chanter1944 | Network

Yesterday, my two little ratbags celebrated their bunny birthdays. Their fifth birthday!

How on earth have they become five years old already?

We got them when they were 16 weeks old and it feels like two months ago! I want to say that now they've hit middle age, they've got all the sass and attitude that goes with it, but they've had that since day one!!! XD

Anyway, happy birthday bubbubs!

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flemmings

Finished Strange Houses and then went to the internet to find out what I just read. Internet was mostly reddit, whose black-out spoiler redactions do not appear when highlighted. But a lot of people had the same suspicions as I about the architect jumping at once to 'murderous child killer cult' while other people noted that that's just the way Japanese horror rolls. Which, fair enough. And also noted that what's important is once again the things not said, sigh. But the general impression was that everyone but the narrator and the architect are lying and what's actually happening is a conspiracy, yes, but not the one we think. Although people did seem to think the weird cult thing was true, which to me is, ok, if you say so. Do not think I'll be reading more of his work.

I know better than to go for a blood draw on a Monday especially a Monday when I've just lost an hour of sleep, but it's going to rain all week and then snow. So out I went at 10 new time and came in to a posted 45 minute wait. But I waited, and then waited some more when they called my name because they said the room available was too narrow for me. Told them I could walk without the rollator but they were all No no just wait. And when they called me again I went without my walker just to show them. But the nurse got my vein first try, no having to use the other arm as in December, which is either her being more skilled than the other or my veins being pumped up from my water drinking. Whichever, I am grateful.

Could have done without the two large guys who barged into the elevator before I could get off it as I was leaving. Men, said Jessica. And am now headachy and am going out to dinner with bro and s-i-l tonight, but again, nobody made me get my draw this morning.

malymin

A monster-battler game with a small number of species that have high morphological variability.

That's a thought I've been having thinking about animal xenofiction and character adoption spaces.

The fantasy animal roleplay forums kallium talks about like Kats, which had both a "subtype" component and a "color" component in determining appearance and powers. Petz breeding, where you can wring so many unique animals out of just breeding the original breeds without modding just through color mutation and hybridzing features from different breeds. Closed species adoptable sites often have a list of features that can be added onto the default template or replace parts of the default template - different types of fins, wings, horns, special markings, etc. The Warriors fan-game Clangen contains tons of overlapping variables for appearance - mostly cosmetic, though a few (like lack of tail) confer disabilities. Genetics/breeding focused animal games often have only one species, maybe one or two more than that, but lots of variation within. Creatures, Wobbledogs, Niche.

People want their individual 'mons to feel unique, and this is what IVs and EVs in Pokemon are supposed to be for... but in practice it's just something to minimax for competitive players, that casual players barely notice. Early 3d Pokemon games had slight hue shifts on individual Pokemon to make them visually individual, but that was later abandoned.

I feel like taking a page from Persona's book, and having the starter be a "wild card" of sorts, able to absorb species and traits it encounters into a library that the player can swap out at rest spots. This lets you play with both mechanical and cosmetic elements at your own whims and deeply customize your starter, while not making your non-starter party slots redundant (since you can't switch the starter's build mid-battle).

Floated this idea by tresfoyle and she added:

Suggests some interesting directions re: the nature of your "starter" and what sort of plot you're in

My mind immediately leapt to something in the vein of "your buddy is a more benign equivalent to The Thing and you're doing some Svalbard seed vault shit with your whole local biosphere"

An angle that's intriguing... I feel like a lot of western indie "this will be pokemon for adults" mons games are sadly less interested in the biosphere of their monsters than Pokemon is.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: coffee shop

dizzojay

This is a day late because for some reason I couldn't post on here yesterday!!

It's international women's day, and I want to take this moment to give thanks to the many amazing, strong and inspirational women that are part of my life. Not just the ones I know in person, but those of you that live in my laptop too.

Thank you for being my friend, thank you for being part of my life, and thank you for being awesome!

