(no subject)

Mar. 18th, 2026 10:50 pm
skygiants: Nellie Bly walking a tightrope among the stars (bravely trotted)
[personal profile] skygiants
Because Becky Mahoney and I know each other, I boosted a Bluesky giveaway for her upcoming vampire novel Thrall (coming out next month!) in the spirit of friendship and then was somewhat surprised to discover that I had in fact won the giveaway -- surprised but delighted, obviously, since I've loved all of her previous books even when they weren't LUCY CENTRIC DRACULA RIFFS!! focused around a COLLEGE PIRATE RADIO STATION!!!

The central character of Thrall is Lucy Easting, who has just transferred into beautiful, isolated, mountainside Rollins University from community college, in a bid to get away from her stressed and depressed mother and live a life she's excited about for a change.

Alas! her first college party results in a couple of neck puncture marks, a marked tendency to experience severe migraines in sunlight, and a tragic susceptibility to the ominous vampire voice in her head that occasionally takes over her consciousness and directs her towards uncharacteristic action.

Fortunately! the college is full of prospective allies who are willing to take a chance on Lucy despite her regrettable thrall situation, including but not limited to the host of the local college late-night radio show, who has been a target of the vampire since her sophomore year and has been using the airwaves to try and fight back; Lucy's RA, a determined young woman with very nice arms, who came to the school to investigate after a terrible fate befell her high school ex-boyfriend Jonathan; and the very nice, normal party host who has no previous vampire experience but feels just terrible about the whole situation and is not about to relinquish responsibility for sorting the situation out! it was her party!!

It's a really charming book on a number of levels, but my favorite thing about it as a Dracula riff specifically is how much it's thematically invested in Lucy as a side character -- the narrative is consistently very clear that the vampire is not particularly interested in Lucy; he's obsessed with Athena the radio show host and everything else he's doing is part of his elaborate cat-and-mouse game with her, including incidentally overturning Lucy's life as a by-the-by -- and how Lucy makes the book her own story anyway by sheer force of determination not to be cut out of it. Lucy's energy really drives the book: she wants to live, and she wants to live a life on her own terms, and she's not about to let one horrible encounter take that away from her.

Also, I think it's not a huge spoiler but I guess is technically a mild one: lesbians! )

(no subject)

Mar. 18th, 2026 10:20 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt
Dear Prudence,

I’m a 21-year-old college student living in a house with five other students. There are three women and three men. We’re having an issue keeping our kitchen clean, and I am the only one who consistently cleans. I keep the floors and counters clean, wash the piles of dishes in the sink, wash dish towels, etc. Anytime I’ve asked people to chip in, they never follow through. I’ve tried not doing the cleaning, but then the kitchen gets disgusting and I end up caving.

I’m not completely innocent when it comes to not always washing my dishes immediately and being messy, but I feel like I clean more often than anyone else. A general chore chart doesn’t work, and I am tired of feeling like my roommate’s mother. How can I get them to take some initiative and do more of the heavy lifting that always falls on me?

—Not a Mother to Five at 21


Read more... )
sholio: Text: "Age shall not weary her, nor custom stale her infinite squee" (Infinite Squee)
[personal profile] sholio
... resulting from making that vid this past week.

One thing that I was thinking about is the sheer challenge of costuming this show, because most of the costumes are directly patterned after their manga/anime looks. So whereas most of the time in most shows, you can probably source the characters' everyday wear from basic mass-produced clothes or even vintage or secondhand shops, aside from really specific superhero costumes or whatever, this is more like a historical production in that everything has to be made from scratch. (Only, if possible, worse, because unless you're doing an unusual time period, normally you could probably go to the warehouses of Elizabethan or Regency costumes or Roman togas that no doubt exist.)

Here, even the relatively normal clothes are directly echoing something specific, like the patterns on
season 2 character'sTashigi's
distinctive shirt, or
another season 2 character'sMiss Valentine's lemon-patterned
dress.

Anyway, it's just interesting to think about. Even the simplest costumes are more complicated than they seem, because it's not just an unusual shirt that the costume people found at a vintage shop; they're having to explicitly pattern-match or color-match or style-match items from the manga and anime.

More specific spoilers about characters' fighting skills )

Babylon 5 fic: Green Growing Things

Mar. 17th, 2026 10:38 pm
sholio: (B5-station)
[personal profile] sholio
So this is apparently the latest installment in an accidental series about gardens. This is based off some bits in [archiveofourown.org profile] hauntinghouses's lovely post-canon fixit Out of the Woods (not necessary to read before this one, but you should read if you like Londo & G'Kar stuff; it's lovely, with some neat Narn worldbuilding), which was in turn inspired by one of my older ones. This is not meant to be in direct continuity with either hauntinghouses' fic or the other fic it was inspired by; it's off happily living its best life in its own AU 'verse.

Green Growing Things (Londo & G'Kar, 2800 wds)
It is post-canon, and there are gardens.

