Caged Strays: JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE #22-23 (JLI 67)
Mar. 9th, 2026 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcampbell1000 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_daily
Giffen, Jones, Rogers. Warning for some cruelty-to-animals comedy on a couple of covers.
Justice League Europe was in no hurry to get back to high-octane excitement after the Extremists arc. The last two issues had seen the team playing around on the beach and shopping in London. Issue #22 involves an actual crime and a JLE-adjacent character in some jeopardy, but within those bounds, it’s still as low-stakes as you can imagine.
( Like, ‘‘Scarlet Skier vs. Snapper Carr’’ low-stakes. )
Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition (volume 2, chapters 9-10)
Mar. 9th, 2026 08:09 pmerinptahContinued liveblog as I read Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH, and sometimes make comparisons to the original Tokyopop translation.
I’m posting the individual reactions on Mastodon and Bluesky, then rounding them up in the blog. Previous roundups in my PSOH fandom tag. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here.
When rounding up this post, I expected it to be shorter than the last one…then I actually checked the word count, and it’s almost exactly the same. Commented about fewer panels, but I carried on for longer, so it balanced out.
see the world in just one grain of sand
Mar. 8th, 2026 09:48 pmmusesfoolAnyway, I got up at my usual workday time instead of sleeping in so I could get the onions in the slow cooker, and I did both the "soak onions in cold water in the fridge for 15 minutes" and wore the stupid onion goggles, and still by the 4th onion my eyes were extremely unhappy with me. *hands* Thankfully I only had 6 onions total, so it all got done, and for dinner I made French onion pasta as planned, and now I have dinner for 3 more days as well. I do love this pasta dish - and I always use bucatini, which is one of my favorite pasta shapes, so it was pleasing all around. Every time I make it after not having made in a while, I'm like, why don't I make this more often!? and then I remember the onion-slicing and how annoying it is. Anyway, definitely recommended for a delicious and easy dinner (except for the onion-slicing). I also made bacon so I have lunch for the week also.
I meant to mention this yesterday and forgot, but The Mountain Goats collaborated with Mary Chapin Carpenter to cover World Party: Put the Message in the Box (don't worry if you only recognize one or two of those names - the song is good!).
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Tallying.
Mar. 8th, 2026 08:42 pmhannahLast time they did this, I only stayed a handful of days. It's not unprecedented in our vacation plans. I'll probably want to get out of New York City in its sticky season, and knowing I'll have a limited amount of time there from the get-go is probably one of the better things I can do to be able to enjoy myself. I've seen what happens when it's all on my parents. It doesn't end well.
Of post apocalyptic sagas and trekking cadets
Mar. 8th, 2026 06:48 pmselenak( Paradise 1.04 )
( Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1.09 )
2025 (2025)
Mar. 8th, 2026 08:56 ampauraque
It's a puzzle where you're presented with two thousand and twenty-five items that you have to group into 45 categories of 45 items each. This is a much bigger version of the New York Times daily 4x4 categorization puzzle Connections (which you can play on a third party site if you don't want to deal with the NYT), which in turn is inspired by the British quiz show Only Connect.
2025 is not as conceptually difficult as Connections, which goes out of its way to trick you into thinking items go together that don't. I figured out what the 45 categories in 2025 were relatively quickly, and then spent a long time with most of them almost full (40+) and staring at a couple hundred uncategorized items that I had simply never heard of. I was able to guess some of them by what sort of a thing they sounded like they could plausibly be, but I also used a lot of brute force, especially towards the end. Yes, the first category I successfully filled was
spoilers
birds. The last one I filled was legal doctrines, which are very hard to tell apart from mixed drinks and logical fallacies because all three are mostly ridiculous-sounding nonsense phrases.You can play 2025 for free on the website of its creator, Thomas Colthurst. His whole site is worth looking at if you are fondly nostalgic for '90s era web sites made by geeks of a certain generation who want to share their filk about linear algebra and lists of puns they and their friends came up with on Usenet.
Thanks to
lirazel for the recommendation!that wasn't a no
Mar. 7th, 2026 09:07 pmmusesfoolOur next in-office day is in late April, and I floated the idea of maybe bringing in baked goods, so I'm already considering what recipe I might choose to make, since I can experiment.
Today, I made these orange shortbread cookies and they're good, though I would zest another orange (I did 2 this time) if I make them again. Also I didn't sift the flour and instead of rolling out the dough and using cookie cutters, I rolled it into a log and just sliced them (after chilling), since they are just for me so there was no need to get fancy.
