elyusion | Reading

Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

I haven't had a particularly outstanding experience in any one fandom, so my appreciation goes out to fandom spaces in general.

( My sappy love letter to fandom. )

Current Mood: grateful

elf_wizard

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bluapapilio

Used my manga TBR boardgame.

I finished 10/10 on my last board! I even read them all in order! It was a mix of 'great' and 'okay'.

Avatar:

Tanjirou (Kimetsu no Yaiba)
Skill: Move 2 extra tiles 1 time (trap tile if roll Even)

Roll #1:

An 8 and the generate from TBR tile oh boy trap tile would've been better. #1349. Okay that wasn't too bad actually, removed one manga and 1349 is a BL oneshot, Peeping Tom .

Roll #2:

A 7, prompt: amnesia. BL Ake Nure Goyou ni Furu Yuki wa.

Roll #3:

A 9, prompt: award-winning work. Too many good options! But I do want to get ahead more in Dr. Stone before the next anime season!.

Roll #4:

An 11, prompt: featuring a group of friends. Okay...I haven't read this one in too long but I'm gonna read more Mairimashita! Iruma-kun.

Roll #5:

A 12. I had really high roles this challenge, dang! The physical manga reread this time is Lover's→Flat.

~Manga TBR List~

[BL/Smut] Peeping Tom
[BL/Romance] Ake Nure Goyou ni Furu Yuki wa
[Sci-Fi/Adventure] Dr. Stone
[School Life/Fantasy] Mairimashita! Iruma-kun
[BL/Romance Lover's→Flat

x josei, x2 shounen, seinen, x3 BL

Current Mood: uncomfortable

ysabetwordsmith

Nearly all women in STEM secretly feel like impostors

A striking 97.5% of women pursuing graduate degrees in STEM report moderate or higher levels of impostorism.

Nearly all women in STEM graduate programs report feeling like impostors, despite strong evidence of success. This mindset leads many to dismiss their achievements as luck and fear being “found out.” Research links impostorism to worse mental health, higher burnout, and increased thoughts of dropping out. Supportive environments and shifting beliefs about intelligence may help break the cycle.

That's probably because 97.5% of their male coworkers are misogynistic assholes, and so are a lot of people even outside of STEM.

After decades of being told that girls are bad at math, go play with dolls, harassment as soon as their breasts start growing, male students being put in charge of groups, professors stealing their work, getting lower grades than they deserve, struggling to find a job, their name being left off papers or awards, promotions going to less-qualified males, fighting for funds ... of course women realize that they are aren't wanted, aren't welcome, and nobody likes them.

The last 2.5% of women in STEM? They don't give a shit if people like them, and they aren't there to stroke anyone's ego or penis. Shut up and work. Impostor syndrome? It can be beaten to death with facts.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is partly cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 1/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 1/6/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 1/6/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

bluapapilio

For my manga TBR list:

Read the BL Boku no Koe, rated it 6/10.

I (re)read the first 8 episodes of Men of the Harem and had fun!

Read the BL The Correlation Between Love and Heat, rated it a 7.

I read the BL Hana wa Saku ka and rated it 8/10.

Read Daydream ★ Nightmare, rated it 3.25/5.

(Re)read ch. 90 (vol. 12) of Mob Psycho 100!!

Read the BL 2-Week Summer Secret, rated it 6.5/10.

Read ch. 8-14 of Twisted Wonderland, will post later!

Read ch, 5 of Enidewi!.

(Re(read Living For Tomorrow, 8/10 -> 6.8/10.

Current Mood: busy

signoftea posting in

common_nature

It started snowing yesterday, and now there's about 5 cm of snow, an amount that is very rare here. I went for a walk to see the beach, because it looks so cool when it's covered in snow. To my surprise, there was even ice on the water! A fragile crust of little floes had formed and seemed to slow down the movement of the waves as they licked the snow away from the breakwater bit by bit.

At first, I didn't hear any bird calls. I did see a few sanderlings darting around, some big birds (probably black-backed gulls) hovering over the sea, and a huge swarm of smaller birds, but they were all far away. I was about to leave when suddenly an impressive formation of geese appeared in the sky. My birding app identified them as barnacle geese. Then the app recorded some more calls, including one from a dunling, a bird I had never seen or heard before.

The snow and the greyish sky skewed my perspective in interesting ways, so that it looked like there were mountains growing out of the sea near the horizon, or like there was a huge wave rolling towards the beach. It felt surreal and a little eerie.

