Reading

Current Mood: mellow

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What I'm Watching

Can't believe it's been one month since I last posted one of these!

Had a stressful week last week this time! haha.

tl;dr- The Witcher, Malory Towers, Hotel Portofino, Only Connect.

( Read more... )

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Sunday Word: Contretemps

contretemps [kon-truh-tahn, kawntruh-tahn]

noun:
1 a minor dispute or disagreement
2 an inopportune occurrence; an embarrassing mischance

adjective:

It’s enough to make an artistic director throw up a white flag, though Sachs’ decision to retire had nothing to do with this latest contretemps. (Charles McNulty, Stephen Sachs documents an American family torn apart by Jan. 6 in his new play, Los Angeles Times, March 2024)

Shiffrin has won so often, in fact, that when she skips a race, or two, it spawns a minor contretemps. (Bill Pennington, Mikaela Shiffrin Wows Skiing When She Races - and When She Doesn't, The New York Times, February 2019)

The latest in this series of contretemps between the Congress president and the BJP is the rebuttal by Arun Jaitley, currently union minister without portfolio, who felt compelled to take on Rahul in a Facebook post a day after he got home from hospital following a kidney transplant. (Sujata Anandan, Saving the drowning farmer , Salon, June 2018)

This little domestic contretemps is then, I presume, disagreeable to you! (E Phillips Oppenheim, The Yellow Crayon)

She had meant to take a stroll herself before breakfast, but saw that the day was still sacred to men, and amused herself by watching their contretemps. (E M Forster, Howards End)

(click to enlarge)
Origin:
1680s, 'a blunder in fencing,' from French contre-temps 'motion out of time, unfortunate accident, bad times' (16c), from contre, an occasional, obsolete variant of contra (prep.) 'against' (from Latin contra 'against;' + tempus 'time' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

When contretemps first appeared in English in the 1600s, it did so in the context of fencing: a contretemps was a thrust or pass made at the wrong time, whether the wrongness of the time had to do with one’s lack of skill or an opponent's proficiency. From the fencing bout contretemps slid gracefully onto the dance floor, a contretemps being a step danced on an unaccented beat. Both meanings are in keeping with the word’s French roots, contre- (meaning 'counter') and temps (meaning 'time'). (The word’s English pronunciation is also in keeping with those roots: \KAHN-truh-tahn\.) By the late 1700s, contretemps had proved itself useful outside of either activity by referring to any embarrassing or inconvenient mishap - something out of sync or rhythm with social conventions. The sense meaning 'dispute' or 'argument' arrived relatively recently, in the 20th century, perhaps coming from the idea that if you step on someone’s toes, literally or figuratively, a scuffle might ensue. (Merriam-Webster)

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Update November 15, 2025

2 new links at Academic Links

1 new link at Life Tips

1 new link at Writing and Worldbuilding

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Speak Up Saturday

Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

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Claude’s Christmas Adventure by Sophie Pembroke

Meet Claude. He’s a loveable, big-eared, permanently hungry French Bulldog, who loves his humans – the McCawley family of number 11 Maple Drive to be precise.

When Daisy and Oliver McCawley start using new words like, ‘ferry’, ‘chateau’ and ‘France’, Claude realises they won’t be spending this Christmas at home. Only, when he finds himself on the street, as the family car pulls away, Claude realises he is ALONE. And more importantly, he is without all the yummy treats he knows the festive season brings…

Cue the start of Claude’s Christmas Adventure. It all begins with a belly-flop through next door’s catflap, where he finds newly single and craft-a-holic Holly, Jack the ex-army postman, his arch nemesis Perdita the cat … and serious amounts of gingerbread.

Maple Drive’s cutest resident is about to bring the street together for Christmas, in ways no-one could have imagined …

It’s a sweet little story with a predictable ending, but still a nice read. You’re introduced to several humans: Claude’s family, the postman, several of the neighbors. Plus there’s a cat that may be good or bad, depending on her mood.

