susieboo: An icon of Double Trouble from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, with slightly muted colors. DT is resting their chin in their hand with a thoughtful expression. (Default)
[personal profile] susieboo posting in [community profile] booknook
Title: Everything, Everything
Author: Nicola Yoon
Year: 2015
Age group: young adult
Genre: contemporary romance, coming-of-age
Content warnings: illness and medical trauma, abuse, mentions of child death, grieving / mental health struggles


“Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life.”
The cover of "Everything, Everything" by Nicola Yoon. The tagline is, "The greatest risk is not taking one." The cover shows the book's title, the first "Everything" being written in plain blue with a paper airplane over the R, the second "Everything" in white surrounded by intricate drawings of flowers, an airplane, sea creatures, and butterflies.

This was my fourth read of Yoon's debut, following 18-year-old Madeline Whittier, who was diagnosed with SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency) as a baby, and cannot leave her house without risking severe illness or death. She reads, a lot - not much else for her to do. She goes to school online. She rarely sees anyone except her mother and her full-time nurse, Carla, and when she is allowed other visitors, they have to go through a full physical and a lengthy sterilization process. As Madeline says, "It's a pain to come see me." Madeline is aware of her limitations, of the milestones she's missed and adventures she'll never get to have, but she's as happy as she can be, given the circumstances. But then a new family moves in next door, and with them comes Olly, a boy her age who spots Madeline in the window and is determined to talk to her. The two develop a friendship while emailing and texting in secret, and start to fall in love, which Madeline realizes can't end well for either of them.

For me, this is one of those books where, nearly every criticism I hear of it, I'm like, "Yes, you're right." The portrayal disability and illness is questionable (more about that in the spoiler section), and the book can be melodramatic and silly. But I eat it up every time; each time I've read this book, I've read it in under 24 hours. The romance is very sweet, and both Olly and Madeline are very likable and compelling characters. The story is a love story first and foremost, and if you want an easy-to-read, enjoyable romance, this might be a good pick for you.

I revisited this book because I've been in a terrible reading slump for the past couple of weeks, and it worked like a charm. The book flies by as you read it, with prose that's both accessible and pretty, and the inclusion of things like medical reports, book reviews Madeline posts online, and receipts from purchases she's made is a nice touch. Madeline's voice is eloquent but believable for a teenager (especially one who's been solely in the company of adults her whole life), and it was a delight to revisit this book for the first time in several years.

Here there be spoilers... )
mecurtin: on yellow background stylized black outline of crown with red X across it, with words: NO kings (NoKings)
[personal profile] mecurtin
If it seems as though Trump plans to steal the midterm elections, you’re right. If it seems as though there’s no way to stop him, you’re wrong. Indivisible’s strategy for the whole year is built around the midterm elections:

- making sure the Democrats who are elected are actually going to fight fascism instead of going along with it.
- making sure that the November election is free & fair, that we win, and *that the results are enforced*.

The critical, unprecedented period will be between Election Day and January 3, 2027, when the new Congress is seated. Indivisible National and other parts of the anti-MAGA movement have been taking advice from scholars of authoritarianism like Erica Chenowith. They say that one of the most dangerous times for a democracy under threat is right around or after an election that the authoritarians are losing. That’s the point where mass mobilization, *society-wide mobilization*, may be critical.

Chenowith and their colleagues have found that authoritarian governments will fall when when 3.5% of the population is committed to active, nonviolent resistance. For the U.S., that means we need at least 10 million people ready to make sure that when they try Jan 6 2.0 (and they *will*) it stops, flails, and falls over.

To get to that point we have to BUILD to that point.

We KNOW the Trump Regime, the corrupt SCOTUS, and state & local level MAGA will be attacking our right & ability to vote in every way they can. We’ve mostly done what we can already with gerrymandering and counter-gerrymandering, from now on it’s going to be what Leah Greenberg calls legal whack-a-mole, where we all have to be alert to attacks on the right to vote and hit them wherever they come up.

Our tentpole events will be a series of #NoKings rallies, growing in size.

• #HandsOff in April ‘25 was 3 million people.
• #NoKings, June ‘25 was 5 million.
• #NoKings2, October ‘25 was 7M.
• #NoKings3 will be March 28, we want 9M people.
• #NoKings4 in the summer, 11M
• #NoKings5 in the fall, leading up to the election, 13 million people.

