Welcome to Write Every Day! I'm china_shop, and I'll be your host for October Part 2! (Much, much thanks to cornerofmadness for sharing the month with me. ♥)
For the regulars who have been doing this a while and just want the details: I'm on NZDT (UTC+13), and I plan to post between 4pm and 6pm local time, which should line up pretty well with cornerofmadness's posts. Please comment on the most recent post, and specify what day(s) you're checking in for.
I go to London Writer's Salon Antipodean Writers' Hour on weekdays, and that usually starts off with an encouraging/inspirational quote. Here's one someone shared a while back.
"When you go mountain climbing, the first thing you’re told is not to look at the peak, but to keep your eyes on the ground as you climb. You just keep climbing patiently one step at a time. If you keep looking at the top, you’ll get frustrated. I think writing is similar. You need to get used to the task of writing. You must make an effort to learn to regard it not as something painful, but as routine.” –Akira Kurosawa, via The Script Lab
My goals and check-in This morning I wrote 1,028 words of flashfic for the current "Brilliant" round of fan_flashworks. I'll finish it tomorrow, and then... has anyone seen Bon Appétit, Your Majesty who'd be willing to beta? :-)
My RSI has been a bit tenuous lately, so writing goals for the rest of month include not stuffing up my arms. This afternoon I walked along a local mountain-bike trail, through the trees, then met up with my partner for hot drinks and chocolate brownie by the sea. The weather has been cold, wet and windy lately, but yesterday and today the sun finally came out. ♥
Other goals for the next 16 days: finish my flashfic, finish a treat I started for guardian_wishlist, sign up for Yuletide, and write something for the next (amnesty) round at fan_flashworks. Other than that, I'll see where the spirit takes me.
How about you? Did you write today?
My Fannish Corner (mxcatmoon) wrote2025-10-1510:38 pm
For the last two weeks I've been in a state of "I really need to work on these paper revisions", which, being who I am, means that I have been coming up with all sorts of ways to procrastinate. Which is not a very good excuse for not posting last week, when I should have told you about the awesomeness of Una Silberrad, and in the past week I have been procrastinating by other means than reading; so I should still write up these books even though they are less fresh in my mind.
Una Silberrad was a popular early 20th century British novelist; like many popular women writers of the time, her books, though in the public domain, are hard to find electronic copies of. I first heard of her from Jo Walton's reading posts on Reactor. A friend of mine is involved with the process of getting her books into project Gutenberg -- in fact we became friends after I messaged her and said "hey, it would be great if someone did this for Edith Ayrton Zangwill, too", and she volunteered to do this, without having read anything of Edith's, just on a Discord friend-of-a-friend's suggestion!
Princess Puck, Una Silberrad. This book just made it to Project Gutenberg, thanks to my friend's efforts. This is a really charming coming-of-age story, with a girl who comes of age and ultimately gets to save the day with her interest in family/local history and her strength of purpose to do what is right. (I think the protagonist maybe could be read as having autistic spectrum traits, in particular her talent for mimicry, but it's unclear.) There is a romance, but this is the sort of story where you feel like the protagonist would have had a meaningful life even if the plot contrivances hadn't arranged to make the romance work out in the end. Reminded me a bit of The Secret Garden, with its combination of romantic tropes and groundedness in everyday work. Of the supporting characters, I particularly liked the protagonist's business-minded older cousin, and how the relationship between the two develops over time.
The Good Comrade, Una Silberrad. This is the only other fiction book of Silberrad's on Gutenberg so far (but this will change soon!) -- it was Silberrad's mos popular novel, and I can see why. This fits the conventional structure of a romance novel much better than Princess Puck, but it goes some really interesting places (Holland, and horticulture) first. Julia is a very resourceful heroine; she has the key Una Silberrad heroine traits of valuing hard work and not caring too much for social norms and class distinctions, but is also very much herself, and shaped by her family circumstances (her father is an alcoholic and gambler, her mother is a professional at keeping up appearances).
Desire, Una Silberrad. This one is not yet on Gutenberg, but was particularly recommended to me. This one has two protagonists; the titular Desire, a wealthy and alluring young socialite, and Peter, an aspiring young writer from a middle-class background. Again the ending is conventional, but the way it gets there is not. (Early in the plot there's some fake dating, but it's not at all used in a tropey way.) Desire starts out being not entirely likeable as a character, but I liked her arc.
