Member Posts

Entry tags:

rl suckage

Goddamn scammers. This is a PSA - watch out for this bullshit

I was almost scammed yesterday. Got a phone call ostensibly from my bank and he (UK accent, slightly unusual but not impossible) launched right away into reassurance that he wasn't going to ask for my PIN or account details. Said he was from my bank's fraud dept and my credit card had been used for a transaction for over $1800.00 in Singapore, so as they knew I lived in Auckland, he was checking I wasn't on vacation there. I said no I wasn't.

He assured me they would block the payment, but said that unfortunately as someone had my card details, the bank would have to cancel my card and mail me a replacement. I moaned a bit about the hassle. Then he said he needed me to check my texts as there should be one related to the scam transaction. There was. Then he said could I read out the 6 digit authorisation number so he could cancel it. But the authorisation number had only 4 digits, so I got suspicious, told him I'd call my bank, and disconnected. Would I have fallen for it if he'd got the number of digits right? I hope not, but am unsure.

Sure enough it was a scam, and my bank's fraud dept hadn't contacted me. There was a small sum the scammer had tried to charge to my card, and my bank said if I'd given him the authorisation number he'd in fact have charged a huge amount to my card. The bad news is that the bank still have to cancel my card, and the REALLY ANNOYING news is that they're based in both Aussie and NZ and their new procedure is to mail my new card from fucking Australia, not locally. I know from past experience that mail from Aussie can take bloody weeks, so that's a huge bummer. (They say max. 2 weeks but I don't believe it). I have several payments automatically set up on my card and they're going to start bouncing.

Anyway, I'll just be over here gnashing my teeth, but be aware of this scam - they're very slick and believable. Don't ever give anyone purporting to be from your bank a texted (etc.) transaction authorisation number, no matter how small the amount is. In fact, don't do anything at all if "your bank" calls you. Hang up and call your bank to check.

Entry tags:

reading,
television

i can see it like a prophecy

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Wow, this is one of the classics that did not disappoint me. I feel the rage over how capitalism and the quest for profits, by people and organizations who frankly do not need them, destroy the lives and dignity of ordinary people. This was written in 1939 and the fact that it's still so relevant is gutting. Not a fast-paced book by any means but overall just really well written details and emotional impact. East of Eden on my list for more Steinbeck later.

In TV, I watched The Undeclared War (season 1). Another show specifically watched due to my random sudden attachment to Simon Pegg and discovered through a tumblr post by someone else going through Simon Pegg obsession. This is a British show about cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns and while it was somewhat slow because it really does focus on the cyber stuff and doesn't just use that as a backdrop for more exciting spy things like a lot of shows would, it got pretty real. I was like, okay, this is indeed a political thriller and hits really close to some serious anxiety areas. That said, I will watch season 2 when it comes out. I like the way they visualized analyzing code as like an escape room type mystery and I find Saara to be an interesting and messy protagonist.

And movies! I went to see the new Superman which I thought was good and the new Fantastic Four which was fine but mostly just reminded me that no matter how good the cast is I unfortunately find Fantastic Four to be hopelessly boring.

Current Mood: exhausted

Entry tags:

✨glimmers and good things - august 5th ✨

Today was a hard one. I ended up taking the day off because the anxiety and depression hit hard in the wake of the airport sale news. The lack of sleep, the uncertainty, the way it was announced - it all caught up with me.

But I tried to take care of myself, even if I felt a bit hollow.

📚 I curled up with books and started gently planning out the rest of the year’s reading challenges
🧼 I spent the day focusing on soft, non-demanding self-care (blankets, quiet, no pressure)
📝 I wrote some very self-indulgent tennis dads smut - and honestly, no regrets

It wasn’t easy to find glimmers today. But they’re there. And I’m proud of myself for looking.

Entry tags:

dear author letter

Dear Shipcrossing Letter

Dear ShipsCrossing Writer,

You are amazing. I want to tell you that up front, because you are.

Please don’t stress about this assignment. Crossovers make me ridiculously happy. Really. So this is going to be a blast no matter what! Also, I love gifts in general, so I’ll be chuffed to get a prize of any shape and size. I know this letter is ridiculously long as it’s the most fandoms I think I’ve ever signed up for and again I love these fandoms and tend to babble, but don’t let that scare you off. Nor is there any one request that I want more than the others, no matter how much I’ve written for one verses the others. Mostly, I’ve had years requesting some of these so LOTS of time to come up with prompts versus new pairings/fandoms might not have as many. But honestly for this whole signup, I just wanted to give you as much detail and choice as possible to hopefully help get your inspiration flowing since holy crap you signed up to write a LOT of words for me! Seriously: A. Maze. Ing.