💜🤍💚

Here are just some of the fabulous women I am proud to call friends - there are many more:

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badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: What is a craft that you tried but abandoned?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

missingvolume

This wraps up the Sarah story arc. As Mark is finally coming out of the coma he has been in for the last eight years, Sarah is kidnapped by the Johrlac and taken back to their dimension to stand trial for her crimes. As they were doing this, the Johrlac take Arthur as evidence of Sarah’s crimes. As the story unfolds, we find out why the cuckoos were sent to our dimension and why they are different from home world. Annie, Sam, Alice and Thomas travel to Johrlac to rescue Sarah and Arthur and along the way also find out more about the Karios. A great book and the novella at the end had me in tears.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

A dark haired woman in an large purple sweater and black skirt with two backgrounds behind her half a dark woods and the other half a alien city with 3 suns in the sky.

helloladies posting in

ladybusiness

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

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smallhobbit

Seven books I own, no caption, no comment.

yourlibrarian

1) I am starting plans for a fall foliage road trip in October through Michigan. Anyone have any recommendations?

2) Following up on what I wrote about in my last post, I watched several episodes of Paradise S2. I'm not sure why I'm still watching this. ( Spoilers )

3) By contrast, I saw the Muppet Show (special? Apparently a one-off?) and found it a delight. Disney has definitely struggled in finding a way to utilize the Muppets and two shows have now failed. I'm glad they tried to do something different with them, and I rather liked the show where they were trying to make a more realistic "behind the scenes" Muppet show.

But maybe these days a return to the past would be particularly welcome (and surely there's still a lot of appeal for kids). I've got to imagine they've got a potential guest list a mile long. My partner and I kept thinking that some of the puppeteers must have been filled with glee at being able to recreate this show.

It did make me laugh when Sabrina Carpenter said she'd watched the show, her parents had watched the show, and her grandparents had watched the show. We'd be rather young to be her grandparents but, yeah, 50th anniversary after all.

4) I found the first of top 3 shows of the year last month when we watched How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. I'd quite enjoyed Derry Girls, so was interested in trying this. I found it had a lot of the fun from Derry with an added mystery at the center. ( Read more... )

5) When in his latest charity auction batch Stephen Colbert listed a Lord of the Rings sword that had been on the stage wall, we couldn't believe he'd be selling such a thing at any price. Turns out it's a replica of the actual sword used in the film, which he already has (and he joked he would be buried with). Even so, I figured it would go for a lot, and it's going to be well over $25,000. His neckties are going for over $1000.

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aurumcalendula

I'm a bit sad VidUKon no longer doing DVDs/USBs of premieres (I totally get their decision), but it did get me thinking about trying to make DVDs (or possible Blu-Rays) of my vids so I have them on physical media.

Any recs for software for Windows? (something that creates basic menus would be nice)

lirazel

lunafleurette

So Tumblr is down. It went down for me three hours ago.

And for other Filipinos, mostly. Maybe, I'm not sure if the problem has become more widespread since then.

A week after the AO3 outage, you can imagine the tweaking out people would be doing on other sites if the problem went international.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Big Enough - Kirin J Callinan

thebibliophibian_feed

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2026/03/09/fantasy-with-friends-adaptations-of-classics/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=19976

This week’s Fantasy with Friends discussion (hosted by Pages Unbound) is about adaptations:

What are your thoughts on fantasy adaptations of classic literature that originally had no fantasy elements? (Ex. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, A Far Better Thing, Kindred Dragons)

I’m fairly ambivalent, I guess? The only one of those examples I knew about is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I thought was a funny concept at the time, but there were a few copycats of that stretched the joke too far (basically just trying to cash in). I think in general I’d judge each book on its own merits, rather than the idea of adapting a classic alone… but I probably wouldn’t actively seek out such books.

One example I can think of that I did enjoy is Jo Walton’s Tooth & Claw, which was spawned (according to her story) when she was reading Trollope and Le Guin at the same time. I haven’t read any Trollope, so I read it as a standalone fantasy novel on its own merits, and had a great time. It’s been quite a while since I last read it, but I view it pretty fondly.

