#moar books

[starbrightcloud]

Grill me a cheese

[gimmecatsorgimmedeath]

My backlog means I always have something to look forward to.

My cartoon for this week’s Guardian Books. #books

p.s I have made five new prints of my cartoons, visit www.tomgauld.com for details.

[dribs-and-drabbles]

You know, I really hope that, apart from the obvious positives that come out of this series, Only Friends will finally make people (the makers and the audience) realise that there are only benefits to having actors paired with different people in different series, rather than the same every time.

Like, yes, I also want to see some fantastic pairings again and again, but come on! If actors only ever work with the same person and never with someone else, we'll miss out on some incredible combinations and chemistry. Why would we deny ourselves that?

[muffinlance]

The Fox's Tongue and Kirin's Bone audiobook is on sale!

$4.99 until Sunday, September 10th, no recurring Audible subscription required. Voiced by the award-winning Gary Furlong.

Humanity is dying, hunted to extinction by creatures of legend. One boy was born to save them all.

That boy just got knifed in the back. He looked a bit too much like Aaron, you see.

Now it’s Aaron’s job to step up, lest his Death correct that little mix-up. But Aaron’s skills as a street rat run more towards stealing and stabbing than towards saving. And the more he learns of what brought dear dead Markus to that fatal alleyway, the more he has to wonder just what the world’s savior was really up to the night the wrong boy died.

Cover art by the most excellent @art-emisz

FYI: Signed paperbacks and hardcovers will be coming back on sale in October so I can ship them ahead of the holidays; if you want an email when the pre-order launches, add yourself to my mailing list (it's at the bottom). Zero spam ever, only book news.

[stoopid-turtle]

On the Acceptance of Unsteady Ground

Throughout this whole dive into turtle world, I've been very conscious of just how LITTLE access to information I have. I'm relying so heavily on English translations and platforms, and most of these are from turtles, so I'm fully aware I'm getting a biased perspective.

I've tried to read stuff from solos or even just neutral third-parties. The neutral parties don't have much depth of information, though, and I found solos heavy on accusations and declarations but light on actual...evidence. And they sometimes use some really nasty rhetoric against the idea that gg and dd might be gay.

Don't get me wrong, turtles get weird too. There's plenty of clearly false rumors, deceptively edited videos, silly stretches of logic, weird ideas of what how people in a relationship would act, etc. But there's at least enough English-speaking turtles that I can find some who are giving open and, as far as I can tell, accurate information (honestly, I find tumblr turtledom better at that then other platforms). I haven't really found a similar pocket of solo fans.

I'm also aware that there's always going to be a limit on how much I can know. I don't speak the language, so I'm always relying on translators. I have limited access to Weibo (even putting aside the language barrier, I'm in text confirmation limbo in actually getting an account), and I have little familiarity with the culture. I don't get a lot of the jokes or references, and stuff may strike me, an English-speaking American, differently than it would someone in China.

Add on top of that the fact that I'm trying to find out purposely obscured information about two celebrities, and, yeah, I'm fully aware that I'm on unsteady ground here. I can do my best, but I'm never going to know anything for certain.

But I've become okay with that.

It took a while. The dissatisfaction with the unknown (and unknowable) is what drove a lot of my early fixation and subsequent fall into the turtle pit. But now, especially after laying out my thoughts, I've reached a zen place with it. I'm 100% certain ggdd were together during filming/promo, and I'm 95% certain they're still together (I had this at 85% originally, but then the whole dd being sick and gg changing his schedule thing happened and I'm just...welp, guess I'm in this confidence interval, then).

Just having that certainty means I can enjoy updates from them without anguishing about "proof" or uncertainty. Oh, gg took the day off on dd's birthday? That's really sweet! I'm not gonna fuss about if it's coincidence ENOUGH to convince me, because I'm already convinced. It's a good place to be.

I typically don't care about celebrities. In fact, I've long been bewildered by celebrity culture here in the US, and I've often been actively annoyed when people assume/expect me to have opinions on things celebrities do. I'm the nerd who doesn't get why the actors get all the attention when the writer or director would be much more interesting.