Fic also posted under the cut )

Bonus extras from Tumblr )
laughing_tree: (Seaworth)
[personal profile] laughing_tree posting in [community profile] scans_daily
image host

Ryan was telling me, "Oh, we're going to do this scene in the Doom crossover book." And I was like, "I don't think Thor would say that." And Thor did kind of say that. And I was like, we have to kill Thor now, we have to kill him. I mean, he was being reborn anyway but now he's got to be reborn. -- Al Ewing

Read more... )

(no subject)

Mar. 17th, 2026 03:05 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt
DEAR HARRIETTE: I've recently gone sober for health reasons, and it wasn't an easy decision, especially because my social life has always involved going out for drinks, celebrating with cocktails and bonding over happy hour. When my friends and I went out last weekend, they were pressuring me to drink. I ordered a mocktail, and almost immediately, my friends started to laugh and said that it would be fine to just have one drink. This surprised me because I never thought that my friends would try to force me to do something that would actively have a negative effect on my health. It made me feel unsupported and, frankly, disrespected. At the same time, I don't want to lose my friendships or isolate myself socially just because I'm choosing not to drink. Now I'm anxious about future outings. I don't want every dinner or celebration to turn into a debate about my personal choices. How should I talk to my friends about setting boundaries without making things awkward? -- Sober

Read more... )

(no subject)

Mar. 17th, 2026 01:51 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt
Dear Eric: My husband and his ex-wife have 50/50 custody of their 15-year-old son. I despise this child. He is completely useless, rude, disrespectful, selfish, ungrateful and lazy. All he does is stare at his computer screen. I have carefully planned my entire life schedule around his schedule, to avoid being at the house on the days he is there for my husband's 50 percent custody.

My husband has just told me that his ex-wife is moving to another state far away and that he is going to take full custody of his son. This means the child I despise so much is now going to be living with me at my house full time, every single day, and there's nothing I can do about it. My husband refuses to let his son move away with his ex. How do I manage this?

– Fed Up


Read more... )

(no subject)

Mar. 19th, 2026 12:29 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Them: Go look at any official communication from a company. Have you ever received a ConEd bill that says, “Ya should of paid ya bill on time, now we gonna haveta cut off ya powa”? Of course not. Why? Because that is not standard English, and it would reflect poorly on the company.

Me: I take it you've never called ConEd on the phone in NYC? Because, whew, that'd disabuse you of this fiction pretty quick. Them and National Grid, wow. And I'm not even talking about their representatives, I'm talking about their recordings! Never heard such a thick NYC accent in my life, and I grew up here!

(no subject)

Mar. 18th, 2026 08:54 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Things!
Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and Repair!"
Everything inside remains. Round the tools
Of that colossal Bench, all arranged
The shiny level and sander are neatly put away.


This is the best comment in that thread, nothing will top it.

"The best have strong convictions, while the worst / Are full of resignation and are sad.
[...]
And if a lion slouches toward Bethlehem, / That's 'cause it's native to the Levant."

Gosh, I wish.

*********************************


Read more... )

Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

Mar. 17th, 2026 08:46 am
icon_uk: Mod Squad icon (Mod Squad)
[personal profile] icon_uk posting in [community profile] scans_daily
In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

LEGO have announced the release of their first ever Tintin set, the iconic rocket from Destination Moon/Explorers on the Moon, which will come with minifigures of Tintin, Captain Haddock, Snowy and Thomson and Thompson.

Maul: Shadow Lord got a trailer in advance of it's April release, showing nice graphics but a lot of very very dark scenes in terms of lighting. We get it; "Dark Side", "Shadow Lord"... at least turn on a damn light every now and again.

The Buffy Reboot has been cancelled before making it to screen, and Sarah Michelle Gellar" has spoken about why.

Space Sheriff Gavan Infinity won points for unespectedness when they introduced their latest Gavan but I won't spoil it for anyone in advance of clicking on the link.

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men had an interesting discussion about genetics in the X-verse, with an actual qualified geneticist.

The Oscars happened, but I wasn't paying attention, so have no idea if anything unexpected happened.
musesfool: mel king from the pitt with a smiley face (happy to be here)
[personal profile] musesfool
Oscar winner Michael B Jordan! Woohoo! I did not watch the Oscars but I am so happy for MBJ!

Also for Kpop Demon Hunters and "Golden!"

Here are two links I enjoyed this morning:

= Don't Fence Ted McGinley In (NYT gift link) (also, spoilers for aired episodes of Shrinking)

= 'The Pitt,' as Told by Its Patients

*
sholio: (Egypt-Yellow Submarine)
[personal profile] sholio
A vid about the Marines. Clips from seasons one and two; spoilers.

(CW: guns, violence, smoking - the usual show stuff. No fast/stuttery cuts.)



Music: Janelle Monae
Length: 2:48
Crossposted: On AO3 | on Tumblr

Download: 212 Mb MP4 (zipped)

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