So overall, not something that calls to me greatly, but I wouldn’t say no to trying it either in the right circumstances — mostly, I think, when it adds something genuinely transformative, rather than just using a popular novel as a shortcut for getting people truly invested.

https://breathesbooks.com/2026/03/09/fantasy-with-friends-adaptations-of-classics/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=19976

condnsdmlk posting in

vidukon_cardiff

Just a heads up that the VidUKon site will be offline from about 08:30am UTC (04:30am EDT) to 10:00am UTC (06:00am EDT) tomorrow morning (10 March). Our web host will be down for planned maintenance.

larryhammer

For Poetry Monday:

She Says, Being Forbidden:, Leonora Speyer

And was there not a king somewhere who said:
“Back, waves! I do command you!” I forget
His name, beloved, or his race, and yet
I know the story and am comforted.
The tides will rise, are rising—see, they spread
About your robes, your ermine will be wet,
Your velvet shoes, your dear dear feet! Ah let
Me warn you, sir, the waves will reach your head!

My king, my kingly love, how shall we stay
The bold broad lifting of this lovely sea?
What is the master word that we must say
To bring these roaring waters to the knee?
The other king went scampering away!
Will you so do? Or will you drown with me?

Hat-tip to

conuly. Ah, Cnut, we hardly recall ye. This is from Speyer’s 1926 collection Fiddler’s Farewell, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from Respect, Aretha Franklin.

prettygoodword

stercoration (stir-koh-RAY-shuhn) - (obs.) n., the act of manuring (ground) with dung.

That is, fertilizing with shit. Dates to 1605 and generally rare, but odd enough it still shows up every so often -- taken from Latin stercoratio, from stercorare, which meant both to add manure and to clean manure out (of e.g. a horse's stall).

---L.

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/09/the-long-and-short-of-it/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59746

I promised Krissy that I would not buy any new guitars in 2025, and that was a promise I mostly kept (I did buy one guitar, but it was for her). However, it is now 2026, and last month I turned in two full-length books, and I thought therefore it might be okay to treat myself. That said, I pretty much have every guitar I might ever need, in most of the the major body shapes, so if I was going to get any more of them, they needed to fill a niche that was not otherwise occupied.

And, well, guess what? I found two stringed instruments that fit the bill! What a surprise! And as a bonus, neither is technically a guitar.

Small one first: This is an Ohana O’Nino sopranissimo ukulele, “sopranissimo” being a size down from the soprano uke, which is typically understood to be the smallest ukulele that one might usually find. The O’Nino here is seventeen inches long from stem to stern, and is absolutely dinky in the hand. Nevertheless, it’s an actual musical instrument, not a toy, and if you have small and/or nimble enough fingers, plays perfectly well. It’s not going to be anyone’s primary ukulele (I have my concert-sized Fender Fullerton Jazzmaster for that), but if you’re traveling — and I often am — and want to take along a physical music instrument — which I sometimes do! — then this is very much the travel-sized uke to tote around.

Watch on YouTube

There are even smaller ukes available, but those do start being in the “is this a musical instrument for ants” category of things. I’ll stop with a sopranissimo.

Almost literally on the other end of the scale we have the Eastwood BG 64 Baritone Guitarlin. The one type of guitar I did not have in my collection was a baritone guitar (which adds an additional four frets to the guitar on the low end, allowing for a lower/heavier/twangier sound). This particular baritone is one of an esoteric variant of guitar known as a “guitarlin,” in which the guitar adds frets on the high end to be able to access notes that one would only usually find on a mandolin. So, basically, this instrument goes from baritone to mandolin over 35 frets, which is, to be clear, an absolutely ridiculous number of frets to have on a single instrument. I can already see the serious guitarists out there despairing about the intonation in the mando frets, but those people are no fun.

I was traveling when my guitarlin arrived and I haven’t yet been able to play around with it yet, but here’s a short video of the guy who helped design it fooling about with it:

Watch on YouTube

(And yes, I got the one with the tremolo, because of course I did.)

Between these two instruments my collector itch has been scratched for a bit, and I look forward to messing around with both in the upcoming months. I won’t say I won’t get any other guitars ever, but at this point it’s getting more difficult to find where the gaps are in what I have, so I do imagine my acquisitions will slow down rather a bit. Let’s hope, anyway. I’m running out of room in the house for them. Although I guess I do have a whole church, don’t I. Hmmm.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/09/the-long-and-short-of-it/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59746

duckprintspress

https://www.tiktok.com/@duckprintspress/video/7615257551453555998?_r=1&_t=ZP-94XxYqQb6Kt

[Video ID: a white person in glasses with short, dark hair talking while sitting in front of a bookshelf. /end ID]

Transcript: So I got this question as part of an ask me anything. The question is: What’s something that surprised you about owning an indie press?

