This is playing in the background at some tavern in the Northern Fallows along Una and Owen's route to Cloven Hill
10.03.2026 18:26
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This is playing in the background at some tavern in the Northern Fallows along Una and Owen's route to Cloven Hill
Text: Where do I even start with how much I loved this book? Where is the beginning and the end? I read Alix E. Harrow's latest offering in two days, and it would've taken me less if I didn't have a life to live outside the time loop of Sir Una and Owen Mallory's world. I'm still reeling. What if a legendary knight and a legend-obsessed historian got trapped in a time loop together? What if the legends you fell in love with as a child were spread in service of a specific, authoritarian agenda? What if you loved them anyway? What if the center of your whole world only thought of you as a tool, a living weapon and a convincing poster child? What if you tried to run from that role? What if you already had, and you kept stumbling over your own carcasses on the way to uncertain freedom? There are so many thematic and story elements that I want to gush about, but at the risk of spoiling everything, I'll refrain. Of course, as with all time travel stories, if you think too long and hard about the paradoxes it gets a little murky. I really don't care, because this book is beautifully written and worth revisiting over and over. I have my own little time loop, thanks to Harrow.
Cover of the book The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow.
My 5-star review of The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow — This book is actually what the band Chumbawamba was talking about when they said, "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down, I get knocked down, but I get up again" etc. etc.
Murders in the Rue Morgue was a parody, I have found the post and the website about it!
The site linked is here
wdl.mcdaniel.edu
And it's really rather good fun, some eyebleedingly bad prose, of course
Image of Jacob Wysocki screaming with poorly edited text that says "you are AN ARTIST WITH FREE WILL."
YOU ARE AN ARTIST WITH FREE WILL. YOU CAN DRAW YOUR FAVORITE THINGS. YOU ARE AN ARTIST WITH FREE WILL. YOU CAN DRAW BAD AND ITS OK. YOU ARE AN ARTIST WITH FREE WILL. YOU CAN TRY DIFFERENT MEDIUMS. YOU ARE AN ARTIST WITH FREE WILL. YOU CAN DRAW YOUR FAVES FUCKING NASTY. YOU ARE AN ARTIST WITH FREE WI
For passersby, I was explaining what an "alpine divorce" is and used this to describe hikers who actually care about their partners and don't leave them stranded halfway up the Grand Canyon
Text: Craig Thompson's story about growing up in rural, religious America is a stark, lanky, awkward, heartbreaking thing to behold. It's bleak and hopeful and true to the Great Lakes region in a way that doesn't often reach the mainstream. Thompson's gorgeous art is doing the heavy lifting in that regard, pulling what might otherwise be a cookie-cutter depiction of coming of age into something unmistakably Midwestern. You can hear the bumpy roads underneath the wheels of the school bus, you can see the white, rolling hills of Marathon County for miles in every direction, and you can feel as achingly alone and misunderstood as you did when you were a teenager. Or maybe that's just me.
Text: My one critique of this love story is that it stumbles over the girl it centers. Raina's interiority is very limited compared to Craig's. We are told that they fit together, even before their two-week-long reunion in the Upper Peninsula, and the phone conversations between the two imply that they have layers and layers of shared beliefs, dreams, and stories, but we don't really see it. Teenage Craig spends so much of his time agonizing about his desire for Raina, about the details of her that he fixates on, about what he's been taught about women and lust and sin, about how broken he believes himself to be for wanting more, and poor Raina gets left up on her pedestal for the majority of the book, offered no opportunity to put forward what she might think about BEING the object of sinful thought beyond one admission that she wants Craig as badly as he wants her. I am left wondering if Thompson ever tried to reach out to this girl he loved in the 1990s to get her side of the story, or if he thought she was better preserved as the memory of first love that she became. I wonder if she remembers him the same way he remembers her.
Cover for the book Blankets by Craig Thompson.
My 4.75-star review of Blankets by Craig Thompson — I made sure to bookmark all the pages with panels containing road signs so I could show them to my partner later and say "Wisconsin mentioned"
I'm calling it now, at some point the looksmaxxing crowd is going to wrap around into using makeup to achieve the perfect canthal tilt and jawline, and then the YouTube beauty guru space is going to blow up again under some stupid new name like "blushmunting" which will be sponsored by Dr. Squatch
That said, the list of European child brides on Wikipedia is looooooooonnnng
Text: A determined, triumphant entry in this heartwarming series, sprinkled with a little bit of mystery and uncertainty for flavor. I'm sure that even if Ryoko Kui decides to dip into darker themes in her future installments, it will probably be horror that focuses on the ethics of eating gingerbread men and their little iced houses.
Cover of the manga Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 4 by Ryoko Kui.
