I was tagged to this by a friend on tumblr, so here are four (technically 5) pictures that aren't selfies.



1. Wall hanging at the church I sometimes attend in Tokyo. It's an artistic rendering of the Holy Spirit descending to engage with humanity/people/Jesus in human down. On the other side, there's a similar art style one of communion. Both are representations of God interacting with humanity.

It's kinda cheating but I guess I'll show that one too without counting it as one of the four.





2. A free rabbit/cat dessert I was given last time I went to Haidilao in Ikebukuro. They're nice if you come there semi regularly alone for some reason. It honestly didn't taste like much but the berry stuff was nice.



3. One of the stupidly large Japanese crows. I encounter them not irregularly in this area when I go that way to work. One morning, I saw one trying to kill a different species of bird. Other mornings, they're scavenging the poorly netted off business trash before the garbage collectors pick it up.



4. A view of Bays Mountain from a walk I took when I was home in America in August. For all its faults, I miss being home sometimes.

I want book recs if anyone has them. I'm about to start the last John Dies at the End audiobook, and I am finding I think maybe listening to audiobooks as much or more than disconnected reddit stories or true crime docs/YouTube videos might be good for my mental health.

As mentioned, I most recently have been on a Jason Pargin kick. I don't know why. I just respect him and think he's a cool guy. Honestly his prose isn't that beautiful but it's easy as hell to follow.

In the past, I was also really into Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I'm usually genuinely interested in whatever I'm reading or teaching as an English teacher.

I'm not looking for high brow or hard to track stuff right now.

I would be most interested in:

funny novels with a dark or ironic twist

horror that isn't primarily about gore

sci-fi that is funny or clever

I've not been super into reading or listening to fantasy as I've tried it and my long term project there is Wheel of Time but I went off it a bit when the TV show got cancelled after season 3. Just dread or whatever. But I would be interested in like a baby's first romantasy

I prefer character driven / shipping possible novels but only feel mildly so about the JDATE novels so I'm flexible. I'm also looking for stuff that'll make me wanna write

Thank you if you have suggestions 🙏

I'm sorry, I still haven't really tried catching up properly, and next my parents will be here for a week, although that may actually not stop me posting some things.

Anyway, it's nearly yuletide again! I'm not at all sure whether I shall be able to do it or not, but it's looking more likely than I thought, so I have had to consider the important issue of nominations.

Other people have nominated Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully and The Winslow Boy, so my 5 (five!!) are looking like this:

* Enigma (Movie 2001)
1. Hester Wallace
2. Tom Jericho
3. Mr Wigram


* Indigo Saga - Louise Cooper
1. Indigo
2. Grimya
3. Nemesis
4. Fenran


* Mimic (1997)
1. Susan Tyler
2. Peter Mann
3. Chuy Gavoila


* Time Police Series - Jodi Taylor
1. Jane Lockland
2. Luke Parrish
3. Celia North
4. Matthew Ellis


* Wish Me Luck (TV)
1. Matty Firman
2. Colin Beale
3. Liz Grainger
4. Faith Ashley

I was VERY tempted to put down The Schoolmistress (BBC Radio 1991) but I decided that I shouldn't make my Jeremy Northam problem quite as bad as all that. Maybe next time! (Also because I'm not sure what I would request beyond "more shenanigans," really). I might swap out Mimic, though, idk. (I think it would be a great one for the Hurt/Comfort exchange or maybe Chocolate Box because I want a v specific thing (not an unreasonable specific thing), but OTOH I do not seem to be managing more than Yuletide, if even that, at the moment. Hmmm.


I don't know what I'll actually request if I do sign up, as there look like being a fair few other shiny things in the tagset already, just from the nomination coordination post. \o/

A rainbowfic piece I finally posted a couple of weeks ago:

Name: On the Interpretation of Dreams
Story: Starfall
Colors: Warm Heart #17 (Honesty)
Supplies and Styles: Nubs
Word Count: 1891
Rating: G
Warnings: None.
Notes: Portcallan, 1313; Viyony Eseray, Osmer Nivyrn.
Summary: Proof that Viyony also takes Leion's advice from time to time.

On the Interpretation of Dreams

On AO3 | Done for the prompt "shopping mall" for the fandom_empire Bingo Challenge

I started listening to Jason K. Pargin's TikToks on some other platforms since I myself never made a TikTok account or downloaded the app. I started to vibe with his perspective. He's a generation older than me, but he speaks to a lot of the weird alienation that has accelerated in the past decade or two. He does a lot of good work to try and help men, especially young men, stop being so disaffected. I think he tries to get them to engage with art in a meaningful way, even if it's silly pop art.

As a result of my admiration for his online work, I decided to support him by reading and buying his book I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. Then, I started to read/listen his other books when I finished that one. I'm nearly finished with This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It and still kind of like it. I don't feel fervently fannish about it, but I feel a bit fannish about it, and I wanted to fight against my making-stuff paralysis while writing words seems clogged up.

As I mentioned about a month or so ago, I did some AU_gust prompts, starting with flash fic for the prompt Romance, using the UC generator to get a summary for The Winslow Boy. It was a bit of a complicated summary for flash fic, and it's just taken me about, um, seven weeks to straighten this out into being a reasonably more comprehensible bit of AU nonsense than it was at the start. idk why. Anyway, also for genprompt_bingo & two allbingo squares (for two different bingo fests of theirs, that is, I'm not cheating).

A Family Affair (1472 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Morton/Catherine Winslow
Characters: Catherine Winslow, Robert Morton (Winslow Boy)
Additional Tags: AU-gust | August Writing Challenge 2025, Alternate Universe - Regency, Regency, Unconventional Courtship Generator, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Stranded
Summary: Catherine Winslow's day is getting worse by the minute.

I got home about an hour earlier today and slightly less disgusting. It got back up in the 90s F today with humidity to spare, but about time work as winding down, some wind blew in what was supposed to be rain but which was a temperature drop of about 10F in an hour, though that still left it in a more comfortable but still quite warm 80s range.

Managed to clean my dishes that had been sitting for two days. Was going to try to cook something but realized the eggplant from the mail had started to go bad, so screw it, I'll wait for the weekend. I have to work this Saturday but only a half day and I get to sleep in.

I'm still just feeling so brain-cooked and frustrated. I want to be creative, but I always just feel like I'm in trouble for not doing enough to entertain the friends I have who care what I do.

I got a little notebook in the mail. Plan to use it for prayer journaling due to the whole brain-is-too-slippery-and-overheated feeling.

I also wrote in my little Japanese study notebook I started before I moved here in 2024 for the first time since. Something about my old boss's approach to "encouraging" me to learn Japanese just made me pissed off for over a year. At least I am doing something, but I want to do things that don't just feel practical without being too tired to function.