krait | Network

I don't recall anyone pointing out other people's gifs before (is that a thing?) but whether or not that's been done has no bearing on the fact that it is precisely what I propose to share today.

This lovely gifset by

michaun and

appleciders's other nice little collection of gifs here both illustrate how the Garvey sisters end up using one another's clothes quite often. That's a bit of a family tradition, it seems, that must have started as a pet peeve (see Bibi's line there, "That's my scarf, Becka", which the gifs don't show as followed by a hard "I want that scarf back, Becka!" and the justification that "she always keeps my shit" when Eva and Ursula look at her following the outburst). Regardless, it lends another lovely dash of colour to the sisters and yet one more fun thing to look out for as the episodes go by.

smallhobbit

Continuing with the challenge

dreamersdare made, here are more top 10 series. This time I've gone for crime fiction books, and again in no particular order:

1. Malabar House series by Vaseem Khan
Set mostly in Bombay just after Independence, these are stories about Persis Wadia, the first female Indian detective, who's shunted off to Malabar House to keep her out of the way. Nevertheless she gets involved in a number of high profile cases and becomes better known. Vaseem Khan is a British writer, who spent 10 years in Mumbai. The series is ongoing and I'm currently reading the latest The Edge of Darkness which is set in the Naga Hills in north-east India. There's lots of details about the time, and gripping stories. I've also enjoyed the Baby Ganesh series, which sees an ex-detective inspector in Mumbai who is sent a baby elephant by an uncle, and the crimes he solves.

2. Maigret by Georges Simenon
There are about 75 Maigret novels. I started listening to them as audiobooks, bought a few hard copies, and am currently working my way through all the books available in our county library. The series starts in 1931 and while Maigret is based in Paris, he's fairly often in different parts of France, or visiting countries nearby. I enjoy the atmosphere and the strong sense of time and place, as well as the variety of crimes Maigret is faced with.

3. Bradecote & Catchpoll series by Sarah Hawkswood
Set in the 1140s and based in Worcester and the surrounding area, so a similar time period to Cadfael, Hugh Bradecote is the Under-sheriff and therefore a representative of the authorities in solving crimes, and he works with the vastly experience Catchpoll who is the Sheriff's Sergeant and Walkelin, the serjeanting apprentice. I like the main characters, who are very human and seek to do their best for those around them, in what can be very difficult times. The next book Act of Betrayal is out in September.

4. Jackman & Evans series by Joy Ellis
I listen to these on audiobooks. DI Rowan Jackman is a modern day detective in the Fenland of Lincolnshire (Joy Ellis' home territory) and is assisted by his sergeant, Sally Evans. There's a team of recurring characters and some interesting crimes, darker than some of what I read. Black Notice is the latest, which came at towards the end of last year.

5. Inspector MacDonald series by E C R Lorac
I've only read the books which have been republished in British Library Crime Classics, but have enjoyed those. The series begins in the early 1930s and runs through to the 1950s. I like MacDonald, who is competent and thoughtful. Most of the books are set in England, with a number in the Lake District. Once more the description of place is excellent - I'm not inclined to read through long descriptions, but these are written so that the reader feels themselves there, rather than simply admiring the view from a distance. They also give an incidental view of life as lived by most people at the time.

6. The Su Yin series by Ovidia Yu
Originally called the Crown Colony series, but with the passing of time this has become inappropriate. The first story is set in Singapore in 1936, when Singapore was under British rule, and the series moves through the Japanese occupation, and has now reached the late 1940s, with the strong demands for independence from the returning British. Su Yin isn't in the police force, but frequently (other than during the war years) works with Inspector Le Froy. The next book The Tembusu Tree Mystery is out in June.

7. The Dinner Lady Detectives by Hannah Hendy
Two late middle-aged school dinner ladies become unexpected amateur detectives in a series of cozy-ish mysteries. Lighter fare than most of the above, but I have a soft spot for the two, who are married to each other. Entertaining with plots relevant to the small town they live in. Implausible, but it all makes sense. A Curiously Convenient Device is out next month.