So the fact that I've gone all fangirlish over two celebrities is bizarre to me, and I appreciate the irony. Well done, me. I attribute some of it to just being able to watch the bts and see their early interactions play out like a story. I find stories compelling, and both gg and dd are charismatic, attractive and have great chemistry. Whatever disdain I have for celebs, I do love a romance.

In my foray into the ggdd world, though, I've also had to learn more about c-ent, and y'all. It's nuts. Like, US entertainment is nuts too, but c-ent ratchets it up to 11. I've been in fandom a long time, and I thought I'd seen some weird stuff, but it's got nothing on c-ent. Just wrapping my head around the culture these guys are in took a lot of learning.

But I appreciate being able to dive into this culture and this country, because I knew very little about China beyond the antagonistic politics. It's been refreshing to get a view on life on the ground in China to humanize the folks there and get a clearer picture of the country.

I started this thing bc I had been spending so much time on Youtube watching clips, and I had thoughts and opinions and nowhere to put them. I already had a tumblr that I use to lurk on some fandoms and I had started following turtles too. I figured tumblr would be a decent place to splurge out my thoughts, so I set up a throwaway account to do so.

I get the vibe that a lot of new turtles come to bjyx through the same route I took? They watch The Untamed on Netflix. They get curious about the show and start watching some clips on YT. Next thing you know, they have 3 playlists full of purported "proof of love" and they need a whiteboard to connect everything together and their wife thinks they've gone completely bonkers supports them in all their oddities.

Like, I was really confused by turtles at first. I was just trying to watch bts videos on YouTube and I didn't know what bjyx meant, but the videos with the label were weird and had strange disclaimers that they were "only for turtles" and I had no clue what that even meant.

My confusion continued as I tried to read more. The fake story disclaimer convention is hella confusing as an outsider, and my first impression was that turtles were kinda crazy. The videos I saw gave overviews of candies without context, and some of them explicitly said they were proof of Yizhan love while still having that fake story disclaimer. Basically, it was a big confusing environment, and it's why I resisted buying into bjyx so hard for so long. It all seemed delulu.

But in reading more, I guess part of that is the point? Recognizing that gg and dd are in a vulnerable position should their relationship ever come out, having so much noise to muddy the waters makes a twisted, clownish sense. I don't know who came up with that convention or if it just kinda happened (is it a normal thing in c-ent? I don't know enough about celebrity fandoms), but hats off, I guess.

With the supertopic recently hitting 4 million active fans, there's something heartening about such a depth of support for the guys. I'm not naive enough to think all 4 million (plus international fans) are allies to LGBT folk in general, but it surely means something to ggdd to have that sort of support for their relationship. Honestly, it means something to me, as a random gay chick on the other side of the world, to see a gay couple get that kinda of support behind them.

I started watching the bts because I was afraid there'd be a lot of cynical homophobia on the set or some evidence of all the male cast being icked out by the whole thing. Instead, I got gg, who was so passionate about WWX being gay. I love that everybody knew they were telling a love story with as explicitly as they could get away with. I love that the guys wanted more Wangxian scenes and that the cast and crew made "everyday is everyday" jokes in a non-mocking way. I'm glad that the whole shoot seemed like such a positive environment for the cast and crew to being themselves and tell a type of story that they may not be able to be involved with ever again.

So, yes, this is my zen turtle place. When I set up a soapbox for myself, I didn't think too much about the fact that people would respond, but I'm so grateful to have had a chance to talk to some other turtles! Everybody is lovely and thank you for sharing my enthusiasm.

Like I said in the beginning, I don't have the time to keep super-active in the long-term. I had intended to write up my thoughts and poof away. But I do also plan to keep up with gg and dd and turtles, so instead I'm just gonna leave off with the potential for further posts down the line.

I'm not gonna be incredibly active, so please don't expect frequent updates or interactions from me. But if I have more Yizhan thoughts I'll pop up again with a post (I mean, I do have lots more thoughts, but nothing energizing enough to write about), or I'll leave a comment somewhere if I have something I simply must say. I'm also open to responding to asks about the timeline or anything else. And if I ever do stumble across anything groundbreaking with regards to the timeline, I'll probably add that in, because I'm particular about things being complete.

