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 fics/fanart/fanvids/other kinds of fanworks/fancrafts/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.

Here comes the nostalgia. The new episode of Daredevil: Born Again, written by Jesse Wigutow, relied heavily on past content. If you like to linger thoughtfully over past episodes of TV series, you may enjoy this episode more than the less sentimental among us.

( Spoilers for Daredevil Born Again S02E05 )

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

1) My partner injured yet another finger playing baseball last weekend and had to go to the emergency room. Luckily it was not broken, just dislocated. Since then we have gotten 3 phone calls from the hospital group asking for a survey response.

This is particularly irritating because this group has been buying up hospitals, clinics and medical practices in the area, and is currently the only emergency room in town and provider of certain services.

So what is the point of the survey? What choice to we have? How will any response actually do anything to improve care?

2) I've been warming to High Potential, and recently Keith Carradine guest starred. I knew I recognized him as soon as he appeared, but I couldn't place him. Instead I kept wondering why he made me think of Joel Kinnaman in For All Mankind. For sure they could play relatives.

3) I have not been reading any fic for the better part of a year now. Some months back I read about 4 or 5 that had probably been downloaded over a year earlier, but I haven't been doing offline reading for the first time in a very long time. And when it happened before it was because I didn't have access to material, whereas now I have dozens of commercial books and even more fic.

(I say "nothing" though this doesn't count the random drabble or ficlet someone recs.) ( Read more... )

4) The thing that really stood out to me about Amazon announcing they're discontinuing service to 2012 and earlier Kindles was to think that there's not many electronics that are still running after 15 years. ( Read more... )

5) The Pillowfort Anniversary festivities have ended and it was fun. Many (not even all!) of the activities could be summed up with the bingo card. ( Read more... )

I'd love to see someone else take this on in a few years' time.

I knew Isa Briones was on Broadway, but I had never heard her actually sing until yesterday when I saw this on tumblr: Isa Briones sings "Who's Sorry Now" from JUST IN TIME | Now on Broadway. What a set of pipes!

*

Today's poem:

Fire

a woman can't survive
by her own breath
               alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am the continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

—Joy Harjo

*

I've belately started watching NCIS: Hawai'i and I'm enjoying it so far! tbh I mainly gave it a shot because of Lucy, but I like pretty much all of the main cast (Jane is awesome imho). There's some standard police procedural dodgyness, but I'm finding it fairly charming. I like that the introduction to Kai was him complaining to HPD about them escalalating a situation. It's also neat how much time Lucy and Kate's romance subplot is getting.

( vague spoilers for one of the episodes )

(I was following NCIS: New Orleans pretty regularly from around season 2 until Sonja left in season 4 - I keep meaning to check out some of the later seasons and the season 7 episodes when Tammy has a girlfriend.)

Today's poem:

A Dictionary Names the Wind in the Trees
by Susan Cohen

Psithurism because
what else would we call sound embedded
with leaf mold and breath
zithering just below the daily drone
of power saws and chippers,
eons of air shifting
like an old Chevy through leaves,
riffling papery corn fields
and the eucalyptus,
stuttering through windbreaks,
jittering an aspen
in a beam of breath,
lisping nothing pins me down
in the language of the Huron,
in Olmec, in Sanskrit, chittering
all its unpronounceable names,
its tunes with the shiver of pine needles
and the moves of a river?
Psithurism comes as close
to the clash of wind and trees
as orgasm comes to the friction
of muscles, nerves, bodies,
which is to say when so many words
cannot catch it,
those of us always searching
for just the right one may
as well stop speaking
and lift our heads
like mule deer, ears twitched
for the smallest sound.

*

A collection of short stories translated from Hungarian. I picked this up from the library because I'd seen references to the author writing cosmic horror, which is apparently one way to get me to read a short fiction collection I otherwise know nothing about.

Veres has a direct, unsentimental style that reminds me a bit of Lisa Tuttle, although with less interest in women. Like Tuttle, one gets the impression he doesn't like people all that much. I enjoyed the eastern European perspective, adding extra flavor to ideas I've seen American or British versions of before. Veres also is really good at spooling out the key information, so that apparently unremarkable scenarios get weirder and weirder as we learn more detail.