The only thing I do ask is that my DNW list be avoided.

DNW: Infertility/miscarriage, prostitution, noncon, dubcon, requested character/pairing death, infidelity, love triangles/jealousy focus (I am far more fond of OT3ing it up), Hanahaki, characters de-aged/aged back up during the story, A/B/O, gangster/mob, noir settings, Modern AUs that remove canon SFF or historical elements, amnesia, loss of limb/amputations, mpreg, underage/adult, gender swap, teacher/student, drug abuse/alcoholism, or incest. Please no 2nd person or 1st person POVs unless in epistolary/letters format.

For M-rated fics, please no knife/blood/gun play in a sexual context (canon level plot/action violence is fine), humiliation in a D/S dynamic, age or pet play, scat, watersports, rape-as-fantasy-scenes, anal for M/F pairings, and any kind of direct blow in a sexual situation, including spanking/flogging.

Yes Please: Post-apocalypse, slice of life/domestic/curtainfic, epistolary stories, found family, crossovers with characters ending up at the Gertrude Hunt of Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles series, AUs (particularly zombie apocalypse, Black Jewels verse, Sentinel/Guide, Old West, and Pacific Rim fusion), outsider POVs, supernatural elements like hauntings/werewolves/fae/etc., competency kink, fixit fics, stranded together/huddling together for warmth, and 5 and 1 style fics.

For M-rating fics, I particularly love dirty talk, Dom/Sub dynamic (service Dom and/or service Sub a plus), that Dom ordering their Sub around, restraint i.e.: shibari/handcuffs/holding partner down, wall sex, shower sex, cramped vehicular sex, biting/marking (without major blood being drawn), mate bonds and/or soul bonds needing consumation, “OMG we didn’t die” sex, and “sharing body heat” leading to sex.

Also I do have gifts enabled and welcome treats if someone who isn’t assigned me gets inspired by my requests!

Pride and Prejudice
Elinor Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility)/Colonel Fitzwilliam (Pride and Prejudice)
Jane Bennet (Pride & Prejudice)/Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility)
Charlotte Lucas (Pride & Prejudice)/Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility)
Jane Bennet (Pride and Prejudice) & Elinor Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility)
I really REALLY love crossovers for Jane Austen stories. Especially for the rare pairs and side characters above. Something about Colonel Brandon and Colonel Fitzwilliam just appeals to me on both fronts, and the quiet sisters of both canons, Jane, and Elinor, seem to me to have deserved better than the fates they were given by the text, as does the other “less” desirable miss, Charlotte Lucas. So, if the canon doesn’t supply a proper pairing – find another canon! Seriously, here I’m just all about mutual respect and “hearthlike” loves instead of “raging fire” passions and competency kinks abounding! I don’t have a lot of specific prompts for these requests, but if you like the style, I would particularly love me an epistolary love story or even society/gossip pages about how the couples fall in love ala Bridgerton’s Lady Whistledown for an added crossover detail LOL!

Chronicles of Riddick Series
Richard B. Riddick (Chronicles of Riddick Series)/River Tam (Firefly)
Oof, this is legit a mashup of two of my fave SF fandoms. Pitch Black is a STUNNING movie fight me! And honestly I even like Chronicles and Riddick (though the latter almost felt a little too much like Pitch Black – I really would have liked to see Furya. Oh well). And Firefly (and Serenity) had SO MUCH POTENTIAL, though yes in retrospect, it had a fair number of Whedon-esque issues (oof the sex work slurs left and right). Still, both are some of my happy places, and putting them together, and in particular these two characters together? So much yes please! I don’t know how to articulate what it is that is so fantastic about these two, but man, it just WORKS for me. I do want River to be of adult age, just FYI, but beyond that, feel free to run wild! Does Riddick escape the Necros and end up getting a ride aboard Serenity? Does River somehow end up crash-landed with the others aboard the Hunter-Gratzner? Are we pre or post Big Damn Movie? Honestly, any of these will make me thrilled. Seriously! BTW, this one is my one exception to my DNW of no sexual blood play, but only when it comes to biting/marking. I still am not game for blades against skin or any kind of dubcon/non-con; I just appreciate Riddick being a bit possessive with his River!