I also planned to caramelize onions overnight in the slow cooker, but then I ended up engrossed in F.D. Signifier's Tyler Perry video (which is FOUR HOURS long - I have one hour left but I'm taking a break to watch the WBC) and didn't end up doing the slicing I need to do, so I figure I'll do it in the morning, let them slow cook for most of the day, and then make French onion pasta for dinner. Anyway, I have never seen a Tyler Perry movie or show, but F.D. Signifier's videos are always worth watching.
So yeah, I've been sort of paying attention to the WBC and why is the "S" in USA like a strip of curly bacon on the Team USA jersey??? Once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. Also so many of these unis could be cool and yet so many of them are just meh. Design fail, Nike! Come on! Also, I might be rooting for the DR since Juan Soto is on that team; if Lindor were in it, I'd probably be rooting for Puerto Rico. Though of course I was pleased for Clay Holmes just now, and will be interested to see Nolan McLean pitch.
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Pounding herb tea, too.
Mar. 7th, 2026 08:06 pmhannahI spent most of the day with a friend - the Frick art museum, both Central Park zoos, a bowl of noodles and broth. We took our time with the paintings and the parrots, and also the penguins and pinnipeds. We talked about our upcoming birthdays and traded presents, and made general noises towards plans to do it again in a couple of months. We spent about two hours at the bowl restaurant talking fandom and fic, bouncing from crossovers to omegaverse to the importance of a plurality of voices within the community. It was more than welcome.
Generally Hoary: JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #50 (JLI 66)
Mar. 6th, 2026 03:51 pmtcampbell1000 posting in scans_daily
Today, the Greatest Generation is all but gone. The fingerprints it left on superhero comic books still linger, but we’re always interrogating what its legacy means to us. But one thing was clear enough as Germany reunified: the “unreconstructed German Nazi” trope, common in comics of the 1960s, was aging out of relevance. Giffen and DeMatteis (and Medley) wanted to be the ones to lay it to rest. It would be defeated by…age itself.
Edit to add: next entry will come late on Monday--I'm traveling and might not get enough unbroken time to finish it for a little while.
( If only being a Nazi today MADE you old, like M. Night Shyamalan’s beach. )
Life in the city.
Mar. 6th, 2026 09:15 pmhannahI didn't get a good look and they're long gone by now. I didn't ask why she'd kept them these last few decades or why she decided now was the time to throw them out, either. But the story lives on, and proof positive unsolicited dick pics have been around for as long as the technology for the pics themselves. It was something I'd suspected and in an odd way, it was nice to see the firsthand confirmation.
Only slightly more surprising was seeing someone else pick a cigarette pack out of the trash, fish through the pack, pull out the last one in there, toss the pack away, and start smoking it. I didn't stay to watch, knowing it'd be rude to stare, but boy, what an addiction that is.
Mind of My Mind by Octavia E. Butler (1977)
Mar. 6th, 2026 08:46 pmpauraquespoilery thoughts
As I think about this book, a thought keeps arising: This book has no good guys. Mary is not a good guy. She's is positioned as the protagonist because she opposes Doro, and in the world of the books Doro is, if not literally the worst person on Earth, at least the person with the most power to do the most harm over the longest period of time. He is a merciless sociopath who will not stop until he is the absolute ruler of humanity. Being a better person than him is a low, low bar.To be fair, Mary never intended to bring others under her control and she doesn't know how to stop it, and she at least has some conception of using her power to help others, even if only other telepaths. And yes, most telepaths were dying or succumbing to mental breakdowns before she set up a plan to help them. But she has no qualms about enslaving the mutes (non-telepaths) and using them as an underclass to serve her and the Patternists. Some characters voice concerns, but by that time it's basically too late, she's already consolidated her power and there's no going back.
Doro's downfall has the shape of classical tragedy, as his obsession with controlling others spectacularly backfires and rebounds on him. Everything he's been working towards points inevitably to this outcome, as he creates people with stronger and stronger powers while believing he would somehow remain in control of them. But he can't have it both ways. He's made Mary everything she is, and while she lacks his immortality, she has something he doesn't: followers who see her as a savior, who love her because she's made their lives better, not just because they're scared of her.
No reader is ever going to be sad about Doro finally being defeated, but his defeat means the triumph of a society where an enslaved majority serve a privileged minority. The best you can say for it is that power is shared with a sizeable elite rather than concentrated in one absolute despot. It's the victory of the lesser of two evils—emphasis on the evil. (And again, I am reminded of Kindred's chilling examination of "less bad" enslavers in real world history.)