Each #NoKings event is made up of thousands of local ones, they don’t involved a big march to the seat of power. All US politics starts at the state and local level, organizing starts local, community is local. And importantly, elections are administered locally. NoKings will be a way for people to become aware and connect with others in their area to monitor polling places, and to let state & local officials know that they can’t do anything in the dark.

These growing numbers are how we build to a number of people committed to oppose the regime that’s so large that even when they try to steal the election, which they will, even when they don’t want to certify the results, which they won’t, they won’t be able to stop us. Even though we won’t be fighting them with guns.

TLDR: both the doomers & the institutionalists are WRONG. Trump doesn’t have the power to just “cancel the elections”, but existing institutions aren’t enough to ensure that we have meaningful elections and that the results are honored.

We the people, organizing and working together, are what’s going to stop him. Bad news for both doomers & institutionalists: there’s work for *you* to do. Join a local organization, Indivisible, immigrants’ rights, 50501, or the Democratic, Democratic Socialist, or Working Peoples Parties. Get to know more of the people in your neighborhood and congressional district. Become part of a team.

Here’s the motto Leah Greenberg says we should put on our walls and phone lock screens, to keep our eyes on the prize:

They are losing, so they're going to try to steal the election.
They're gonna fail, because we're gonna stop them.


this is something of a first draft. I'd like advice about how to make it punchier, more like something that would draw eyeballs on substack etc. Where do I need links? Is it structured properly, with the right things at the top?

Where should I put something about how I fit into Indivisible? I'm just a joe-normal member of a joe-normal Indivisible group, this is really reporting based on attending the weekly "What's the Plan meetings for the past year.

Community Recs Post!

Feb. 12th, 2026 08:31 am
glitteryv: (Default)
[personal profile] glitteryv posting in [community profile] recthething
Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanart/fancrafts/fanvids/other kinds of fanworks/fics/podfics have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.
kalloway: Risen King Chrom (FE:A Chrom)
[personal profile] kalloway
Yet Again, Stuff-

First, last quarter's JFF movies!

No Longer Heroine - I was not expecting to like this as much as I did. It's a delightfully meta movie about a high school girl who's always been in love with her friend and how she's always expected to end up with him despite never telling him her interest. There are a few too many subplots, but everyone was a joy.

Teiichi - Battle of Supreme High - this was a good movie but I also didn't really like it, if that makes sense? Basically an over the top story about student council elections.

My Love Story!! - live action version of the manga, makes a few changes for format but overall the same story and a lot of fun.

Handball Strive - about the power of social media in an area still recovering from the 2011 earthquake, and friendship, and ooof, social media.

Bento Harassment - this is the genre of generational conflict movies that turn up a lot, and it even has the required parent getting sick, etc. There is so much delicious food, though and one unresolved subplot that's a little maddening.

Megane Glasses - a slow movie about nothing and the middle of nowhere and just... finding one's own pace. (Also food.)

Restaurant from the Sky - this is about a man and cheese, but also food and mourning and family and community. Peak culture drama, tbh, but I feel like it's a hard genre to recommend movies in because things happen but quietly.

As usual, I am procrastinating on this quarter's movies. ^^;;

School of Rock - haven't seen this since it came out but my father picked up a copy and saw it for the first time and then insisted I watch it. Still good!

Majestic Prince (full series + movie) - this is an anime about giant robots and fighting aliens and it is tropey and ridiculous and Absolutely Understood The Assignment.

Flying Witch 12 & 13 (Chihiro Ishizuka) - I sometimes worry when otherwise chill manga, especially slice of life(ish) series, get past about volume 9... But Flying Witch is still full of ridiculous charm and these volumes were great.

The Dragon Knight's Beloved 8 (Ritsu Aozaki, Asagi Orikawa, Akito Ito) - wraps up an arc and see above, the next volume is going go be make-or-break for the series keeping my interest. The leads are still super-cute though.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! - this was recommended and it was pretty good. I like series about fans and media creation, and I liked how the real world blended with what was being created or what could be created. Unsure about hanging onto it, though. (For now?)

(no subject)

Feb. 11th, 2026 08:55 pm
kalloway: (KoA Siegfried 1)
[personal profile] kalloway
Finally, the long, lingering bitter cold has ended! It is actually supposed to be above freezing basically every day for at least a week. Work was noticeably warmer last night! I will hopefully no longer be spending all my extra energy just trying to stay warm! I do seem to have picked up a mild cold, alas, but so far it just seems to be minor congestion.