8. Follet Valley Mysteries by Ian Moore
These stories are not to be taken seriously, but are great fun. The murders happen in bizarre ways, and the main protagonist and foil is Richard Ainsworth, an English proprietor of a French guest house, who has pet hens who he has named after classic film stars. The latest in this series of books set in rural France is Death and Boules.

And lastly, two classics:

9. Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The original stories. Some are better than others, but the characters of Holmes and Watson are enduring.

10. Miss Marple by Agatha Christie
An overlooked older lady with a very sharp mind and a real knowledge of how people think and behave.

Finally, an honourable mention to Discworld by Terry Pratchett. Here, I shall simply quote the Librarian, "Ook!"

pensnest

The glorious Wordsmiths At Gorsemere continue to bring me joy. Today's episode was possibly the most sublime. One Mr Sheats arrived, and a cricket match ensued, with commentary by, in succession, Sheats, Wordsmith, and Cholerick.

As the episode drew to a close, Dorothy Wordsmith was heard to say, "Oh, dear, Mr Sheats has forgotten his stockings. I shall preserve them in this basil pot." And I was overtaken by relentless giggles.

Seriously. If you think you might enjoy listening to a radio comedy based upon the humble lives of several lakeland poets, let me hasten to assure you that you would, indeed, you would.

And now, I must paint.

itsnotmymind

32 protest songs written for my home town of Minneapolis

ofearthandstars

From this week's

thefridayfive:

1. What did you want to be when you were a kid?
At around 8 or 9 I knew I loved animals and wanted to be a vet, but then at some point I realized that the job required cutting in animals and seeing them in pain, and I realized that may not be for me. In late middle/early high school I was a high-acheiver academically and everyone told me that I should be a doctor, but I think I was more interested in science and math and at one point was seriously considering biology/ecology and/or meteorology. When I left for college, I had no idea what I wanted to do for certain, based on all the advice and competing interests, and it took far too long to settle on a major. I ended up turning back to atmospheric sciences, which are similar to meteorology but have more of an exploratory feel and also a direct impact to helping people. Hence I levelled out as an environmental scientist.

2. What is your proudest accomplishment so far?
At the most basic level, I have survived some awful things. Since this questionnaire seems focused on job/career and because I (unfortunately) have tied a lot of my self-image to my professional job, I would say... I was damn proud to be a part of implementing some of the first climate change regulation in the United States under the Clean Air Act and supporting subsequent climate regulation for the last fifteen years. Unfortunately, due to the consequences of November 2024, that is now all at risk of being ripped apart, which is devasting for a whole host of reasons. Where this country goes from here will dictate whether it ever survives/comes back.

3. What is your dream job?
I don't know how to answer this anymore. I had a dream job but it has been twisted and convoluted in the last year. I hate how environmentalism is politicized when it literally is about protecting the systems that support life on Earth. Sometimes I dream of becoming a park ranger, mostly because I want to be away from people and out in nature, but realistically that would require some level of BLET and also probably relocation, both of which don't actually appeal to me. Is there a place for a burnt-out and slightly-wounded person to simply take gentle care of the land and woods?

4. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I cannot even begin to speculate after the last year.

5. What does it take to make you happy?
I actually do have a strong ethical core and I want to be doing work that aligns with that. This is why I have never set my sights on a higher paying job in industry (working for a chemical or oil and gas company would be much more lucrative). But I feel like it would present as much of an ethical conflict as my current predicament, and at least my current arrangement has a chance of turning things around for good (I hope).

seleneheart

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Blurb:

From the number one bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, a deeply suspenseful and heartrending novel about the unbreakable love between a mother and child in a society consumed by fear Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic-including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power-and limitations-of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.

The blurb above is not what is on the back of the book. What I thought I was getting was a YA type thing where a child receives a mysterious letter and goes on a quest to find his mother.

I started reading this book three days after Liam Ramos was kidnapped or as the book so politely puts it, "Taken." It was a bit of a hard read under the circumstances, but very thought-provoking. Just a warning for anyone protecting their mental health from these kinds of stories right now.