My 4-star review of Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 4 by Ryoko Kui — I'm guessing that red dragon steak has the tough fattiness of bear meat and the vague taste of chicken or some other bird
I might be a giant complainer, but I actually love ludonarrative dissonance, whenever I see a game's story and gameplay contradicting each other, I get so excited to dissect the why of it
Text: Revisiting this fantasy romp a good 20 years after I first discovered it was a treat. Yes, shapeshifting narrator Bartimaeus is snarky to the point of fatigue, if you're no longer a young teen who enjoys a witty know-it-all. Yes, Nathaniel is still a little shit. Yes, this first novel in the series suffers from a lack of perspectives apart from magicians and spirits, aside from a scene of Nathaniel getting knocked into the mud by some kids with ties to the Resistance. But coming back to Jonathan Stroud's magical world as an adult brings a new layer of understanding that my enamored, younger self didn't pick up on, back in the day. For one thing, the social stratification between elite magician government officials, the enslaved spirits that do the real magic, and out-of-the-loop, disenfranchised commoners feels more stark and bleak than it did during my first read. The details of Nathaniel's selection for magical study, abusive upbringing, and brainwashing into elitist thinking are MUCH more horrifying. Despite Bartimaeus' whimsical commentary, there is an inescapable feeling that this world is rotten to the core, and its gilded edges are peeling off. The hints of poverty, war, and alternate history in the background enhance this, too. Finally, I can't say whether Stroud was influenced by the Harry Potter series when he decided to start his own series about a magical England, but the way he shapes his characters and world almost feels like a response to J.K. Rowling's lackluster attempts to incorporate class struggle into a Young Adult story. I could be entirely wrong here, but I definitely prefer this series, and I preferred it even when I was younger. Hopefully the film rights stop languishing in Hollywood hell and it gets a Renaissance at some point.
Cover of the book The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimaeus No 1) by Jonathan Stroud.
My 4.5-star review of The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimaeus No 1) by Jonathan Stroud — Always nice to see a childhood favorite of yours has stood the test of time
I am only 2.25 hours into Oblivion Remastered, and it started looping the audio from my last game session over the top of my current one, and when it ran out of audio, it fed me the same line from Jauffre 20x in a row before I finally quit out: Bethesda, never change
Text: Ryoko Kui returns with another cozy entry in her manga series that explores the main party's history with each other and their determination to remain together and rescue their missing member. I await the day that Laios meets a minotaur and has a full-on crisis of deciding whether he wants to eat them or ask them out on a date.
Cover for the manga Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 3 by Ryoko Kui.
My 4-star review of Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 3 by Ryoko Kui — We're straying into seafood, which means it's once again time to convince my partner we should go get sushi together
Hidden Leaf Village killed her little brother by sending him off to war at age 12, and then it killed her boyfriend in the same war, leaving her despondent for years: She should want that place burned to the ground, and what a coincidence, Orochimaru wants the same thing
Having now watched Naruto through Episode 101, I think Tsunade should've taken Orochimaru's invitation to Become Evil™
"Remember I'll always be here for you, even if you can't see me. Because I love you."
Text: Another savory dive into Ryoko Kui's fantastical mukbang, where each new floor of the dungeon brings a little more depth to the world, its characters, and its cuisine. I am looking forward to an upcoming volume addressing how to best prepare fur-bearing trout for a dinner party.
Cover of the manga Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 2 by Ryoko Kui.
My 4-star review of Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 2 by Ryoko Kui — I'm turning my own garden into some wandering golems as we speak
Lmao
Text: A charming introduction to a fantasy world full of magical, mythical, tasty beasts. I'll be back for the rest of this manga at some point. In the meantime, I'll daydream about cooking a jackalope in wine and garlic sauce.
Cover for the manga Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 1 by Ryoko Kui.
My 4-star review of Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 1 by Ryoko Kui — It's bite-sized and tasty
a zohran mamdani tweet cropped to say “Locked, loaded, plowing.”
😮💨
Text: T. Kingfisher says in her acknowledgements that this book was her attempt to write a cozy fantasy romance, and it certainly is that. The problem is that I was seduced by the front cover tag line — "When a god dies, who gets left behind?" — and thus was squarely disappointed when what I thought might be some harrowing religious angst turned out to be a meet cute between a second-guessing, scatterbrained perfumer and a paladin-turned-social worker. Aside from an inconvenient accusation of attempted murder and some unrelated beheadings in the background, the main obstacle between these two is their terrible self-esteem. They are each as likeable and wholesome as a sack of potatoes, and are often just as obtuse. This does produce the desired effect in the reader, in that a sigh of relief is uttered when Stephen and Grace finally lock lips, but it also robs the story of whatever weight might have come from a deeper, messier dive into faith, duty, guilt, and all the nastier bits of being the former instrument of a now-dead god. We don't even know how the god died, at the end of it all! That said, Kingfisher can sell a cute romance, and has a knack for writing comfortable dialogue. Just expect it to sound more like New Girl than Game of Thrones.
Cover of the book Paladin's Grace (The Saint of Steel No. 1) by T. Kingfisher.
