#might include some stickers I have left over too

[provokedgoalie]

I'm thinking of doing a giveaway for hockey cards 🤔

[russolaw]

Model Daniel/Musician Johnny

Because the door was unlocked and he'd been there several times the last month and a half, Daniel thought nothing of walking right into the house, where he found Johnny in his bedroom (actually the living room because Kreese, the band's ex manager, would not let them buy the three bedroom house and forced Johnny to make a room for himself on the first floor) packing boxes. Their new house had three bedrooms. Johnny was gonna have his own room.

"What do you want?" Johnny asked, barely glancing as he cumbled up some papper and tossed it in a trashcan a few feet away. "Shouldn't you be at that party, schmoozing it up?"

Daniel shut the door behind him turned the lock, casually walked to the bed (pull out couch) and lied down, arms behind his head. "Nah. Got tired of the crappy music and drunk people. Jimmy was hitting on Zendaya when I left." Daniel never wanted to go in the first place, but he promised the photographer that invited him he'd make an appearence. His manager, Mr. Miyagi, didn't mind that he was only there for an hour. It was enough.

"Like anything would happen between them," Johnny replied with a roll of his eyes. He picked up what looked like a business card. His jaw clenched and he sniffed. Daniel guessed it was Kreese's, his name in small print shining silver underneath rhe large "Gold Entertainment". Johnny said him and the rest of the Cobra Boys were happy at Lotus Agency United now, but despite the way Kreese was, they'd been with him for awhile. There might always be a part of them that would miss him. Johnny ripped it up into pieces and let them flutter to the floor.

"Hey, get out of my bed, LaRusso."

He grinned. "Come over here and make me."

While they were long past the point of violence (he still couldn't believe this blond hotheaded lunatic was his friend), there was still the memories of Johnny's punches and kicks, so Daniel assumed his smart remark would earn some kind of assault. However, Johnny silently got up and lied next to him. They both looked up at the ceiling, at the water stains and star stickers.

"You takin' those with you to the new house?"

"No. Tommy already bought a bunch more."

"Real ones are better. You should go take a gander at them sometime."

"You asking me out, Danielle?"

Yes. No. Maybe. Was he?

"Depends. You good with a pizza and movie first?"

Faster than Daniel could blink, Johnny sat on Daniel's thighs, one leg on either side of them. Daniel stared, wide eyed,as Johnny lifted his shirt up to show off his chest.

"Yeah sure. Maybe you'd rven get lucky."

Hesitantly, Daniel reach out a hand. Johnny smirked and grabbed his wrist, brought the hand ulp to his chest. Daniel swallowed and squeezed one of his pecs. "Wow," he breathed.

This wasn't an unexpected development. Most people, some of Daniel's friends included, insisted there was some tension between them, even back when they couldn't stand each other.

"Real glad you're here," Johnny said, bending down to kiss Daniel. He ground their hips together, and Daniel groaned as Johnny started to unbutton his shirt.

⭐️

"You hungry?" Johnny asked, shaking Daniel, who was in trance, focused on the stars.

"I guess." His clothes were back on. Underwear most likely on backwards. Pants unzipped, unbottoned, unbuckled. Johnny's hair was a mess. He watched the blond as he walked into the kitchen, noticing a slight limp..

"Most of the stuff is packed away. But we got microwavable popcorn. And beer. Maybe a movie on my laptop."

"Yeah, sure." He eyed the guitar resting on the couch they used as an actually couch. "How 'bout a song, too? You have a decent voice."

Johnny followed his gaze to the guitar. "Want me to sing the song I wrote you?"

Daniel sat up, jaw hanging open. "You what?"

"You’re too easy, Daniel," Johnny laughed. He threw the bag into the microwave and turned it on. Getting the beers from the fridge, he jumped on the bed next to Daniel, sat crosslegged and handed one off to him. He gave Daniel a sweet peck on the mouth that got hus heart racing. "Play your cards right and maybe I'll like you enough to write you a song."

"Sounds like a challenge. How's this: you and me next Friday at seven. I'll pick you up and take you to an Italian place near Mr. Miyagi's."

"Oh, what a gentleman."

"I want that song, doll."

[changesforminnesota]

Molly’s Cracker Jack Collection

Cracker Jack was a popular caramel popcorn and peanut food and every box came with a prize. Molly loved to collect and trade small toys from inside these boxes. Open the Cracker Jack Box and help Molly eat the pretend popcorn. She keeps her growing collection in an old cigar box. It includes two marbles, a ring, two tiny animals, a World War II airplane and three paper toys.

Details about Cracker Jack and how I made the collection under the cut.

What are Cracker Jack prizes?

Cracker Jack is a caramel coated popcorn and peanut mix that was first sold around 1896. It is a staple of American baseball games and other sporting events. It’s even mentioned in the song that plays at every baseball game, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, written in 1908: “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back”. 

Cracker Jack started giving prizes in their boxes in 1912, and throughout most of the century, these prizes were highly collectable among kids. Most of the prizes are plastic animals and other trinkets, as well as many paper or cardboard items like games and collectible cards. Some even included tiny books or flipbooks or dollhouse furniture. It’s fascinating to look through the years and see how things changed, from metal to plastic, the different pop culture references, the war years, et cetera.

Frito-Lay bought the company in 1997 and changed all of the prizes to flat things like tattoos, stickers, and jokes. Not the same experience at all–that’s what I remember from growing up. And now they don’t even include anything but a QR code for an online game.

Research

To make Molly’s collection, I looked through the 1940s pages of a collector’s guide on Internet Archive to get a sense of what was available at the time. I took some things from the 1930s and 1950s too. I printed out some of the flat games and collected other items based on what I could find in a teeny tiny scale–these toys were already really small so it was hard to find things that are small on an American Girl scale. I also did some searching about how kids collected these, and someone said they were often kept in old cigar boxes, which might not be PC enough for PC, but I liked the idea so I made a cigar box out of a fancy cardboard jewelry box I had. (more on collecting and trading below).

I have ideas to add more prizes, like printing out movie star trading cards and coming up with a way to make pins–I’m picturing something like the doll Grin Pins. 

Molly Lore (head-canon)

I can imagine Molly trading away all of the warplane cards and toys to her brother Ricky for dollhouse furniture, jewelry, animals, movie star items, and so on. There were, unsurprisingly, tons of planes and other war items in Cracker Jack in the 1940s. It seemed like Molly was always getting planes and Ricky was always getting stupid doll furniture! They both liked the games, though. Molly and Ricky gave any leftover prizes they didn’t want to Brad. 

One day Jill decided she was “too mature” for Cracker Jack and gave her collection to Molly, which was more annoying than it should have been, because there’s something kind of not fun about suddenly getting things all at once that you’ve been collecting slowly. Molly invited Susan and Linda over to pick through Jill’s collection, each girl choosing one thing at a time until it was divvied up. At least sharing with her best friends and not keeping it all to herself made it a little more fun. 

Resources:

This collector’s guide was instrumental in my research. It both gave me specific ideas and a general sense of the experience and patterns of the prizes. There were a few telling editorial remarks like this one about Barrettes on page 127: “Left a lot to be desired if a little boy got it. (Then again, I’m sure that many a little girl was disappointed to get a “war” prize).” This is what gave me the image of Ricky and Molly trading their prizes and both of them being happy about it!

https://archive.org/details/crackerjacktoysc0000whit

Another resource I used was this selling website:

Although the search function is pretty awful, it is good for scans of paper prizes. 

Here is the google doc I used to collect the pictures I wanted to print in what seemed an appropriate size: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/196ByHxFQ8G21VbtBmT5H2ZCmigQnAYsUfbzru0buivM/edit?usp=sharing 

[whinlatter]

think (harry/ginny) | a microfic

day 13 of @hinnymicrofic | prompt: think

He showers quick, tries to scrub the train off him. Snorts at the sight of Vernon’s large bottle of hair-thickening shampoo. Having stared at his uncle’s head all the way back from London, he reckons Vernon’s due a refund.

There's some lurid deodorant of Dudley's - hair gel, too, looks cheap and shit. He feels a stab of pity for whichever poor girl his cousin’s trying to scrub up for these days. Dudley trying to pull, he thinks with a laugh, Christ. But thoughts of pulling lead to thoughts of girls, which lead, inevitably, to thoughts of Ginny.

He shoves the hair gel back on the shelf. Adds Dudley pulling to the don’t think about it list he’d started making on the train, somewhere around the Cumbrian border, when Ron had offered him a Caramel Kappa, Ginny’s favourite, and he’d wanted to throw up all over the chess board.

The Dursleys had waited all of two seconds after he’d slammed the car boot shut before speeding off to dinner at some miserable gastropub off the M3. Suits him fine, wants to be alone. He stabs a fork through the plastic film of his ready-meal, makes sure to puncture the yellow reduced sticker Petunia's left on for his benefit, and watches the bright white of the mashed potato atop the shepherd’s pie whirling around in the microwave. 

