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Monday, June 1st, 2026 05:37 pm
Guess who managed to get a grail doll!

He's a Rumpeldoll Morfeo. On a body that isn't my first choice, but is in my top three and matches. (And happens to be the same body my Abbadon is on so clothes shopping will be really easy for those two.)

If you are looking for BJD and related things, there are a lot of people posting sales posts trying to clear stashes out before DoA goes to archive mode.
Monday, June 1st, 2026 10:39 pm

Over 255 hours & 6 months later, I finished Hundred Line! At the start of pride month on top, haha.

I wish I had the energy to write an actual post, but this will have to do for now (also I'm in mobile, sorry for all the typos and bad formatting)

In short, I'm glad this game was made.

When I was around 70% I started to doubt myself on the way I'm playing (leaving 2nd scenario for the very end) as if I had played the route where everything is revealed I would probably took way more time to play instead of taking all of it at once.
Like, I feel this game deserves to be played little by little, play a route, chew it for a while, then start another.

But man, after playing it, all of that vanished (even if I would've liked to play slower) I couldn'tbe happier my final ending was 001.


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Monday, June 1st, 2026 10:30 pm

Posted by Gwynne Dyer

A consensus has emerged, at least in Western media, that we are on the brink of a real war with the gloves off, maybe even a ‘world war’. The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will overrun the rest of Europe as soon as he is finished with Ukraine. Donald Trump will invade Cuba even before he […]

The post The Threat of Global War first appeared on Gwynne Dyer.

Monday, June 1st, 2026 10:16 pm

Posted by John Scalzi

Awww, doesn’t it look like they’re cuddling? They are not, about a tenth of a second later they were rolling about in a full-blown tussle, as they are wont to do. Don’t worry, it’s all in good fun; Smudge actually enjoys his wrestling time with Saja, and vice versa. But it does make for some fun moments:

To begin the month of June, Smudge offers up the rare but valuable TussleMlem™, with an assist from Saja

The Scamperbeasts (@scamperbeasts.bsky.social) 2026-06-01T11:22:48.639Z

Sugar and Spice, I will note again, want none of this sort of nonsense. It is far below either of their dignities. Which is, perhaps, their loss.

— JS

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026 07:08 am
discussion prompt: Do your dolls have characters? If so, do you "shell" existing characters or do you develop new characters? Are your characters canon or original? Do your dolls have a story? Tell us all about it. (This peer reviewed, open access journal article, "Death, Reincarnation and Rebirth of BJDs" is all about that through a religious studies lens.)

photo prompt: June is Pride Month in the U.S. (where I'm from) and Japan (where I live) so this month's theme is LGBTQIA+ pride photos!

Remember, you can post about all kinds of dolls and the prompts are optional! If you got a new dolly and you want to show off the unboxing, or you made a new dollhouse, or you just took a photo that you're proud of, please feel free to post it any time!

If you're looking for photography inspo, [tumblr.com profile] seasonaltoyprompts has a Summer 2026 prompt list.

Don't forget, the Museum at FIT is collecting doll photos for their We Love Dolls online exhibit! Photos must be submitted by July 1st for consideration. More details at the link.

P.S. Thank you [personal profile] althea_valara for this month's icon! Please submit icons for the community here.
Monday, June 1st, 2026 06:10 pm
Rabbit, rabbit! I am thrilled at the notion that we may have been splatted into on Saturday by an Eta Aquariid. I will otherwise have missed all of the year's meteor showers to date.

On a forecast of long-range optimism, I am planning this summer on Readercon and NecronomiCon Providence. Noir City Boston is nearer enough future to be uncertain, but this year's selection is generously defined as jazz-themed and I am really eyeing that 35 mm screening of Blues in the Night (1941) backed with Black Angel (1946).

Last week [personal profile] selkie shipped me a paperback of Lee Welch's Mr Collins in Love (2025) and this afternoon [personal profile] a_reasonable_man was responsible for the arrival on my doorstep of Molly Crabapple's Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (2026), which swathe of interests makes me feel very catered for.