And indeed, there is some straight up Lovecraftiana in here as well as two different body horror twists on the idyllic rural past, all of which are squarely my kind of thing.

Favorites:
Well, both the Lovecraft ones. "Multiplied by Zero" is a travel report from a man who's gone on a guided tour of a Lovecraftian horrorscape. I enjoyed the contrast between subject matter and tone all the way along, and then it really stuck the landing.

Meanwhile, "Walks Among Us" is an inside view of a Lovecraftian cult, aka exactly my jam, seen from the perspectives of two people raised in the faith and struggling with it and one who's married in. I'm amazed by how deftly Veres weaves all the backstories together with the present day timeline. This is extremely nonlinear and yet I never had any trouble following the action. One could argue the discussion of the cult as a religious minority is not great, given that this minority really is into murder and slavery and all that, but I enjoyed the Watsonian view of the world too much to quibble about the Doylist implications.

The two farming horror ones are honestly quite similar in subject matter, if not theme, to the point of feeling a little repetitive. "Return to the Midnight Soil" has the more interesting and imaginative body horror, but I think the title story "The Black Maybe," about a family from the city doing farming tourism, wins by a hair because it's more horrific, rather than tragic like the first one, and because I cared a lot more about the daughter in it than about either of the boys in the other story.

And "The Time Remaining" is the slashy entry, a story about a man whose life keeps getting worse and the devil whose life's purpose is to convince him to lead the armiese of hell. VERY shippy.

Least favorites:
"To Bite a Dog," about a woman who discovers the psychic power of dominating other creatures by biting them and her boyfriend who can't decide how he feels about it. The most Tuttle-feeling story of the collection because of how damn bleak it is. Also I just don't like animals being upset or in pain. It's rough being a horror fan sometimes.

"Fogtown," an epistolary story composed of an unfinished manuscript about someone else's unfinished book about an incredibly popular underground band that seemingly no one ever actually heard. I love this kind of thing normally, but the nested epistolary layers (complete with editor's notes!) were hard to keep track of, and the underlying story just didn't have any meat to it. I've read this story before with less effort and at least as much reward.

Those were the first two of the collection, so I'm really glad I pushed through to the ones I enjoyed! In fact, I ended up liking the collection enough that I bought his new one rather than waiting for it to show up at the library.

Today's poem:

Eurydice
by Carol Ann Duffy

Girls, I was dead and down
in the Underworld, a shade,
a shadow of my former self, nowhen.
It was a place where language stopped,
a black full stop, a black hole
Where the words had to come to an end.
And end they did there,
last words,
famous or not.
It suited me down to the ground.

So imagine me there,
unavailable,
out of this world,
then picture my face in that place
of Eternal Repose,
in the one place you'd think a girl would be safe
from the kind of a man
who follows her round
writing poems,
hovers about
while she reads them,
calls her His Muse,
and once sulked for a night and a day
because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns.
Just picture my face
when I heard –
Ye Gods –
a familiar knock-knock at Death's door.

Him.
Big O.
Larger than life.
With his lyre
and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize.

Things were different back then.
For the men, verse-wise,
Big O was the boy. Legendary.
The blurb on the back of his books claimed
that animals,
aardvark to zebra,
flocked to his side when he sang,
fish leapt in their shoals
at the sound of his voice,
even the mute, sullen stones at his feet
wept wee, silver tears.

Bollocks. (I'd done all the typing myself,
I should know.)
And given my time all over again,
rest assured that I'd rather speak for myself
than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc.

In fact girls, I'd rather be dead.

But the Gods are like publishers,
usually male,
and what you doubtless know of my tale
is the deal.

Orpheus strutted his stuff.

The bloodless ghosts were in tears.
Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years.
Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers.
The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears.

Like it or not,
I must follow him back to our life –
Eurydice, Orpheus' wife –
to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,
octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets,
elegies, limericks, villanelles,
histories, myths...