You know, it’s made from real shepherd, he’d said to Ginny once. That’s such a dad joke, she’d said, and he’d said I wouldn’t know and she’d said Potter you get one dead dad joke a day and you already used today’s up at breakfast. Shepherd’s pie is on the don’t think about it list, then, he thinks, just before he burns his fingers sliding the ready meal onto a tray. Probably best add cottage pie, too, same idea. Maybe all savoury pies, play it safe.

He flops down on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table, eats straight from the hot plastic as he flicks through channels. The nine o'clock news is all budget this, Hong Kong that, Tim Henman out at Wimbledon. The nine o’clock news is not Dumbledore's dead, Snape murdered him, there’s a war on, Harry Potter's dropped out of school to go hunt bits of Voldemort's dismembered soul. 

Dropped out of school, he thinks. Scandalous, delinquent. What d'you reckon? he asks the Ginny in his head. Harry Potter, troubled dropout? Do anything for you? The Ginny in his head laughs. It’d be fun if she were here, he thinks, curled up next to him on this ugly sofa, taking the piss out of Petunia’s cushion covers and Dudley’s wrestling trophies. Imagines taking her up to his bedroom, pointing out the lamp Dobby whacked himself around the head with. But then the Ginny in his head looks at him and says I never really gave up on you and I knew this would happen in the end, and it all bursts, shatters into a hundred dusty pieces.

He chucks the rest of the meal in the bin, adds dropping out of school to the stupid list. Might as well add the budget, Hong Kong and Tim Henman, why not.

Turns off the telly, goes upstairs and lies on his bed, fully-clothed, staring up at the ceiling, because on the walk from the living room to his bedroom the list has expanded to include his trunk (train, Hogwarts, Ginny), his jumper (still smells a bit like her on the left arm, pathetic), and Hedwig (how does it feel knowing your owl prefers me, Potter?).

He stares out of the window for a while, eyes next door's new extension, which sort of works - ugly nothing suburbia - until he remembers the twins and Ron at the window in a flying Ford Anglia, zooming him off to the Burrow where a little red headed girl is blushing and sticking her elbow in the butter dish and god, this really is shit, isn't it, they weren't lying. She knew then, of course she did. He's never been good at thinking of nothing, has he, and he's thought about her as he falls asleep every day since about October, so what chance does he have now?

He's dreading the dreams the most, knows they'll be unbearable. Almost hopes he dreams of lockets and green light and dead headmasters. Can't be worse than bright brown eyes, freckles on a bottom lip (how do you even get freckles on your bottom lip, Gin? Don't be jealous of my freckles, Potter, just because your skin's so boring), the smell of her hair (what do you mean my hair smells? What is that supposed to mean? Why are you laughing?) and the sound of her laugh and her gasps and the sound of her breathing, soft, lying beside him under the cloak on the lakeshore. Looking down under the table at dinner, seeing her thigh next to his on the bench, hand on his knee, body drawn to his, magnets, magic.

When he wakes groggily the next day - crick in his neck, still in his jeans - his first thought is: he's overslept. He’s missed Ginny on her way down to breakfast, going to be late for Potions, fucked it.

But no, of course not. There’s no Ginny, no breakfast, no Potions. Might still have fucked it, though, who's to say. Don't, he tells himself, as he heads for the bathroom to scrub the night off him, just don't think about it.

now up on AO3 here | ask me anything

[vulpesverda]

I'm sure you were referring to my Kayn Making Food for the Group headcanons, but I think this would be more fun to do a headcanon post about the kinds of pranks he'd pull on all of the members. I'm also a menace who loves giving myself extra work, lmao

Prank Master Aphelios

Content: No Warnings 》 SFW 》 Alune Included

Requests: Currently Open

Masterlist

K'Sante

We all know about Aphelios replacing K'Sante's protein powder with flour, right? KNOWING this man eats that shit DRY? Evil. And I love it. On top of that, I like to imagine Phel changes the lock and homescreens on K'Sante's tablet to just... really weird shit. Obscure memes. Sometimes ones he's made himself. Ones he's made about K'Sante. How did he get the pass code. K'Sante doesn't know. K'Sante does not have the power to stop him. Someone help this man.

Sett

Pranking Sett is both so easy and so difficult. It's so easy to get a big emotional reaction out of him... but there are some pranks that will just fly right over his head. But I think Phel's favorite thing to do is gaslight this motherfucker. Tell him fake facts knowing that Sett is gonna repeat it later and look silly. And when Sett is like "Phel told me that! It's true!", Phel is like "I did not say that, where did you hear that".

Yone

You might be thinking, "If anyone were to be free of his shenanigans, it's got to be Yone, right?" And you would be correct. However, no one is free, and therefore Yone suffers. And by "suffers", I mean his cold brew is replaced with decaf. Yone notices. Immediately. He doesnt even have to taste it. He is not happy.

Yone is aware he can just go buy a cold brew, but its the principle of the thing. You don't fuck with a man's coffee, or his morning routine. But Yone can't prove anything, and his coffee is re-replaced as soon as he makes a stink about it, so.

Kayn

Kayn loves to dye his hair, canonically. And if he dyes his hair with any dye that comes in containers like the Arctic Fox hair dye, you bet Phel has intentionally switched around the colors. He bought sticker remover stuff so he could peel off the labels and switch them around undetected, so Kayn opens up his next bottle of pinkish purple dye and ends up with ultramarine or black or green and dumping it directly on his head.

Because let's be honest, I don't imagine Kayn would put that shit in a bowl and apply it with a brush. He's squeezing that bottle on his head and rubbing it in with his hands. And you're lucky if he's using gloves.

Ezreal

Ezreal is an easy one to prank. If Ez leaves his phone alone for even a SECOND, Aphelios is on that shit, hiding it away in his pocket or something so Ez is frantically looking for it. And then he puts it in a spot he KNOWS Ezreal knows he's looked. He gets a really big reaction out of it, too, which is what makes such a low effort prank so worth it. Minimal risk, big reward. If he's lucky, Ezreal might start whining.

Aphelios

Now, dear reader, you may be asking "Why is Aphelios on this list?". And the answer to that question lies in the fact that Aphelios is not even safe from himself. Particularly when he is drunk. I envision drunk Aphelios giggling to himself as he thinks "It would be really funny to piss off sober me", and doing something he knows is going to inconvenience him while hung over. Like rearranging his bedroom furniture in a way that doesn't make sense or is impractical. Or hiding the toilet paper so he has to do the shuffle of shame after his morning shit.

He is a menace, even to himself. I told you no one is free.

Alune

This is her brother. Her brother who loves her, but her brother nonetheless. He's perfected the art of the prank, and she was his unwilling test subject for many, many years. Anything you can think of, he's probably done it to her. There's nothing he can do that would surprise her, at this point. I think he enjoys stealing her hair ties and hiding them somewhere she can't reach. Or hiding all of the left socks in her matching pairs. Anything to inconvenience her just a little bit. And she knows this has the work of the Phae (Phel/Fae) written all over it.

》 ------ ◇ ------ 《

AN: God I love aphelios. End note.

[blouisparadise]

Today we have the third part of our hurt/comfort rec list for you! You can find part one here and part two here. If you enjoy our rec lists, please be sure to like and reblog this post to help spread the word.

1) Wanna Feel the Edges Start to Burn | Explicit | 6,111 words

Harry gives him a gentle smile. “Feeling a little bit better?” Louis nods tentatively. “I think so yeah. Thank you so much for being so kind, but you really didn’t need to do this.” He lifts his unfortunately still shaky hand and runs it haphazardly through his hair. “It was just a spilled tea, I totally overreacted. I’m a bit embarrassed to be honest.” Harry scoffs. “Are you kidding me? Don’t be. I saw the whole thing, that guy was way out of line. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Louis gives him what he’s sure is a watery smile. “Erm thank you. I wouldn’t normally admit this to a stranger, but you’ve already seen me cry today so what the hell?” He forces himself to let out a weak laugh. “The thing is, my period is due any day now and sometimes the birth control pills make my emotions go a little haywire. I think that’s what happened.”

2) Quietly Our Hearts Beat | Explicit | 7,539 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be ready by AO3 users.

Louis and Harry in the universe of ‘A Quiet Place’.

3) Waiting | Explicit | 10,517 words

Louis Tomlinson was Harry’s omega, of this Harry had always been sure. Unfortunately for Harry, Louis seemed to think they were just best friends. The six weeks that Harry has to live with Louis were going to be rough.

4) All This Delusion In Our Heads | Explicit | 15,088 words

After Harry and Louis break up, they cope with it in very different ways. What will happen when Harry keeps calling his ex over when things go wrong in his life, but Louis just can't take it anymore?

5) Just My Style | Explicit | 15,443 words

Harry is sick, and the only thing that might help him is the pheromones from his mate--problem is, he hasn't got a mate. Louis' just been disowned, and taking part in a medical study where he has to cuddle with some strange alpha seems to be his only option for earning a bit of cash. The hippies and Omega Rights campaigners are busy changing the world--but all Harry wants is a chance to live.

6) How You Sleep At Night | Mature | 15,568 words

The one where Louis thinks he got left because he might be too much to handle, but then Harry appears in his life again.