So thanks for being so welcoming! It's been a joy to clown around and make up completely fictional stories with everybody here. 🤡🐢🙇🏼

[wynjara]

My current county library system has put so much emphasis on technology and trying to find activities people will show up for that the minor issue of 'having books in the library' got shoved aside.

I live one block from a branch of the library. There is no reason for me to ever go- half the room is children's books (yay, that's fine), another third is taken up with the combined adult fiction and two shelves of non-fiction. The rest is set to ensure that NO ONE WANTS TO BE IN THE ROOM because someone decided that instead of building a technology room, let's just put the 3D printers in the main room. It's not like they make horrendously annoying noises or anything.

(They just build this building like six years ago. They could have done anything. They could have made it two stories and put ACTUAL BOOKS IN IT. Yes I'm bitter.)

I wanted to read Hogfather. I'd argue that it's in the top percentage of the Discworld novels by 'people outside the fandom have heard of it' standards at the least. It only exists in e-book in this system.

I'm rambling at this point, but this is a huge disappointment and source of- well, grief, honestly. I don't see how kids can learn a joy of reading then there's nothing to read. Searching the database for a specific title is fine, but it can't compare to standing in front of a wall of books and wondering what's in that one, no wait that one, oh heck let's just take home both of them!

(For the record- I've had this conversation with librarians here who have been working in the system for decades. They're just as disappointed as I am.)

As a young librarian, I started trying to figure out why more young people aren't ever coming in; 90% of our demographic are the elderly and parents of children, and the rest are a rough mix of the kids and teenagers who come in just for school projects. As a result, I've been attempting different ways to get the Youth TM to come into libraries, but first I wanted to see why they don't come in. Please reblog to get this poll out to more people! <3

[cowchickenbeefpork]

List of cluster b characters I like

(DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT HAVE ANY CLUSTER B DISORDERS I DO NOT KNOW MORE ABOUT THE DISORDERS THAN DOCTORS OR PEOPLE WITH THEM DO I JUST LIKE LEARNING ABOUT CLUSTER B DISORDERS SINCE I LIKE LEARNING ABOUT MENTAL DISORDERS AND I HAVE FRIENDS WITH CLUSTER B DISORDERS ANYWAYS. DO NOT EXPECT ME TO BE 100% CORRECT I AM NOT THE BEACON OF ALL KNOWLEDGE IF SOMETHING IS OFFENSIVE HERE I WILL APOLOGIZE AND TAKE DOWN THE POST)

[papsiguesss]

Packing my suitcase!!!!!!

[scattergoriesofevil]

Sam Riegel, Episode 87: I can ritual cast! I could have been doing this THE WHOLE TIME.

I would like to see more people play wizards on this show. Someone sitting down for C4 with a spell book and nothing left to lose.

[pastafossa]

Hi honey! How are you? How’s your mom doing? I hope she’s better now🥺💚

I’ve recently decided to learn how to book bind bc it’s a must to have my fav fanfics as actual books. I’m still learning and it’s probably gonna take a while before I get the results I want but I wanted to ask you if it was okay with you to book bind The Red Thread? Obviously it would be just for me, I would not sell it or make any profits. (And if it turns out how I want to, I would love to gift you one👀)

It’s one of my favourite fanfics of all time, like it’s a masterpiece and I would love to have a physical copy of it<3

And I know it’s not finished yet but it’d probably have to be a few volumes anyways bc it’s a lot so😅

She's doing ok! Progress is slow but it's definitely happening! She's graduated from at-home physical therapy to outpatient, which is a HUGE thing. We've gotten the house pretty well set up too now (chair lift for a section of stairs not covered before, new railing on the front steps), and between me, dad, and sis's various sleep schedules, we're all able to make sure she has someone nearby when she needs help getting around or opening things. I'm still in caretaker mode and trying to balance everything, but she's getting there, so I hold onto that! As for me, I'm doing... ok I think, considering how exhausting and brutal the past few months have been. I'm taking @shouldbestudying41 's advice and just trying to be kind to myself, and I'll admit my brain seriously needed the break. I continue to miss Cato something awful, but I've felt a little more settled since his ashes came home, and I think I'm starting to adjust to sleeping without him next to my pillow. I also got my follow-up today with my cardiologist on my heart issues and their answer was basically a shrug and a, 'we have no idea why your heart's doing this, but it's getting better every time we test you, so keep doing what you're doing!' Which could be worse. So... I'm getting there. Slow and steady!