I finished up Yoroi Samurai Troopers (though watching the dub as Ronin Warriors, this time around) after many attempts over the years, and then paid up for Crunchyroll to watch the sequel. (Which is amazing so far.) Since I'm going to be paying for CR for the next bit, if anyone has any recommendations for series to watch, I'm all ears. I do want to watch the Apothecary Diaries and there are a couple of Gundam series on there that don't have physical releases.

Aside from trying to stay warm and watching brightly-colored nobs, I'm still working on various models, archiving stuff, and sorting through notebooks and papers. I'm trying to do some notebook consolidation, especially with various notebooks with only a handful of pages left in them that I was keeping for a few rogue notes.

I also found an old organizer that has a bunch of lines pages that I'm using for daily to-do lists. The kicker is that it's a 2019-2020 student organizer, so like July-June, but the blank pages in it start in March 2020 and there's just nothing written after that. Owww... (I mean, I still make March 2020 jokes so... I guess this is fair.)

Incorrect fandom osmosis

Feb. 12th, 2026 07:52 am
naraht: Moonrise over Earth (Default)
[personal profile] naraht
Still haven't seen Heated Rivalry but I glanced at one of the books in a bookstore last night, and realised that I had the characters backwards! Based on pictures, I'd assumed that the dark-haired one was Ilya Rozanov and the ginger one was Shane Hollander. I'd figured that Rozanov was part Kazakh (or could well have been part Korean, like Viktor Tsoi) – but the guy who actually turns out to be playing Rozanov doesn't look Slavic to me at all. I can only see him as having a severe case of American Canadian Actor Face. This has been an interesting collision of racial assumptions.
sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey: passion)
[personal profile] sovay
My poem "The Principle of the Thing" has been accepted by Weird Fiction Quarterly. It is the ghost poem I wrote last spring for Werner Heisenberg: 2025 finally called it out. 2026 hasn't yet rendered it démodé.

Branching off The Perceptual Form of the City (1954–59), I am still tracking down the publications of György Kepes whose debt to Gestalt psychology my mother pegged instantly from his interdisciplinary interests in perception, but my local library system furnished me with Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) and What Time Is This Place? (1972) and even more than urban planning, they make me think of psychogeography. An entire chapter in the latter is entitled "Boston Time" and illustrates itself with layers of photographs of a walk down Washington Street in the present of the book's composition and its past, singling out not only buildings and former buildings but weathered milestones and ghost signs, commemorative plaques and graffiti, dates established, construction stamps, spray paint, initials in concrete. "The trees are seasonal clocks, very precise in spring and fall." "The street name refers to the edge of the ancient peninsula. (If you look closely at the ground, you can trace the outline of the former shore.)" "The railroad, which in its day was cut ruthlessly through the close-packed docks and sailing ships, is now buried in its turn." Five and a half decades behind me, the book itself is a slice of history, a snapshot in the middle of the urban renewal that Lynch evocatively and not inaccurately describes as "steamrolling." I recognize the image of the city formed by the eponymously accumulated interviews in the older book and it is a city of Theseus. Scollay Square disappeared between the two publications. Lynch's Charles River Dam isn't mine. Blankly industrial spaces on his map have gentrified in over my lifetime. Don't even ask about wayfinding by the landmarks of the skyline. I do think he would have liked the harborwalk, since it reinforces one of Boston's edges as sea. And whether I agree entirely or at all with his assertion:

If we examine the feelings that accompany daily life, we find that historic monuments occupy a small place. Our strongest emotions concern our own lives and the lives of our family or friends because we have known them personally. The crucial reminders of the past are therefore those connected with our own childhood, or with our parents' or perhaps our grandparents' lives. Remarkable things are directly associated with memorable events in those lives: births, deaths, marriages, partings, graduations. To live in the same surroundings that one recalls from earliest memories is a satisfaction denied to most Americans today. The continuity of kin lacks a corresponding continuity of place. We are interested in a street on which our father may have lived as a boy; it helps to explain him to us and strengthens our own sense of identity, But our grandfather or great-grandfather, whom we never knew, is already in the remote past; his house is "historical."

it is impossible for me not to read it and hear "Isn't the house you were born in the most interesting house in the world to you? Don't you want to know how your father lived, and his father? Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors." None of mine came from this city I walk.

The rest of my day has been a landfill on fire.

Community Thursday

Feb. 12th, 2026 05:04 am
vriddy: Two cups of coffee on a tray (friendship)
[personal profile] vriddy
Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Posted and commented on [community profile] bnha_fans.

Commented on [community profile] common_nature. A lot. What a lovely comm.