7) Somebody's Got Your Trainers On (It's You) | Explicit | 28,000 words

Louis hasn't thought about Harry since half an hour after the shift started, when Krystle told him that she was binging Gogglebox last night and therefore didn't get enough sleep - a sure reminder of Harry’s temporary Gogglebox obsession. Five hours isn't much without thinking about someone, but that's as long as it gets. Louis came to terms with that two years ago. When Harry walked out the door with his stupid New Balance trainers and never looked back.

8) Let Me Carry Your Weight | Explicit | 28,633 words

Louis is fresh out of a bad relationship with someone who made him feel awful about how he looked. On his journey to better himself, he meets Harry - the ridiculously attractive and fit personal trainer.

9) Compass to my Soul | Teen & Up | 31,439 words

Note: This fic does not have smut, but it's omega Louis, so we included it.

Harry Styles, alpha, is 1/4 of the perfect pack, and 1/5 of world famous boy band One Direction. He spends his time touring the world with his best friends and family. Louis Tomlinson, omega, is 1/5 of world famous boy band One Direction. He spends his time hoping his bandmates don’t notice him.

10) Stuck On You | Explicit | 33,983 words

Louis’ life revolves around his stickers. Harry’s life revolves around his job. The universe has decided their worlds should revolve around each other.

11) A Common Place Affliction | Not Rated | 36,508 words

“You should go home,” Louis muses, and Harry can feel the omega crouch down to become eye level with Harry, poking his cheek with a dainty finger. Harry lifts his arm, taking a peek at Louis’ face. Louis looks tired, he notes, but not exhausted, and there’s an eyelash stuck to his cheek. Harry doesn’t hesitate to lazily reach out and thumb over his cheek. “Can’t,” Harry croaks, blindly twisting his hand around to grab at Louis’ offending finger and just holding it. “C’mere. Take a nap with me,” he asks after a beat, opening an eye to look at Louis. Louis raises an eyebrow. “M’not going to nap with you in the middle of the ER, H.” Sighing, Harry squeezes the young nurse’s finger. “Nobody cares.” He knows they do; they’ll annoy nurses and probably worry patients when they catch sight of a nurse and surgeon sleeping on the job. Let alone in the middle of the emergency ward hallway. Harry can hear the complaints now: ‘these are the people we’re supposed to trust with our lives?’

12) To Paint A Symphony | Explicit | 40,583 words

Despite being a wedding painter, Louis has never had quite an optimistic outlook on marriage life. Love, sure, he’s a hopeless romantic and he longs for a sweet partner, to feel adored and cherished, but a part of him will forever doubt that love can last forever, a spark never lasts long, after all, so he paints because strokes of paint can remain forever and unchanged if looked after properly, cared and cherished the way he wished he could be, safe from an unsure future. Harry, on the other hand, as a performer and lyricist, indulges in pleasure. He loves love, never wastes a moment, never hesitates, always so sure of what he wants. Songs come and go on the radio, sometimes forgotten, sometimes transcending generations, the way people leave, and others stay. He never thinks of a future because he only ever lives in the present and he never was egocentric enough to think he could make a real impact and his art could outlive him. At a wedding under summer skies and surrounded by endless sea, two seemingly polar opposite lovers meet, and perhaps one learns to let himself feel and fall, and the other lets himself hope and cling on.

13) Wild Hearts Run Free | Explicit | 42,979 words

Harry is an alpha who is harbouring a dark secret, one that has forced him into self-imposed isolation, far from civilization and far from temptation. Louis is an omega who has fought the predispositions of his secondary gender his whole life and suddenly finds himself cast aside by his beta partner, leaving him to question his place in the world. When fate and Mother Nature conspire to trap the two strangers together, will Harry’s worst fears be proven, or will Louis find a way to break down his walls and lead him into the light?

14) This Glass House | Mature | 43,012 words

While deployed, Alpha Harry gets injured by an IED explosion, leaving him to deal with severe injuries in its devastating aftermath. During his road to acceptance and recovery he learns with the help of Louis and their children just how important family can be for the mind, body, and soul.

15) Hold Me How the Deep Night Has | Explicit | 48,018 words

Louis Tomlinson needs a change. Stuck in a cycle of going to the job he hates, spending time with his friends, and avoiding the one man he hates most in this world, Louis' in desperate need of something new. So when he discovers an abandoned notebook on the way to work, the decision is easy to take it for himself and begin a journal amidst the empty pages. What can't be expected are the words that appear overnight directly beside his own, written on the same day 400 years in the past. What are the consequences of a magical connection between two men of different centuries? And who, among it all, is the mysterious E who only exists on the other side of Louis' journal?

16) Made For Lovin’ You | Explicit | 52,637 words

The one where a quick, horny decision ruins Louis’ summer plans, but may also lead to unexpected discoveries. Featuring the road trip of dreams, misunderstandings, and a bit of fate. The one where a quick, horny decision ruins Louis’ summer plans, but may also lead to unexpected discoveries. Featuring the road trip of dreams, misunderstandings, and a bit of fate.

17) Gallery Of Us | Explicit | 55,778 words

Harry knew what he was doing in life, everything laid out in black-and-white, each day pleasantly predictable. Cue lively art student, Louis, trying to find his place. An almost insufferably happy person who sometimes forgets to hide the way they feel meets the person who is diligent enough to notice and determined to make a difference.

18) Untamed Hearts Align | Explicit | 55,795 words

For as long as Louis has known her, Lady Margaret Tomlinson has had two aspirations for the remaining years of her life. The first was to out-dress the Duchess of Kent at every soirée and gathering. The second was to marry off her omega nephew to the most honorable – and highly ranked – alpha suitor she could find. He does not expect for her to arrange a marriage between him and the crown prince, and he certainly does not expect to fall for him. Everything changes when Harry disappears.

19) I’ve Got You | Explicit | 62,988 words

As a reward for saving the king's life, Harry is offered omega Prince Louis' hand in marriage. Neither of them has any interest in the union going forward, and so they concoct a plan to prove to the king that they are far from a perfect match.

20) You're Umami Baby | Mature | 87,429 words

Harry is a chef who never experienced umami until he meets his new dishwasher, Louis.

21) Echoes & Omens | Mature | 100,707 words

Echoes of the dead come in many forms. Their imprints forever tied to the ones who'd killed them. Louis Tomlinson is able to track the dead using their echoes, they call to him. He's used that gift to aid Scotland Yard in their investigations, with the hopes of studying Criminology at Cambridge University. He's lived a life of privilege and good fortune as a Marquess, son of the late Duke Tomlinson, with his life mapped out since day one. Until two terrible truths are revealed. One, he's adopted. Two, his biological parents are London's most notorious serial killers. Against his family's wishes, Louis travels to Chicago to uncover the truth of their incarceration. Much to his dismay, his biological mother's Lawyer, Harry Styles, wants to take his case. Together, they work to uncover what really happened all those years ago, but perhaps more is revealed than they could've ever anticipated. Trapped in a whirlwind of portents and omens, Louis and Harry find themselves pitted against an enemy they'd not foreseen.

22) You’ve Got A Higher Power, You’re Once In Any Lifetime | Explicit | 113,444 words

Giving up and letting them think they're right were never valid options in Louis Tomlinson's mind. In a society full of prejudices, finding a family and being accepted, also seemed like an unrealistic utopia. Louis sets out to do what no other of his kind ever has before and in doing so, he finds love, friendship and more about himself than he thought he would.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

[ununotter]

Tokyo Game Show - 28th September 2024 report (I guess? Might as well?)

So I went to Tokyo Game Show yesteday and I dunno quite what I was expecting the result to be but tickets weren't too expensive and some friends ended up going too so it ended up being pretty fun.

First we had to queue to exchange our reservations for our actual tickets because we had all been genuises and googled "Tokyo Game Show" and clicked on the first link which was the international ticketing page, not realising there was an option on the Japanese side of things where you could just pick up a ticket directly from Lawson or something?

Anyway once we had finished dealing with that (and I was agonising over how the Hakumyu announcement tweet notification came through but then I couldn't load the actual tweet because I was in a crowd of hundreds of people all using their phone at the same time and therefore was not getting enough data to load anything) we actually got into the halls.

My immediate goal became to track down these very shiny green bags that I saw heaps of people with (mission success) and then my next goal was to see how much free crap I could leave with if I just accepted everything anyone held out in front of me.

End result: the shiny bag, some other bags including game branded plastic bags, a bunch of pamphlets and flyers about new games, stickers, an uchiwa, and some pin badges.

Actually the PlayVital booth was amazing cause they gave each of us a pin badge just for approaching their booth so we felt bad and had a look inside which is when I decided to get some thumbstick covers for my Steam Deck and Switch, and then they gave me another bag, stickers and another pin badge for free with my purchase.

I don't have my Switch with me in Japan at the moment but here's one onigiri topper on my Steam Deck:

As for actual games, we were mostly just trying to look around as much as possible and then there were a couple specific things we wanted to look at so we didn't spend a whole lot of time playing demos or looking at any one specific booth for that long although we did have a look at what people were trying out at a couple of booths. The Devolver Digital one had some pretty cool looking games for example.