Richard B Riddick (Chronicles of Riddick Series) & John “Reaper” Grimm (Doom)
The ridiculous Doom movie is yet another of my way too formative fandoms. It was one of the VERY first I ever wrote fic for actually, and is a large part of my Karl Urban Problem™. Back in the day, said Problem also led to the joy of tying John into other Karl Urban fandoms with his infection turning him into an immortal. Or something? Anyway, Reaper!Vaako having lived for however many hundreds of years falling into the Necro cult if only for the possibility that he might get to die some day could be VERY fun, especially once the Riddick shows up. Riddick after all has a helluva lot of keener instincts than most, and it would be fun to see if he could figure out something is just a little extra off about Vaako. Bonus for this leading to Kyra surviving and that maybe leading to all three of them remembering how to be as close to human as possible. Hell maybe John bites Kyra to save her for Riddick? IDEK. I just like the implications of this!

Games of Thrones TV
Sansa Stark (ISOIAF)/Aragorn (LOTR)
I’ve been in a “ship Sansa with people who treat her like a queen” mood, and this crossover pairing has SO MUCH potential. I think I’d prefer it set in one world or the other, but I have read some awesome “slip from one universe to another fic” if that’s really what you are in the mood to write. Regardless of how you get them together, I would prefer no bashing of Arwen as she is glorious – she just isn’t meant to be with Aragorn for this exchange lol. But yeah, Sansa deserved SO MUCH BETTER, and Aragorn is one of my early (probably too early honestly) fantasy crushes. Oh! I also think I would prefer Sansa to be human in either world, but yeah, other than that – run amok! Courtly love! Political shenanigans that a king must deal with no matter than he still feels more like a Ranger! Letters between an arranged marriage! Sansa serving and caring for her people during a war (whichever war you decide on)! I’m just fascinated by the thought of these two – I look forward to seeing what you write!

Innkeeper Chronicles – Ilona Andrews
Dina Demille & Gertrude Hunt (Innkeeper Chronicles) & Any Character from Another Ilona Andrews Series (Creator's Choice of Fandom)
Dina Demille & Gertrude Hunt (Innkeeper Chronicles) & SG1 Team (Stargate SG1)
Dina Demille (Innkeeper Chronicles)/Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG1)
Dina Demille & Gertrude Hunt (Innkeeper Chronicles) & Any (Creator's Choice of Fandom)
I don’t know what it is about inns in general and semi-sentient ones like Gertrude Hunt in particular, but I LOVED the Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews, and Dina and her relationship with Gertrude Hunt is definitely one of the major factors there. I also love that the inn pretty much is a perfect crossover vehicle with doors opening up to thousands of worlds and possibilities. (Why yes, yes you could cross over Riddick and/or John Grimm in this location 😉) I would be happy to see just about any crossover in this inn which is why I’ve allowed for Creator’s Choice of Fandom, and bonus Creator’s Choice of any other Ilona Andrews fandom – more Book Devouring Horde-verse shenanigans for the win! (I’ve read everything they’ve released so far so take your pic unless you have an ARC of Maggie in which case I am super jealous and also won’t get what’s going on there sadly until next year). Aside from that, Stargate SG1 is another of my forever fandoms which ALSO has a great potential for crossovers. I’ve asked for SG1 as the whole team for a gen request or something shippy with Daniel Jackson who is one of my long time fandom boyfriends and deserves all the good things (assuming Sean Evans never managed to woo Dina). I do heart me some Sean Evans though, so feel free to let him show up in any of the other request options!

Current Mood: stressed

Entry tags:

✨glimmers and good things - august 4th✨

It's always so nice to find out that the airport you're working for, and the one you're based at, are both being sold by the parent group.

You know what else is super fun?
Finding out from a report on BBC news yesterday before we were officially notified this morning.

So that was... um... delightful. Today has been a tough one, it's been very heavy and I've been struggling for most of the day. It's been tricksy to find the glimmers and good things for today:

✨ Glimmers - August 4th ✨
🧁 I didn’t overindulge, even though the office was full of tempting cakes and treats
🧠 I’m working on brainstorming a fanfic idea that actually feels fun and exciting
🧸 I curled up with a soft plushie and let it soothe some of the sharp edges

Current Mood: determined

Entry tags:

📆 July Wrap-Up + August Goals 🌻

I love writing goal posts. I love reviewing them slightly less, because inevitably I have to admit that I did not finish the Big Thing I meant to finish. But also: I did do some really cool stuff, and my brain kicked off several brand new projects like a chaotic little goblin in a fic mine, so. Let’s talk about it.