Commented on [community profile] getyourwordsout.

Commented on [community profile] booknook.
mific: John sheppard looking sad or worried against stone wall, half out of frame (Shep - sad)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] stargateficrec
Shows: SGA
Rec Category: threesomes+
Characters: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay/Ronon Dex
Categories: M/M/M
Words: 3200 total
Warnings: no AO3 warnings apply
Author on DW: [personal profile] dedkake
Author's Website: dedkake on AO3
Link: not an elf, and the sequel sensitive, on AO3
Why This Must Be Read: These linked fics are funny, charming and (in the sequel) super hot! John's sensitive about his pointy ears, in more ways than one! A lovely OT3 series.

snippet of the fic under here )

Wednesday Reading Meme

Feb. 11th, 2026 06:30 pm
sineala: Detail of Harry Wilson Watrous, "Just a Couple of Girls" (Reading)
[personal profile] sineala
What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing, because I still don't have the brain. I guess technically I reread Iron Man: Crash for Book Club. Maybe I should go give myself credit on Goodreads for that. I mean, it's a graphic novel, so it should count. It's really bad.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

Alien vs. Captain America #4, Ultimate X-Men #24 )

What I'm Reading Next

I am really hoping for more brain soon.

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

Feb. 11th, 2026 02:14 pm
silversea: Buffy holding a red book (Buffy Reading)
[personal profile] silversea posting in [community profile] booknook
It's that time of the week again! What are you reading?

Copic Marker Layout for Practicality

Feb. 11th, 2026 01:27 pm
bread: vuvuzela (Default)
[personal profile] bread posting in [community profile] dreamwidthlayouts
Title: Copic Marker Layout
Credit to: [community profile] vuvuzela
Base style: Practicality
Type: CSS
Best resolution: Built in 1912x1074 – Mobile responsive
Tested in: Built in Firefox. Tested in Chrome & Opera on Windows OS. Tested in Android OS with Firefox.
Features: Mobile Responsive! Stylized home page, reading page, entry/comments page, icons page, and "more options" reply page.

Click for image previews

( Layout Instructions, Live Preview, & CSS )
goddess47: Emu! (Default)
[personal profile] goddess47 posting in [community profile] stargateficrec
Show: SG-1

Rec Category: Jack O'Neill
Characters:Pairings: none
Categories: gen, team, episode related
Warnings: none
Word Count: 2,235
Author on DW: [personal profile] fignewton
Author's Website: AO3 Profile
Link: O is for Other Perspectives


Author's Summary:

Five times SG-1 had to accept an unusual perspective of childhood and adulthood. Jack POV, set in Seasons 1 and 2.


Why This Must Be Read:

Part of Fig's own Alphabet Soup. ::grin::

A series of five lovely ficlets that are episode and kid related. Fig says this was a pinch-hit but these are nicely done missing scenes.


snippet of fic )

I'm resorting to bribery.

Feb. 11th, 2026 09:45 am
goodbyebird: Alabaster Wolves: Dancy Flammarion on the background of a three-headed seraph wielding a flaming sword. (C ∞ Dancy Flammarion)
[personal profile] goodbyebird
+ Doing poorly at getting enough sleep. I hereby decree that if I go straight in the shower and then straight to bed after work for the remainder of the trip, I get to order a batch of the damaged chocolates from Jentene På Tunet the next time the offer comes up + one new tarot deck (or just the oversized Buffy one? idk).

+ We did get two more days of orcas last week. Day one was just a solo boisterous youngling aggressively darting after the net, but the next day? The biggest pod yet! And best of all: after the net was up on deck they slowly glided alongside the ship, letting me observe them from the deck under water (which was crystal clear that day). I stood outside until all feeling left my hands and snot was running freely. Read more... )

+ Comics! My brain is so cooked, the only reading I've attempted was the physical trade of Batman: Secret Files that I picked up for a song during the New Year's sale. Made it half-way through the first story before my brain went "no thanks, I'm full". And I know The Gardener is in there! Brain tired. Sucks.

Know what doesn't suck? Poison Ivy still has an ongoing written by G Willow Wilson and Harley is in it as well and it is beauuutifull. Vol 2 of Absolute Wonder Woman is dropping in a few days. Meanwhile THIS HERE is Diana showing up in Absolute Batman (the writing is excellent, but THE LOOK woohee).
Absolute WW built like a truck

I'm waiting for it to be collected, but Harley & Ivy is bringing so much cuteness. Lookit!
Harley & Ivy variant cover by Jasmine Putri; they're both in front of a full body mirror, trying on each other's outfit and clearly having a good time.