There actually is one good guy in the book, though. Anyanwu (here called Emma) is a tertiary character. Of course, this was written before her character had been fully revealed in Wild Seed; I wonder how much Butler already knew about her? I'm not sure what I would have thought of her if this book were all I knew. This reading order emphasizes that the best Anyanwu could ever do was to fight Doro to a stalemate, and suggests that she could never defeat him in part because she wasn't ruthless enough. Unlike Mary, she wasn't born into his twisted world, and she has a moral code that goes beyond mere self-preservation. No wonder Mary can't stand her.
With this book I felt more of a sense of it being backstory to an existing work, setting up for what's to come. Which is exactly what it is—it was written as a prequel to the first-published book in the series. And Wild Seed was in turn a prequel to Mind of My Mind, but I got more of a stand-alone vibe from that one. I still do not actually know what eventually becomes of Doro and Mary's descendants, but I am guessing it doesn't go super great for humanity!
Recs for nice things + Cat News
Mar. 6th, 2026 08:18 pmerinptahSome recs:
Preorders are open for this comics anthology by Iranian cartoonists. Already got mine.
A long and thorough Megatokyo breakdown from an ex-fan. (“I think I hate it better than anyone else.”) The criticisms are well-founded and well-explained, so even though I have some nostalgic fondness for Megatokyo and I’m not on board with every criticism, I liked reading it anyway.
The Skyjacks podcast, an original fantasy actual-play series, was on my “to try” list for a while. Recently, I opened the RSS feed, scrolled to the bottom, downloaded the first few episodes…and was confused to realize that it was (a) picking up from an existing story and (b) set in the Star Wars universe?
Yeah, the same group of players did an extensive Star Wars fangame first, spinning off from a short Star Wars adventure in a different feed, then moved on to their own series and kept adding that to the same feed. It’s a good jumping-on point, though. I’m 11 episodes in and not stopping.
Got caught up with Sporadic Phantoms, which was the last new podcast I mentioned starting. It continues to be very good. There’s a big pivot in season 2, but I think they handled it well. And…the season isn’t finished, so now I’m on a cliffhanger. Fingers crossed they stick the landing.
Also watched season 2 of the Ranma 1/2 reboot. It had a lot more of the madcap Jenga-tower-of-connected-gags pacing that I was missing while watching s1, where the personalities are wildly pinballing off each other and if you look away for 30 seconds you’ll miss something great. My “they couldn’t fully do this in s1 because they were too busy establishing the characters” theory is panning out.
And I did end up rewatching Cosmic Princess Kaguya. Turns out it absolutely rewards a second watch. There’s one character who knows about The Reveal from the start, and the amount of “oh that’s what you meant, I see what you did there” is amazing.
Cat news: Vet checkup for Fiddlesticks the other day.
When she had dental problems last May, they said she was down from 7-ish pounds to 6-ish, and theorized “maybe she’s eating less because it hurts her teeth.” But the current visit said she’s 7-ish pounds…and said that she was already back to 7-ish pounds last July (the visit where she had the bad teeth out).
Wonder if their scale in May was just having problems.
She developed these two Mystery Bumps since the last visit — you can’t really see them, they’re pea-sized at most and have normal fur growing over them, it’s just something you can feel when petting her. Official vet analysis on those is “probably just cysts, could develop problems in the future, but as long as she isn’t messing with them, we won’t mess with them.”
And she’s not messing with them! Doesn’t seem to notice them at all.
Good job not having cancer, kitty.
AO3 Celebrates 17 Million Fanworks
Mar. 6th, 2026 05:17 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
otw_news_feedA lot has been going on at the Archive of Our Own (AO3) lately! In January, we celebrated 10 million registered users on AO3. February was all about International Fanworks Day, which we celebrated with several events, culminating in our 30-hour chat and games party over on Discord. And now, we’ve hit another milestone: 17 million fanworks on AO3!
With this many amazing fanworks, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to remember your favorites. This is why we have bookmarks on AO3! Bookmarks are a useful tool to save fanworks for re-reading whenever the mood strikes, or to recommend a work to other users.
And did you know that not only can you bookmark works posted on AO3, but also external fanworks you want to remember? To bookmark an external work, go to your Dashboard, and then to the “Bookmarks” section. In the upper right corner, there should be a button called “Bookmark External Work”. For more information on bookmarks, check out our Bookmarks FAQ!
As always, we are beyond grateful for each and every one of you who contributes their free time, love, and effort to AO3, and helps us grow and flourish! We’re excited to see what other achievements we’ll celebrate together this year.