My one quibble is there was nothing to indicate dialog making me have to read a little closer to figure out what was being said.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: You Won't - Television

melagan posting in

stargate_search

I remember a lot about this fic, but not the author or title.

Earthside- John thinks Rodney breaks up/will break up with him because Rodney says "I love..." during sex and John doesn't say it back.

John winds up in a bar drinking and bemoaning his tragic breakup. He's hit on by a couple of cute girls, but he's too broken-hearted to do anything but think about Rodney.

Rodney comes in, drags John out of the bar, and clears up John's wacky idea that Rodney broke up with him.

sakanawords

Check-in post for day 8!

Day 1:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

shadaras,

Day 2:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

shadaras,

Day 3:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

Day 4:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

Day 5:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

ashelterofpages,

miss_ingno,

Day 6:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

ashelterofpages,

miss_ingno,

Day 7:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

ysilme,

goddess47,

ashelterofpages,

miss_ingno,

Day 8:

marcicat

The weird thing my brain is stressing about this week is our heat, which is working fine. But I keep waking up and thinking 'that's a weird sound, it could be bad, maybe the heat is broken.'

(We've got those forced hot water baseboard heaters, which make a ton of weird sounds. That's their whole thing, pretty much: weird sounds. So it's not ideal that my brain has decided 'weird sounds' = 'must worry now.')

ANYWAY, that's what's happening here!

(I'm relatively sure it's my brain trying to signal me that I'm Experiencing Stress, which it thinks is helpful. I'm less sure that it actually IS helpful, since my awareness of said stress was not really in question. But I appreciate that it's trying!)

cmk418 posting in

halfamoon

Today's theme is Pet Peeves.

Here are some ideas to get you started: There are some things that really get under her skin. Maybe it's someone who shows up five minutes early to a meeting while she's still getting ready, maybe it's that the store doesn't stock her favorite guilty pleasure item, maybe it's that her significant other keeps beating her at checkers. Sometimes the little things needle away and she hits her breaking point. Show us what bugs her and how she deals with it.

Just go wherever the Muse takes you. If this prompt doesn't speak to you, feel free to share something that does. You can post in a separate entry or as a comment to this post.

Want to get a jump start on tomorrow's theme? Check out the prompt list in the pinned post at the top of the page. Please don't post until that day.

dolorosa_12

I mostly finished five TV shows in this past month, but left it until today to write everything up as the final episode of one show only aired on Friday. As is common with my TV viewing, it was a mixed bag of genres. The shows were:

The Lowdown, a tale of local political corruption starring Ethan Hawke as a local journalist and secondhand bookshop owner attempting, ineptly, to uncover the truth behind the suspicious death of one of the members of a wealthy, prominent family. It's run by the same showrunner behind my beloved Reservation Dogs, and written with the same blend of offbeat surrealism, slightly sentimental affection, and incisively sharp focus on the poverty, deprivation and racism festering in declining American cities and towns.

Season 2 of A Thousand Blows, Stephen Knight's take on the nineteenth-century East End. As with the previous season, it's a wild, lurid tale of audacious heists, rival criminal gangs battling for dominance, boxing matches offering opportunities for the show's impoverished characters to claw their way into financial security, and larger-than-life people with larger-than-life emotions, told with a comic book sensibility. As a standalone series, I would have enjoyed this, but as something following on from Season 1, I found it a bit lacking. It was as if all the previous season's character development was reset, and there was never any sense of real risk: characters felt protected by plot armour from suffering any consequences.

I Love LA, a comedy miniseries about a group of self-absorbed Gen Zers trying to make it in the entertainment industry (social media influencer, manager of said influencer, costume designer to pop stars, nepo baby daughter of successful actor), which was almost painful in its humour. It's brilliantly acted and written, but excruciating if you find secondhand embarrassment at the obliviousness of characters always on the brink of disaster hard to watch.

Season 2 of The Night Manager, which picks up close to a decade after the previous season (an updating of a Le Carré novel for the Arab Spring era) finished. This new tale of twenty-first-century spycraft deals with corruption, international arms dealing, and external attempts to meddle politically in Colombia, and is well written and well acted with its stellar cast, even if some elements strained credulity. It's a wild ride from start to finish — tense and engrossing, with some incredible and audacious twists. Bring on Season 3!