The book jumps from one POV to another, with several of the characters having interesting back stories. I especially enjoyed the postman’s, Jack, story, as well as Holly’s, the young woman who fills her time was crafts. They’re all brought together as they try to reunite Claude with his family. In a way, it’s really more their story than Claude’s.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t all that taken with Claude. I’ve read several books where the dog has a “voice.” I think this one was a tad too sweet for me.

I still want to thank

severina2001 for recommending the book.

( Mount TBR 2025 Book Links 1-45 )

46. A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and Its Implications by Carl Sagan
47. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
48. Curfew by Phil Rickman
49. The King's Justice by Stephen R. Donaldson
50. Virgin by F. Paul Wilson
51. The Ancients by John Larison
52. Children of Memory (Children of Time 3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
53. Claude’s Christmas Adventure by Sophie Pembroke

Goodreads 60

NOV - “Popcorn Fiction”

A book that makes for light but enjoyable reading Binge-worthy and low stakes. One-sitting reads. Quick and fun palate cleansers.

Claude’s Christmas Adventure by Sophie Pembroke

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New Multi-Fandom Community: animatedfanfiction

animatedfanfiction

Community Description:

animatedfanfiction is for any animated films/shows, such as cartoons or anime fanfiction. Any rating is accepted. Feel free to post your old or new works!

The Friday Five for 14 November 2025

These questions were originally suggested by

alysonl.

1. What's one of the nicest things a friend has ever done for you?

2. What's one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for you?

3. What is a trait in another person that you instantly admire, and that draws you to them?

4. What is a trait in another person that instantly repels you, and prevents you from forming a close relationship with them?

5. Time to vent: tell us about something rotten someone has done to you.

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

Current Mood: shocked

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Neighbours- the Big Reveal

So today the news came out about Andrew and Holly.

Spoilers below!

( Read more... )

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Tuesday word: Pinchbeck

Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025

Pinchbeck (noun, adjective)
pinchbeck [pinch-bek]

noun
1. an alloy of copper and zinc, used in imitation of gold.
2. something sham, spurious, or counterfeit.

adjective
3. made of pinchbeck.
4. sham, spurious, or counterfeit: pinchbeck heroism.

Origin: 1725–35; named after Christopher Pinchbeck (died 1732), English watchmaker and its inventor

Example Sentences
With rough and homely fist he had copied this pinchbeck fervour.
Read more on Project Gutenberg

There was Robert--haggard and unkempt--still in the pinchbeck uniform, torn and bespattered now, with a peasant's frieze-coat thrown over it--a ridiculous disguise.
Read more on Project Gutenberg

What a snake in the grass, with his clever military plan and pinchbeck enthusiasm!
Read more on Project Gutenberg

But for love of the dear old Karnak, I must show up this pinchbeck Isabel; this dirty, disorderly floating prison, where no kind care alleviated one's miseries, and no suitable diet helped one's recovery.
Read more on Project Gutenberg

The public has in turn learned to expect the sudden start, the swift pace, the placarded climax, the clever paradox, the crisp repartee, the pinchbeck style, the bared realism, the concluding click.
Read more on Project Gutenberg

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TV Tuesday: Cancellations

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk

Cancellations are usually a sad affair. Sometimes shows even get a renewal before they get cancelled again. Which show's cancellation hit has hit you the most?

Current Mood: amused

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Monday Storytime- The Professionals

So er...I meant to post this yesterday as I want to post a funny story on these dull Mondays to cheer us up and lead up to Christmas. Better late than never!

Further instalments will be on Mondays. 7+1 chapters. The title is a quote from the episode Not a Very Civil Civil Servant.

Too Many Of You Fellas Are Bent

Fandom: The Professionals

Characters: Bodie, Doyle, Cowley, various other Professionals characters

Tags: rom-com; dorks in love; highly unprofessional behaviour; humour; fluff; banter; bad matchmaking; wrangling horny colleagues; farce.

