Ever wished more people knew more about some of your favourite fandoms, whether that be movie, book, show, video game, comic, even band or hobby? Now is your chance to be a “carnival barker”, someone who hangs around outside the carnival and tries to promote it to people passing by.

Challenge #5

Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show (or any other of your choice - game, comic, anything else)! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.
Creative prompt: Write a fic or original story about a character reluctantly doing something they are hesitant about.

Title: I'm Never Going Back, The Past Is In The Past
Fandom: School Spirits
Characters: Charley, Yuri, Wally, Rhonda, Janet, Quinn
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers all through S2
Summary: Charley's always avoided his class reunions, but reluctantly considers attending the next one.

( Read more... )

"oh man! the new Pokemon sets are out! I'm so glad I'll be able to buy product for a reasonable price!" I say, before getting my ass promptly beat by everything being out of stock/ridiculous price markups/constant resellers/etc.

I got some of JP White Flare a bit ago, so it's not like I'm being completely devoid of items here, but this shit is ridiculous. I'm not paying x2 RRP for a booster bundle. I'm not getting an EB Games membership so that they can offer me the chance of being fast enough to get a pre-order in. I just want to open cards for a reasonable price? I want to be able to walk into a store and actually see the newest series in stock. I don't want to tooth-and-nail it out on online storefronts just hoping to find something. I shouldn't feel like this hobby is out to drive me broke when I'm barely even BUYING anything for ANY price because I can never find it.

Round 1 of seasons_of_fandom a successor to the now closed lands_of_magic is opening soon! Multifandom challenge community with original fic and stock icons welcome. Challenges include graphics, writing, and puzzle games.

There are 4 teams and Summer and Spring could do with a few more members!

Please check it out, and if you join tell them I sent you :)
Some no pressure pre-round challenges are already posted but the community and challenges open fully in September.

sign up post

Why don't I just trust governments and censorship in the name of safetyism and AI and digital everything?
For a whole host of reasons and this is just another example from the corporate world from a site I'm not obligated to use unlike other services.

This image was one I had pinned to a Pinterest board, inspiration for a fantasy romance I was writing some years ago. I got an email about it. (As I mentioned before I'm not adding anything to Pinterest now and downloaded what I wanted to keep to back up elsewhere. Though any cloud service could start spying on and deleting your "bad" content.)
This image was deactivated why?
"This Pin violates our Community Guidelines on adult content because it contains sexual exploitation"

Not only are we controlling, censoring, and sanitising in ways that are stifling free speech and creativity, we're letting computers do it with no capability for nuance or context.
Can we go back to the days of "Terminator" when we were worried about AI instead of "it write email for me".

And now I'm having issues because I don't want to give Reddit a copy of my photographic ID or let their dodgy third party verifier take and store a selfie of me. Remember as one Reddit user pointed out "Face ID seems convenient and secure, but here's the catch: your face is public. Unlike a PIN code or password, your face is always visible and can't be changed."

I'll take the "bad old wild west days" of the internet over the current control-freakery.

This was a week where a huge part of my motivation to push through it was the knowledge that next week I will be in San Diego. We've already started putting our schedules together. I had honestly resigned myself to the Critical Role panels likely being on Friday and Saturday, and so was very delighted when I learned they were both on Thursday, when I can go. Though I do wonder what those doing the scheduling were thinking, having the second in Ballroom 20 only an hour and a half after the first one gets out! I suppose I shall not be eating lunch that day...
Also, what those responsible for scheduling the tickets sales for next years live shows were thinking, having all the sales the same week as Comic Con! I'm probably going to try to get tickets for the one in Atlanta anyway, since that's the one it's feasible for me to attend.
The week also got better when my meds finally showed up on Tuesday. I am now back at full dosage and will remain so for the immediate future, though I'm starting to wonder if it might be worth trying to get a doctor's appointment related to a couple of the problems it's supposed to treat.

Today'sthefridayfive  questions:

5. Name five favourite movies.
Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, The Sting, The Italian Job, The Fifth Element

4. Name four areas of interest you became interested in after you were done with your formal education.
History, Crafting, Astronomy, Battlefields

3. Name three things you would change about this world.
Greater respect for all people; greater care for ecology; a true desire for peace

2. Name two of your favourite childhood toys.
My teddy bear, which I still have, my collection of zoo animals

1. Name one person you could be handcuffed to for a full day.
Please no!

***

Posting now because I predict being way too sweaty and exhausted for that after Stray Kids gig. And in honour of that, I'm posting the MV and dance practice of one of my favourite songs by them.

The song is beautiful but I also have a lot of feelings about the choreo, mainly: 1) The way it starts with everyone holding Chan's heart 😭😭😭, 2) the sequenced kneeling of Minho, Seungmin and Jeongin (the bdsm au feels I have about this), 3) Seungmin solo choreo! 




***

Challenge #4

Fun House
Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.
I love music so I'm going to just post a top 10 songs I've been listening to recently (though not all time) and in no particular order. All links go to YouTube! :D

1. Stargazing by Myles Smith
2. Three Six Five by Shinedown
3. That's Not How This Works by Charlie Puth & Dan+Shay
4. Ordinary by Alex Warren - first song of his I've heard and I really like it
5. back to friends by sombr - it was a crazy coincidence how spotify recommended them to me and then all of a sudden, a couple of their songs started playing on the radio like a few weeks later. i like this one and 'undressed'.
6. Revolving Door by Tate McRae - she has really catchy songs.
7. can't slow down by almost monday
8. Azizam by Ed Sheeran
9. Bad Dreams by Teddy Swims - ngl at first I thought he was saying "closer when I cry" and I only found out later it was "no sound when I cry"
10. Me Without You by Evan Cline

The Deep by Rivers Solomon is about a society of merfolk living in the deep of the ocean, who choose a historian to hold their ancestral memories for them. Yetu, the current historian, is struggling to maintain her own identity under the weight of the memories, so she gives them all back to the other merfolk and runs away. Her actions have far-reaching consequences that force her to confront her purpose, her place in the world, and prompt her to find a better way for her people to live.
The book has several narrative threads, and my engagement with each of them ebbed and flowed somewhat (see what I did there?) throughout the story. I struggled with the deeper meaning of some aspects of the story, while others felt a bit too bluntly stated. But it went to some interesting places and I liked how Yetu's thread developed in the latter stages. I really wanted to be able to just accept the ultimate conclusion as really heartfelt and beautiful but it didn't quite land for me, which was a shame. But there was a lot of profound beauty in this novella, even though I didn't connect to it as much as I wanted to.