And oh my gosh, you absolutely, ABSOLUTELY can bookbind TRT, thank you! 😭The idea anyone would love it enough to bookbind makes me SO FUCKING HAPPY! Hell, if I could sell copies at cost I would, but sadly that's a huge no no and all I can do legally is tell people, YES you can bookbind TRT for your shelf! I'm 100% supportive basically (also I would D I E if I got one, like no pressure at all cause D A Y U M it's a long thing to bind, and also just knowing it's out there on someone's shelf is more than I ever expected would happen so I'm delighted even if you just bind for you!).

TRT volumes one to ten maybe??? LOL. I know I had it planned as a series originally before I decided to just kinda keep it in one thing since we were all already there LOL.

[the-holy-ghosted]

you really went crazy about John Lynch yesterday. Fair enough tbh.

and im only gonna get crazier so strap the fuck in

[welcome-to-green-hills]

CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT SNOK INTO SNOK-VERSE AU MYSTERY

❤️🥹❤️

[technocipher]

Some may wander onto the church's balcony, never once sparing a glance at the rolling rack of plants. "They're just plants. Who cares? Doesn't Eva grow flowers over there?" Sure, there's a scant number of plants growing there. Nothing seems to support much life over there. No signs of any vegetables from those seed packets we give her, either.

(In all likelihood, the developers probably thought that few would notice that section. Fleshing out the balcony with more plants might've been deemed a pointless gesture.)

What many don't realize, however, is that many plants are medicinal! Consider that the next time you pass by the herb pots at the grocery store. Common thyme, for example, is antibacterial! It can also be steeped as a tea for sinus infections, and that's just a small fraction of what it can do!

The central shelf on the rolling rack carries rosemary, along with a plant I could not identify. Just generic, silly nonsense, right?

Wrong! Rosemary is more than just a kitchen spice. It's a fantastic herb for the brain!

It acts as a brain stimulant!

It aids with memory!

It aids blood circulation to the brain!

It aids with treating early onset dementia/Alzheimer's!

It acts as an antidepressant!

It acts as an antiviral!

It aids concentration!

It also has anti-anxiety properties!

Where the revenants are concerned, I'd say that's quite the vital herb! With the help of scavenged alcohol and some sterile jars, bottles, and lids, there's potential for the crafting-- and trading-- of rosemary tinctures! (In the absence of proper sterilization, whatever they can use to rinse would have to do. Above all else, these chosen jars and bottles would need to be airtight enough to prevent oxidization. An oxidized tincture is not desired-- it can lose a lot of those helpful properties!)

If water is still consumed by the revenant population (and if it is, I haven't seen it mentioned)... they can take these tinctures through water. A couple drops or barely a spoonful would go a long way! Some may attempt to slip these under their tongues and get quite the burn for their trouble. At Home Base's bar, there are numerous bottles of blood bead leukocytes. These could possibly handle a small dosage... if our favorite revenants can stand to hold the first sip for ten seconds.

Now, the uppermost shelf of the rack holds some decorative plants... and some parsley, growing out of a generically-labelled tea tin. Parsley? Really?!

Parsley's got quite the high vitamin content, though. I don't know if revenants require the same intake allotment for vitamins like humans have-- I've never seen it mentioned before. But if you factor in the maintenance of the host' body, vitamins are just as important! Whether or not the BOR parasite directly benefits remains to be seen, but for now, we're covering the fun stuff.

What the heck does parsley do, anyways? Well...

It's got stupidly high amounts of Vitamin K, which is not only good for your bones, but also boosts blood production!

It's full of other key vitamins and antioxidants!

It acts as a diuretic!