The Best Horror Literature and the Worst (horrorlitreddit_feed) wrote2025-10-1603:07 am
I’m interested in other genres yall read. I would say horror is my fave, sci fi a close second, followed by thriller bc sometimes I need a break from all the gore and such. I wish I could be like the intellectuals who read all the western classics and French philosophy, but really my heart is with horror.
What are ur top three fav genres?
I am not into extreme horror. The closest I’ve gotten to is Brother, Gone to See the River Man, etc…
I will dip my toes into hard sci fi once in a while but I’m not smart enough for most of it.
I have written Lots of Words this year. Feel free to ignore these ideas and use your own — I love seeing how other people think about my favorite fandoms, and I love seeing interpretations that are different from mine (some of my favorite fics are the ones that made me look at things in a new way). Also, please don't read anything into the amount of stuff I have written for each fandom, which has more to do with how much free time I had when I wrote the various sections than anything else; I would be extremely pleased to receive anything for any of these, otherwise I would not have requested them. :D
Gave three midterms today and I have only graded one. On the plus side, plenty of writing time. I finished my last two fandomgiftbasket stories (to the tune of at least 2500 words, probably over 3K) (there is like one set of prompts I could do but they only want art. I'm not sure I'm good enough for that)
The other good, got two 100% scores on the exam. On the bad I had at least 6 (out of 24) less than 50%. I tell them don't leave the fill in the blanks blank. Give it a shot. I give it partial credit. I might have to start adding 'but think hard if it makes sense' because on the ceruminous glands make this question (ear wax) someone put BRAINS. I...I can't even. And two people on the what is the system called that we use to determine % of the body that's burned (rule of nines) and they said 'nervous system' I figure they cheated off each other because what are the chances two people would independently come up with something that dumb. (I am not pursuing the cheating suspicion because seriously neither got over 40%. doesn't even matter)
And I have two more sets of tests to grade :(
Yoga was well attended (yay), in a terrible room (boo). Hard floors even with a mat was hard on my knees. I could not push up from the floor into downward dog (I can go into it from standing). I handed the standing poses well but since there was nothing to hold on to, I couldn't return to the floor. My leg was shaking too much. I couldn't feel it at all. I know it'll buckle if I try to get down with nothing to hold onto. I had to stand and basically not do the second half of the exercise. So embarrassing. Also frightening was doing the child pose and realizing I can feel whatever the fuck it is in my throat blocking my breathing. I still have about 3 weeks before I see Ent. sigh.
Next week we're moving to a different room, one with chairs so I can either do chair yoga or at least have something to grab onto. This was so much harder than I thought (and I thought it would be hard even though I used to do yoga). I have to look to make sure my toes aren't folded over because I can't feel them. And at the end when I'm telling my parents about it dad's like 'you wasted money on an Amazon mat'
Me - what are you talking about? I've had this thing for years. I've been doing yoga since my undergrad days!
Dad - I've never see you do yoga, (very obviously calling me a liar)
Me - yeah well I have done (I should mail him the old vhs and dvds I have of yoga flows) but I'm thinking I would NEVER let your hyper critical ass see me exercise ever, not even at gun point.
What I Just Finished Reading:
The Cat Who Saved Books - I just didn't get the hype. It was fine but...I've already forgotten most of it
What I am Currently Reading:
Mirage City - the follow up to Lavender House, very different in tone. I would love ALL of the Hazbin fandom (and creator) to read this to see what being gay in the early half of the 1900s was like.
The Queen of Blood - a YA fantasy I've had on my shelf for too many years now. It's not bad so far but yes the first quarter is more dark academia, fit to survive school (eye roll)
Haunted Cemeteries of Ohio - you know why
Lackadaisy vol 2
clean sweep - I think that's the title some romance graphic novel urban fantasy might be decent if not for the icky romance tropes (sorry but alpha males make me want to shoot them in their smug faces, not drop my panties)
What I Plan to Read Next: The Gallery Assistant -got bored with this arc
More comic cons means more news so have some more of the Mighty Nein
And I've posted this before. But as I was watching Critical Role, this popped up a few years ago and got me listening to The Mighty Nein because I was so curious after hearing this (I just wished I liked Jester better (don't like Beau at all)
I read this year's Hugo and Nebula winning novels.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
I wasn't planning to read this until I saw Wiswell's presentation at Readercon, which went deeply behind the scenes and made this sound thoughtful and interesting.