He'd been told that he mustn't look back
or turn round,
but walk steadily upwards,
myself right behind him,
out of the Underworld
into the upper air that for me was the past.
He'd been warned
that one look would lose me
for ever and ever.

So we walked, we walked.
Nobody talked.

Girls, forget what you've read.
It happened like this –
I did everything in my power
to make him look back.
What did I have to do, I said,
to make him see we were through?
I was dead. Deceased.
I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late.
Past my sell-by date...

I stretched out my hand
to touch him once
on the back of the neck.
Please let me stay.
But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.

It was an uphill schlep
from death to life
and with every step
I willed him to turn.
I was thinking of filching the poem
out of his cloak,
when inspiration finally struck.
I stopped, thrilled.
He was a yard in front.
My voice shook when I spoke –
Orpheus, your poem's a masterpiece.
I'd love to hear it again…

He was smiling modestly,
when he turned,
when he turned and he looked at me.

What else?
I noticed he hadn't shaved.
I waved once and was gone.

The dead are so talented.
The living walk by the edge of a vast lake
near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

*

Fandom: Hockey RPF
Characters/Pairings: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni (Geno) Malkin, Alexander Ovechkin, Shea Weber, Joe Thornton
Rating: Explicit
Length: 15,934
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: thehoyden on AO3
Themes: Arranged marriage, First time, AU: royalty, Secret identity

Summary: It’s actually his father who suggests it.

“Take the rest of the summer for yourself,” he says. “Do something fun.”

“Fun,” Sidney repeats blankly.

Reccer's Notes: I'm into hockey fics now! This is a classic, already reccd here ages ago and worth revisiting. It's a royalty AU with added hockey, which is where Sid meets Geno. There's a fun, hot and charming initial romance, then Sid has to get on with his life of obligations, including the frustrating search for a suitable royal-lineage husband to cement political ties. Ultimately, love wins, of course, and it's a satisfying, well written story.

Fanwork Links: You're the One That I Want (locked to AO3)

(I guess I'm letting out all my bottled-up words today...)

A collection of essays on feminist topics. I've been meaning to read some Solnit ever since everyone was reading her book Hope in the Dark during the first Trump administration. I randomly was in need of an ebook to read, and this was the book of Solnit's available through my library, so here we are.

On one hand, I did not find this a challenging read. Most of what Solnit had to say, I've encountered in some form or another before, and most of these essays are surface-level examinations of their topics. OTOH, there's something to be said for having thoughts laid out in a coherent essay format when one has previously only encountered them via social media, haphazardly and in fragments. And even though the collection had a strong feminism 101 feeling for me, I did highlight a bunch of quotes, which I am putting below under a cut, mostly for my own use. So, clearly I got some value out of the book!

IMO, by far the strongest essay is the one where she gets into specifics, and that's the final essay, "Giantess," about a 1950s film called Giant starring Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. I feel like I might vaguely have heard of this movie, and although it doesn't sound like my usual jam genre-wise, the politics sound progressive even today, so I'm tempted just from a point of historical interest.

( quotes )

We recently lost a very dear member of our community here at drawesome. minoanmiss loved creating and connecting with people. She was a really special person, and her thoughtful packages, art postcards and stickers brought so much joy to those in her orbit.

We say goodbye to our friend minoanmiss, and will always remember her fondly.



You're welcome to share your own pictures and remarks about minoanmiss in the comments of this memorial post.

Here are some of her artworks that she sent me over the years, including from our annual community card exchange: ( Photos )

Written by mekare:

"Minoanmiss was an active participant right from the start of our drawesome community back in 2017. In her own words: "This community has been absolutely WONDERFUL for me, and I can't say enough how much I enjoy participating here."

She let everyone feel welcome, commenting, drawing for almost every challenge (sometimes multiple pieces) and suggesting many creative challenge ideas herself (a lot of which were later used to spark everyone's creativity).

Her first artistic contribution was Poison Ivy for the second challenge, and she continued to delight us with more characters from comics universes, mermaids, figures from mythology and of course Minoan ladies (sometimes in space).

