Black Emporium Exchange
Sep. 6th, 2026 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
settiaiFirst up is mysterious ways, a Fenris/Male Hawke/Sebastian Vael fic set immediately after Hawke's fight with the Arishok in Act 2 of DAII.
The next two are crossovers with Ratatouille that were prompted by someone making a joke regarding Neve Gallus and the rats of Dock Town back in May that a number of people then ran with when given the chance.
The first is a lovely piece of art and a short ficlet called The Informant.
The other is Anyone Can Cook, in which Remy the rat learns the hard way that Neve Gallus may be the one person in Thedas who cannot, in fact, cook.
Turning the Seasons
Sep. 3rd, 2026 07:56 pmglindaIn actually getting things done news, I took the late August Bank Holiday (we get our public holidays as floating days, but I ended up with a wodge of them left at the end of last year so I’m trying to be better at taking them in a timely fashion this year) and finally got round to finishing painting my ensuite. Yes it has indeed been half-painted for about 18 months… But it’s done now, that’s the important bit. Apparently all the home improvement projects I’m going to get to this year are going to be hideously overdue ones, though at least this one isn’t as overdue as the curtains… (Though that reminds me, I need to chase the blind company up about the new rail I ordered.)
I think I’m rather overdue doing my taking stock post. Where I look at my resolutions, what I’ve got to so far and what I reasonably likely to achieve in the remaining months of the year. So now’s as good a time as any to give it a poke.
So, what have we achieved? Well, I did in fact manage a couple of big ones. I took a proper chillout holiday and I made some actual sound art for the first time in years. (Apparently what I needed was a combination of concentrated time, inspiration and being locked away without any real distractions? Though probably being in a new and interesting location to work in helped? Possibly when my little mac mini keels over I need to go back to having a laptop again, apparently I need the location flexibility more than I realised. Also definitely I need to just admit defeat, Logic is never going to be my software of choice, I enjoyed working in Reaper, I just need to run the OS updates and download it. Working with audio editing software that doesn’t fight me at every turn definitely helps.) On a smaller scale I did in fact start a new recipe notebook, as favourite web-based recipes keep disappearing behind paywalls and link-rot so that was a good job done.
In terms of things I’ve made progress on and think I’m likely to complete, well there’s the half done/in progress home improvement projects. I’ve managed to complete two of them, and I’ve made progress on a third so, I have hope for that one. Also I had a craft projects one to either finish 5 WIPs or to make 5 stashbuster projects and so far I’ve done two of each and made progress on another couple of WIPs - one of which only went back on hold for weather related reasons once Autumn kicks into force properly I think I’ll have no problem getting back on that one. Bizarrely, one of my resolutions was to pick any 3 incomplete resolutions from last year and do them, and I realised that accidentally I’ve been doing two of them. Last year I had one to do an AtoZ reading challenge - and the year before a film equivalent - and this year I’ve accidentally made better progress on the book one so far than I managed all last year, and I’m fast catching up on the film one with the film festival still ahead of me.
I’ve been making decent progress on actually seeing new to me media this year, so all my resolutions that were intended to make a virtue of continuing last years re-engagement with old favourite texts are going by the wayside. I have high hopes of getting to more new-to-me films than I watched all last year, before I hit the start of the film festival. Re-engaging with all sources was clearly what I needed last year, so I’m glad I was able to lean into that and enjoy it rather than beating myself up about the new stuff I wasn’t engaging with but it is definitely nice to be able to engage with new stuff.
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
library_comic_feed
Poking the Squid: What We Can Learn From Animal Sex by Perrin Roosevelt Ireland. W.W. Norton, 2026. 978132408904. 272pp.
Ireland, along with cats Pudge and Ursala, takes readers on a graphic tour of the amazing sex lives of animals. She dives right into details in the introduction, the first in a long line of complicated examples of how “…so much of what humans struggle with about sex, and what makes understanding the private lives of animals so difficult for us.” It’s about hyenas. (See the included images from the book for more info.)
The graphic novel is full of unexpected examples and facts about other species; their biological sex is complicated and eye-opening, as is their behavior. Perrin shows how previous generations of scientists tried to interpret all of this through their human- and male-centric viewpoints and ideas about morality, often to the denial or outright misinterpretation of the complexities of biological sex, its expression, and the act itself.
The whole adventure is entertaining and often utterly unexpected. The diverse generation of scientists Ireland quotes and interviews seems to be doing a fantastic job of trying to make sense of it all, as is Ireland herself.
Secrets Post #977
Sep. 4th, 2026 05:00 pmfrancinefrenski posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
officialsimsecret WARNINGS -> Mean Girls & Clueless -> Video secret -> The Darleen Dreamer Story |
.png)
( + 18+ more )
>NOTICES & REMINDERS:
Next week's Submissions is here.
