Janet Miles

 Haiku Horror Writing Prompt no. 1609: human masks

Yesterday was eaten alive by yuletide pinch hits, so day late with these.

~ Samson and Delilah gifs - young Angela Lansbury the Hottie

~ Smokin' MoTown - Temptations, Miracles, Stevie, Smokey, Vandellas, and Supremes in one photo

~ Art of Dorian Pavus and the Iron Bull in a bath

~ Trans Art for Maevaris Tilani

~ Beowulf Essay titles? - anecdote from a professor

~ Xuanji Tu - A mathematical art of poetry

No, this was actually not planned, but a funny and very fitting coincidence: finally, my newest homemade watercolor is ready! Today is the best day to publish a paint called "Living Sun", right? Happy Solstice to everyone who celebrates, and a wonderful time to everyone else, too! :D



Filling the pans took a while: I learned that PY159 is a very annoying pigment, even more difficult to work with than the PB71 I already complained about. It loves to unmix and it loves to make awful lumps that no amount of grinding managed to remove: after an hour, new lumps inevitably formed. I'm soooo glad I somehow got this into the pans!



I added a small amount of PY138 because... PY159 granulates nicely but is not a particularly intense color. So, the PY138 (which is a cool and very intense yellow) unmixes on the paper from the (warm) PY159, and it's an effect I'm actually very happy with. Looks much nicer in real life than in the photo!

Can they use their abilities in the course of their mandatory voluntary community service? Or maybe, the question is, how to use them without running into the bar on endangering other people or themselves?

 Quite sad, though.....

The two editions have different subtitles. The 1996 edition is Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure and marketed as cyberpunk, while the 2025 edition is Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run, and marketed as romance.

Karn: Question: ... ::drumroll:: Online, what *is* your "self"?
Leilia: Oh, christ, there's the question of a lifetime.Karn: Uh huh. Why so for you?
Leilia: I really become that person online. That's the scary thing. i really believe my fiction. Used to feel bad about it, but obviously there's truth in those fictions.

Blurb: Genderfucking netizens Scratch and Winc splatter across self and identity in this cyberpunk epistolary novel, accidentally starting a global Internet strike, getting accused of high treason, and falling in love.

Why is it worth your time?: Sullivan and Bornstein are queers who used lots of their own chatlogs for this book, which depending on your feeling will be either a good thing or a bad thing. The 1996 edition especially has a lot of pontificating on the nature of self and personality on the Internet, including an exchange where the hero/ines email with a self-declared MPD multi going by "StLouis7." (They decide that they aren't that kind of multiple, but they DO have multiple genders and are exploring interesting expansions of self!) Scratch's persona of Razorfun is ESPECIALLY separate, to the point that Razorfun outright says that "it is my most primitive persona. It is where I go when in danger" and when Winc has to ask Scratch to break out of the Razorfun persona, it's stated to be both difficult and painful. If you're interested in queer cyberspace of the '90s, check it out!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, otherworld (cyberspace), fictioneers (Lt. Yar and Jadzia Dax from Star Trek), nonhumans (Dax is a Trill, Scratch mentions multiple times wishing ze wa a wolf with a tail), switching, on purpose

Content Warnings: include spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: Okay, so heads up, the 1996 edition and the 2025 editions of this book differ subtly but significantly! The 2025 edition just came out, and it's available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook; it's much easier to find and removed a fair bit, including stuff that really needed removal... but also a lot of the most interesting (to us) ponderings of the nature of self! It also simplified the typefaces and style, but in our opinion to the book's detriment; with all the chats, web diaries, emails, news stories, and announcements flying around, it can be easy to get lost! So the 2025 edition is smoother and simpler.

Meanwhile, the 1996 edition is rough and crunchy in a very '90s way; while the 2025 edition focuses more on gender and romance, the '96 edition pays more attention to self in general. The older edition is expensive and difficult to find these days, though it's been scanned and bootlegged online, and the first chapter is available in clean screenreadable PDF on the Wayback Machine. Take a look, compare and contrast the formatting, and pick the edition you prefer! We are grateful for reading both simultaneously, comparing the drafts side-by-side.

 

Coming up on the end of the year, and here's what I've enjoyed in short fiction and poetry! Year end summation post to come.