I had not heard of Goblin Band before discovering their exuberant version of "Clyde Water" (2026), which I have loved since Kate Rusby via [personal profile] selkie and Nic Jones via [personal profile] nineweaving. I have since gathered with pleasure that they are trans/queer trad folk and Martin Carthy likes them.

For the first time in several days the weather heaved itself out of its autumnally raw overcast and I walked around and took a slightly disheveled seasonal picture.

Monday, June 1st, 2026 05:47 pm

Business first! The Fey Duology, including dark fantasy novels Duainfey and Longeye, is now available for purchase in electronic format from!  Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and Baen.

The paper edition is for sale at the Amazon link.

Go forth, Big Book, and Find Your Audience.
#

So! Monday. Sunny and cool-but-not-cold.

Did some good start-up work on the new novel. I still have to find a few names of planets and locate a couple spaceships, but so far, all the Signs and Portents are positive.

The cats were very supportive.  Photographic proof.

A couple people asked me what I "usually" do with a completed jigsaw puzzle, and the answer is!

The puzzle the cats completed for me yesterday is, I believe, the very first jigsaw puzzle I have assembled as an adult. My spatial sense -- by which I mean, the ability to recognize what will fit into where -- does not exist. So! While it's very lowering to read that a 500-piece puzzle ought to take, eh, up to five hours to assemble, I'm kind of astonished I actually got one together At All, despite it very likely absorbing 3 times that many hours (I didn't time myself, really, but I do know that yesterday alone, it took 4 hours to finish.)

The completed puzzle is taped up safely in its portfolio. It being an Accomplishment of its kind, I may glue it together eventually, as a trophy.

Lunch has been et, and in a moment or two I will start in with emptying trash cans, and staging the trash bags and recycling, so that it can easily be moved from the garage to the curb tomorrow morning. Also up for my exciting afternoon is doing my duty to the cats, taking a walk, and making two phone calls. Sigh.

Since last week, I've listened to Georgette Heyer's Cotillion and Black Sheep. Yesterday, I started listening to The Talisman Ring, and I'm ... a little shocked at how very menacing Basil "The Beau" is, listening to him being read, professionally. Of course, I read Heyer as comedies, and the narrators are obliged to read them as if they were serious.

So, that's me caught up on the first day of Back To Work.

How's everybody doing?
#
So, that's enough excitement for one day. All the to-do list items are crossed off, including the one where I had to remove Steve's name from the sock-drawer credit card (new cards arrived in the mail today; I'd forgotten he was even on it).

Also? The altered state that newly bereaved people exist in is an impressive coping mechanism. I made dozens of those calls right after Steve died, and they were hard, but today was gut-wrenching.

And, apropos of nothing much, I don't talk to many people from Texas, and that accent falls odd on the ear.

So, anyway. Knocking off for the day, having Done Great Deeds. I have a mid-morning dental appointment tomorrow, and after that? We'll see.

Everybody stay safe. I'll check in tomorrow.


Monday, June 1st, 2026 04:31 pm
Posted about the aikido seminar yesterday during the period of time DW was having trouble actually posting posts, so idk when that got out of the cache relative to when people check in on their DW feeds.

It's also getting warm again after the weekend that was weirdly chilly/rainy for the end of May, but hey that went well with "do physical activity in a space without AC for most of the weekend".




Apparently it has been a full year since [personal profile] hafnia and I started our origfic series which wasn't supposed to get this long or complex or include a second generation of story ideas about their kids. xD (The ones up there are shorts, but we do have novel-length thoughts about them all too...)