🖋 July Writing Goals:

Finish A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack — ❌ absolutely not. It’s still sitting there, gentle and ominous and unfinished. I’m choosing to believe this is just a simmering stage.

Update:
You Wouldn’t Take My Word for It If You Knew Who Was Talking — ❌ noooope
I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You — ❌ also no, but I did think about it a lot
The Courage of My Convictions — ✅ YES. A new chapter and a spin-off/prequel side fic. I’m counting this as a win for narrative momentum and gay priest chaos.
Wolf-Tethered — ❌ untouched, though not unloved

Maybe post a one-shot just because — ✅ I’m counting the Darren/Simone scene from the priest AU, because it came from somewhere deep and tender and needed to exist....

Also. I may have started two entire new AU series, because apparently July was the month Bob! said “yes, but what if…?”

🌿 July Life Goals:

Make a doctor’s appointment about the arthritis diagnosis — ✅ did the thing. Proud of this one.
Day trip to the RAMM + sushi — ❌ no museum trip, but we did buy most of Yo!Sushi and I did spend roughly £200 in the Lucy & Yak sale, so I have no regrets and very colourful trousers. It was a good trip
Visit Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm — ✅ lions and elephants and giraffes achieved
Reclaim one chaotic space (maybe the laundry chair) — 🌀 kind of? Started rearranging my work clothes and moved some piles around. Progress is happening in slow, meandering steps.
Come back to Dreamwidth, and stay — 🌀 back-ish! A few posts, a bit of lurking, and some genuine joy in reconnecting with long-form fandom space. Still holding this one as a soft goal.
Cook something that feels like summer — 😅 not really. But I thought about tomatoes a lot.
One proper lie-in, no guilt — ✅ absolutely achieved, 10/10 would lie in again
One evening offline with candles, music, or silence — ❌ does scrolling Tumblr with one candle lit count? No? Thought not.

🌻 August Goals: gentle momentum, storybrain chaos, and maybe some tomatoes

✨ Writing/Fandom Goals
Actually finish A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack – even if it’s just in bullet-point plan format
Update Wolf-Tethered - or at least open the doc and reread it. Or smell the forest in my head and cry about Simone.
Keep working on The Courage of My Convictions - more priest AU, more Jannik/Simone quiet intensity, more religious yearning and repressed gay disasters.
Return to I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You — the booktuber romantasy AU deserves more petty feuding, more yearning in comment sections, more mutual pining over tropes.
Make space for the new AUs - if my brain is going to go chaotic, might as well let it do so on purpose.
Maybe write something short and weird and self-indulgent. Just because.
Keep sharing. Even when it feels scary. Especially when it feels a little raw - that probably means it matters..

🌿 Life Goals
One genuinely slow, nothing-is-urgent weekend.
Book one fun thing for August, even if it’s tiny.
Get my new tattoo (appointment booked for the 30^th!)
Properly reclaim one corner of chaos in the house. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just has to be better. My work clothing storage isn’t working for me right now.
Keep gently decluttering my digital spaces - Dreamwidth tags, folders, etc.
Go outside for something that’s not an errand. A walk, a sit, a stretch in the sun.
Remember: lie-ins are good, my body is not a machine, and my stories are worth telling.
Keep up the shoulder, hip, and knee physio - consistency counts more than perfection.
Aim to lose a little more weight if it feels good and manageable - but keep it soft and low-pressure.

Tell me your August hopes! Or the weird thing July gave you that you’re still thinking about. Or the AU your brain started without asking. I’ll bring the snacks, you bring the story chaos. 💛

Current Mood: pleased

Entry tags:

✨ Glimmers and good things – August 3rd ✨

A little sparkle, a little serotonin, and one very important tennisdad sighting.

🖤 My Li painted my nails for me, they're black with rainbow glitter — peak cozy gremlin vibes
⚖️ Lost 2lb this week — small steps, slow and steady, still worth celebrating
🎾 Darren spotted in Cincinnati!! After the rumours he might not be at the USO with Jannik, I am delighted — tennisdads remain undefeated

💫 Sometimes it really is the little things.

