themightyflynn: (bun)
[personal profile] themightyflynn posting in [community profile] hp_bunintheoven
Title: Unfogging the Future
Author:
Pairing: Harry/Parvati
Prompt: H14: Padma's married and pregnant and the centre of family attention. Getting broody, Parvati starts talking to her very new BF about having kids. What does he do?
Summary: See prompt.
Word Count: ~545
Rating: Teen
Warnings/Contains: None
Notes: Thanks to [personal profile] lightofdaye for the once over. Thanks [personal profile] themightyflynn for running this fest over the years!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

Unfogging the Future )
pauraque: drawing of a wolf reading a book with a coffee cup (customer service wolf)
[personal profile] pauraque
I liked this book when it was a fantasy noir starring a biracial knife-throwing assassin with magic hands in 1940s New York who's trying to get out of the business but keeps getting pulled back in. But that book wraps up about a third of the way through the actual book. Then it turns into a completely different book where the assassin moves upstate with her boyfriend and the story becomes about slimy small town politics and the characters' profound guilt for their actions in the city, and I became increasingly confused about what the book was trying to do and decreasingly satisfied with my reading experience.

Part of the problem is that Dev (the boyfriend) kind of rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't feel invested in the romance between him and Phyllis (the assassin), so shifting the focus more to their relationship was not going to work well for me. I actually liked both characters less and less as the book went on, and by the end I was feeling pretty fed up with both of them. A late promotion to the group of main characters is Tamara, Dev's ex, who comes to have a close bond with Phyllis as well. There is some interesting complexity to the dynamic of this trio, but I ended up frustrated with the way it was handled.

relationship endgame spoilersIt seemed to me that this was going in a poly triad direction, and then backed off of it. And I mean... it's not not poly. Phyllis, Dev, and Tamara have a one-night threesome, and Tamara also has a boyfriend who's deployed overseas, and in general it is not a book that assumes people only love one person at a time. I did appreciate that. What specifically threw me was this passage in Tamara's POV:
Sure, she and Phyllis had kissed that night with Dev and even now, in certain light, she didn't mind the notion of touching Pea [Phyllis] until she came. But the love she felt wasn't really that kind—it was a blood love, a bone love, and it ricocheted off of her other loves at unexpected angles.
Maybe I'm misreading the author's intention in pushing away the idea that Tamara's love for Phyllis is "that kind", or maybe I'm misunderstanding what "that kind" is supposed to be. But to me it read like the poly dynamic was being held at arm's length, which was not the direction I'd hoped it would go. I guess the Tamara/Phyllis relationship is ambiguous and not clearly defined as (queer)platonic or romantic, which sometimes I like, but the way it was presented here didn't land for me.

I also didn't understand what we were supposed to take away from the reveal of how the magic in the book works.

worldbuilding and plot spoilersOnly certain rare people have magic, and only people of color. It's eventually shown that the magic is a gift from their ancestors, who intended for their descendants to use it to fight white oppression. But if the ancestors are displeased with how the magic is used, the magic can turn against its holder or disappear completely. This explains why Phyllis loses control of her hands—the ancestors wanted her to assassinate the sadistic mob boss Vic (who is white), but by that point Phyllis wanted to stop killing so she didn't do it. She spends the rest of the book trying to make amends for the murders she's committed, yet her hands continue to torment her for not killing Vic, and she eventually sickens and dies. Dev, who also has magic, does kill Vic, and is tortured by guilt for the rest of the book, and he also dies. Tamara has magic too, and also becomes consumed with guilt because even though she never hurt anyone directly, she worked for Vic and looked the other way; she tries to sacrifice herself to save Phyllis but doesn't succeed.

To me it ended up reading like the characters were being punished for not living up to binding magical agreements that they never consented to or even knew about, which override their own agency and moral convictions. What are the ancestors trying to accomplish here? How does any of this help in the fight against racism? We're told that magic is getting rarer, but it's not really explained why. I know it's not because people of color in the 1940s don't need the help, and I can't imagine the author is saying it's because they're not worthy of it, but... what, then? Phyllis and Dev's daughter is supposed to have extraordinary powers, but I don't think that's explained either and I didn't have a clear sense of what she's expected to do. The whole cosmology of the book didn't make sense to me.