Heritage/Speaker | Hablante/Herencia, Angela Acosta (Samovar)

Bestla, James Joseph Brown (Kaleidotrope)

Atomic, Jennifer Crow (Kaleidotrope)

Flower and Root, J. R. Dawson (Sunday Morning Transport)

The Place I Came To, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (Lightspeed)

Understudies, Greg Egan (Clarkesworld)

All That Means or Mourns, Ruthanna Emrys (Reactor)

Michelle C. Jin, Imperfect Simulations (Clarkesworld)

The Loaf in the Woods, David Marino (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

Liecraft, Anita Moskát (trans. Austin Wagner) (Apex)

The Orchard Village Catalog, Parker Peevyhouse (Strange Horizons)

The Horrible Conceit of Night and Death, J. A. Prentice (Apex)

Regarding the Childhood of Morrigan, Who Was Chosen to Open the Way, Benjamin Rosenbaum (Reactor)

No One Dies of Longing, Anjali Sachdeva (Strange Horizons)

A Random Walk Through the Goblin Library, Chris Willrich (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

Phantom View, John Wiswell (Reactor)

Here's some more recent DecRecs!

Day 18
Today is one of those days where I really wish I was capable of napping. But since that isn't going to work I'm planning on spending some time curled up on the sofa with an ereader full of fic an hopefully a cat on my lap
So for today's #DecRecs I want to rec one of my favorite fics ever "on a long journey" by twigofwillow
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29819775/chapters/73366473

This is a Lan Sizhui centric post-canon CQL fic and It's really the best!

Things I love about "On a Long Journey":
*It's beautifully written
*The characterization is so perfect!
*The way the story is non-linear and includes. memories, stories and letters (Jiang Cheng's letter is so funny and pitch prefect)
*found family and good feelings while still letting people be complex and messy!


Day 19
For today's #DecRecs I have a really cool boardgame that I first played this year Vantage by Designer Jamey Stegmaier
basically your party crash lands on an alien planet and you are all in different locations, represented by illustrated cards. You can tell the other people about the cards but not show them the cards

It's very fail forward game, so you kinda wander around and interact with the environment and maybe complete some goals. There's lots of cool stuff to do! Once I have taken a child on an adventure, almost gotten eaten by a dragon, and stolen a flying vehicle!


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Today is sunny and cool.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.  Some birds are singing in the south hedge.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 12/21/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 12/21/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 12/21/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.
 

 Good Morning, you Beautiful People!

When I discovered Olivia Newton-John's father took Rudolf Hess into custody during World War II.

Title: Ghost Valley
Author: Tarlan (tarlanx)
Fandom: Word of Honor (TV 2021)
MAIN Pairing/Characters: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Ye Baiyi
MINOR Pairing/Characters: Gu Xiang/Cao Weining, Zhang Chengling, Jing Beiyuan, Wu Xi, Luo Fumeng
Rating/Category: NC17 SLASH
Word Count: 19180
Summary: Finally putting the ghosts of the past to rest had freed Wen Kexing in a manner he had never truly expected. For the first time he looked out across Ghost Valley and no longer saw a pitiful realm of criminals and monsters in human guises but real people who had no place else to go.

Content Notes: Written for IetjeSiobhan for ficinabox 2025.

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72633681
 

Title: Caught in a Trap
Author: Tarlan (tarlanx)
Fandom: Yin Yáng Shi | The Yin-yang Master (Movies - Guo Jingming)
Pairing/Characters: Bo Ya/Qing Ming
Rating/Category: PG13 SLASH
Word Count: 2971
Summary: In a bid to stay away from the Yin Yang Temple, Qingming took on many demon hunts. If he should happen to entice Boya to join him then that was just two masters working well together. What he never expected was the attack that came in the middle of the night.

Content Notes: Written for kaitou for ficinabox 2025

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73031071
 

It turns out if you really want to raise the profile of your writers' union, all you need to do is announce LLM-generated works are eligible for awards, as long as they are not entirely LLM-generated.

Title: Blink of an Eye
Author: Tarlan (tarlanx)
Fandom: Fangs of Fortune (TV)
Pairing/Characters: Li Lun/Zhao Yuanzhou | Zhu Yan and Li Lun/Zhao Yuanzhou | Zhu Yan/Zhuo Yichen
Rating/Category: PG13 SLASH
Word Count: 1623
Summary: Before he had his first sentient thought he was drawn to the Pagoda tree.

Content Notes: Written for acernor for ficinabox 2025

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71386931
 

Harold Shea seeks escape from mundane life in tales of myth and magic.


The Compleat Enchanter (Incomplete Enchanter, volume 1) by L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt

What will happen after the moral equivalent of the battle of Yorktown?

I think we should have another Constitutional Convention.

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What rights and rebalances would you fight for? What values would you wage peace for?

Happy birthday, lannamichaels!