Current Mood: contemplative

Entry tags:

Soundtracking July

At the start of last month, I wrote a piece on Brass Banding (the radio series, but also the wider concept) and along the way went down a bit of a rabbit hole listening to the back catalogue of it’s presenter Hannah Peel. The album that I’m writing about today - and that has been on heavy rotation all month - fit that theme admirably as it’s a symphonic piece written for analogue synthesisers and brass band. It’s also absolutely glorious.

Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia is a seven movement work describing an imagined journey by - and I’m just going to quote the press release here - “an unknown, elderly, pioneering, electronic musical stargazer and her lifelong dream to leave her terraced home in the mining town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, to see Cassiopeia for herself”. Apparently inspired by the quote that “we have a hundred billion neurons in our brains, as many as there are stars in the sky”. In my research adventures looking into the origins and inspirations for the album, I read a review that described it as being like a team up between the Flaming Lips and the Brighouse and Rastrick Band, and that really does hit the nail on the head. (While last month’s album made me feel that I’d have loved it substantially more if I’d encountered it twenty years ago, this is an album that I love now and yet still dearly want to press onto my seventeen year old self because it would blow her mind.) It’s a symphony for analogue synth and brass band - Tubular Brass to give them their due - and achieves that rare thing of balancing both in a way that shows affection and respect for both elements while combining and pushing them into something greater than a sum of their parts.

As I’ve often noted in my Tectonics reviews, even when writing for orchestra, electronic and modern classical composers lean heavily on strings and percussion and often ignore the more experimental potential of the brass section - if they even know what to do with it in the first place, sometimes they miss it out entirely. One of my favourite things about Public Service Broadcasting’s oeuvre is that they know what to do with a brass section - to the extent that when they do live shows, if there’s any non-electric instruments it’s usually a bit of brass. (The do love a wee wind trio of trumpet, trombone and saxophone.) But that’s generally the exception rather than the rule, it’s rare to get something that really explores the joys of brass and syths working together to build a greater whole. It’s incredibly cinematic, music fit for wider screen vistas or a planetarium show. The electronics are dreamy and gorgeous, but it’s the beautifully layered brass that really opens us up to the scale of what’s being depicted. It’s also a piece composed by someone who loves brass band music in it’s own right, who understands how epic and transporting brass - specifically this was written for a colliery brass band rather than an orchestra section, it’s a very specific sound - can be while being at the same time such a grounding and physically solid presence. There’s a gorgeous solo - is it a flugel horn or a cornet I puzzled for ages, the reason I couldn’t identify it is became it is in fact a synth! - in the second movement - Sunrise Through The Dusty Nebula - a segment that evokes both a brass band playing in a village hall, dust motes dancing in shafts of sunlight from high windows, and cinematic shots from the window of the ISS of the sun rising over the Earth amid the darkness of space. This is music for lying in the grass on a pitch black night in the middle of nowhere watching the stars wheel overhead.

The run time is just shy of thirty seven minutes, and if no-one uses it as the soundtrack to a short science-fiction film - ideally animated, perhaps heavy on the homage to both Wallace & Gromit and the works of Raymond Briggs and Oliver Postgate - then they’re missing a trick. (Now I want to use it to re-score A Grand Day Out…)

Current Mood: relaxed

Entry tags:

✨ Glimmers and Good Things - August 2nd ✨

Today’s been a quiet one - not a lot of spoons, but enough softness to hold onto.

🛌 I actually slept well last night, which already felt like a win
🍝 Made a really good dinner: cheesy beef and bacon bolognese gnocchi bake with pesto garlic ciabatta (yes, it was as good as it sounds)
📖 Curled up with Love on the Brain for a while - sometimes a fluffy romance is exactly what I need

Trying to notice the moments that feel good, even when they’re small. That counts too. 💛

Entry tags:

plot bunny dust off challenge 2025

Dust Off Your Plot Bunny Challenge 2025 - Done!

Well, we did it. How did it go for everyone? I worked on a few stories, but didn't make very much progress on my big WIP. That's the way it goes sometimes.

If you participated in the Plot Bunny Dust-off Challenge, here is your chance to brag. (right click and Save image as)

Congrats everyone!

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Blue County - Firecrackers & Ferris Wheels

Entry tags:

🦴 Ancestors – Alice Roberts

🦴 Ancestors – Alice Roberts

Listen. I’ve had a crush on Alice Roberts since her Time Team days, so this was always going to be a win, but Ancestors genuinely delighted me. It’s tender, nerdy, and full of big feelings about bones and burial and the stories we try to tell about the dead. I laughed, I got a little misty, I googled archaeological sites I’ll probably never visit but desperately want to.