One game did end up catching my eye in particular though. It's called Amedama (雨魂 for the kanji nerds - the characters for "rain" and "soul" - very apt if you play the game).

The main thing that drew me to it was the character designs on this banner they had and anyone who knows me should immediately know this looks right up my alley.

So I scanned their QR codes and they gave me stickers of these characters (named Yui and Yushin). This game is actually already out on Steam (and PS5? Idk) and a Switch release is coming in November.

Anyway I went home, played the demo and since it is indeed very much up my alley I ended up buying the game and have been playing it a fair bit ever since. Since there's a demo, I'd definitely recommend trying it out if it seems like it might be your kind of thing.

As for the event overall - as to be expected, it was very crowded in some places. Including exchanging our tickets, getting our tickets and bags checked etc the queue to get in ended up taking us something like an hour and a half. We arrived about an hour after admission had started and the queue for admission was meant to start another half an hour before that so we were on the later side.

Also the Keiyo line to Kaihimmakuhari station was rammed and it took us a few minutes to get down the stairs and out of the station. Similar situation on the way back even though we left about an hour before the end of the day. But it was still very fun. I didn't ever actually have to queue for the bathroom at least (which is nice cause I often have to do that at theatres or even just in train stations or shopping centres).

[staghunters]

STAGHUNTERS NEOCITIES WEEE

Figured I should make a new post at this point because the other one is getting too long to keep reblogging. I've been tinkering away at the site and it is shaping up! Here's a lil page by page tour under the cut

you can view the site here!

Splash screen!

It's a little bumper so the css can load without it scrabling the home page. It looks alright, but to add some more text to the image, I have to make a new one in the death screen generator, which is not ideal.

The home page!

I've changed the middle window so it fits in better with the rest. Not very visually exciting there in terms of color, but it is for now the best look imo. Text there is aligned justified, I've condensed it a bit more and added the randomized quote section underneath it instead of it being a seperate window on the side.

To do list needs an update but is still accurate. The team is still there, but on the other side, I have set the blinkies to be a bit larger. The music player has been removed because I couldn't find a way to add songs to it that weren't included on the source site. Snufkin is here now. The webrings will need some more. Retronaut is there, but not functioning as it should. it just forwards you to random sites in the ring instead of where it should be, but I can't find what exactly I'm doing wrong with the code.

Another thing that is not working on neocities itself is the "last updated" part. For some reason it doesn't display there what it does display on my local html. Maybe a bug at neo.

And icons at the top on the nav par! Adds some more flair to the place. The footer has also received a minor update: it now has a sitemap link instead of another back-to-home url.

About!

I'm thinking of moving the small window with the short info to the right, but it is here for now. Links that are web-building related are on the right, also for my own referencing. The essentials lists on the left are hidden on load, but can be revealed by tapping the puttons. The lists are in tree-view and the window shouldn't expand over the cassette image once the construction sign is removed. Speaking of, the cassette has a lil playlist.

I might expand on the info a bit more, but that is for me to ponder. I liked including links to tumblr, the guestbook, and a button in case anyone wants to link my site on theirs.

Writing!

Hasn't really changed much. I've been looking at moving the sidebar info to be in the main section upon load, but idk if that would just make things more complicated. Right now it loads to an empty section there, stuff appears once you click a button. PDF support is only available once I'm a supporter of neocities, which i do wanna do but isn't a priority atm just for getting this part running. The links to ao3 will do just fine for now.

Journal!

The space for my rambling. It can be browsed by entry through the post-it, and all that seems to be functioning alright. Added a kitty and a sticker for decoration. The Stop Making Sense bumper sticker will now load a local video of the performance, but once again I won't be able to add this to the site until I get a supporter thing going. It plays/pauses on click, hehe.

Basement!

Decided to add a page for it. Basic info, schedule, link to the room, my letterboxd, and an overview of past movies. It's a nice spot on the site that is also the most cramped, but I like how it turned out.

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

In case any page/url error happens, you can send a movie recommendation to B (their askbox is linked when you open on desktop)

UNDER HEAVY CONSTRUCTION

The art and other pages are very much works in progress. Art can be up and running once I upload art to the site, but I'm not sure if I want to post full pieces here. Maybe I'll make it a space for sketch stuff that I'd otherwise discard.

As for the other page: I might be filing it under the writing page as a section, since the only thing here is WvW atm. It's cool that it has it's own thing, but I'm not sure if something that is basically a fanfic warrants such a space. That, or I keep it and drop all my other-media stuff in here so there's more to look at.

That's it for now! I got some ideas on how to continue, but they're not super-duper set in stone.

[razorsadness]

Though, also worth noting...is that skateboarding, at least between the mid-eighties and mid-nineties, was one of the (many) places the gift economy was in radical action, by which I mean in practice. It was just the case that whatever you had extra—and skateboarding, with its many components (decks, wheels, bearings, trucks, bushings, riser pads, rails, Rip Grip, bolts, etc.) made for extra—you passed along. Most of us had a bucket of some sort where, when someone needed something, we dug around to find it. I never once heard anyone express it as an ethics (sharing, redistribution, commonwealthing), though if you tried to keep your extra to yourself, if you spoke to no one of your bucket, and then it got out you had one, and gleaming like gold in that extra Independent truck was the kingpin one of us needed to skate that day, the reaction would be an ethical one: Yo, that’s fucked up, man.      Also worth noting is that skateboarding’s reemergence, at least in the US, is almost perfectly concurrent with a new gilded age, a grotesque accumulation and celebration of wealth, deregulation, the dismantling of the welfare state, mass incarceration, NAFTA, taking the solar panels off the roof of the White House, privatization of everything, further enclosure of the commons, and the unabashed, unapologetic, mongering sanctification of hoarding. Of the hoard.

...

...the only limitation to what might be skated, or made public, or commoned, or shared, is the imagination.      Which, yeah, leaves some marks sometimes. Though the residual polyurethane script of previous wall-riders, the frenetic black rainbows streaking a white wall, to me indicates possibility, skateability, to maintenance, and most definitely to the owner of the building, they are a headache, and might even hit ‘em in the wallet if they want that wall real clean. To the owners, everything is a headache, or a potentional headache, which is to say: a threat. And to the skaters everything is skateable. As you can see, this is an endless loop that results either in criminalization (and the once ubiquitous Skateboarding Is Not a Crime sticker), or the very pristine and perfect skateparks municipalities have taken to building as a kind of legal protest corral, helmets and recycling strongly encouraged.      It is so odd to be old enough to catch myself saying things like “I’m so glad they didn’t have that then.” You know, cellular telephones. Homework. Schedules. Parents. Bottled water. Strange to say, but skateparks, too, I’m so glad we didn’t really have. We had the thing behind 7-Eleven on Maple Ave., a little rough but still nice. We had the drainage ditch up behind the car dealerships. We had the car dealerships. We had the loading docks behind the supermarket. We had Herbert Hoover Elementary School, which included the roof. We had that jarring bit of transition behind Burger King, and the culvert behind Mindy’s Skateshop. We had those sexy, long, slippery, connected parking curbs at the school near where Georgie moved over in Fairless Hills. Another ditch, kinda steep but good, behind the Posh Nosh and the Clemons, where they carried Transworld SKATEboarding magazine. We had dumpsters we could flip over, and washing machines or dryers left by the dumpster we could boardslide and grind. We had those ramps we built of good wood we found at local construction sites in the middle of the night. We had the SEPTA station in Penndel, the park bench and that indecipherable hunk of wood Harley and I pulled from the trash and skated for hours. We had those high yellow curbs over the sewer grates. That ramp we took out of the driveway of that kid Steve who wouldn’t share his bucket. We skated and ollied off the wooden boardwalk and steps of Seafood Shanty. Ledges, the fountain, the speed bumps, the smooth yellow curbs at the mall. We had that little course we built from a stash of railroad ties and some scavenged plywood in the janky, netless, heavenly smooth tennis courts at the apartments, until they banished skating from the premises with threat of eviction. Of course they did.

—Ross Gay, from “Share Your Bucket! (Skateboarding: The Fifth Incitement)” (Inciting Joy, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2022)

[iridium-quality-salad]

Sticky Business

[ID: The banner of the game, with the title, sticky business, written over purple brush strokes, next to a pair of pink scissors and an open box with several stickers inside: a frog wearing a suit, a piece of pepperoni pizza, a pink popsicle on a stick with rainbow sprinkles, and a rainbow with a heart. Everything is pixel graphics. End ID]

Do you like pixel graphics? Have you ever wanted to run your own online shop, but you don't actually want to deal with taxes, rude customers, or the post office?

Then this might be the game for you!