I had a rant a while back about my growing frustration with the Minority as Monster metaphor, where in order to accept the premise of the story you have to accept that there is something monstrous about the minorities. I think maybe it was in my review of one of the Cadwell Turnbull books? In any case, this book is doing something subtler with this, but I kind of suspect that some readers are reading it in that Minority as Monster vein. The trick here is that Wiswell isn't asking you to empathize with that which is monstrous about Shesheshen. Shesheshen knows that eating people is wrong, and is ashamed that she eats people, but it has been a survival tactic in a world that persecutes her because of who she is. This lets Wiswell explore the monster metaphor in a much more satisfyingly moral way, with twists that flesh out the metaphor and profoundly ask the question of who in fact actually is a monster. But it's only profound and interesting if you don't read the ending as a happy ending, and I think that is a big ask because it does have such cozy vibes.
The Tainted Cup by Robert Bennett Jackson
skygiants said in her review "genarti tells me Ana Dolabra is not a Holmesalike but a Nero Wolfe-alike" but I don't think that's quite right. It's true in the sense specifically that Ana stays inside and sends out her assistant Din to do the boots on the pavement investigating, and then Ana solves the mystery, and yes, that is the fundamental premise of the Nero Wolfe series. But Din is not an Archie-alike and the storytelling is not very Stoutlike at all, so I was thrown a bit in the first couple sections before I started to vibe with it.
Archie Goodwin's narration has very little explicit interiority. I mean, that's not fair, Archie is very open with you about when he is upset or amused or hungry, he wears surface level emotions on his sleeve. But Archie will never muse about the nature of justice, or bemoan the position of the detective in a city built on corruption. Not that he doesn't have opinions about those things, but you are left to infer them, Archie will never tell you. And Jackson hangs a lot of his story on Din doing precisely that, and asking what it means to be part of an Empire. Also Din is very bad at lying! Archie looks askance.
But I liked this very much, it is one of the fairest and most well-told fantasy mysteries I've ever read, the worldbuilding is compelling and suits a murder mystery extremely well. I have already checked out the sequel; I'll report back.
The Best Horror Literature and the Worst (horrorlitreddit_feed) wrote2025-10-1602:07 am
I think mine is the narrator of I Who Have Never Known Men. I appreciate her determination and (towards the end of the novel) her introspection. Although, I Who Have Never Known Men is so well-written, maybe I’d like the protagonist regardless of her personality 😅
Flower Power 2 - Voting We have over forty fabulous icons. Thank you very much to all the participants! Voter Guide Anyone is welcome to vote. Please choose five (5) icons for the main placements and one each for the categories Best Color (Coloring), Best Image Crop & Best Composition. Please, don't vote for your own icons or ask others to vote for your icons. Please try to vote for the best quality icons, not only the subjects, fandoms or makers. Important: Please vote for a different icon for each of the categories (Color, Crop, Composition). There is a checkbox & text answer combo poll. Voting will be open for one week. Thank you for voting. If any icons are missing, please view a screen shot of the icon table in the comments.
Tuesday morning we awoke in our hotel room in Brussels. We took a 10-minute walk to Wittamer's, one of the classic old chocolateries of Belgium, then back to the hotel, packed everything up, checked out, and walked the 15 minutes or so to the main train station. Caught a train to the Amsterdam airport: it was somewhat delayed by a national strike in Belgium, then by a slower train ahead of it on the same tracks, then by an infestation of swans on the tracks. (Would I make that up?) But we still got there at 13:30, in plenty of time for our 17:05 plane to JFK.
As of 16:30, they hadn't started boarding yet, and takeoff was tentatively pushed back to 17:25. Mechanics were looking into "a technical issue" with the plane, with no confident estimate of when they'd be finished. As of 17:45, takeoff was tentatively pushed back to 19:00. As of 18:30, the flight was cancelled altogether, we would be automatically rebooked onto a later flight, we would get an e-mail with details, and if we wanted a hotel voucher to spend the night, we should go to transfer desk T4. We heard about all of this by individual airline employees walking around and telling small groups of people, because the microphone they would have used to announce it more broadly wasn't working. So by the time we got the word about transfer desk T4, there had already been a mass exodus in the direction of transfer desk T4, and we found ourselves at the end of about a hundred-yard-long line inside the terminal.