💬 Quiet awe, prehistoric people, emotional damage by way of funerary rites.

🔗 [Full review’s over here at

bibliollama]

Entry tags:

July Recap & FIC

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

Amnesia Roll Call

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

2025,
fic rec

road less traveled by arya_silvertongue (PG)

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Spongebob

Postcards (free)

I'm currently having a huge declutter and clear out with a charity collection planned for when I'm done, hopefully by the weekend. Anyway I was going through the IKEA bag that has got the A1/A0 size poster frames that still need filling up with photos and among the various photos and postcards is 20 Yorkshire postcards that I was going to use for an art project and now I'm not because I'm not really wanting pictures of my old home on my walls.

There is 3 Yorkshire Coast, 1 Yorkshire Rose, 9 Scarborough and 7 York.

They've never been used and are in good condition, so I'm happy to send all them to just one person or in two or three batches for you to use for your own correspondence because I very rarely send things in the post.

All postcards on my kitchen table in batches and iPhone photos are generally huge so clicky for bigger. All comments are screened, PM is also on for those who prefer it.

[3 Yorkshire Coast and 1 Yorkshire Rose]

[9 Scarborough]

[7 York]

Current Mood: geeky

Entry tags:

sunshine_revival Challenge #6 - The Midway

Journaling Prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?

I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. It started with Space Invaders on the Amstrad CPC 464 in the mid-80s - that clunky green-screen magic, the beep-boop intensity, the sheer novelty of it all. And I never really stopped.

Over the years, I’ve collected a fair few consoles: SNES, Gameboy, Playstation, PS2, Wii, Switch. I’ve still got them all, too. There's something oddly comforting about holding onto those pieces of plastic and circuitry, like keeping a time capsule of different versions of myself.

I’m definitely a solo-gamer. Always have been. I think it’s the introvert in me. I like slipping into a gameworld on my own terms, no pressure, no voice chat, no audience. Just me, the screen, and whatever rhythm the game wants me to fall into.

My favourites fall into a few categories:

Old school side-scrolling platforms
Tight levels, tricky jumps, that sense of flow when everything clicks. Still satisfying as hell.

Racing games
Especially Rock & Roll Racing, which lives in my memory as pure, chaotic joy. The soundtrack! The mayhem! The fact I can still hum the menu music unprompted!

Millennial dream games
AKA my happy place. Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley, Palia. I will always love games where you can farm, fish, befriend villagers, decorate your house, and wander around making little To Do lists for yourself. Peak comfort.

I know gaming is a social thing for a lot of people, and that’s great, but for me, it’s always been a way to unwind, to self-soothe, to get lost in a world I don’t have to share unless I choose to. A quiet kind of joy.

Two cozy-living titles are landing in August that have me genuinely buzzing - Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar and Tiny Bookshop

Grand Bazaar is a remake of the classic Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar, rebuilt for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and PC. It looks like it'll hit all the familiar beats of the series - the crops, the bazaar, the friendships - with some extra structure and energy, like planning your stall layout, managing inventory, ringing the announcer bell, all while engaging with townsfolk and growing relationships

Tiny Bookshop feels like someone peeked inside my brain and made a game out of it. You run a little travelling bookshop in a seaside town, stocking shelves, making recommendations based on people’s moods, and slowly building relationships with the locals. I played the demo earlier this year and it was fantastic. It's out next week and I can't wait!

Both games feel deeply me. They’re about building worlds, making meaningful (but low‑stress) choices, and finding comfort in routine. Can’t wait to build my bazaar stall and decorate my little bookshop by the sea.

Entry tags:

Taking Stock Once More

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

book recs,
recs

Recs recs recs

Ebooks:

Copper Script by K J Charles
The usual well-plotted historical romance/mystery from Charles. Set in 1924, the fantasy element is that Joel, gay and a WWI veteran who's lost his dominant hand, makes a living as a handwriting expert but his uncanny success at assessing the personality and state of mind of writers is a paranormal gift. Aaron is a closeted detective in the London force and their chance encounter and subsequent work together uncovers a serious enemy. I liked that the tension built so that everything seemed insoluble (to the more uptight Aaron) but was eventually deftly resolved by the other two less-conventional protagonists. An entertaining read.

I had less luck with the other ebooks I tried.