How much work it would be. I know that, maybe, like, obviously it was always going to be a lot of work to open and run a business, any business, and especially an indie press. I don’t… I don’t wanna make it sound like I’m upset with anybody cause I’m not, but I’ve ended up surprised how much is on me. I had hoped that certain aspects would be more collaborative and I understand completely why they’re not. It’s a really tough. Everything costs the sky. Like, it… yeah. I picked, like, the world’s worst time to open a business, and sometimes I think how much money I might be making if I’d opened it, like, 15 years ago. But whatever.

I think the thing that surprised me is sort of… just how much rests on my shoulders, while at the same time so many people help so much. Like I don’t wanna make it sound like I’m, “oh, I’m the lone warrior facing all the difficulty by myself. It’s so awful. Feel bad for me.” No, no, I have wonderful people who help me a lot. But there’s just so much in owning a business like this, and so much of it isn’t delegateable in any useful way.

That was a surprise.

On the pro side, just how amazing and supportive people are. I mean, you know – it actually ties in with the other. People who I didn’t know at all now help me with stuff every single day. People who I go, I can’t afford to pay for that right now. I appreciate the offer. And they go, “no, no, I can see that you need this help, I will do it for free.” Which I always am uncomfortable accepting. I – you know, people who do work deserve to get paid for that work. I mean, I sort of moaned and groaned in the beginning part about how more of it’s on my shoulders than I thought.

Less of it is on my shoulders than could be.

An enormous number of people – I mean, everything from the people who are like “we’ve never bought a single thing, but we always share your posts” all the way through, you know, the people who I hadn’t met when this started who are now some of my closest friends. The community that has developed – and we start with a community – but the community that has grown and developed since I opened this press amaze me and wow me and inspired me every single day. And I wouldn’t still be shouldering as much as I do if it wasn’t worth it, because I’ve made all these amazing friends, you know, people who are incredibly skilled at what they do, very passionate, and share my values and goals, and we all just want to get more queer works out in the world. And we’re doing it together.

So thank you, everyone. You make it worth it every single day.

I’m Claire, I own and operate an independent publisher Duck Prints Press. If you’ve got any questions for me in March, hit me up. It’s independent publisher’s month and I’m asking for your questions and I’m answering all comers. Bye!

osprey_archer

We begin Hornblower and the Hotspur with Horatio Hornblower standing at the altar with his blushing bride Maria, desperately informing himself that they’re not married just yet! There’s still time to run for it! Only he can’t bring himself to commit the cruel act of leaving her at the altar, so instead he stands there like a lump and gets married.

This is one of the most inexplicable marriages I’ve ever encountered in fiction. It appears that Maria confessed her love for Hornblower and Hornblower was unable to think of any response except “Will you marry me?”, despite the fact that he doesn’t love her, in fact doesn’t think he should ever marry, and lives in dread of passing his temperament on to his children. (I should note that he is in no way honor bound to her before the wedding: she’s not pregnant with his child and he didn't seduce her. He didn't even flirt with her! He just existed in her general vicinity and she fell for him.)

He then spends the rest of the book asking himself “What would a good husband do?” and then enacting the part of a good husband, in much the way that he sometimes enacts the part of a good captain.

littlerhymes and I discussed many possible explanations for Hornblower’s behavior, none of which were entirely satisfactory, but to be fair, what WOULD be a satisfactory explanation?

1. Hornblower is a deeply closeted gay man who is marrying Maria for reasons of social pressure. However, there seem to be plenty of bachelors in the Navy, so it’s unclear how much social pressure he would actually be experiencing, especially since he seems to have no family clamoring for grandchildren/an heir.

(Whether or not he’s gay, there is alas little evidence here that he sees Bush as more than an excellent lieutenant, although Bush is clearly still nuts about Hornblower. The bit where Hornblower fails to mention his own act of heroism in a letter to the Gazette and Bush is like “It isn’t RIGHT, sir.” And also the bit where Bush is tells Hornblower he’s worried about Hornblower’s health and Hornblower is like who cares about this SACK of MEAT that is my BODY.)