North Sea beach with snow and ice

bluapapilio

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Current Mood: irritated

wavesagainstrocks posting in

fancoded

Hello! I'm hoping someone here could answer my admittedly really silly question.

I've dabbled in coding and have used websites like Neocities to host my site in the past, which was all fine and well! But I had come across an entry here on DW regarding a Shrine Challenge. I looked through a lot of the published shrines and they all looked like they had "multiple" sites under the same domain (not on anything like Neocities). Is this something you pay for? Are there any free hosts out there able to do this too?

I can give some examples if this question doesn't make sense, haha! I'm having a hard time explaining it, but I didn't wanna just post someone's site link without permission or anything like that!

Thanks so much!

cielsosinfel posting in

onesongaday

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Current Music: Tracy Chapman - Subcity

ysabetwordsmith

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from

jake67jake.

Maduro kidnapped --
he was quite unpopular,
but it was still wrong

* * *

Notes:

Read a discussion of Venezuela politics.

Current Mood: busy

stardust_rifle

This one is going to be hard.

I was not very mentally well when I was younger, due to getting ass-fucked by both genetics and life circumstances, and there are two reasons that I made it past age 15. One of them is that I'm very pain-averse.

The other is fandom.

Reading fic gave me something to do besides "lie in bed and feel miserable" and "move through my life like a zombie", and it sort of helped me... unlock the ability to feel emotions? I don't know how to describe it, but I'm very much (and still am) a Robot Person, and experiencing emotions through fiction was, for a while, the only way I could actually feel things, so I dove headfirst into melodrama in order to actually have an outlet for the pain I was feeling at the time, but couldn't express.

Additionally, you know the suicide prevention strategy of "you can't kill yourself until X happens?" Yeah, that was a big thing for me. "You can't kill yourself until Eternal Summer comes out." "You can't kill yourself until Attack on Titan finishes." "You can't kill yourself until that fanfic you really like finishes." "You can't kill yourself until Hetalia stops coming out."

So, uh, thanks, fandom. Thanks for keeping me alive.

ysabetwordsmith

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "short forms." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting poetic forms of 60 lines or less, so basically below my epic range rather than only the short-short length of 10 lines or less. Free verse below the length limit is also fine. Here are 15 short forms with descriptions. Among my favorite short forms not listed there: hexaduad, indriso, sestina, villanelle. This list of 168 forms is alphabetical. Poets Garrett has my favorite list of forms, including a list of repeating-interlocking forms. Their main page has links to poetic forms of 3-10 lines. Plus a few of my own: A darrow poem is a short, haiku-like musing by dark elves. A khazal is a Whispering Sands desert poem in couplets. A moose track is a repeating-interlocking form. A tweet wire is a tiny 10-line poem designed for Twitter. Some short forms, like haiku and tanka, work well as verses in a longer poem. I have The New Book of Forms by Lewis Turco so most forms should be in there. You can also prompt with a link to any exotic form you find; I collect these things.

In addition to forms, I also need topical prompts. One-word or short-phrase framing will assist in keeping them small enough to fit within the theme. Here is a huge list of common themes. This page of idioms has alphabetical and topical listings. I love writing poems about an individual word; see The Phrontistery (WARNING! Black hole caliber time sink ahead!) for glossaries. Have an orientation that is not well represented in literature? Ask for a sexual, romantic, or other orientation! If it's not on any of my lists, just include a description or link to one. I also list gender identities and my characters with disabilities. Want to help me play with my bookshelf? :D I have The Conflict Thesaurus, The Conflict Thesaurus Volume 2, The Occupation Thesaurus, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, The Urban Setting Thesaurus, The Rural Setting Thesaurus, The Emotion Thesaurus, The Positive Trait Thesaurus, The Negative Trait Thesaurus, and The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus. Simply click "Read Sample" and view the table of contents for a list of cool ideas. You can prompt a sestina with six end words; I usually pick 5 short flexible words and one long exotic word, but I'll work with whatever I get. Favorite characters, threads, series, settings, etc. are also fair game but this is NOT the time for long plotty prompts. Consider combining a name or title with a short form, theme, or idiom. If you like to prompt with photos, this is a great opportunity for that. Just type in a topic (see above for possibilities) and click the Image link in your favorite search engine.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: creative

nairiporter posting in

talkpolitics

Recent talk about the United States asserting control over Greenland, whether framed as acquisition, pressure, or "strategic necessity", should be taken seriously not for its feasibility, but for what it signals. Greenland is not a vacant asset, it is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally. Treating it as a bargaining chip implicitly weakens the principle that borders and sovereignty among allies are not subject to unilateral revision.