[ID: Three stickers made in the game, all with a purple theme. The first is designed like a polaroid, with some books in front of a rainbow as picture. Pink tape with I heart is clipped to the top right corner, and a pencil is writing the word books at the bottom. The second is a round sticker with purple night sky, a half moon, and a very round black cat with white eyes at the bottom, in between high rows of purple plants. The third is an assortment of purple potion bottles, crystals, and plants. End ID]

Now, let's be clear. This is not a business simulator. I'm not sure if it is even possible to actually lose the game by running out of money - you can run out of money, for sure, but at least the first time, someone will bail you out. There also seems to be no penalty for messing up/missing an order.

This is a "have fun creating fun stickers" simulator.

[ID: Full screenshot of the game, showing the sticker creator. On the right side are all the object categories, with the DLC one chosen, showing various words like books, gratitude, travel, and work. In the middle of the screen is the assembled sticker, a flowerpot with a red bow. The plant growing out of it has a smiling dog head with a flower above its ear. End ID]

The mechanics aren't groundbreaking. You design stickers from premade assets by placing, resizing, flipping, turning, and sometimes tinting. You arrange them on a sheet of paper to print—there's different types of paper with sparkly effects, too. Customers order stickers, and you pack them into packages to sell.

You cannot pick prices, reorder, promote, or anything like that, only list and delist. Each object used gains experience with each sticker with it sold, which you can boost by up to 75% per order. When an object levels up, you gain points you can use to unlock more elements.

Sometimes, customers will tell you their story and ask you to make stickers with special elements. You can do that. Or you can shrink the element and hide it behind something else 😂

[ID: Full screenshot of the game, packing stickers up for shipping. The top row shows all available stickers. The first one in the list is a small rainbow with a thank you note, available over 1000 times. The left side shows one order at a time, with the message the customer sent, if available. The right side shows multiple tabs of available goodies to include, currently strawberry candy, miniature chocolate bars, and chewing gum. In the middle is an open box, padded with pink paper and blue wrinkly paper, containing the stickers appearing in the last screenshots (despite not being ordered), as well as two pieces of candy. End ID]

The boosting is basically free: just make a tiny (unlisted) sticker that can fit in all the cracks and blanks on any sticker sheet, and you have hundreds of those to throw 15 (max bonus) into every order you send. There's little point in purchasing actual goodies, just like actually using wrapping paper has no influence on anything.

The maximum amount of orders coming in depends on whether you have ongoing "quests" - that is, those customer story email chains not yet finished. As soon as the last one is done, you get many more requests, allowing you to gather currency for unlocks much faster.

There is an achievement for unlocking everything. I got it early—and I am glad I did. Halloween, Christmas, and the DLC brought three huge new categories, and I am not sure if they count for that achievement, but if they do, it would take twice as long now.

[ID: Two more stickers. One shows a green goblin in front of an open book. Left to it are a crossed sword and magical staff. At its other side sits a little ferret. Three red, twenty-sided dice are in the foreground, all showing 20. The other sticker is a christmas three. End ID]

All in all, it was a fun game, and I messed around with it for about 20 hours. I made lots of stickers I loved and shared with some friends, and *whispers* I even managed to spell the word fuck.

Why the frowny face then?

I played mostly on the steam deck.

At first, you may think "whee, full support, awesome", but the longer you play, the more things get incredibly frustrating.

It's impossible to export stickers on the deck. Why? Hell knows. Perhaps because they don't trust a "console user" to find the steam compatdata folder. You can override this by forcing it to not recognize the device as steam deck with the launch option: SteamDeck=0 %command%

The cursor keeps flipping back to the start of the list. Every time you pack the last of one sticker, the cursor flips back to the start of the list. Every time you go into another section (for example arranging stickers on the sheet) the cursor flips back to the start of the list. This isn't so bad the first time. Ten hours in, it makes me wanna cry. Also because:

There is no way to scroll through a list or even hold a button. No. You. Need. To. Press. The. Button. Over. And. Over. Again. To reach that 30th sticker you made.

While you probably break your mouse wheel finger trying to scroll through the end of day report, there's no button that works at all on controller. So you either sit through the painfully slow popping up of the report, or you speed it up and can't see it.

There is also no display when creating a sticker to show which assets are already maxed out on points you can earn. Have to go into the asset store for that. If you make me need thousands of points to unlock things, at least show me what can earn/earned those points!

Very occasionally, I couldn't edit a sticker sheet I made on desktop/deck on the other without having to adjust some stickers.

Also occasionally, the game started up on desktop without the save being synced, giving me half a heart attack as I thought my save was gone.

Don't get me wrong. It's still a good game, and it delivered exactly what was promised, and I wouldn't vote it down for that but. Geez. To play the DLC, I forced the deck to pretend it's a desktop and set mouse/kb controls, dealing with the touchpad mouse just so I could have A BUTTON THAT SCROLLS.

If my cursor had jumped back to the start of my sticker list. One. More. Time. I would have made another sticker that said fuck.

[ofpineapplesanddawns]

I went to Meow Wolf in Denver today, and because it's themed on a station that leads you to a planet made up of four other planets that smashed into each other because of inter-dimensional whatnot, it got me thinking about some of my sci-fi based aus on this account.

And considering the first place you go to when you get off the elevator is into a local port that kinda reminds me of when Ten took Martha to New Earth, I decided to write something up for my au where the Doctor is traveling with Arthur from Passengers.

Warning: weird alien nonsense, it's not really a safe place but Ten and Arthur can defend themselves, stabbing, Arthur has cool robot spider legs because reasons (gr1d, I'm stealing from you)

On with the fic!

--

"Here we go!" The Doctor threw open the doors, grinning as he jumped out of the TARDIS. "Welcome to Port 8!"

Arthur slipped out of the TARDIS and frowned, glancing around at his surroundings. "It's... certainly different from what I'm used to."

The area around them was the complete opposite from Arthur's original home. It was filthy, grungy, someone's laundry was out on display on a clothes line, including a bra with multiple cups for it, and it smelled like something might have died while smoking something strong.

The Doctor shrugged. "It's got its charms! And the best place in all of the galaxy to get street tacos! Oooh, I am very excited to get some of those!"

"I don't eat." Arthur commented.

"I know, but still! And there's a bar I'd like to take you to, I'm sure you'll find it enjoyable to be a snob. Oh, don't look at me like that, Arthur, you know you love being superior."

Arthur did not reply to that, just straightened his bow tie and clicked his metal feet on the street as he walked past the Doctor. "Show me where to go."

The Doctor grinned and shoved his hands into his pockets, walking alongside the android as they passed people of all shapes, sizes, colors, flesh, and appendages. This was a very busy port, one that had quite the doozy of an incident centuries ago where it seemed to have been the subject of a universal one-of-a-kind phenomenon where several planets congealed together into a strange place that left you lost for hours but feeling like you were in a fun house.

And also making you a bit sick from all the neon colors.

Still, the Doctor liked coming here, you could find the most interesting things!

He walked past two aliens who looked oddly like Sularians, before suddenly being yanked into a strange room by the back of his jacket. That was the thing about this place, it had hidden doors all over and if you knew where they were, you knew where they were.

And if you didn't...

Well...

You end up in a situation like this.

The Doctor hissed as he was slammed into a wall, blinking past the paid to see a weird hallway, covered in what looked like thousands of posters and stickers and blinking lights. And red splatters of varying degrees of age.

There was an alien before him, tentacled and slimy, and reminding the Doctor way too much of a nasty one he and Donna had the misfortune of dealing with twice.

"Look, if you think you're gonna get money off me, it's pointless!" The Doctor shrugged. "I don't carry cash on me! Or credit sticks!"

He tried to smile, but that only angered the alien more. "Don't seem like the type not to have credits, or mems."

"Oooh, you can't exactly get those off me, way too many, way too hard to sort through, would upset some of my past selves if we did that." The Doctor completely forgot about mems, or memories, some of the locals used those as currency. It was not always a fun way to pay for things, but if you were low on credits, it helped.

"Someone paradin' around all snazzy in a suit's gotta have somethin' on 'em." The alien snarled, baring blunt teeth that looked like they'd break bones.

"I'm telling you, I- hey! Get your tentacles out of my pockets!" The Doctor shouted, letting out a squeak when he was suddenly grabbed by more tentacles, his arms locked in place, and one slapped across his mouth.

Uhg! Disgusting!

"Shut it, or you won't have ta add to the art here." The alien held up a nasty looking knife with another tentacle.

The Doctor squirmed, trying to free himself. He wondered if Arthur was aware that he was missing, he hoped that Arthur was looking for him. The tentacles in his pockets felt like they were going deeper and deeper, pocket dimension pockets were so helpful, but that still had him worried.

Then they attention was both drawn to the door, where there was a sound, and the Doctor watched as it seemed to move, like someone was trying to tear the secret door from the wall.

And then it was torn right from the wall, with Arthur standing there, and a few startled aliens behind him.

He threw the door out onto the street, getting shouts and warbled complaints from others out of view. He dusted his hands and put them in front of himself. "Excuse me, but what are you doing to my friend?"

"None of your business, get outta here!" The alien yelled.

The Doctor shouted from behind the tentacle, kicking and flailing his legs. The alien growled and turned, moving to stab at the Doctor with the knife.