It also helps to keep your eyes healthy!

In the grand scheme of things, it might not seem like that big of a deal. But it could help boost a revenant's regeneration. Code Vein flip-flops a bit on how regeneration works, especially with gameplay in mind. Could parsley increase the healing amount, or even the number of times it can be tapped into? Quite possibly! It could also be circulated to the shelters, and thus assist blood donors with recuperating quicker. The diuretic properties can also be utilized to help flush status effects quicker. And as for the eye health of revenants far and wide, wouldn't that go a long way? That's a lot less stress on them, isn't it?

Though I cannot identify the other plants on the rack, that doesn't mean that they're lacking in benefits. There are some flowers that can be eaten and be used in medicine. Calendula, for example, is an edible flower that can be used to aid the healing of wounds. Besides, it's such a bright and cheery flower-- why not keep a few blooms just to look, and let them go to seed, while you're at it? (Calendula is very easy to grow-- save those seeds!)

Another one is chrysanthemum, which is another edible flower. Its primary benefit is eye health, and I believe it's even stronger than parsley in this regard. (Do not consume the store-bought ones, as they have been treated with a myriad of extremely harmful chemicals! The best way to avoid this is by growing them yourself. Remember to buy non-neotic seeds; these are better for pollinating insects and keeps you safe, too!)

And if the parts above the soil aren't safe for consumption, remember that the roots can still be used! Roots can have loads of medicinal properties! Some can be edible, while others can be dried and infused into oils! An example.of an edible root is the humble dandelion. Though the entire plant is completely edible, its taproot is a potent liver detoxifier! Should it be roasted and brewed into tea, it tastes just like coffee!

Even if revenants aren't taking these medicines themselves, consider how much it would benefit the human population living in the shelters. If we really gotta split hairs, the medicinal benefits could carry over into blood donations. Entire categories of enhanced blood could be produced by the shelters, and distributed to the revenant-occupied shelters. In times of disease where the latter is concerned, these unique products could be life-saving. Even then, the more positive trading arrangement may improve human and revenant relations-- a massive issue omnipresent within the Gaol of the Mists. This isn't just food and decoration; it's something greater.

Just a little thing that makes life a bit more bearable.

[domithanasia]

remembering in 2022 when i was in my goldfinch phase big time and i would have completely one sided beef with those 13 year olds on tiktok who only watched the movie because finn wolfhard was in it and did nothing but make #boreo edits and talk about how tragic teenage unrequited yaoi they were while completely ignoring every other character and theme in the book

[soymimikyu]

Witcher S3E5 Chicken Scratches

I really like the structure of this episode.

Returning to the conclave opening from slightly different POVs was intelligent.

The tie in to blood origins is good too.

I really am always curious of the music that is made is valid for the time period. Some of the string instruments seem off. Anachronistic but not awful.

I like how the much is fake at conclave. The book mentioned aretuzas finances are a bit screwy. I would love read about their treasurer. I feel sorry for that soul.

Streggobor is a monster. I like how we circle back to that.

Omg tissaia praised geralt. :3

Squeeeeee Geralt and Yenn! Squeeeee!

Netflix Phillipa is great! The hat! Absolutely ruthless! Shiny dress too!

Poor Lydia :(. I really like her character in the book and show, but need more of her in the show. And her cat!

This is actually pretty solid and close to the book. I don’t know why people didn’t like it. They did the painting scene — it’s not as grand though. Ahhh geralts neutrality argument!!!!!!

I have honestly forgotten what vilgefortz is. Just creepy.

Need more triss. Always need more triss. With poofy hair. Triss needs head pats.

[techmiranda]

Sometimes I wonder what is too much when writing fanfic. But I love small details, and I want to get facts straight if possible. (Ok, fanfic was just an excellent excuse to buy more books, because you never have enough books or SW thingies.) For coming chapters I used a good time reminding myself about both EMP protection methods, and browsing the stages, symptoms and treatment of hypothermia... :D Funny thing is, that something might be only a very short mention in the fic, but I want it to be correct in my head.

Well, as long as it is fun, it is good.

...And I get to buy moar books. That's good too.