It occurred to me that the rush for hotel vouchers might well be accompanied by a rush for hotel rooms, so while standing in the line, I pulled out my phone and looked for nearby hotels. Found one, the "Citizen M", a 5-minute walk away from the terminal we were in. This sounded good because we had no idea what time our rebooked flight would be, so I made a reservation there. And since KLM was allegedly paying for it, I requested breakfast with our room (for an extra 19 € each).
I checked my mail a few times for word of a rebooking, then tried text-chatting with customer service to rebook interactively. The bot informed me that my flight had been canceled (news flash!) and pointed me to the exact same web page I had used to chat with it, but also offered the option of talking to a human. So I waited for that.
After an hour and a bit, and before getting a response from the chat, I reached the front of the line for hotel vouchers. There was a ring of about eight self-service kiosks, which the employees recommended you start with, resorting to another line for human customer service only if the self-service kiosk couldn't cope with your request. So I did that: the kiosk recognized that our flight had been cancelled, and offered us food-and-drink vouchers and a hotel voucher. For the hotel voucher, there were two choices: make the reservation for me, or I'll make it myself. Since I had already reserved a room, I picked the latter, and was given two food-and-drink vouchers and a "generic voucher" that isn't actually good for anything itself; you're supposed to show it to the human customer-service agents after standing in another line. But in the process of doing all this, the kiosk also informed us that we had been rebooked for a 7:15 flight to London Heathrow and a connection at an unspecified time from there to JFK. So much for breakfast.
We stood in another line for twenty minutes or so before getting to the human customer-service agents, who took our "generic voucher" in exchange for a voucher at the Park Plaza hotel. I pointed out that I had already made a reservation at Citizen M, which the agent acknowledged was much closer -- "basically the only hotel in walking distance of here". The prepaid vouchers were apparently available only for the Park Plaza, but the agent assured me that we could get reimbursed for the cost of a night's lodging at another hotel, and gave me instead a card with URL's to request such reimbursement in various languages. And she also printed off our boarding passes for the flights to Heathrow and thence to JFK, telling us we should be at the terminal 90 minutes before boarding, i.e. 5:45. We thanked her and walked into the night looking for the hotel.
Which wasn't difficult: Google Maps gave reasonable walking directions, and we weren't far from the front door of the terminal before we could see a big letter-M logo glowing in the distance. Checked in and went to our room. Which was trippy and ultramodern: the first thing you see when you open the door is a shower stall on the "open plan", followed by a toilet, also on the "open plan", and once you've walked between them, you get to the bed. In fact, both shower stall and toilet have frosted-glass walls that close around them on a circular track, so they're not entirely "open". Next to the bed is an iPad that controls everything in the rooom: the television, the curtains, the blinds, the lights, the soundscape, the night-light (which has separate controls for brightness and color)...
It was now about 9 PM and we hadn't eaten much since noon, so I looked up the menu on the iPad and discovered there was no room service. So shalmestere and I agreed on some dim sum as a late-night snack, and I went back to the ground floor bar to order it. While waiting, I pulled out my phone and realized that a human had responded to my customer-service chat. I summarized the situation, and the agent said "Good news! You've been rebooked on the 8:00 AM flight from Brussels to Amsterdam, and the 10:00 AM flight from Amsterdam to JFK." This was the exact same pair of flights I'd been rebooked onto twice before, and it was decidedly not appropriate now given that we were in Amsterdam, not Brussels. I pointed this out, and asked whether we could have just the 10:00 flight from Amsterdam to JFK, without the Brussels-AMS leg (which sounded more pleasant than a 7:15 flight changing in London). The agent misunderstood me and said the 10:00 PM flight was cancelled too (I didn't think there even was a 10:00 PM flight!); when I clarified that I meant 10:00 AM the next day, the agent said that flight was also canceled or unavailable or something. So we agreed to stick to the 7:15-to-London plan. And finally the food arrived, I took it up to the room, we ate and fell into bed.