But Arthur was fast, much faster on those new legs of his.

He was there just as the knife dropped, and struck him in the shoulder. The sound of metal scrapping metal was terrible and the alien hissed.

"How rude, this is my favorite jacket." Arthur huffed and grabbed the tentacle, gripping it tighter, and tighter, and...

The alien howled in pain as there was a horrible, wet sound, a nasty looking liquid spilled from between Arthur's fingers. He pulled away from Arthur and something purple and squirmy dropped to the ground, moving about on the ground.

With another hiss, one of anger and fear, the alien rushed away, down the other end of the hallway. Arthur looked bothered by the fluid on his hand and the Doctor, now free and wiping at his mouth with a handkerchief from his pocket, handed it over.

"Thank you." Arthur said as he cleaned up the mess, then looked up at the Doctor. "What happened?"

"Got grabbed and pulled into one of the many secret hallways and locations around here, was threatened for money."

"I see. You're lucky I noticed you vanished." He handed over the rag, which the Doctor pocketed it.

"And I'm grateful for that but... how'd you find me?"

Arthur sighed at the tear in his shoulder after he yanked out the knife and tossed it aside. "I may or may not have had the TARDIS put a tracking device on you so I could know where you wandered off to."

"Ah, I see." The Doctor nodded, then stopped, eyes wide. "You did what!?"

--

Look, Arthur seems like the type who would have the TARDIS do this because the Doctor may complain about the companions wandering off, but they're just as bad (if not worse).

The tentacled alien is based on one from an audio story (Time Reaver) and from a book (In The Blood).

A lot of the weird stuff I talked about, hidden doors and such, those were at Meow Wolf, lots of weird shit. I found a room full of bones and teeth in jars. And a terrifying pizza place.

[televinita]

First library sale of the year! Their bag sale, specifically. I initially went on the first night but I was so exhausted from work that I legitimately did not enjoy myself; I found no proper treasure and only bought 2 things, not least because I was surprised to find hardcovers were $2 instead of $1. So instead, I hatched a plan to come back for the $5 bag sale on Sunday, because I had a lot of fun with those in 2021 and didn’t really go to any in 2022 because I was already way over capacity with my regular buying. This time I had a great excuse!

My bag sale objectives are twofold: one, scoop up pretty books to dump in my HPB “sale fodder” bag (left side pic) -- I do not feel bad about this as long as I’ve given people who might genuinely want them at least a full weekend day plus a bag sale hour to pick them up first -- and two, grab whatever even mildly catches my eye once the bulk has been picked over, because hey, $5 whether I take two books or twenty-five, and *slaps reinforced paper sack* this bad boy can fit so many books.

I’m including the stack on the left just for general interest if anyone’s curious what kind of things I found. I don’t know any of these titles and am not interested in reading them. EXCEPT “Sold,” which I don't need a physical copy of but do love, and am probably going to buy as an e-book at some point because the writing is so profoundly moving. Might even just put that one in a Little Free Library, so strongly do I believe in its literary value to portray a harsh topic in teen-appropriate ways.

Below the cut, photos exclusively of the much-less-pretty, mostly-ex-library books’ covers from the stack on the right, along with extremely and unnecessarily long winded commentary.

(hmmm, I did not arrange these in the same order I wanted to talk about them, but I guess I’d better follow the pics)

Adult Fiction & Nonfiction

1. Spill Simmer Falter Wither - Sara Baume (2015): Will I love it, IDK. Will I keep it...even less sure. But it’s about a solitary older man who adopts an unwanted dog, and it seems very introspective and beautifully written without being too heavily literary. This is almost always a trap in literary fiction, but what if it wasn’t.

2. The Distance Home - Orly Konig (2017): Ooh! on my TBR for like 5 years now, because horses + women’s fiction, everything in the summary appeals to me. Grabbed partly to ensure I have access in case the last copy gets weeded after this, and partly because there’s a good chance I’ll want to keep it.

3. The Escape - Lisa Harris (2020): would not have paid for this on its own, but on bag sale day I grabbed it for convenience just to read because “two air marshals transporting a dangerous prisoner crash-land in the mountains and everyone except them dies and now they need to catch the bad guy on the loose” really ticks all my law-enforcement-character-loving + wilderness setting + thriller preferences. [edit: it was exactly what I expected, nothin’ special. but to my delight, the library stickers actually peeled beautifully off this one so now it’s going in the sale pile]

4. Cold Day in the Sun - Sara Biren (2019): Oops, this one’s YA. Anyway, still haven’t read her books but I suspect I might like them, and they are so unpopular here that the library only has 1 copy left; it won’t last much longer. So, convenience again.

5. Wanderer - Sara Leon (2016): I skimmed through this last year when I was looking for pianist/composer characters and it wasn’t quite what I was in the mood for, but it’s slim and at some point I will be in the mood for “a novel that explores the stifled, unspoken feelings of a music teacher and his former student, and the damage done by their years of silence.” And the library weeded BOTH of its remaining copies at once in this sale so yeah, tucking this safely aside for later.

6. Leaving the Pink House - Ladette Randolph (2014): university press published memoir, I don’t know if I will really like her but there are no local library copies left and I love houses so much that this immediately grabbed my attention: on September 12, 2001, Randolph and her husband bought a dilapidated farmhouse on twenty acres outside Lincoln, Nebraska, and set about gutting and rebuilding the house themselves. They had nine months to complete the work. The project, undertaken at a time of national unrest and uncertainty, led Randolph to reflect on the houses of her past and the stages of her life that played out in each, both painful and joyful.

Children’s & YA (mostly)

7. My Friend Flicka - Mary O’Hara: One of two I bought on Thursday. Not the most beautiful copy but not a bad one either, 1960s ex-school-library and fairly clean pages. Because I was just thinking about how odd it is that I neither own a copy of this very famous novel, nor ever see copies of it at these sales, despite owning the latter two books in the trilogy. I’d like to reread it, and haven’t since childhood.

8. I Tell A Lie Every So Often - Bruce Clements (1974): OH HEY, one of the long-weeded-from-local-libraries titles from Lost Masterworks of Young Adult Lit?? Instant snag! I’m always interested in reading those for myself, even though this one does not look nearly as exciting as hoped. Will probably read & release.

9. Vinyl Princess -- Yvonne Prinz (2009): I don’t remember this title well but I remember it fondly, and every time I look at it on Goodreads I think about rereading it, not least because she was really ahead of the curve in writing about a modern day teen who thinks music sounds better on records. I always promised myself I’d buy it if the library ever weeded its last copy, and that day has come.

10. King of the Screwups - K.L. Going (2009): actually, nah, this one’s going in the sale bag as originally planned. While sorting them I caught enough in the jacket summary about a complicated father/son relationship to make me wonder “Loki vibes?” and consider trying it, but upon further examination this just looks like an awful time. Trashy teen boys are not where it’s at for me.

11. More Tales for the Midnight Hour - J.B. Stamper (1992): I bought Still More Tales for the Midnight Hour as a teen and have loved it ever since; with this one I think I might finally have the full set o’ spook.

12. Both Sides of Time - Caroline B. Cooney (1995): I read so many of her books in high school, but I remember this one being one of the best. Mass market paperback is a very convenient way to store access. Plus, Laurel Leaf imprint is my favorite paperback imprint. very nostalgia/comfort.

13. Call it Courage - Armstrong Sperry: an elementary school fave I’ve almost forgotten, bought to revisit briefly and then I’ll release because holy hell is this cover ugly, and the too-stiff binding basically made to crack and dump the pages out.

14. Vacancy - K.R. Alexander (2021): THE children’s horror author of the modern day. I’ve actually read a couple of his books recently because the covers alone were so creepy, and had a blast, so I’d like to read this one too and then I’ll let it go. Much better in print than as an e-book, but library only has it on Libby.

15. Nop’s Trials - Donald McCraig (1985): Ending where we began, with an adult-fiction dog book set in nearly the same region... Except this is much better. It’s the other one I bought Thursday, and the closest to treasure in the set, because I read this in high school and 5-star loved it and have been looking out for a cheap copy ever since, but only ever saw it in a huge and heavy oversized hardcover. At last, the mass market paperback of my dreams/same as the one I originally read is mine.

BONUS FUN FACTS: 

(because I love to talk books and literally cannot shut up about them)

1. I spent an hour walking around and it was honestly fascinating to watch the number of books shrink in real time, circulating volunteers constantly consolidating sections and folding up/removing emptied tables. Practically a time lapse vid.

2. I donated a full grocery bag of books to this sale myself, and I was so excited by how many I saw on Thursday that were gone by Sunday. I also took back 3 of them (not pictured above) that had not been taken by an hour before sale ending time, because I was Personally Offended about it -- one of them was a horse book! i just accidentally had two copies of it -- and went, “fine, I’ll bring them somewhere they’re appreciated!”

(joke, but I really do plan to donate them to another sale and hope they have better luck in a new county. I don’t know for sure what the Friends do with unsold stock after these sales and I don’t want to, but I’d rather not risk ones I like being thrown out / donated anywhere that will pulp stock en masse if I don’t have to.)