Please click here to report any comments that break our rules or the Dreamwidth TOS.
Comments may be screened due to spam. Dreamwidth has recently changed their captcha settings on a side-wide basis, so users who aren’t logged may get captchas even if the community doesn’t have them enabled.
I put the extended secrets at the end of the entry and did not number them separately this time, please let me know what you all think of that and if you want me to number them individually or not, or do something else with them.
There were 3 unposted secrets this week, none are Sims-related.
Submission Post #978
Sep. 4th, 2026 05:00 pmfrancinefrenski posting in officialsimsecret2) Host your images at an image sharing website such as postimages.org. If it goes against their TOS you can host it elsewhere. Please provide the URL to the actual picture, nothing else. You don't need to code it (and DreamWidth doesn't use BB/forum code, so stop it). Just paste the "Direct link for layouts" into the comment box. If you want an image that lasts forever [for whatever reason], you can upload it to Tumblr and then delete it after you grab the image link, as that will remain active forever.
3) WCIF and help requests won't be posted. You can use Google instead.
4) Secrets must be somehow related to The Sims or other life simulation games, such as InZOI or Paralives. Whether it's a gameplay secret or a non-game secret that uses the game to illustrate it. To count as sims-related, the secret must contain either a reference to the games or related materials OR a picture from the games, with the exception of usernames and profile/banner images, etc. Vague references to "content" or "story" are only accepted if the mods can recognize that it is in fact sims-related.
5) Further rules/recommendations are normally found listed on the community info page.
6) Please post a DIRECT LINK TO YOUR IMAGE, not a link to the page on the hosting site. It should end in .png, .jpg, .gif etc. If you do not post a DIRECT LINK, your secret will not be posted.
Please note: Imgbb.com is frequently breaking images, we no longer recommend using them because the image is often broken by the time Friday comes around.
Secrets submitted to this post will be posted on September 11th.
My newest game: Noodle Battle! At PAX!
Sep. 2nd, 2026 07:30 pmwondermark_feed
The past few weeks have been a frenzy of assembling the very laborious, very bespoke first print run of NOODLE BATTLE, the puzzle game I am releasing this weekend at PAX West in Seattle!
PAX has an event called the PNW Tabletop Game Market (Saturday night ONLY), which is a curated selection of short-run games from local designers. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I applied for a space in this fall’s event mainly as a way to force myself to finish a new game. And here it is!
The drawings are all by Jason Poland, good pal and cartoonist of My Dad Is Dracula. Jason played an early version of this game at Alaska Robotics Comics Camp this spring, and really liked it!
So I said, “Do you want to help me make it?” And so he has! It was his idea to make all the characters fun little animals, and I think it adds a ton of charm.
Because this edition is limited-run, it has been incredibly labor-intensive to make! The boxes and cards were made by a game factory in the usual fashion, but separately. The blank tiles were made by a woodworker dude out of Connecticut. For each game, we have had to:
- Cut a piece of plastic and install the box window
- Paint all the tiles, hundreds at a time
- Apply a sticker to both sides of every tile
- Apply stickers to the box (we couldn’t get the box back printed in time, so the whole back side of the box is a sticker too)
- Apply the “Nutrition Facts” sticker, which was a late suggestion by my kid that I just had to run with
- Fold up the rule sheet (they come from the printer as big strips of paper)
- Put all the components into the box and seal it all up
I knew it would be a lot of work and would require some inefficient, expensive compromises AND I WAS RIGHT. But the final product is turning out great, which is the important thing!!
I will have 50 copies with me (if all goes well) at PAX, and then between now and the holidays we will be putting together additional copies to round out this first edition.
I will announce additional copies on Patreon first, once they are available online!! And here too, naturally, before long.
You can also sign up here if you’d like me to email you once the game is available online!
Novel Review: Backwater by James Sallis
Sep. 1st, 2026 01:24 pmlibrary_comic_feed
Backwater by James Sallis. Soho, 2026. 9781641298599. 208pp.
I love short crime novels, and I love those written by James Sallis. He was a poet who created characters by sharing moments from their lives, whose books often move suddenly and naturally between a character’s present and the past in a way that feels natural. This was his last novel; Sallis died earlier this year.
Bishop, a former detective turned jazz guitarist, is talked into coming back to the town where he grew up to help solve a murder (though there’s no body) by a friend from his days as a cop. By the time Bishop shows up to take a look, that friend has absented himself. Bishop sinks in behind his friend’s desk, into his files, and into life in a place he never wanted to return to. It brings back memories of moments on the police force, of growing up, and of books he’s read. He connects with the people he works with as much as anyone, and finds many things unchanged. And as he puts in time, much of it just spent listening and paying attention, solutions to puzzles and problems present themselves, as do a few other crimes and tragedies of different sorts.
