#cog talk

[crystaloregarden]

made a visual bingo sheet for doing @batmanisagatewaydrug 's 2025 book bingo since my memory is a lot better with images + I'm not a person who remembers or pays a lot of mind to genres so I'd just forget anyhow B)

also, a few of my friends and i are doing this book bingo together in my server, if any of my moots want to join in!

book titles & my reason for choosing them under the cut:

Literary Fiction: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio (blind pick from storygraph)

Short Story Collection: The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl - Roald Dahl (roald dahl is on this list already so i figured i'd read some of his other stuff, too!)

Sequel: Two Hearts & The Way Home - Peter S. Beagle (sequels-ish to the last unicorn which is one of my top fav pieces of media of all time I NEEEED THESE)

Reread a childhood favorite: Matilda - Roald Dahl (LOVE THIS BOOK & MOVIE SO MUCH!!!)

20th century speculative fiction: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin (i've been trying and failing to read Wizard of Earthsea due to lack of time + its juvenile tone so hoping i can find something i like in this book instead!)

Fantasy: Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao (been on my TBR forever and finally have an excuse to prioritize it)

Published before 1950: The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux (ALSO been on my TBR forever, attempted to read it once via audiobook but the audiobook reader was so bad at reading that i had to put it down. hopefully my library has a print copy!!)

Indie Publisher: Those We Do Not See - Angie Gallion (looked on the list that the tumblr post recommended, ended up at red adept publishing and blind picked)

Graphic Novel/Comic Book/Manga: Dragon Quest - Adventure of Dai (recommended to me by luca! he first recommended dragonball to me and i had to decline because that's is SO many chapters FHSJDFKL)

Animal on the Cover: The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World - Robin Wall Kimmerer (obsessed with all of kimmerer's works and need to read them all NOOOWWWWWW)

Set in a Country You Have Never Visited: The Fox Wife - Yangsze Choo (this was recommended to me right before i left kansas by the person who did my hair so it's only been on my TBR a short while, but i'm always super eager to read books that were personally recommended to me!!)

Science Fiction: Time Shards - David Fitzgerald, Dana Fredsti (was on my TBR in storygraph, i don't remember adding this so it might as well be a blind pick FHKSJDHF)

2025 Debut Author: The Woman In The Wallpaper - Lora Jones (blind pick!)

Memoir: Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy - Charles Busch (recommended to me by my coworker at my old job who was an elderly gay man who spent his life in theatre, extra excited to read this one!!)

Essay Collection: Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 - Nick Land (on my storygraph TBR, i think i saw some quotes from a tumblr post and added it?? i THINK)

2024 Award Winner: Dance with Me - Georgia Beers (blind picked from the Lambda Literary Awards since they focus on LGBT+ works!)

Nonfiction: Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair - Sarah Schulman (recommendation from a tumblr account i follow for book recs on activism and mental health)

Activism/SJ: Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights - Molly Smith, Juno Mac (same as above!)

Romance Novel: Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (was on my storygraph TBR)

Horror: Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer (i am vaguely aware that the movie version of this book is dogshit and i've heard the book is LEAGUES better so i want to take a peek for myself)

Published in 2000-2009: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them - Francine Prose (ohhh i added this to my tbr recently-ish but i don't remember where i found it, i am SUPER interested in this though as both a writer and an avid reader!)

Historical Fiction: Babel - R.F. Kuang (blind pic, partially influenced by the fact that luca brings up the tower of babel so often that we have a spiritual "mentioning tower of babel" jar in place)

all i need now is the library rec (i'll be moving in walking distance from a library in a couple weeks), the read & make a zine (i'll poke around archive.org to find some interesting ones & potentially want to make one myself about my old cat who passed) and read & make a recipe (i cook at home rather than eat out most of the time so this is gonna happen prolly within like a week of 2025 anyways)

[animesickos]

The Sickos remembered that we have a form we shared a long time ago where people can submit horror stories from their workplaces, and we finally read some of them! Then, we discuss if Joe should get a Vespa so he can fit in with all the Italian guys.

Submit your own cog tales here, perhaps we'll remember to read them one day: https://forms.gle/aBFBueBAGQr4xtcx6

[crystaloregarden]

hey op I'll trade you that thing for one of my boppies

(I have several more of them because I turned out to just love sewing them like that lol)

i followed a sewing pattern that didn't have any irl finished pics of it, and the whole time i was like 'yknow this doesn't seem like it'll work very well, but i'm the novice so i guess i should follow the pattern' and well.