[thehumanexperience8b]

September 29th, 2024: Donation Day

Today is the last few hours of the 29th. Since February 29th (my lovely deceased betta fishes’ birthday) of 2024, I donated money to causes I found important every month. I worked hard to make sure I could keep up with it; last month I lost my bank card.. And I was so heartbroken because I didn’t have enough time to find it and make my donation in time. It felt so bad because I felt like everyone in the world was disappointed in me.. That no one could rely on me to be committed and I would never make any difference. I also felt so awful because it was like my fish, Tsumi, was looking down on me in disappointment because I had forsaken her name. I cried so much I woke my brother up and he told me that I can just wait until tomorrow and do the donation, and that it doesn’t matter what day I do it because they’ll still get the money and be grateful for it. I started to realize that maybe the donations were more personal that I realized. I felt more that it was about how I felt about myself, my character, proving to myself and others that I am caring and I do matter; because “look everyone, I am so virtuous, I give my hard earned money to people in need every month.” And “everyone” included myself, too. I think my consciousness understood this before I did, but I couldn’t process it, I felt like it was just an excuse to give up. But I think actually, my donations might be more valuable if I just wait a little while.

This month alone I spent more than $600 for two concerts I plan on going to, and they’re really important to me. I’m going to see The Orion Experience this week on Thursday, my favorite band which I love so much and had the opportunity to work for. Then in 2025, Weird Al is coming to Foxwoods resort, an hour or so away from me. I couldn’t believe it, I am so in love with him. I bought tickets an hour after I found out… and they were QUITE expensive. So I’m kinda in the pit, I’m also unemployed so all of this was coming out of my savings. I’m ranting again! My point is… I realized I will have more money to give if I wait so I can earn some money, and see how much money I have left over after my NYC trip. So I have officially decided to resign the 29th Donation Day and instead keep it as a reminder to be thankful and give when someone is in need. I still try and do donations once every month, but sometimes life doesn’t turn out that convenient. Also just wanted to mention a sweet thing, I donated to Upstream a few months ago and they sent me a thank you letter with stickers inside! How cute. So this is what this post is about.. It doesn’t even really matter to you because you didn’t know about Donation Day at all to begin with, but I just wanted to share my revelation about self reflection and awareness. Have a great day!!!!

[xtruss]

The 2024 Uber Lost & Found Index Reveals Bizarre Items Left behind By The Customers

— April 17, 2024 | Uber.Com | Written By Uber

With Mercury in Retrograde, which astrologists say influences forgetfulness, we’re back with the eighth annual Uber Lost & Found Index – a snapshot of the most surprising and most popular items left behind in Ubers.

Over the last twelve months, items of clothing, luggage, headphones and wallets topped the list of most frequently forgotten belongings. But Uber riders didn’t just leave the usuals behind… in fact, folks forgot their frontal hair toupees, live turtles, trays of meat pie, tubs of surgical implants, and more. We saw a few new forgetfulness trends this year, too: Miami was the most forgetful city, red was the most lost color, 9pm and 10pm are when most folks report lost items, and January 21st was the most forgetful day.

Take a look at the full Lost & Found Index below, which includes step-by-step instructions on how to get help getting lost items back in the Uber app. Whether it’s your Beyoncé fold up fan or a whole smoked pork belly, we want to help you reunite with your prized possessions!

The 2024 Uber Lost & Found Index! The 10 Lost Commonly Forgotten Items:

Clothing

Luggage

Headphones

Wallet

Jewelry

Phone

Camera

Tablet or book

Laptop

Vape

The 10 Most “Forgetful” Cities:

Miami, FL

Los Angeles, CA

Atlanta, GA

Houston, TX

Dallas, TX

Orlando, FL

Phoenix, AZ

Tampa Bay, FL

Denver, CO

Austin, TX

The 50 Most *Unique* Lost Items:

Frontal hair toupee

Hot sauce and a breathalyzer

I left a leaf in your car that’s much needed

Two containers with spiders in them

A Beyoncé fold up fan

A tray of meat pie

Ceramic cat

Jar of oysters

A personalized blanket with a picture of me and my dog

Small rat skeleton prop

Candle that says ‘See you in court’

A fake tooth / retainer (it’s a really small plastic piece with a fake tooth in it)

Gray tub of surgical implants

Police-grade handcuffs

My live pet animal turtle

Waist beads and a burrito steamer

I left expensive blueberries that are special that I need that the store is completely out of. There’s two packages that I absolutely need.

My girlfriend’s pregnant pills

Small box containing a gnome.

Standup paddleboard paddle

Painting from SeaWorld. It was wrapped up in a roll and I love it.

A playbill from the Spamalot show at the Kennedy Center

My robot

Benihana garlic butter

Contraceptive Plan B from Costco and a BaBylissPRO massager machine

A panic button

A spear and a furry fox tail

Taylor Swift autograph. Framed!!!!

Fart sensor

Bravo Con wristband

A #bestdayever foam sign

3 feathers

Fake butt

Poster of Hillary Clinton

Panty liner and 1000 bucks. That’s all I can remember

Some lotion or my thong

Meditation crystals

Undergarments, bread, pack of ham and mayo

Cardboard cut out panda

Street sign saying ‘She’s drunk’ and a picture frame

My father’s beard softener

Big sentimental carrying jug

Paternity test

WWE championship belt

Harry Potter wand engraved with name ‘Alexander’

Large sticker with a dancing cartoon cat that says ‘Spanky Fest’ on it

I might have left my garden fence in the trunk.

Jeep Liberty engine. Please call me

I lost my wizard woman

Three Japanese ceramic decorative cats – one gold, one black and one pink. All fist-sized.

Top 20 Forgotten Food Items:

Leftovers from Pizzeria Portofino. Soooo expensive.

A whole smoked pork belly

Cooler with meat

I left the ice cream cones in your car and was worried about it melting and making a mess

A nice cheese. Feel free to keep!

A pan of chicken spaghetti

Bucket of cookies

Benihana garlic butter

Mason jar with cilantro

Church cookies in the trunk

Green lettuce in a jar in your car

Fly ass burrito

Side of salmon

Tomatoes (Don’t need ‘em back, just a heads up so they don’t cook in your car!)

A tray of meat pie

I left my pizza in your car! I can’t believe I left it!

Bowl of meat is in your car! And i need it

I left some pasta in the back by accident. Feel free to have it! It was so yummy and I didn’t eat out of the plate. Thanks again!

Jar of oysters

Small container of valuable honey

2024 Lost & Found Trends:

Seeing Red: Lost an item and seeing red? Well, that should help, since the most popular color of lost items was red.

Keeping Cool with Crystals: Channeling your inner zen and manifesting more just got a little harder. Riders around the country lost a number of healing crystals, including purple Amethysts, green Aventurines and more.

Mini Cooper Movers: The top lost car keys were from Mini Cooper owners. They won’t be getting very far in their little cars!

What’s the WiFi: There was a significant number of wifi hotspots and mobile routers left behind this year. Is that why you dropped from the Zoom call?

Getting Sensical: It appears Uber riders are coming to their senses this year, or finding them rather. From dignity, to credibility and memory, riders reported emotional losses left behind.

Next Time, Take Your Board: Whether of sentimental value or brand spankin’ new, skateboarders forgot their #1 tool this year time and time again.

Most Forgetful Days/Times:

Remember 1/21: January 21st is the most forgetful day of the year, with the most lost items recorded.

Losing Hour: The most popular hours of the day lost items were reported were 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm. Not the ideal night time routine we see on TikTok, huh?

Lost Items That Peak On Certain Days:

People are most likely to forget luggage on Mondays.

People are most likely to forget headphones on Tuesdays.

People are most likely to forget wallets on Wednesdays.

People are most likely to forget jewelry on Thursdays.

People are most likely to forget phones on Fridays.

People are most likely to forget vapes on Saturdays.

People are most likely to forget clothing on Sundays.

If you’ve left something behind during a ride with Uber, look no further than this help page, which outlines the simple steps you can take to help you get a lost item returned to you.

The best way to retrieve a lost item is to call the driver – but if you leave your phone itself in an Uber, you can login

Open the Uber app and tap “Activity” on the bottom icon menu.

Select the trip on which you lost the item.

Scroll down to “Find lost item” in the Help section, and then “Contact driver about a lost item.”

Enter your phone number to call the driver.

If your driver picks up and confirms that your item has been found, coordinate a mutually convenient time and place to meet for its return to you.

If your driver doesn’t pick up, leave a detailed voicemail describing your item and the best way to contact you.

[atamascolily]

Some more thoughts on the box-cutter snippet, because I'm still not done with it:

In Rebellion, Homura was able to stamp out all resistance from Sayaka and Madoka, but here, we see her being challenged, with the unknown girl stabbing the salamander that is the embodiment of her powers. The fact that the other girl is willing to stab herself at the same speaks volumes to how ruthless she is, the lengths to which she will go to for victory (up to and including self-harm!!) to win. It's a very powerful establishing character moment for a character who isn't even visible on-screen, even though the clip ends in what is basically a draw, with the salamander reforming as a cuff and breaking the box cutter. Is this the end of the conflict? Probably not--more like an opening skirmish. Shots fired, you might say.