Summer plans continue apace. Apparently my twin is going to be in the area around our birthday? Which is cool, especially since my mother informs me that he did not realise it was going to be so close to our birthday when he first made the plans (with other friends of his who happen to be relatively nearby), but hey once he knew he was all "okay, I think I can extend my stay until our birthday so we can celebrate together". So! That'll be neat, should be a good time.
Monday, June 1st, 2026 09:53 pm

Pre-orders are currently open for the first volume of the mainland print edition of Middle-Aged Love Patch (中年恋爱补丁, pinyin: zhongnian lian'ai buding), Ning Yuan's videogame/virtual reality-themed novel, under the title Patch Loading (补丁加载中, pinyin: buding jiazai zhong). Here's a selection of bookshops currently taking pre-orders (I'm only listing the ones with store-exclusive merch):


A Taiwanese print edition was released some time in late 2024/early 2025 (as far as I can remember). The web version of the novel can be read here.

Pre-orders are also open for the concluding volume of Together for a Long Time (合久不分, pinyin: he jiu bu fen) by Yu Shuang (鱼霜), a contemporary romance. This is also a mainland print edition. Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:


The web version of the novel can be read here.
Monday, June 1st, 2026 10:02 pm

The weather has been overcast and wet the last few days. But the strawberries still know that June is here.

Yesterday aft3rnoon V was outside inspecting the garden (as they do every day) and said the strawberries were a few hours away from being ripe.

And later, long after I'd forgotten they said this, they went out again and when they came back and handed me one red strawberry.

I ate it, delightedly. Well, I took a picture of it and then ate it. First Strawberry Day is like a holiday for me.

Today, when I was mired in work, they came in with a paper towel in their hand, which held another strawberry.

I told them I hoped they were getting some too. But only after I'd grabbed this one as well, heh. They said they hadn't yet.

I'm a little sheepish that my excitement about strawberries is so great that I am getting all the earliest fruits of their labor! But I know soon that there will be more of them in the fridge than any of us eat before more come along to join them.

Monday, June 1st, 2026 04:36 pm
Fandom: Star Trek: TOS
Pairings/Characters: McCoy & Spock & Kirk
Rating: T
Length: 152,048 words
Creator Links: PSW
Theme: just like canon

Summary: McCoy's transport is destroyed in what appears to be a containment field explosion, leaving no known survivors. The truth, however, is not so simple as that ...

Reccer's Notes: McCoy is kidnapped by non-Federation aliens that force him to work for them in a medical capacity treating other kidnapped individuals.  Meanwhile Kirk and Spock think McCoy has been killed in an explosion.  I think this fits the "just like canon" theme because the quality, plot, and the writing of this fic is as good as any Trek tie-in novel, and may in fact be better.  There is a quite a bit of hurt!Bones in this as he struggles to survive and try to escape the situation he is in.  At the same time Spock and Kirk are trying their best to deal with their grief over the loss of their friend, and not always doing that in the healthiest of ways.  All while there is a greater plot about these new aliens and what they are trying to achieve, and some original characters that I really enjoyed.    

Fanwork Links: AO3
Monday, June 1st, 2026 04:40 pm
Hi everyone!

Did you get some writing in today?
  • Yes
  • No
  • I thought about it.
Monday, June 1st, 2026 01:06 pm
As a complement/update to my 2026 personal goals from earlier in the year:

1. Learn to crochet

I picked up my set of crochet hooks and a skein of yarn I bought literally a decade ago the last time I tried to do a fiber art. I'd like to complete at least one granny square by the end of August, which seems doable.

My LAPL card gives me access to Craftsy, so I'll be looking there for video tutorials. I may also pick up a book if I find I need one.

2. Get off Facebook entirely

I wiped my cookies trying to fix the missing entries thing from yesterday and now I can't remember the email/pw combo to log back into FB, so at least that's gone from my laptop. I can still get on via my phone, but I'm going to make a conscious effort to not visit it.

3. Learn how to identify nice jewelry in thrift stores

I'd like to start both collecting jewelry and also possibly sell it (on eBay?) as a "side hustle" (bleh), but I only really know to look for makers marks/material marks, and not much else. Figuring out how to find the good stuff seems like a fun activity.