From a NATO perspective, this kind of rhetoric introduces strategic ambiguity where cohesion is essential. NATO's strength depends less on raw military capacity than on mutual trust and predictability. If a leading member appears willing to coerce or sideline another ally over territory, it complicates alliance decision-making and gives adversaries an opportunity to test fractures, particularly in the Arctic, where Russia and China are already probing for influence.

More broadly, this episode reflects a tension between transactional power politics and the rules-based order the US has historically championed. Even if intended as leverage or domestic signaling, normalising the idea that great powers can "reallocate" strategic geography undermines the norms the West relies on to criticise similar behaviour elsewhere. The long-term cost is not Greenland itself, but the erosion of credibility when the same standards are no longer consistently applied.

ysabetwordsmith posting in

goals_on_dw

Punch Card Goals: Creative Goal Setting Made Simple

Instead of a traditional goal list, I turned my intentions into punch cards!

If you’re a crafter, a goal-setter, or someone who just wants their habits to feel more like play than pressure, this might be your new favorite New Year ritual (or anytime you want to set new goals).

This is also a great approach for people who like tactile things. It would probably work well for children too.

Current Mood: busy

bluapapilio

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birdandfoxboys posting in

1character

Character: Joshua Rosfield
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Theme set: Delta
Rating: G
Warnings: Mention of incestuous feelings( Read more... )

prettygoodword

[Sidebar: I didn’t fully unpack yesterday that the Austronesian language family includes, as a subgroup, the Polynesian languages. It encompasses the indigenous languages of Taiwan (the Austronesian homeland), the Philippines, Madagascar, Malaysia, most of Indonesia, as well as most Pacific islands to the east and south, excluding New Guinea and the continent of Australia. The Austronesian Expansion was … expansive.] [Sidebar²: Statements that Malayo-Polynesian is a synonym for Austronesian can be readily found yet are wrong: Malayo-Polynesian is subgroup of Austronesian, covering all the languages outside of Taiwan.]

tiki (TEE-kee) - n., a figurine or talisman in humanoid form of a god or ancestor.

Thanks, WikiMedia!

Also, as an adjective, relating to an exoticized representation of Polynesian culture characterized by tiki figures, palm fronds, tropical themes, etc. -- because tiki culture is indeed weird. Among Maori, talisman versions of tiki (called hei-tiki) are sometimes worn for protection/luck. Tiki was the first man in Maori mythology, and tikis are also known by the name of the first man in Tahitian (Tiʻi), though in Hawaiian the first man was Kumuhonua and a tiki is a kiʻi -- interestingly, tikis are known only in Eastern Polynesian cultures.

Which brings up the bonus word moai (MOW-ai), one of the large stone statues on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), which even though they are representations of ancestors, not to mention highly influential on tiki culture, are not considered tikis:

Thanks, WikiMedia!

[Sidebar³: The emoji 🗿 is not actually a moai but rather a moyai, a Japanese sculpture inspired by maoi -- in Niijima dialect, where they were first carved, moyai means join forces/help each other, and mayoi are often used as meet-up landmarks.]

---L.

ysabetwordsmith

These poems were written outside the regular prompt calls. They have been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

A NASA satellite caught a giant tsunami doing something scientists didn’t expect

When a huge earthquake struck near Kamchatka, the SWOT satellite captured an unprecedented, high-resolution view of the resulting tsunami as it crossed the Pacific. The data revealed the waves were far more complex and scattered than scientists expected, overturning the idea that large tsunamis travel as a single, stable wave. Ocean sensors confirmed the quake’s rupture was longer than earlier models suggested. Together, the findings could reshape how tsunamis are modeled and predicted.

Current Mood: busy

Profile

Chris

Chris World

(//_-) ← emo bang

you must be real nosy LOL (i am too 🤝)

Reading

Snowflake 2026 #3

oof

January Manga TBR

Science

Birdfeeding

December+ Manga Wrap-Up 3

Nature diary

🌈BL Manga Check-in: "Living for Tomorrow"

Website/Shrine Question

Tracy Chapman - Subcity

Haiku

Snowflake Challenge 2026-3: Love Letter to Fandom

Poetry Fishbowl Open!

Greenland, and beyond

Punch Card Goals

Manga Check-in: Enidewi v2 ch. 5

Memoria (50 sentences about Joshua Rosfield)

tiki

Poem: Darrow Poems 12-12-25

Science

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