[vivianvixen]

The two extremes of looking up used books on Amazon:

amazon.com: math textbook from 2005, ten thousand dollars

amazon.co.uk: original Gutenberg bible, three quid

[songinabottle]

I tried to switch my calendar/s to start with Monday because, "Yeah, I guess it does make more sense." But then my clever brain rebelled. It said if my calendar starts on SUNDAY, it looks like I don't have two days in a row off. But in practice? Oh ho! I've tricked them now!

For unnecessary context: I live in the USA (on Shawnee land), and I coordinate a lot of calendars for M-F/9-5 work reasons. Even if those aren't always my hours.

[yuukirita]

wow- Did Optimus Prime know Pre-Empurata Bee?????? or maybe He knew OF him? I wonder what Bee did to deserve Empurata? C:

[crystaloregarden]

Us too us too!!!

(location is east TN!)

Wildflower season is here!!

I love spring 🥰

[paper-lilypie]

something something gaining perspective

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[crystaloregarden]

BIRTHDAY IN A WEEK!!

[daddy-long-legssss]

arctic monkeys on later ... with jools holland 2022

[olive-man]

early years

and more stuff down here

just doodles, and a very stressed out me. thought this was a perfect time to post since i’m actually going back to school tomorrow for my last semester of high school lol. happy late new years btw (oh and brony headcanon i got from @bonkerbuster69 . you are cooooollll)

[witchlingcirce]

I don’t think we talk about Isabelle Lightwood literally ripped Sebastian Morgensterns hand off.

and the fact that his wrist is still SCARRED.

Everyone say thank you Isabelle !

[vivianvixen]

A big part of my job involves encountering various books of esoterica, often by people who claim to be in contact with aliens or angels or the spirits of the dead, and without fail they're all like "and they want to teach us how to move on to a higher spiritual existence of peace and love!"

Come on, be original! Be the first person to write about how the angels/aliens/ancestors want us to ascend to a plane of suffering and endless psychic warfare with powerful mind blasts and swords of astral light.

[kedreeva]

Kpop demon hunters ask because I keep thinking about this and I need to put it in words

I think Rumi IS the answer to the golden honmoon prophecy. In the first song they sing (how its done?), and in the last song (this is what it sounds like), and in the version of the hunter mantra that Rumi sings with Celine as a child, and probably in some other places, one line gets repeated over and over again and its some variation of "when darkness meets the light" and from what we can see, everyone in the know about the demons assumes this is the hunters fighting the demons, but... theyre only really successful at fixing the world when Rumi accepts that she IS that meeting of light and dark

It makes me wonder if Gwi Ma knew/suspects this, since he knows about her existence. If he knows that this is the generation where he HAS to stop them, because of her, because he won't get another chance, where as every generation before it didn't matter as much.

oh for SURE she is! And that's one of the messages threaded through multiple places in the story.

it's paralleled in Rumi (a hunter, the light) actually literally meeting Jinu (a demon, the dark), instead of just always fighting. which is, you know, something that was only POSSIBLE because of what she was.

The whole song is a history and a future.

We are hunters, voices strong. Slaying demons with our song.

-history, conflict, aggression, death

Fix the world and make it right. When darkness finally meets the light.

-Fix the old world (conflict) and make it right (no more fighting, killing), when they finally MEET each other.

There was a whole second song they sang as well about how they can't fix things until they face them (when darkness finally meets [faces] the light).

and then you have the girls themselves, with the whole "our faults and fears must never be seen" or whatever... well guess what, the "dark" parts of them met the light and they forged themselves into something so much stronger. they broke the cycle there, multiple times- when Mira and Zoey admitted their fears to Rumi, and later during the ending song.

The movie was not subtle about the message, it definitely wanted us to get it!

[iamnothingwithout]

Thinking about how book Louis went talk to the priest after Paul's death and the priest told him Paul was possessed by the devil as a way to console him.

Thinking about show Louis going to confessional and saying the devil is in HIS head and how father Matthias tries to interject when Louis says he failed his brother.

Thinking about book Louis going into a delusional grieving rage and attacking the priest for saying something so horrible about his dead little brother.

Thinking about show Louis stabbing Lestat in the back with his cane sword to try to save father Matthias after Lestat attacks him.

Thinking about how book Louis wrecked the room in the process of "nearly" killing the priest.

Thinking about how show Lestat had no blood or rips on his back from a stabbing after he takes off his coat.

Thinking about book Louis having an unreal strength pre-vampirism.

Thinking about Lestat calling father Matthias a charlatan despite us not seeing any evidence for this claim.

Thinking about Lestat bringing up the dead priests later as a comparison to Louis killing someone important.

Thinking about how much fire was in that church.

Thinking...