It sucks because I find Johnson's prose excellent, and the first third worked so well for me. I really didn't want to have to say I don't like this book! But alas, here we are.
themightyflynn: (bun)
[personal profile] themightyflynn posting in [community profile] hp_bunintheoven
Title: This Home Becomes You
Author/Artist:
Pairing(s): Harry/Pansy
Prompt: #H12
Summary: Harry finds Pansy hiding out in Draco's office one night, alone and pregnant. Unable to keep himself from being a good person, he offers her a place to stay. And perhaps never leave.
Word Count: 8247
Rating: PG13
Warnings/Contains: Unplanned pregnancy, unwed mother, perhaps a suckerpunch
Notes: Happy 10th BITO fest! I enjoyed participating and I'm gonna miss this fest.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

This Home Becomes You )
selenak: (Time Lords by Crazy Celebrian)
[personal profile] selenak
Dark Winds, Season 3: continues to be both beautifully acted, thoughtfully and empathically written, and a visual feast. Also heartbreaking in the day it follows up on s2's conclusion for Joe Leaphorn and his wife Emma. Small spoilery remark. ) Also I was more grateful than ever that the show takes place in the 1970s and wasn't updated to the present because Bern's new job with border patrol would have felt very differently even before her subplot kicks in.

Young Sherlock: aka the one by Guy Ritchie which doesn't feel like a prequel to his Holmes movies and is the better for it. I mean, I didn't dislike his first Holmes movie, which was the only one I saw, but I wasn't crazy about it, either, and never felt the need to see it again. Also it was made at a time where all the various iterations of Sherlock Holmes seemed to lean into emphasizing his arrrogance. Now, this show is entertaining fluff with only the vaguest nods to when it's supposed to be set: female students galore in Oxford, 1870, for some reason a rich and high ranking visitor takes the carriage instead of the train to Oxford, while someone in the production team actually remembered the Paris Commune happened, they evidently forgot or ignored both the near starvation of the population part of that and that there was also the Franco-Prussian war going on, so everyone makes a trip to Paris for one episode with no armies in sight, but the Folies Bergeres being in business with dancing girls, etc., etc., etc. Not to mentiion something extremely plot spoilery ) But honestly, because the show doesn't pretend to be anything but fun fluff, I did not mind. What I do suspect is someone in the production team has watched at least some Smallville and thought, hm, that "Clark and Lex were bffs for a while when young before Lex went evil" premise is great, we should do that with Holmes and Moriarty". And proceeded to follow up on this idea. Young Sherlock, played by a member of the gifted Fiennes clan, and young James M, played by Mat (the second one) from Wheel of Time, have the necessary chemistry and homoerotic subtext, they hit it off famously, and at the same time the seeds for future supervillaindom in Moriarty are there. And the show does make it believable these are two young guys smarter than most others around them and on each other's level. Most importantly, though: this Sherlock Holmes is the first one in what feels like eons who is not introduced being a jerk to the people around him. (I love Elementary ! But while Elementary's Sherlock was never as extreme as Sherlock's Sherlock, he, too, started out being rude to his Watson and everyone else.) It might come with the much younger territory, but while he's cocky, he's not (yet?) abrasive, downright tender with his mother, and, lo and behold, civil to people who aren't awful to others in front of him. Otoh, it may also be that Guy Ritchie and his production team watched the last season of Sherlock and thought, hm, dysfunctional Holmes family drama, unexpected relations, we like it, we like it, but how about giving the women better parts? Spoilers were very entertained indeed by the result ) Oh, and absolutely no one gets raped or threatened with rape. Like I said, this fluffy show with a heavy emphasis on the bromance manages to do very well by its female characters. Anyway, whether nor not this gets another season - which it doesn't really need for the story it has told - I enjoyed myself.

Can't post to LJ

Mar. 15th, 2026 06:28 pm
themightyflynn: (eye)
[personal profile] themightyflynn posting in [community profile] hp_bunintheoven
For some unknown reason, I can't access LJ right now. Posts will continue on DW, and I will catch LJ up as soon as it lets me back on. :)
themightyflynn: (bun)
[personal profile] themightyflynn posting in [community profile] hp_bunintheoven
Title: Silly Little Game
Author/Artist:
Pairing(s): Draco/Hermione
Prompt: #H7
Summary: After a friend's baby shower Draco decides it is time to start their own family.
Word Count: 2900
Rating: E
Warnings/Contains: Breeding Kink, Pregnancy Kink
Notes: Side pair is Pansy/Neville
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

Silly Little Game )
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

pauraque: Guybrush writing in his journal adrift on the sea in a bumper car (monkey island adrift)
[personal profile] pauraque
When I was a kid I had two artillery games: Tank Wars and QBasic Gorillas.

side by side screenshots of two artillery games, one on a green battlefield with visible firing arcs in a starry sky, the other with gorillas standing on skyscrapers
Left: Tank Wars. Right: QBasic Gorillas

Both games share the same basic concept. You and your opponent sit on opposite ends of a battlefield and take turns lobbing projectiles at one another in parabolic arcs, adjusting the angle and power of each shot to try to land a hit.