We are going to miss her dearly."

♥

I feel like I've probably oversold this post as well-put-together meta when it is mostly a lot of bullet points with me going "WTF? WTF?," which I guess is basically the Dungeon Crawler Carl experience in a nutshell. Anyway! It's a month until Parade of Horribles comes out, so I figured I'd better post before the post was obsolete. *g*

This is mostly stuff that I've picked up on in reading/rereading and am wondering what will be resolved (and when, given that there's supposedly 3 more books, and ( spoiler ) I also wanted to do a little speculation about endings. Because despite people on reddit being very vocal about Dinniman being a horror writer and how it's not going to end happily and everyone will die, I don't believe that to be the case, necessarily, based on my reading of the books. (I mean, is it likely? Sure. Do I want that ending? Nope!)

The first, less salient, point in my favor is that the books open with Carl telling the story in a way that sounds like he's looking back on it, that he's been through it and lived to tell the tale. This is typical in novels written in first person past tense; however, ( spoilers )

The second, more important, point, to me, is the theme of the story that's being told – one of resistance and revolution, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism – and having that be snuffed out in favor of late stage capitalism and status quo antebellum being restored is just...I don't see it (especially not now). I guess even if everyone dies, the changes Carl et al. have forced on the galaxy will linger, at least for a while, but I am not sure anymore that even Carl dies at the end (I would have said 98% yes he does, but I read some interesting meta on tumblr that made me wonder if he will in fact survive and why, rooted in his own past trauma to make it make sense).

I do think a lot of our favorites will die, probably horribly, but I also think Donut will make it out alive. I cannot imagine killing the cat at this point. It would be interesting and somewhat surprising to make Carl live in the new world too. (I am not just saying this because he's my blorbo, but that might be a major factor in it.) Though how – given his primal race – could be as something new and different (or its own horror, given the givens), which might as well be death in some ways? Metamorphosis, at least. Idk.

Anyway, I've wrestled with how to organize this – by character? by theme? – and decided to go with *drumroll* location! It seemed to make the most sense to me, anyway.

There's spoilers for all 7 books (I am not a member of the Patreon so I haven't read any excerpts from book 8 or the extra material from the print versions of the books) from here on out.

We'll start wide with ( the galaxy )

Which brings us to ( earth's surface )

And then, the most important location, ( the dungeon )

I'm sure there are things I've forgotten/missed/am making too much or too little of, but there is just so much going on that I needed to track it all somehow, and so here we are. If you've read the books, what do you think?

*I said this on tumblr, but I do hope someone makes a Carl vid to Springsteen's Trapped - it's definitely #1 on the Carl playlist I did not actually make but which lives in my head while I contemplate inchoate fic ideas I will never write.

***

Assorted items:
+ seasonsofdrabbles spring round signups close today!

+ Having posted the fic below, I seem to have gotten all my Oasis feelings out for the moment, or maybe just all my writing feelings. I spent the last couple of weekends going to art museums, and I've also finally found the brain space and desire to read again. It feels really good. I've finished two books in the past week! Amazing!

+ Currently actively reading:
- In the Forests of Serre by Patricia McKillip
- It's Not a Cult by Joey Batey (thanks to troisoiseaux, who passed their copy on to me <3)
- The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit

---

I wrote a fic! Not even for an exchange!

doughnut hips (6511 words) by Snickfic
Fandom: Oasis (Band)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Liam Gallagher/Noel Gallagher
Additional Tags: Chubby Kink, sensory play, Light CBT, Light BDSM, Anal Sex, Porn with Feelings, Oasis Reunion (Band), Sibling Incest, Crying, Weight Gain, Kissing
Summary:

Liam settled his hands on Noel’s hips and then wondered if he shouldn’t, but there weren’t a lot of places for him to touch Noel that weren’t softer than they’d been sixteen years ago.

Noel cleared his throat. “I didn’t think you’d care if—you know. If I put on a few pounds.”