I’ve read most of Sallis’s novels more than once. For me, this is one of his best, right up there with Moth, Death Will Have Your Eyes, and Drive (which was the basis of the film starring Ryan Gosling).
fic: the borders of our lives (shetland)
Aug. 31st, 2026 04:30 pmusuallyhatsthe borders of our lives (5564 words) by usuallyhats
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Shetland (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez
Characters: Jimmy Perez, Duncan Hunter
Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 07, Pre-Relationship, they don't know they're in a slow burn romance yet, but I do
Series: Part 1 of sky, water, land
Summary:
Five conversations Jimmy and Duncan had while Duncan was in prison, and one they had when he got out.
fic: no time like the present (shetland)
Aug. 29th, 2026 12:28 pmusuallyhatsno time like the present (2491 words) by usuallyhats
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Shetland (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez
Characters: Duncan Hunter, Jimmy Perez
Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 07, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Oral Sex
Summary:
And besides, he thinks, looking Jimmy up and down and wondering if he'll notice, there's other things he'd rather do with Jimmy now they've got the evening, if Jimmy's as amenable to them as Duncan's hoping he'll be.
Picture Books!
Aug. 27th, 2026 02:47 pmlibrary_comic_feed
Monkeypig by Huw Aaron. Viking, 2026. 9798217039159.
Molly (a pig) lives in the jungle with a bunch of monkeys. No one notices she’s different. But then the head monkey calls a meeting, announces there’s an imposter among them, and sets out a series of tests to figure out who needs to be banished from their tribe. Molly is freaked out! But of course she doesn’t really need to be. My favorite part: Molly, entirely failing to eat a banana in the “correct manner.” Epic.
All the Ice Cream in the Land by Emmy Kastner. Simon & Schuster Book for Young Readers, 2026.9781665984515.
Princess Roselyn the Reticent’s every need is taken care of without her ever having to say a word. When she doesn’t say how much ice cream she wants for a snack, everyone thinks she wants more until the whole kingdom sets about making the largest bowl of ice cream ever. (In the end, she gets what she actually wanted all along.) Charming.
The Fart Book by Todd Harris Goldman. Grosset & Dunlop, 2026.
Ever wondered how often people fart? How many farts there are in a day? A week? A year? Now think about that with animal farts added in. This book would have broken my brain if I read it as a kid. (I respect the science of this book, but I think every number is based on an undercount.) Awesome.
Secrets Post #976
Aug. 28th, 2026 05:00 pmfrancinefrenski posting in officialsimsecretWARNINGS -> Suicidal thoughts -> Elon Musk -> Taylor Swift |
( + 17 more )
>NOTICES & REMINDERS:
Next week's Submissions is here.
Please click here to report any comments that break our rules or the Dreamwidth TOS.
Comments may be screened due to spam. Dreamwidth has recently changed their captcha settings on a side-wide basis, so users who aren’t logged may get captchas even if the community doesn’t have them enabled.
There was one unposted secret this week, it is a broken link.
Submission Post #977
Aug. 28th, 2026 05:00 pmfrancinefrenski posting in officialsimsecret2) Host your images at an image sharing website such as postimages.org. If it goes against their TOS you can host it elsewhere. Please provide the URL to the actual picture, nothing else. You don't need to code it (and DreamWidth doesn't use BB/forum code, so stop it). Just paste the "Direct link for layouts" into the comment box. If you want an image that lasts forever [for whatever reason], you can upload it to Tumblr and then delete it after you grab the image link, as that will remain active forever.
3) WCIF and help requests won't be posted. You can use Google instead.
4) Secrets must be somehow related to The Sims or other life simulation games, such as InZOI or Paralives. Whether it's a gameplay secret or a non-game secret that uses the game to illustrate it. To count as sims-related, the secret must contain either a reference to the games or related materials OR a picture from the games, with the exception of usernames and profile/banner images, etc. Vague references to "content" or "story" are only accepted if the mods can recognize that it is in fact sims-related.
5) Further rules/recommendations are normally found listed on the community info page.
6) Please post a DIRECT LINK TO YOUR IMAGE, not a link to the page on the hosting site. It should end in .png, .jpg, .gif etc. If you do not post a DIRECT LINK, your secret will not be posted.
Please note: Imgbb.com is frequently breaking images, we no longer recommend using them because the image is often broken by the time Friday comes around.
Secrets submitted to this post will be posted on September 4th.
RIP Tim Curry
Aug. 26th, 2026 12:34 pmsettiaiAnd, I mean, if you want to stick with 80-year-olds...