Tank Wars, created by Kenneth Morse, allows you to customize a myriad of game options, from windspeed to the color of the sky. You can play hotseat multiplayer, or if you have a keyboard and a mouse (fancy!) you and a friend can huddle around the computer together and split the controls. If your friends are unavailable there are CPU opponents of various levels of skill, from "Mr. Stupid" to "Wind Master". As you rack up points you can buy bombs with different blast radii, and when you win the terrain blows up in a satisfying crater and rains back down on the field in an elaborate shower of pixels.

QBasic Gorillas came with MS-DOS 5.0 and was created by Microsoft as a demonstration of the capabilities of the QBasic programming language. You and your opponent are gorillas who throw exploding bananas, and when you win, you do the Monkey.

Tank Wars is, I suppose, the "better" of the two games, in the sense of having more sophisticated graphics and gameplay. But does it have dancing gorillas? Does it have exploding bananas? Does it have a cartoon sun that makes a face like 😮 if you manage to hit it? I ask you. I did play both games a lot, but I know which one was more appealing to my sensibilities as a child of 8-9 years of age.
themightyflynn: (bun)
[personal profile] themightyflynn posting in [community profile] hp_bunintheoven
Title: Be Happy
Author:
Pairing(s): Harry/Remus
Prompt: #S5
Summary: Remus accidentally gets Harry pregnant after a one night stand.
Word Count: 2100
Rating: Explicit
Warnings/Contains: mpreg, dirty talk, knotting, age difference, angst, drunk sex
Notes: Thanks for reading!!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

Be Happy )

Posting starts tonight!

Mar. 14th, 2026 07:35 am
themightyflynn: (bun)
[personal profile] themightyflynn posting in [community profile] hp_bunintheoven

Come join [community profile] hp_bunintheoven's FINAL Pregnancy Fest!


Posting for the final Pregnancy Fest starts tonight my time! All the entries are in. The last one may have been mine. I didn't have an extension. Shh don't tell the mod! XD We will have a week's worth of posts, so posting will end on Friday. Hope to see you all there!
pauraque: butterfly trailing a rainbow through the sky from the Reading Rainbow TV show opening (butterfly in the sky)
[personal profile] pauraque
subtitle that didn't fit in the subject line: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

I'm going to say this prominently because I think it has caused some confusion among reviewers: This is a book by two nonbinary authors and the title is Life Isn't Binary, and it is NOT (primarily) about nonbinary gender identity! If you want a book that is primarily about nonbinary gender identity, this book may not give you what you're looking for!

Instead, it is about problems with binary thinking in all areas of life. There is a tendency for people to view many things in terms of two categories in opposition. Male/female and cis/trans, yes, but also Black/white, straight/gay, privileged/marginalized, body/mind, emotion/logic, friend/lover, us/them. The book examines and deconstructs these binaries and more, and encourages thinking about who currently benefits from their resultant flattening of nuance, and what we could gain from framing concepts in a less polarized way.

The book is short but extremely densely packed with ideas. I read it as a two-person book club with [personal profile] dragonque, and every chapter elicited fruitful discussion about its points and how they related to our own lives and experiences. I have known [personal profile] dragonque for a long time and I feel like I got to know them much better through talking about this book!

I do think at times it can feel too dense and too short for the vast scope of its thesis. The authors can state in one sentence an absolutely massive idea that could itself be an entire book, and that's the only thing they say about it because they're already on to the next point. (The authors have in fact collaborated on several other books which sound like they may elaborate on some of the things where I was like, "so, that's all you're going to say about that one? okay!")

But I found the book very worthwhile and thought-provoking, and after returning it to the library I bought my own copy because I expect I will be re-reading it, referring to it, or wanting to lend it to people.

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lightofdaye

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