Wednesday morning I woke to my alarm at 4:30 AM. Turned on the night-light in orange-yellow to suggest sunrise, took a shower, and woke shalmestere to do the same. We got downstairs by 5:30, checked out (accepting the offer of a couple of pains au chocolat to-go, since we had paid for breakfast after all), walked back to the terminal, and went through security and passport-control again. The 7:15 flight to London boarded without mishap, although it didn't actually get off the ground until 8:00. Landed in London only ten minutes late, with about 45 minutes before our connection to New York would start boarding. Unfortunately, the connection to New York was on a different airline and from a different terminal, so we had to stand in line to catch a bus from one terminal to another. Fortunately, the bus stayed on the "inside-security-and-passport-control" side of the border, so we didn't have to do security and passport control again in the new terminal. Unfortunately, the boarding passes we had used for the flight to London were apparently insufficient to get us onto the NYC leg, so we had to stand in another line, with dozens of other people, to talk to one of the two Virgin Atlantic customer-service agents on duty at 9 AM. Eventually the agent issued us two new boarding passes, and we started running to find our gate, hoping it wouldn't be closed by the time we got there. And it wasn't, although the plane was mostly boarded.
Fairly uneventful flight from Heathrow to JFK. Retrieved bags, didn't even have to show passports to anyone (just get our digital photos taken), caught a cab home, and collapsed in bed, 32 hours after boarding the train from Brussels to Amsterdam.
On October 3, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services sent a memo to legal services across the U.S., directed toward unaccompanied migrant children in the services’ care. The memo offered children who arrived in the United States as unaccompanied migrants, and who were not themselves citizens, the sum of $2,500 in exchange for “voluntary departure” from the country.
If that was the carrot, a day later came the stick. As the Trump government prepared on October 4 to institute a new policy of immediately detaining undocumented immigrants once they turn 18, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order to stop the directive from taking effect pending further court decisions. The ruling was widely expected to be appealed.
Dr. Stephanie Canizales has spoken with more than 200 of these undocumented teenagers, following their lives in and around downtown Los Angeles between 2011 and 2014 while researching her PhD at UCLA. Her book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States, tells the story of hopeful but deeply uncertain lives marked by a constant sense that any achievement or advance in American society would, in the end, prove impermanent.
I met Dr. Canizales while researching a previous piece, and our discussion eventually turned to the larger questions behind the accelerating drive to persecute and expel migrant youth, and what it means about citizenship and identity in the United States in a post-democratic era.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Zach Rabiroff: You started this work five years before the first election of Donald Trump. What has changed since then, in policy and public attitudes toward these young people?
Stephanie Canizales: The trajectory of our treatment and perception of immigrant children has gone from viewing children as innocent moral subjects deserving of protection to viewing immigrants as criminals, and undocumented immigrant children are caught in the middle.
In the first Trump administration we saw the criminalization of undocumented children, which I describe as a kind of ticking time bomb. They are undocumented, the “illegal immigrant threat,” at the time of border crossing. But because they are children, aging into adulthood, they’re also this protracted threat, right? They will be undocumented adults eventually; that is kind of how it was framed. I remember [former Trump Attorney General] Jeff Sessions saying that unaccompanied children were coming to the U.S. as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Meaning that immigrant children were thinking about the Dream Act, thinking about DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program granting temporary work permits and protection against deportation for young people brought to the U.S. as children); Sessions’s rhetoric suggested they were taking advantage of U.S. immigration policy, and that they were sort of conniving and deceitful in that way.
Obama, who was the DACA president—it became law in 2012—really pushed for it at the urging of undocumented immigrant students themselves: he put forward this idea that there was at least some group of young people deserving of continued protection. We know that [DACA was] complicated and wrong in a lot of ways, but it gave 530,000 young people legal protection for a short amount of time.
It was also extremely popular. So when and why did the public attitude toward undocumented children shift to the right? Was Trump the product of a kind of thermostatic reaction against Obama’s immigration policies, or did the wave emerge from Trump to begin with?
I think what Donald Trump was able to accomplish was a blurring of childhood. We see it in the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. The fact that children as young as 14 were enveloped in this invasion narrative: this activation of the “criminal alien” rhetoric superseding the “protected child” rhetoric.
You’re right that Trump came out in stark contrast to whatever Obama was. The pendulum swung, and the narratives about the caravans and all of that arose in 2015 and 2016. Thinking about all immigrant children as MS-13, that was his favorite line to say: that all of these young people were gang members. And now we are hearing that it’s an “invasion,” this “enemy poisoning our blood” narrative that we’re seeing become more prevalent.