Spartacus: House of Ashur, a spinoff from the cult favourite Starz series about the revolt and subsequent crushing of enslaved gladiators in ancient Rome. I have to say I thought the concept was a bit far-fetched and ridiculous (a canon-divergence AU in which a secondary character — who died towards the end of Spartacus — gets offered a second lease of life in the afterlife, and lives again as a freedman, the client of Marcus Crassus, and the owner of the house of gladiators in which he, and Spartacus were previously enslaved), and I'm still not sure why the show exists, but I can't deny it was entertaining. It has the same wall-to-wall gratuitous violence (slow-motion, comic-book style punches and blows by sword and spear, rivers of blood spraying around the screen), nudity (equal opportunity) and sexposition, the same bizarre dialogue choices (all the characters speak without the use of definite and indefinite articles, and absent possessive pronouns, as if translating directly from Latin — I honestly wonder how the actors are able to speak such contorted lines without difficulty), and, underneath all the sex and violence, a serious story about the limits of respectability politics. (In other words, a marginalised person can expend all his energy adopting the trappings and values of those privileged in his society, swallow every insult, and do everything in his power to cater to their whims and give them what they want, and it will still never be enough for him to gain material comfort, safety, or their acceptance of him as their equal.) I assume it goes without saying that if you're looking for historical accuracy, or even a sense of internal narrative coherence, this is not a show I'd recommend: it's 90 per cent vibes, and you just have to go with that. In the show's final five minutes, it makes a narrative choice so wild and so left field that I was almost astonished by the audacity, making it clear that — if it does return for a new season — it will be operating not just in canon divergence, but in full blown alternate history.

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

puddleshark

Another grey day, though the rain held off for a few hours this morning, and another walk across the high ground, this time following the chalk track along St Aldhelm's Head.

Even the high ground is wet.

( Black & white photos, and grey photos )

chacusha

Snowflake Challenge: A close up shot of an owl ornament hanging amidst pine boughs..

Continuing to push these out...

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page - Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

For this challenge, I'm just going to rec the last thing I read that I thought was really neat. It's a blog post that was linked to on a Discord I'm in, which I thought was a fascinating read: Idle Words: Scott and Scurvy -- it's a very readable account of one part in the history of scientific understanding of scurvy. Namely, it talks about how various occurrences and advancements in science led to people having a worse theory of the causes of scurvy in the early 1900s than they did in the mid 1700s. This continued until vitamin C was finally isolated and its effects understood. I think it's a fascinating study of how scientific progress is not linear and how smart people reasoning with the best facts, tests, and technology of their time can still mistake the nature of things. Of course, our own scientific understandings are the same way, even as they're the best guess we can currently make.

Challenge #5: Wishlist - In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

While I generally am like *gestures at all my exchange sign-ups* for this prompt, let me try to focus on a particular theme, namely -- AUs! AUs are something I'm always hungry for and I think it's unlikely I'll sign up for an AU exchange in the near future (as the only one currently running has a work minimum that's probably just a bit too high for me -- I don't know, I might sign up for it in the future but it would be a pretty difficult commitment for me to make, the stars would have to align, etc.). Okay, so let me highlight three particular things on my AU wishlist:

1) AU prompts: I'm still very much taking prompts for my

au_challenge bingo card over here. I really enjoy the activity of thinking about AUs and how I would translate canons into certain settings/setups, and so appreciate people giving me random prompts and shaking some ideas loose that way.