Summary:
A CI5 rom-com.
When two of their CI5 colleagues catch feelings for each other, Bodie and Doyle decide to play matchmaker. Shenanigans ensue.

~~~

Chapter 1 – The Injury

A startling assignment.

***

“3-7 and 4-5!” shouted Cowley down the radio. “Go to the hinterland by the docks off Concord Street! 6-1 and 8-2 are holding off terrorists, about six of them. But one of ours is down, they need back up, now!”

“Yes, sir,” said Bodie, pressing the accelerator, tyres screeched and the car roared off, as Doyle grabbed the London A-Z to give him directions.

“So those call signs are Lucas and McCabe!” shouted Doyle as his partner flung the car around the corners.

“Right. Good blokes.” Bodie drove faster.

When they got there, Bodie hid the car behind a broken down shed, and the two agents ran, guns in hand, towards the sound of shooting. They made sure to dash between buildings and not make themselves vulnerable running across open wasteland.

As they peered into the warehouse, they could see McCabe high up on a walkway, firing down at the gang of criminals, four of whom were dotted around various vantage points, while two stood in the middle of the floor supervising. One shouted, “give up! We got your partner! Now we’ll get you!”

It looked like McCabe was sheltering someone behind him, must be Lucas.

Bodie and Doyle exchanged glances, indicated with sign language which way they’d go, then leapt through the door. Bodie took out the two gunmen on the right, Doyle the two on the left, while the two bosses ducked for cover, then ran out of another door, cursing loudly. A vehicle roared away, and Bodie shouted into his radio, giving details to CI5 of the two men escaping. He and Doyle had been instructed to save their fellow agents, they couldn’t chase the terrorists as well.

Doyle was already sprinting up the metal stairs, his shoes clanging like out of tune bells. As he got closer, he noticed Lucas had blood on his blond curls and face as he lay unconscious. McCabe had turned and was patting his partner’s cheek, whispering to him.

“Alright mate, where’s he hit?” asked Doyle.

( Read more... )

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Monday Word: Rambutan

rambutan [ram-boot-n]

noun

1. the bright-red oval fruit of a Malayan, sapindaceous tree, Nephelium lappaceum, covered with soft spines, or hairs, and having a subacid taste.

2. the tree itself.

examples
There was early success for the catchers on one street, with three of the macaques falling for the ruse and ending up trapped because they had fancied a taste of rambutan fruit. Seattle Times

The bargain buyers drifted out of a popular Little Saigon fruit shop with tote bags full of pale brown longan and hairy red rambutan, barely glancing at the dirt-smeared face of Duc Tran. Los Angeles Times

origin
1700–10; Malay, equivalent to rambut hair + -an nominalizing suffix

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New Community for Video Games Fans

Description:

videogamefanfiction is a space dedicated to fanfiction based on video games. Membership is open and all members can post.

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Children of Memory (Children of Time 3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The unmissable follow-up to the highly acclaimed Children of Time and Children of Ruin.

Earth is failing. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carry its precious human cargo to a potential new Eden. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost.

Then Liff, Holt’s granddaughter, hears whispers that the strangers in town aren’t from neighbouring farmland. That they possess unparalleled technology – and that they've arrived from another world. But not all questions are so easily answered, and their price may be the colony itself.

Set long after the second book, you now have humans, sentient arachnids, octopi, and the parasitic slime on the vessel, Skipper, on an expedition to find more of the lost ships that left earth millennia ago. What they find on the planet, Imir, defies all their expectations.

Dressed in human bodies, the symbiotic slime known as Miranda, the arachnids Portia and Fabian, Paul, the octopus, and two rather strange corvids, infiltrate what’s left of the humans who still survive. But the colony is dying. Their best bet seems to be Liff, who is somehow connected to what may be another life form.

The story moves around in time, so it took me awhile to understand what exactly was going on. Once I did, it became compulsive reading, as we, as well as the crew of the Skipper, learn who, or what, is controlling the colony. Its ending took me by surprise, yet it made perfect sense.

I eagerly look forward to the fourth book in the series, due for publication on March 12, 2026.

NOV – Tale, Final, Feast, Bloom, Cliff, Wide, Memory, Always

Children of Memory (Children of Time 3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
⁠

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Sunday Word: Captious

captious [kapshuhs]

noun:
1 apt to notice and make much of trivial faults or defects; faultfinding; difficult to please