What do you think allowed that to become pervasive in the culture so quickly?
American ideas of childhood are shifting, broadly speaking, and I think that comes a little bit from the pandemic. We saw child labor laws being changed across various states: this idea that children as young as 16 could serve alcohol, or be cleaning bathrooms and working in restaurant kitchens because there weren’t enough workers. Children are not as priceless today as they were in the ’80s and ’90s. American ideologies around childhood shifted in response to the pandemic economy, and that converged with the economic fallout that came after. All of these things snowballed and met up with the “immigrant child is a threat” narrative.
We should be thinking about the meaning of childhood in the U.S. It is at risk, if we value this idea, that children are the protected population in the U.S. When we think about environmental policy, education policy, Social Security—everything is about preserving the future for our children. If childhood is no longer sacred, then what is the purpose of what we’re doing today?
So maybe the question is, what changed American attitudes toward childhood, and whether or not it was something innocent or worth protecting?
Yeah, I think this is the real question, and it’s something we really need to be paying attention to: “Is childhood still sacred in the U.S.?” And I see that also in [detained permanent resident] Mahmoud Khalil not being allowed to be present for the birth of his child. I see it in the vaccination conversation. Children are dying of measles when they don’t have to. I see it in the gun safety conversation. There’s so many ways that we see every day that childhood doesn’t mean what we pretend it does for the sake of our American cultural cohesiveness.
I wonder, too, if this is emerging out of the American religious culture, maybe going back to the ’70s and ’80, if not earlier.
Yeah. I don’t want to step out of my lane, but I do think that in faith-based circles, there is a movement—I think about JD Vance having made this push, saying, “We need to have more children.”
Once the child is born, what are we doing? We’re withdrawing any sort of federal aid or temporary assistance for needy families. [We’re cutting] Medicaid. We’re lowering the bar on child labor laws. We’re getting rid of books in the library. All these things that actually promote childhood development and growth are being pulled back, even as people are saying that we are a nation where we value children, therefore we should have more children.
But it also goes along with the growing notion that these immigrant children cannot become real Americans.
I would agree with that. And then it sort of spills over into the Great Replacement theory, and the racial logic of who is phenotypically American. That isn’t a cultural argument. It is a race-based argument.
The last thing I want to ask is about the matching wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that we’ve seen break out in countries far removed from the United States. And that obviously goes beyond a reaction to DACA, or Obama, or anything else particular to us. Do you have a sense of what’s fueling this hostility worldwide?
Oh my gosh. The answer to this question would have to go into the history of settler colonialism and the history of racial capitalism. At a high level, I think it boils down to demophobia: the fear of demographic change. If we can’t sit and have a lesson about how settler colonialism works, and how immigrants are constructed as the stranger on stolen land and then made out to be the threat…
On Friday we’ll publish a form where you can admire the best 21 entries that come in, as judged by a panel of Flaming Hydra editors. Then you may choose your favorites from the feast of reason, and the flow of soul.
It is a shock to the system to WIN (favorable) and the winning entry will be posted on the ANNALS of HYDRANYM page.
In New York this November 1st? Want to have some fun? Yes; yes you do.
Join Flaming Hydra at Village Works, 12 Saint Marks Place, from 7 to 10 p.m. We'll be offering books for sale, signings, light refreshments, and a chance to hang out and relax for a minute IRL with online friends.
Please RSVP here. It’s free, and you can also pre-order discounted books to pick up at the party (and maybe have signed)!!
We have twelve initial pinch hits. Please email me at modmultiplicity at gmail dot com if you want to claim one, or comment here (comments will be screened); make sure to include both the pinch hit you want to claim and your AO3 name.
Finally had my nerve conduction test today, and I officially have carpal tunnel on top of my tendonitis in both wrists. Worse, as expected, in the left. Fortunately it's moderate so surgery is unlikely, but it will not go away on its own, which means.... I don't know? Probably more physical therapy. I don't know what else, but I should hear in a few days from my actual doctor about what the next steps are.
The zappy doc was really nice though, he explained everything clearly and answered all my questions about this that and the other thing with the tests themselves. I'm guessing he doesn't get many people who are like omg tell me what that is, what's the spiky bit mean, how does this work?