2) My old AU exchange sign-up: Here's the one time I signed up for an AU exchange -- I would still love mini-presents for the requests here. A drabble, a doodle, an icon, or just some off-the-cuff thoughts you have about a neat AU, etc. The fandoms being requested are:

- A Song of Ice and Fire (Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark)
- Bravely Default (Alternis Dim/Edea Lee)
- Final Fantasy VI (any or ensemble focus with some suggestions of characters to include)
- Pinocchio (1940) (Lampwick/Pinocchio or Blue Fairy/Jiminy Cricket)
- Soulcalibur (any or ensemble focus with some suggestions of characters to include)
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Odo/Quark)

But let me also add:
- Trials of Mana (any or ensemble focus)

3) Recursive fanworks for some of my specific AU ideas: These are both mentioned in the above AU exchange sign-up, but I thought I would highlight them: I've drawn art for two specific AU ideas I have, and I'd love recursive fanworks for them -- your take on the same idea, a drabble illustrating how you think it would work, or just tossing around some ideas or asking me some follow-up questions.

- Bravely Default, superhero AU with a two-person love triangle between Ringabel, Edea, and Alternis.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Quodo angel/demon AU.

Current Mood: rushed

andrewducker

1. New data shows surge in trans kids' suicides following healthcare rollbacks: (tags:LGBT children transgender suicide OhForFucksSake uk )

lanternglass posting in

fandomcalendar

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shipperslist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

soemand

Wasn’t happy with my album side police cassette tape so I asked a Ilm for a redo. mother should have stayed on the editing room floor.

SYNCHRONICITY // EXPANDED

Synchronicity I [3:23]

Murder by Numbers [4:31]

Low Life [3:45] — noir grit

Synchronicity II [5:02]

Once Upon a Daydream [3:31]

Every Breath You Take [4:13]

King of Pain [4:59]

I Burn for You [4:50]

Wrapped Around Your Finger [5:13]

Tea in the Sahara [4:11]
  
    44m | High-fidelity tension

lilly_the_kid posting in

vidding

Title: You've Got Time
Fandom: Dolores Claiborne
Music: You've Got Time by Regina Spektor
Characters: Dolores, Selena, Vera, ensemble
Summary: Everything looks different the second time around
Warnings: mind the tags on AO3

Vid is here on AO3

pilottttt posting in

common_nature

Current Location: Istanbul, Turkey

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February 2026

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Page Summary

sisterdivinium in halfamoon - Day 8: gif recs, Bad Sisters - Eva, Ursula, Bibi and Becka Garvey
smallhobbit - Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition - Challenge 2 (series)
pensnest - no ceiling when i'm in my zone
itsnotmymind - Protest Songs
ofearthandstars - Friday Five: Dream-on Edition
seleneheart - Book Bingo: I2 | No Sex/Romance | Our Missing Hearts
melagan in stargate_search - Fake break up (misunderstanding)
sakanawords - WED Day 8
marcicat - thanks, brain
cmk418 in halfamoon - Day 8 Theme - Pet Peeves
dolorosa_12 - January (plus early February) TV shows
jazzyjj in awesomeers - Just one thing: 8 February 2026
puddleshark - Another grey day on St Aldhelm's Head
chacusha - Snowflake Challenge #4 & #5
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 08-02-2026
lanternglass in fandomcalendar - Link Click: LC Rare Character Semiflash Reveals + Interest Check
shipperslist - meme: first lines of 2025
soemand - Police Synchronicity
lilly_the_kid in vidding - New Vid: Dolores Claiborne "You've Got Time"
pilottttt in common_nature - The Guardian

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serpentine smiles

Network

Day 8: gif recs, Bad Sisters - Eva, Ursula, Bibi and Becka Garvey

Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition - Challenge 2 (series)

no ceiling when i'm in my zone

Protest Songs

Friday Five: Dream-on Edition

Book Bingo: I2 | No Sex/Romance | Our Missing Hearts

Fake break up (misunderstanding)

WED Day 8

thanks, brain

Day 8 Theme - Pet Peeves

January (plus early February) TV shows

Just one thing: 8 February 2026

Another grey day on St Aldhelm's Head

Snowflake Challenge #4 & #5

Interesting Links for 08-02-2026

Link Click: LC Rare Character Semiflash Reveals + Interest Check

meme: first lines of 2025

Police Synchronicity

SYNCHRONICITY // EXPANDED

New Vid: Dolores Claiborne "You've Got Time"

The Guardian

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February 2026

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