Angelfall (book 1 of 3) by Susan Ee
A YA series from 10 years ago that had mostly rave reviews. It's post-apocalyptic, centered on the protagonist Penrhyn, a 17 y.o. girl who, yes, is a bit of a Special Girl. No overt powers but her mother, who has paranoid schizophrenia, paid for her to have extensive martial arts training, like you do when you have a major mental disorder. I could have put up with that nonsense as Penrhyn's nicely feisty, but there were three big problems. 1. The worldbuilding was crap. The apocalypse was 2 months earlier and "the world as we know it" has been comprehensively trashed by destructive, homicidal angels. Yes, as in archangels etc., with wings and swords. There's a vague reference to "the asteroids and the fires" to account for the extreme infrastructure damage to cities and bridges, but no real attempt at making the cracky premise work. And the angels are very much extrapolated from Judeo-Christian myth (unfair to the non-Christian world) which mythology makes no sense at the best of times so good luck basing your worldbuilding on it! No explanation was given for the angelic vendetta on humanity (I gather a bit more emerges later, but I was past caring). We're told that only Gabriel knew the plan and human weapons killed him early on, so now no one knows. 2. The romance was bothersomely Twilighty with Raphael, an ancient (and beautiful and built) demigod angel thrown into travelling with Penrhyn, and clear hints of attraction developing. It felt like an adolescent girl's daddy fantasy with no depth or coherent structure. (Ee is not an adolescent.) 3. The latter part of the book suddenly switched from gritty survival in the ruins to a bizarre infiltration of the angelic HQ in a luxury San Francisco hotel filled with desperate human women slinkily dressed and made up to the nines, fawning over tuxedoed clubbing angels like a mobster's wet dream. And then it takes another sharp turn into horror, and finally into a dramatic and improbable rescue. Nope.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
Another post-apocalyptic series but the action rapidly moves to an underground dungeon maze as in similar games. Full of typical gaming detail and you need to be at least a bit of a gamer to enjoy this. I'm not, so DNF.

Audiobooks (read by the author):

On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves
Interesting enough, and nostalgic for me as I did the big OE and travelled from NZ to Kathmandu at about the same time as Steves ended up there in the mid 70s (although he did what we used to call "the overland", from Istanbul to Nepal, before various wars erupted and made that impossible). I found it reasonably engaging but although there were occasional attempts at deeper thinking about white privilege, the issue of beggars, travelling vs tourism, and other interesting subjects, he didn't give these much space and it was mostly a travelogue and sometimes a little casually dismissive of the local people who were struggling to get by and didn't actually owe Steves friendship or generosity. Comes with access to a pdf with lots of photos he took, which is a nice bonus.

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
A fascinating, horrifying, and engaging deep dive into the history of TB and how it's ravaged humanity, and how it continues to do so in those parts of the world that can't afford the inflated prices of Big Pharma. There were many fascinating revelations, such as that the skinny model look Western women are supposed to aspire to partly stems from C19th TB chic when getting thin and dying became romantic (and was also hard to avoid). Green gets angrier as the book progresses about the fact that TB killed/kills many AIDS sufferers and is still a terrible disease in poorer countries while the West does very little (Trump of course cut funding recently, e.g. to the Apopo programme where rats sniff out infected samples with amazing accuracy). The rise of resistant TB is also daunting, and Green lays it all out clearly and with passion. A great read, although the issue does seem to have gripped Green in a somewhat obsessive manner.

Paper Towns by John Green
Fiction, from a run of YA novels that preceded his current focus on TB. It felt a bit similar to Looking for Alaska, which I listened to a few months back, in that it focuses on a somewhat anxious and socially sidelined young man, Quentin, at the end of high school/start of college who's obsessed with a mysterious girl. In this case his beautiful neighbour, a somewhat "manic pixie dream girl" of a young woman who's superficially one of the cool kids, but who runs away leaving clues which he frets away at for the bulk of the book. It's set in Orlando, Florida, and Quentin has an engaging friend-group although initially all male (they're not great at achieving girlfriends and in Ben's case I can see why - he calls all women honeybunnies; even his girlfriend refers to him as "a challenge"). Much of Quentin's detective fretting revolves around a dog-eared copy of Whitman's Song of Myself, and the book partly explores the barrenness of the USA suburban subculture and physical environment, set in unreal theme parks and abandoned subdivisions - the paper towns of the title, although that also refers to unreal, multi-faced people. Interesting, but a bit slow and neurotic. Green's been open about having OCD and there are hints of obsession in these YA books, and in his new TB focus.