Next physio appointment is on Friday, so I'll be able to tell my therapist that it's official, so hopefully she'll start giving me more stuff to do with that focus rather than just the tendonitis.
In other news, I just got back from NY again, even though I wasn't working the con this year. It was a good time though - did some touristy stuff like MoMA and seeing the van Goghs and Monets, ate a lot of good food, as well as getting some studying done. Oh, and Drunk Dracula. Drunk Shakespeare/Dracula is always a blast and so fuckin' funny. I'm not sure what it is about those shows, but for some reason I always end up dancing on "stage" - this time with Drac himself. The narrator/Renfield/every other random character also borrowed my phone and recorded a bit - I didn't even realize that he was recording at the time. Hilariously, when he borrowed it, he saw my background and was all, "that is a BEAUTIFUL man," in character, as he continued to turn on the video recorder and do his bit. (My background is Z1L.)
Got to see a few of my friends in NY, but not as many as I would have liked. Still, it was really nice to be able to snag them in smaller groups so we could actually TALK and hear each other and chill a bit. And if Monday morning four of us knocked back two whole carafes of mimosa together, well. That's between us. And all of you. Shh.
Also went to Chinatown and hit up the bookstore. Came out with two textbooks, a translation of Le Petit Prince, and another collection of short stories that appear to be for kids but I dunno for sure what it is cuz I can't read it yet. I haven't taken a very deep dive into it, but I think it'll be a good stepping stone.
Tax class is going well; I'm over halfway done now, and scored a 95% on my first exam. It should have been slightly higher, but one of the questions was written incorrectly and even though I ran it by the teacher it still got marked wrong. Whatever. The passing grade was 70% so I don't care that much. I feel like there's still a lot that I'm not really solid on, but a lot of it is just going to come with time and practice.
Let's see, what else. LACC was great - I worked front table for David Tennant and got to interact with a lot of happy fans. Also had the chance to tell DT how much I appreciate him standing up for trans kids and he was so lovely about that. Invited him to Shakesnight too, jokingly. That would be fuckin awesome though, heh. Didn't really see or do anything else at the con, but I did get to wander around on Friday night and picked up an absolutely adorable Derpy and Sussy art print and got to chat with one of my friends in artist alley.
Trying out a new brain therapist tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. It'll be nice to be in person again, and I hope that this one is better than my last one. He seemed pretty okay in our consult call, but *shrugs*.
's mom's birthday today, so we're gonna go do dinner at some point, whee.
The Best Horror Literature and the Worst (horrorlitreddit_feed) wrote2025-10-1511:56 pm
I've been reading a lot lately, and the kind of books I lean towards are definitely too messed up to talk to the people in my life about because they tend to be squeamish. I don't know of what I've been reading technically counts as horror? I saw some splatterpunk servers and stuff for extreme horror, but I don't know if what I've been reading counts. (Also I will totally take any book recommendations based off of what I've read below as well)
Here's what I've read recently, nothing obscure or anything lately.
Fluids - May Lietz
The Sluts - Dennis Cooper
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke - Eric LaRocca
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china_shop) wrote2025-10-16 04:35 pm
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fan_flashworks. I'll finish it tomorrow, and then... has anyone seen Bon Appétit, Your Majesty who'd be willing to beta? :-)
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![Bluesky post by Joe MacLeod: IT'S A GREAT PUMPKIN [QUOTE POST] with image of CT scan of a pumpkin: Shown this one before over the years at the old site, but once again for Bsky, CT scan images through a live pumpkin scanned at 600 micron thickness, w/ lots of post processing, video flythrough, etc. The detail is exquisite. Best seen not on a phone. (🔖 it) randomfootage.homestead.com/pumpkin.htmlShown this one before over the years at the old site, but once again for Bsky, CT scan images through a live pumpkin scanned at 600 micron thickness, w/ lots of post processing, video flythrough, etc. The detail is exquisite. Best seen not on a phone. (🔖 it) randomfootage.homestead.com/pumpkin.html](https://flaminghydra.com/content/images/2025/10/image-11.png)
![Bluesky post by S.I. Rosenbaum: osie and me during that last editing session before the book goes in sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 10h @josie.zone FUCKING WROTE A BOOK YALL. Like. not just a book. A BOUQUE [RESPONSE by Josephine Riesman] SO damn true](https://flaminghydra.com/content/images/2025/10/image-13.png)