My 2.5-star review of Paladin's Grace (The Saint of Steel No. 1) by T. Kingfisher — Quick, sweet, cozy, romantic fantasy, to my ASS-JIGGLING CHAGRIN
#AEWCOLLISION
Text: Lina Abascal's record of the bloghouse music scene (2006-2011) covers its major players, its packed clubs, and its legacy in a short, sweet package stuffed with quotes from the DJs, producers, and promoters who were there. It's everything you could ever want about music in a post-Napster, pre-Spotify era, if you're only looking for a written record. The problem with writing about bloghouse is that so much of those five-ish years was an audiovisual affair. Abascal does a great job documenting how this was intertwined with the scene, dropping track title after track title that packed dance floors, which were then documented by photographers who were just as famous as the musicians on MySpace and elsewhere. However, it does make the reader long for some photo inserts to display what The Cobrasnake and the Misshapes were capturing during that time. And maybe a playlist of the tracks in question, to bump in the background while you read the book. Really, what I'm looking for is a documentary in the style of I Love the New Millennium where Abascal sits A-Trak down on camera to recall remixing The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and working with Ye when he was still Kanye West in shutter shades.
Cover for the book Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor by Lina Abascal.
My 3.75-star review of Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor by Lina Abascal — Got curious about this one when @taylorlorenz.bsky.social brought it up on the A Bit Fruity podcast a year ago, and wow, was reading it a blast from my teenage past
This local Wolfdog joined an Olympic ski event and triggered the finish-line camera. This is Nazgul. He snuck into a cross-country skiing sprint this morning and raced the homestretch with some competitors before being escorted home. 14/10 someone get him a medal
Text: A short, straightforward primer for anyone looking to wrap their mind around facilitating group discussions about sensitive topics. It's light, it's humorous, and the concepts laid out by Sam Killerman and Meg Bolger when tackling subjects as a meeting facilitator are easy to digest and internalize. Still, there's only so far a book can carry you as a skilled facilitator: The rest is up to practicing and reviewing.
Cover for the book Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation: 11 Key Concepts You Didn't Know You Didn't Know by Sam Killermann and Meg Bolger.
My 3-star review of Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation: 11 Key Concepts You Didn't Know You Didn't Know by Sam Killermann and Meg Bolger — Wish me luck on my first facilitation for The Safe Zone Project, and maybe drop the JKR quotes at the back of the book?
A cross stitch of an irradiated deathclaw plushie. A circular sunrise background features the silhouette of the Fallout New Vegas roadsign.
The back side of cross stitch of an irradiated deathclaw plushie. A circular sunrise background features the silhouette of the Fallout New Vegas roadsign.
Oooh look at the little irradiated #plushie he's so squishy! Backstitch soon to show off all his details. #CrossStitch #wip #fallout #deathclaw #art #craft #stitch
Put her in a Predator movie STAT
Text: Jack Halberstam assembles a star-studded cast of female masculinity in this text, ranging from Anne Lister in the Georgian age of England to the drag king scene of 1990s New York City. Indeed, Halberstam has plenty of examples of women borrowing, living, performing, and embodying masculinity, and proclaims that masculinity exchange between men and women should be the norm instead of the sharp, cultural division that currently exists: However, he falls short of really digging into why that division is so ingrained and enforced. An early passage in the book describes "the bathroom problem," wherein butch or insufficiently-feminine women find themselves frowned upon and questioned when entering public women's bathrooms. Halberstam asserts that the policing of gender presentation is more openly strict in women's bathrooms, inciting ridicule; whereas men's bathrooms are less nit-picky, but carry a higher risk of violent backlash if one does not pass as sufficiently masculine. This feels like a prudent topic to revisit near the end of the book, where Halberstam brings up the topic of adolescent girls being discouraged from athletics and sports, lest they become too masculine from exercise-induced muscle definition. Had he done a little more research into the history of sports being divided based on sex, Halberstam might have found that women's divisions only began to appear regularly once women began to compete alongside, and BEAT, men at their own games.
Text: Of course, this book isn't about men, or at least not cisgender ones. However, I do think that it could have been interesting to track how female masculinity, when borrowing from male masculinity, has shifted historically as what it means to be masculine has shifted across cultures and time. Halberstam gets into this a little bit — particularly when talking about the concept of female sexual inversion in the 19th and 20th centuries, and in talking about the ways women of color are perceived as more masculine thanks to racial prejudice — but I would have liked to see a wider exploration of it. Then again, as Halberstam points out, research into early queer history tends to skew anecdotal over quantifiable thanks to a multitude of issues. Halberstam's writing really hits its stride when he focuses on masculinity in queer media: Films and pop culture and stage shows where interpretation is as fluid as gender expression can be. It's also nice to slip into critique and comparison of movies after several chapters responding to several other queer theorists that I didn't read. Aside from some very outdated language and understanding of transgender identities, this is still a thought-provoking book when examining masculinity found in places beyond society's norms.
Cover for the book Female Masculinity by Jack Halberstam.
My 3.5-star review of Female Masculinity by Jack Halberstam — Five years after @contrapoints.bsky.social mentioned this book in her YouTube essay, "J.K. Rowling," I finally got around to reading it