Physical library books:

Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
I liked his first book Moon of the Crusted Snow a lot more, maybe as it was immediately post-apocalyptic so there was more change and drama. In this sequel (which has solely been available as a physical book way longer than seems usual) an exploratory party from the tribe go south to find the ancestral lands by Lake Huron the government forced them to move from. They're surviving in the colder north 12 years after the ?EMP and civilisation's collapse, but barely, and game is getting scarce. They have the expected encounter with evil white survivalist cult dudes, but most of the book is lower key travelling, and there was a lot of untranslated Anishinaabe language that I had to skim. The ending also seemed a bit too happily-ever-afterish to ring true. I got through the book, but it didn't grab me.

Once More With Feeling by Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton.
A non-fiction account of their attempt to make a porn film after they stumbled into a job reviewing porn movies in their youths and decided they could definitely do it better. I DNF'd I'm afraid - I'm just hopeless at reading physical texts these days. My eyesight is worse at night which is usually when I read, and I can't read them in bed. I was enjoying this amusing tale, and if it was an audiobook I'd have mainlined it for sure. Unfortunately, as an older text, it's not even an ebook. Recommended if you still read physical books.

Entry tags:

🌿✨ Shoutout to my enduring love of age gap and power imbalance relationships in fiction ✨🌿

There’s just something deeply compelling about watching two characters navigate uneven ground - whether it’s age, experience, authority, or institutional power - and still manage to build something charged and intimate between them. Not despite the imbalance, but through it. That slow burn of restraint. The ache of wanting something they shouldn't. The negotiations of trust, timing, control, and care.

This is especially compelling when both characters are competent in their own right, but operating from different registers: mentor/student, coach/player, commander/civilian specialist, master/apprentice. The imbalance isn’t about helplessness - it’s about the impossibility of an even playing field, and the intimacy that arises anyway.

These dynamics can be messy and complicated and so emotionally satisfying when done right. They let fiction stretch into questions of loyalty, respect, control, vulnerability. What does it mean to choose closeness, when there are rules saying you shouldn’t? What does it cost, to reach for someone who could say no with a word?

Some personal favourites:

Jannik Sinner/Simone Vagnozzi – restrained affection, a coach who holds himself too tightly, and a player who sees straight through him
Jannik Sinner/Darren Cahill - built on loyalty, history, and the kind of attention that feels more like possession if you look too long
Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi – power wrapped in devotion, connection shaped by discipline, love made sharper by its impossibility
Jim Ellison/Blair Sandburg – the sentinel and the grad student who never stops talking, thrown together by biology and staying for each other
Jethro Gibbs/Tony DiNozzo – command and obedience with a side of locker room banter and unspoken everything
Jack O’Neill/Daniel Jackson – sarcasm vs sincerity, orders vs ethics, saving the world one lingering look at a time

And yes, this is entirely about fiction. These dynamics let us explore things that might be fraught or even dangerous in real life but that, in the hands of a good writer, become vehicles for emotional tension, character growth, and that delicious blend of intimacy and restraint.

Give me the power imbalance that heightens the stakes. Give me the age difference that adds weight to every decision. Give me the mentor figure trying not to fall. Give me the younger one pushing every boundary, knowing exactly what they're doing. Give me the slow unravelling, the look that lingers too long, the moment someone steps just half an inch closer than they should. Give me the ache of wanting what they shouldn't - and wanting it well.

I want characters who should know better - and want it anyway.

I want stories where love is inconvenient. Where it’s earned. Where it burns, quietly and ferociously, just beneath the surface.

I will never be over it

Entry tags:

reading,
television

pry them loose from the rotting past

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Gripping, terrifyingly plausible post-apocalyptic America where climate change has made L.A. unlivable and the protagonist sets out to make a better life. Read this through in two days and have the sequel on hold.

In TV, I finished Spaced (seasons 1 & 2). Funny British show where the two main characters Tim and Daisy pretend to be a couple so they can rent a flat that will only rent to a professional couple and the friend group has a lot of hijinks. Perfect time capsule of 90s/Y2K. I'd never heard of this show but I'm in a Simon Pegg phase from my Mission Impossible hyperfixation. I also watched Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End for the first time. The movies I knew about through general pop culture osmosis but I didn't really think I'd like them because they're kind of silly comedy and I don't tend to watch a lot of comedy but I enjoyed them a lot!