This was supposed to be a quick kink-focused one-shot, but it almost immediately grew a bunch of reunion feelings and became a lot more emotionally dense than I planned, and it ended up taking me about five months to write (across 19 days of writing). It was really satisfying to finish, and I feel like I did all the things I set out to do.

On the theme of "every kink applies to Gallaghercest," this has my first ever CBT and sensory deprivation. I've never had even the faintest inclination to write those before, did not go in planning to write them here, and yet: here they are.

I'm calling this a fill for crackthewip, which makes it the first fic I've finished for that event, despite having run it for three years (and then passed it on to chacusha). Yay.

This fic really filled a niche, apparently, because I got the most feedback on this that I've ever gotten in the first week of posting an Oasis fic (not counting the one last year that I was posting in daily installments). It's so gratifying to write things that people want to read. ;______;

Exit 8 (2026). A man who has just found out his ex-girlfriend is pregnant gets lost in a seemingly infinite subway tunnel.

This is a Japanese movie based on a Japanese video game that was apparently a huge hit a few years ago. It's also the second movie this year based on an essentially non-narrative video game with long stretches of "yup, this sure feels like I'm watching someone play a video game." Like Iron Lung, they really have to work here to stretch their premise to a 90-minute runtime with an actual story. Things get pretty repetitive after a while, since the tunnel acts essentially as a spacial time loop (as elegantly depicted by the movie poster).

That said, I mostly enjoyed the experience, in large part because of the lead actor Kazunari Ninomiya, who is great. I've learned he was a beloved Jpop idol 20+ years ago, and I believe it, because he has loads of charisma while acting basically alone for the first 2/3 of the film. I would absolutely watch him in more things.

The movie is also occasionally really stylish. The opening scenes are IMO the best part of the film from a filmmaking perspective, starting with our guy on a crowded train listening to Bolero to the camera-eye POV first loop through the subway tunnel (as a nod to the game being a walking simulator).

However, I think my favorite part of the movie is the interlude where we see the backstory for the other recurring character in the subway tunnel, a man walking robotically with a briefcase. That's easily the best horror material in the film.

--

Forbidden Fruits (2026). Three women named after fruits who work in a mall fashion boutique tentatively welcome a new member into their girl-power coven.

This movie is kind of all over the place. It leans a bit too hard into satire, which loses me sometimes, while also not seeming to have a clear idea what it's trying to say about female relationships. In my opinion Lili Reinhart as the coven leader is one of the weak links, although I've seen a lot of people say the opposite. On the other hand, Victoria Pedretti as the airhead recovering alcoholic stole the show for me. I didn't even recognize her at first because Cherry is so different from the Mike Flanagan characters I've seen her play, but she's hilarious and heartbreaking.

The movie is also very stylish, and the fashion is incredible, like truly impossible to describe, you have to experience it for yourself. Each of the four gets their own consistent look: glam seductress, gothy femme, girl next door, sexy baby.

The movie also, after an hour and fifteen minutes of campy satire, suddenly goes extremely hard. It gets gnarly, you guys. It fucking commits. It must have been a real challenge to market this film, because if you're watching it as a horror movie, it takes over an hour to get there, but if you're not into horror, you are in for a nasty surprise at the end.

Put this on the list of "wasn't quite for me, not mad I saw it, happy it exists." It had style and ambition, and that goes a long way with me. (Typing that out, I realize it has a ton in common with last movie's football horror movie Him, with a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. So if you were into that, try this.)

Today's poem:

July
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we'd dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we'd suck off our fingers,
the eggs we'd watch get beaten
'til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other's plate, saying,
No, you. But it's so good. No, it's yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don't, and to get it anyway.

***

I caught up on Abbott Elementary last night and ( spoilers )

***

Works have been revealed! Time to dive in and enjoy!

Thank you to all participants, especially our wonderful pinch hitters, who helped the collection reveal on time. Creators will be revealed in one week.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of our pinch hitters, everyone has a gift and the collection will open on time! *\o/*

Launch imminent at 17:00 CEST! (in your timezone | countdown)