+ I really wanna whine about work but I'm not gonna. Big sigh though.

+ hrrmm I need to cut my nails.

Announcing: Retro Writing May!

Feb. 11th, 2026 04:08 pm
notfreyja: Text reading "Freyja's heart-pulverizinf machine" over a purple heart on a yellow background (Default)
[personal profile] notfreyja posting in [community profile] fandomcalendar
event banner showing the title in 70s style font

A month long writing challenge focused on tropes, tags, and formats that have (for better or worse) fallen out of style.

From May 1st to 31st, creators will post their takes on each of the days' prompts, in any medium. Fan fiction, original stories, poetry, meta-analysis, and (even though writing is in our name!) yes, visual art as well! Currently all event documentation is on Tumblr, so the links below will redirect to the appropriate Tumblr posts.

Quick Links:




(no subject)

Feb. 10th, 2026 09:01 pm
watersword: Keira Knightley, looking at the camera (Keira Knightley: Gaze)
[personal profile] watersword

This might be the first time that Jo Walton's reading list did not result in a half-dozen new library holds, so I unfroze some existing holds and headed over to [personal profile] rivkat's to catch up on her notes on books. Results: several new holds, as expected and intended. I feel much better.

I fought my way past Amtrak's terrible 2FA and did not have to deal with Julie, which definitely counts as dodging the boss battle, but now I am getting errors when I try to buy my Dessa ticket, and in conclusion, computers were a mistake.

The gherkin is asleep on my chest (tiny tiny tiny snores) and allegedly it is going to go above 0° C for the first time in days, possibly weeks, tomorrow.

schneefink: Caduceus Clay in shiny light (CR Caduceus glowing)
[personal profile] schneefink
Oh no I fell into Vampire Survivors again. A few days ago I said I had no idea where to go for game progression, but there is an actual "unlock" menu so I followed that for a bit and now I have ten different things I want to do next, and I definitely want to complete the 1.0 achievements because of the cool prize - and after that there is a very cool Castlevania DLC as well! Spoilers )

Last weekend my gf and her friend L and I tried out Hanabi (I had only played it online before) and that was a lot of fun. We also baked four different kinds of Vanillekipferl because why not?, and they were very good.

On Monday together with more friends we watched Wake Up Dead Man, the third "Knives Out" movie, and had a great time. It was in turns (and sometimes all at once) tense, exciting, emotional, and very funny. All of us suspected the murderer from the beginning but it was still great to see it all play out. I would like several more movies in this series please.
This one felt a lot more, hm, grounded than the second one, not "rich people on a remote island" but instead a small community with characters that felt like they could be anywhere. (Unfortunately, in some cases.) I suspect that there were some things implied that I missed because I think in the US religion is very closely related to social class, and also I'm pretty sure Catholicism has different connotations, but it still worked very well.

I'm still watching a lot of Hermitcraft and some other MCYT. Season 11 is a lot of fun, and can barely wait for Decked Out 3.
Mid-Offs 3 is soon, and the draft on Friday! It's an event where top Minecraft speedrunners coach people with little to no MCSR experience through a tournament. Scar is in this one and I'm excited, and I think False could do really well too. Though afaik neither of them have any MCSR experience, unlike e.g. Ludwig who's been playing for the past month or so. I saw a couple of clips and enjoyed that people made dozens of parody songs for him.
Then the Hermitcraft charity event is in April again (Cleo will participate IRL this time, yay!) - the weekend before my exam unfortunately >.< But what if I'm really really well prepared... And didn't get distracted by MCYT Battleship in March either...

FIC: Stadium (Tempestuous Tours)

Feb. 10th, 2026 04:26 pm
duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

I wish I could be more complimentary about Emor's stadium.

As a feat of architecture and engineering, it is on par with the Chara's palace. As a place of entertainment, it is appalling.

Out of all the dismal spectacles that take place here, I can only recommend the chariot races. These can be quite as bloody as the other acts that take place here, but at least they do not involve beasts and prisoners. Charioteers are highly esteemed and highly paid for their skillful work, and they care for their horses tenderly. The chariots – works of art unto themselves – achieve speeds that are said to rival that of royal messengers. I'd recommend keeping your small children and sensitive women away; crashing chariots often result in mangled bodies. But a chariot race is certainly worth witnessing, at least once.


[Translator's note: A chariot race will appear in an upcoming novel, Motley Mayhem.]

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