Silver pointed out to me that while almost everything else in the trailer is shiny and new, the blade isn't--it is coarse and ugly and covered with rust because this likely isn't the first time it's drawn blood. That same ugliness is also visible in the other clip where the cuts made the box cutter have been patched over with suspiciously pinkish tape.

Although it's a little faint, you can see what might be the box cutter's handle sticking out on the left side, which also sends a dramatic message alongside the "Fragile, handle with care" stickers featuring an open glass.

The fan shot is one of my favorite visuals from the new trailer because it shows us a glimpse of the literal workings of the world behind the scenes (remember the theater motifs from the first trailer?) Even without discussing the circling fan and the closed eye lid, there's just so much to unpack here!

But to return to the salamander stabbing, Kyubey's system depended on girls acting in their own logical self-interest, but it was broken by girls acting out of love for each other (first by Madoka's compassion, then by Homura's love for Madoka) which he cannot comprehend or defend against. Homura's replacement system was deliberately designed to make people she cares about happy, but it also depends on people following a script/set of established behaviors and not deviating too strongly from it. Unlike Kyubey, who was undone by love, Homura's system is especially vulnerable to those who don't give a shit and just want to see the world burn... which is a textbook motivation for witches.

Attacking the salamander appears to be analogous to Homura killing Incubator bodies... it doesn't do any permanent damage, but it does signify that the other party means business and is out to get them. Something something "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain" something something--or in Homura's case, the system to be overthrown.

Homura has done her damndest to keep everything static, but the story can only progress if she is challenged. The question is, who will be set up in her place once she is torn down?

Mami is more right than she knows when she blurts out "If magical girls become witches, we have no choice but to die!" To become a magical girl is a death sentence; to become a witch is to die, and that remains true even after Madoka wishes to erase witches from the world, as Homura's speech at the beginning of Rebellion makes abundantly clear.

The suicidal tendencies start long before the transformation into a witch; Sayaka self-destructed by working herself to death, arguing that she had no worth outside of her job of killing witches. Even Madokami's arm bears self-harm scars even as she provides salvation (death) to others.

There's been a lot of discussing about the symbol on the green-haired girl's hand and what it might mean; so far, I've seen the Greek letter phi (ϕ); a null sign (∅); and the theta nigrum (ꝋ), which was a scribal abbreviation for the Latin obiit--'he died'. Given all of the suicidal imagery and the fact that this girl is almost certainly a witch (and therefore dead), I think the last one most likely, but we'll see. It's unclear if all of the "new" characters with black collars have the same mark, or if it's unique to this particular character, but either way, it's both ominous and telling.

I think that when Sayaka regains her memories and realizes that she *is technically dead*--that she is, in a very real sense, a walking corpse, just like she claimed earlier--it will trigger a personal crisis, because let's face it, who wouldn't be upset about that??

I spoke too soon--Nagisa's technically in the same boat, but she is out there living her best life and having a great time doing it. What a legend. Sayaka may be right about duty and justice and responsibility, but there's no question that Nagisa is having more fun.

I realized why there's a box cutter in the new Walpurgis no Kaiten trailer--among other things, it's what teenage girls typically use to cut themselves and/or kill themselves. This makes perfect sense given the suicidal imagery that ran all through Rebellion, as well as the witches in the original series causing their victims to suicide while suffering from suicidal levels of despair themselves.

Since we know from the second trailer that witches are definitely back, and there's evidence to suggest these new girls are witches themselves, it's not surprising that this theme would keep popping up. See also the unknown girl in the first trailer jumping off a building and leaving her shoes behind (a visual shorthand in Japan for suicide; this being another common method for teenage girls there).

I should mention here that Japan has one of the highest suicide rates of any nation, so this is a major social problem and something that regularly appears in popular media as a result.

The new girl falls backwards off the building, paralleling the doppelganger Homura falling in the stairwell at the beginning of the second trailer. This could mark the start of a transformation sequence, which is interesting in and of itself, but it also goes back to this idea from earlier installments that becoming a magical girl is a death sentence and, to quote a blink and you'll miss it segment of runes from Homura's transformation sequence in Rebellion, "they glorify death".

Which, combined with the religious overtones of Homura worshipping at the Madokami stele, would make magical girls essentially a death cult even before Homura became the Devil and whatever is happening now. But I think Walpurgisnacht and the witches are doubling down on that--simultaneously consumed by their despair even as they delight in spreading their curses to others, perpetuating the suffering in a vain effort for relief.

The falling backwards is also a kind of letting go, a deliberate surrender as well as an unwillingness to face things directly. When Homura jumps off a building at the end of the original series, she falls forward; when she falls off the cliff at the end of Rebellion, she falls sideways. So in that sense, I suppose falling backwards was inevitable--there's nowhere else to go!

But it occurs to me that the Fool in the classic Tarot is walking straight off a cliff, and if the Fool is Homura (as is strongly suggested in the framing of the first trailer), then the doppelganger Homura, as the Fool Reversed and Homura's reflection, should logically fall backwards, since she's her mirror image. Viewed in that light, it makes perfect sense.

[inwintersolitude]

- July 25th 2023 -

Do you have any plans for tomorrow? Not much. My husband gets home from his last flight around 1 p.m., then we're going to go to the nearby garden center to buy more plants, and I'm probably going to make Tuscan chicken for dinner. But that's all I have planned.

What's the longest movie you've ever seen? The extended edition of The Return of the King. It's a little over 4 hours long.

What movies did you watch a lot as a kid? The ones I remember watching the most were The Lion King, The Land Before Time, and Cinderella.

How many rooms are in your home? 11.

Do you ever experience imposter syndrome? Nope, I can't think of a time where I have.

What was the last place you rode to in a car? As a passenger? Just into town to run errands with my husband, I think.

Do you have a PayPal account? If so, how often do you use it? Yep, I set one up because I make a monthly donation to my state's abortion fund and PayPal is the easiest way to do it. I think I've also used it for a few online shopping orders, too.

Are you cold right now? Nope.

How old will you be at your next birthday? 34.

Before this one, when was the last time you took a survey? A few days ago.

Can you skip rope? I haven't used a jump rope since I was a kid, but I'm sure I'd still remember how.

Have you ever participated in a charity fundraising event? Yep, numerous times. Maybe like 10?

What is your hair like at the moment? It's in a ponytail.

Do you like cucumber? Yes I love cucumber.

What do you like and dislike about your job? (or your last job) I like that I hardly work LOL. It takes me only a few hours a week to check my stock positions, look for potential stocks to buy, etc. And I like that I can work whenever I want, and I can take huge chunks of time off of work. And some things I dislike about it is that it's kind of monotonous, and it takes a little longer to do my taxes and makes it slightly more complicated.

Have you ever had a dream job? If so, did you give up on it, and why? Or do you happen to have that dream job? Yeah, my first airport operations job was my dream job at the time. I absolutely loved managing ground ops at that little airport, and I had a great boss and coworkers. I didn't give up on it, but I left and got a similar job at a different airport when my husband and I moved to Virginia for his airline career in 2013.

What's the last sitcom you watched? I think it was Parks and Rec.

What car did your parents or guardian drive when you were growing up? They had a bunch over the years. They had two Saab sedans when I was really little, then they got a Chrysler minivan in 1996 and my dad had a company car provided by his employer. They'd update the minivan every few years - they had two or three Honda Odysseys after the Chrysler, and my dad also got a new company car every few years.

Do you have milk in your fridge right now? What kind? Yep. 2 percent.

Are you left or right handed? Right.

If you have your ears pierced, how old were you when you got them done? I was 14.

Do you have any other piercings? Nope.

What was the last thing you wrote down in the notes app on your phone? I have a note that uses a script that I wrote to record when I take my anti-arrhythmia medication (so that I never forget if I did/didn't take it). I use my phone to scan a NFT sticker on the prescription bottle, and then the script records the date/time in the Notes app. As for what I last wrote down in there manually… it was a funny nickname that I randomly thought of for one of my birds, and I didn't want to forget it.

Have you ever been on a winery tour? Yep.

When was the last time you were hungover? I've only been drunk/hungover once. It was in 2012, on my honeymoon. We went to an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean (so, alcohol included), and I was like… hey why not, might as well see what it's like to be drunk. Turns out I hated the feeling of being drunk LOL. Never again.

Do you still have Facebook? If so, how often do you check it? Yep. I go on there maybe once a month.

Are you wearing your favourite colour today? My pants are navy blue, but they're a bit darker than the shade of dark/navy blue that I consider to be my favorite.

Would you ever want to visit South Korea? Eh, possibly. It used to be higher on my list of places I'd want to go, but the more I read about South Korea and the more I learn about their cultural problems with xenophobia and misogyny, the less interested I am in visiting.

How many times in your life have you been in love? Just this once.

Do you like your name? Yep.