2 proceeding from a faultfinding or caviling disposition
3 apt or designed to ensnare or perplex, especially in argument

adjective:

During the past 15 years Mr Maxwell has established himself as one of the few sui generis voices in experimental theater, and like all truly original talents, he has been subject to varied and captious interpretations. (Ben Brantley, Small-Town Americans, Street by Street to Eternity, The New York Times, October 2012)

Speaking for the poets, as if sizing up the discussion, was William Carlos Williams: 'Minds like beds always made up...' And for the philosophers, captious and ornery, was the great modern American logician Yogi Berra: 'The future ain’t what it used to be.' (Ian Crouch, An Evening of Examined Life, The New Yorker, February 2011)

But when the two reconvene, there is no talk of favors or captious admonishments, only the authentic joy of seeing a friend’s familiar face after so long. (Coleman Spilde, 'Black Doves' has all the delightful messiness of any true best friendship, Salon, December 2024)

I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. (Charles Dickens, Bleak House)

Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre)

(click to enlarge)

Origin:
'apt to notice and make much of unimportant faults or flaws,' c1400, capcyus, from Latin captiosus 'fallacious,' from captionem (nominative captio) 'a deceiving, fallacious argument,' literally 'a taking (in),' from captus, past participle of capere 'to take, catch' (from PIE root kap- 'to grasp'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Captious comes from Latin captio, which refers to a deception or verbal quibble. Arguments labeled captious are likely to 'capture' a person; they often entrap through subtly deceptive reasoning or trifling points. A captious individual is one who might also be dubbed 'hypercritical', the sort of carping, censorious critic only too ready to point out minor faults and raise objections on trivial grounds. (Merriam-Webster)

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Speak Up Saturday 🌞

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

The Friday Five for 7 November 2025

These questions were originally suggested by

newagebastard.

1. What’s harder to live without, chocolate or alcohol?

2. Does the colour yellow remind you of anything?

3. Who most annoyed you last week?

4. Do you have a cutesy romantic nickname for your partner (or previous partners)?

5. What is your favourite Stephen King movie?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

**Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.**

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reading,
writing

A query I put fruitlessly into the ravenous machines that once gave answers

Who was it who said something like -- in a way all books are games, whether they are actual gamebooks or not, because all readers engage with a novel (I feel like they said novel?) with some level of imaginary wiggle room, constantly envisioning alternatives?

Queer reading is one form of this, but any reading contains some aspect of this push-pull. I think this person said that this is in fact an inevitable part of reading a story, this alternate acceptance and refusal, this shimmering of possibility, such that (famously) you can read a story over and over again and still always hope at a particular point that a character will make a different decision?

(I may have asked this before, because it is an idea that intermittently preoccupies me.)

(Possibly several times, because it might be in my notes from 2023, but who can find those?)

(Now I feel paranoid that I never stop asking this question)

(Also I got double vaccinated today and I am a teeny bit feverish)

§rf§

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Ollie's Queens joins Dreamwidth

olliesqueens is a dreamwidth community dedicated to het & gen relationships of Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow, thus "Ollie's Queens". The community was imported from LiveJournal, it originally focused on the Smallville version of Oliver Queen het & gen relationships. Since lack of works posted to LJ for awhile and since Smallville had ended back 2011 (Smallville Season 11 ended in 2014) & Arrow ended in 2020, Ollie's Queens has since opened up to any universe Oliver Queen exists in, including comics, animation, films, and shows of course.

Doesn't matter if it's Canon ships or Unconventional pairings, or how rare the pairings are! If you write or want to rec something you love! PLEASE SHARE.

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werewolvesden >> for werewolves lovers

werewolvesden is a dreamwidth community dedicated to any fandom or media that related to werewolves or other wereanimals or shapeshifters (from folklores to latest show or film). Feel free to post your fanworks, recs, start discussions or feel free to pimp your fandom if you feel like you need to make more people aware of it.

This community was inspired by the lovely

vampiremedia ♥ I love vampires but I also love werewolves just as much and there's sooo many fandoms out there that just doesn't get the justice they deserve so I figured why not!