2. Hornblower is SO deeply repressed that he can’t cope with the fact that he is experiencing the weakness of having a human emotion (“love”), but actually does love Maria on some level. He keeps feeling surprising upswellings of tenderness for her. Also, he castigates himself severely every time he DOES experience an emotion (or also human weaknesses like “sleepiness” or “hunger”), which I feel has probably damaged his ability to recognize emotions at all.

But even if he loves her, he clearly doesn’t have a lot of respect for her. Might love her purely in the sense of feeling an animal attraction, and also gratitude for the fact that someone cares about him? He muses at one point that it’s strange to be going to sea with someone on land who gives a damn about him.

3. Hornblower doesn’t think that he deserves nice things, so he marries Maria to make sure that he will have a wife who is ill-suited to him, as he deserves.

Oh, also there are some sea battles and stuff. Hornblower is sent with the fleet to capture some Spanish ships carrying a fortune and then has to hare off chasing another ship at the opportune moment so he doesn’t get a share of the massive amount of prize money. But then the Crown takes the money anyway so he actually would have gotten nothing even if he had been there.

I’m pretty sure these Spanish treasure ships formed the basis for a similar incident near the end of Post Captain, only you better believe Jack Aubrey was on hand to win his part of the prize money. I finished Post Captain confident than Jack could pay off his debts and marry Sophie, but now it looks like maybe he won’t be getting the money after all…?

We will find out in HMS Surprise, but not for about a week, as I am setting off on a trip to Massachusetts on Wednesday!

littlerhymes and I will resume our sailing voyages once I return.

cimorene

Our beloved floofy bun, Rowan, passed away a week ago. He was ten years and four months old (the average lifespan of pet bunnies I saw quoted some places is 2-4 years, and 10 years is the expected upper limit for his type of bun) and was healthy, cheerful, friendly, and sweet his whole life; he died very suddenly at home, apparently of old age. I miss him - he was always more friendly and cuddly than Japp - but I'm glad he had a long, happy life.

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Chanter

March 2026

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Page Summary

dizzojay - Happy birthday bunnies!
flemmings - (no subject)
malymin - A thought that's been brewing
dizzojay - Happy post: Happy International Women's Day
badly_knitted in get_knitted - Check-In Post - March 9th 2026
missingvolume - #14 Butterfly Effects by Seanan McGuire
helloladies in ladybusiness - Sidetracks - March 9, 2026
smallhobbit - Seven Days - Seven Covers: 2026 - Day Two
yourlibrarian - TV Stuff at High Prices
aurumcalendula - (no subject)
lirazel - seems relevant to the interests of my flist
lunafleurette - 🌙 — Tumblr is down???
thebibliophibian_feed - Fantasy with Friends: Adaptations of Classics
condnsdmlk in vidukon_cardiff - Planned maintenance 10 March
larryhammer - “all i’m asking in return, honey / is to give me my propers when you get home”
prettygoodword - stercoration
scalziwhatever_feed - The Long and Short of It
duckprintspress - Indie Publisher AMA: What Surprised You About Opening a Press?
osprey_archer - Book Review: Hornblower and the Hotspur
cimorene - Memorial Post: Rowan (Halloween 2015 - 28 Feb 2026)

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Clarisse McClellan's Daughter

Network

Happy birthday bunnies!

(no subject)

A thought that's been brewing

Happy post: Happy International Women's Day

Check-In Post - March 9th 2026

#14 Butterfly Effects by Seanan McGuire

Sidetracks - March 9, 2026

Seven Days - Seven Covers: 2026 - Day Two

TV Stuff at High Prices

(no subject)

seems relevant to the interests of my flist

🌙 — Tumblr is down???

Fantasy with Friends: Adaptations of Classics

Planned maintenance 10 March

“all i’m asking in return, honey / is to give me my propers when you get home”

stercoration

The Long and Short of It

Indie Publisher AMA: What Surprised You About Opening a Press?

Book Review: Hornblower and the Hotspur

Memorial Post: Rowan (Halloween 2015 - 28 Feb 2026)

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March 2026

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