wolffyluna | Reading

since there's been some lively discussion about dewitt's the last samurai here on dreamwidth before: i found phil christman's post on dewitt's latest book very interesting, and that post links to all kinds of other very interesting bits and bobs—e.g., dewitt's reflections on david foster wallace's writing. posting here for those who may find such things interesting!

duckprintspress

A huge, HUGE thank you to everyone yesterday who helped spread the word about our campaign to fund publishing our next two anthologies: Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Stories and Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit Stories. With your help (and of course the awesome support of the people who decided to buy one or more of the books!) we’ve reached our base funding goal!

Our campaign will officially end, successfully, tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern time, but we’ll be open for late pledges for at least a couple weeks, so even if you miss the deadline, you won’t miss the books!

Check out our Kickstarter to get two anthologies with over 40 stories, and some fun merch too!

A banner with text that reads Ducks in a Row | Duxxx in a Row, Curated Collections of Queer Stories. Beside this are two mock-ups of books, their cover titles matching the text. Duxxx shows art of a line of people sunning themselves on the beach while reading, and Ducks shows a group of people cuddling in a pillowfort while one of them reads aloud. There's a "Projects We Love - Kickstarter" badge in the upper right corner. Black text has been added that says Final 24 Hours!

stardust_rifle

- "I am a centrist on the issue of X", where "X" is something utterly non-political that it would be insane to proclaim oneself as a centrist on. Ex: "I am a centrist on the issue of Naruto."

- "If you work hard and believe in yourself, then X", where "X" is something that absolutely can not be accomplished simply by working hard and believing in oneself. Ex: "Cis men can get pregnant if they work hard and believe in themselves."

stardust_rifle

god hates me. god hates my hubris. i am going to die and the cause of death will be typing "dir en grey" for the eight billionth time in my stupid gay little catalog .txt file that i made to go along with my stupid gay jrockyaoi archives. kill me. i make good decisions about what to do with my time because i am a sane and normal man.

stardust_rifle

visual prison would have been so good if it was good

muccamukk

Whoever wrote this has read a non-zero amount of The Comfortable Courtesan.

douqi posting in

baihe_media

There's a new (human) translation currently serialising, of crime thriller Miss Profiler (侧写师小姐, pinyin: cexieshi xiaojie) by Wu Man Qing Shan (雾漫青山). This came out in 2024 on JJWXC and has been something of a hit in mainland baihe circles. It features a romance between criminal profiler Liu Huisheng and police captain Zhao Yu. The sequel is currently serialising on JJWXC.

The translator is Berps and the main page for the translation is here. Berps has also translated some of the free-to-play material from the audio drama adaptation of the novel.

duckprintspress

A very ill-timed nasty spring cold has meant I’ve been able to do way less promotion on our now-running Kickstarter to fund Ducks in a Row and Duxxx in a Row, curated collections of stories from Duck Prints Press’s first 2 years. We’ve got 48 hours left in our campaign, and we’re only 80% to our $9,000 goal – about $1700 short.

And all you need to do to help is boost this post (or a shareable version on another platform where we have a presence)! Of course, if you’re interested in the books, I hope you’ll check out the campaign, but we are a small press that relies on word-of-mouth for advertising. More people simply seeing that this project exists is critical as we try to make our goal before we run out of time.

Ready to learn more about what it’s about? Visit our Kickstarter now or read on!

Since Duck Prints Press was founded in January 2021, we have published over 200 stand-alone short stories by dozens of authors, ranging in length from just over 1,000 words up to 9,999 words. Most of these short stories are available for purchase individually from our webstore or are only available to people who back our Patreon… until now! With Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Short Stories and Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit Stories, Duck Prints Press dips into our vault, anthologizing stories we published from 2021 to 2023 into all-new collections!

Whether you’ve looked at our short story offerings and weren’t sure where to start, or you’ve heard about Duck Prints Press and wanted a tasting selection of what we offer, or you’ve wanted all your favorites in one lovely volume, or you had no idea we existed until today and just heard “short stories by queer authors” and said “SIGN ME UP,” Ducks in a Row and Duxxx in a Row have a little something for most everyone, with stories in different genres, with different types of characters, and by many different authors!

What we’re offering:

Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Stories: includes 22 stories by 22 different authors, 236 pages long, in e-book (no DRM!) and trade paperback formats.
Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit: includes 19 stories by 19 different authors, 264 pages long, in e-book (still no DRM!) and trade paperback formats.
Art prints of the front covers: our gorgeous cover art is by Pallas Perilous, and we’ll be making it into 8 in x 10 in/20.3 cm x 25.4 cm matte art prints.
Bookmarks of the front covers: you can see how we cropped the front cover art to make two charming bookmarks, 2 in x 6 in/5 cm x 10.2 cm, below! The backs will feature the (digital) signatures of all the book contributors.
Red Bowtie Dux die-cut sticker: our adorable mascot, Dux, created by Alessa Riel, is red-feathered for this campaign sticker! You can learn more about Dux, our Press mascot, here.
Red Bowtie Dux enamel pin: our first-ever enamel pin of our mascot will feature iridescent metal – including as the bowtie! – and pearlescent red enamel feathers.
Our ENTIRE back catalog of print books (not the e-book only releases) are also being offered as campaign add-ons!
Many of our past merchandise, such as stickers, enamel pins, magnets, and key chains, can also be added on!

A graphic labeled Backer Level 6, which includes the covers of both Ducks in a Row and Duxxx in a Row, an artprint and bookmark cropped from each cover, and two slightly different images of a red duck wearing a bowtie.

Learn more about the contributors, the stories, the merch, the Press, the add-ons, the budget, the schedule, you name it, by visiting our campaign page!

thank you so much for the signal boosts, y'all.

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

tavina

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

voxtekmod posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

mekare posting in

c_ent

I've justed posted an extremely short review for this new Netflix show and thought I'd crosspost here.

TV

Since I’ve been travelling, I didn’t watch a lot. I did check out a new Taiwanese Netflix series though: Agent from Above. It’s about a Heavenly Agent (he's acting on behalf of the Third Heavenly Prince and gets missions via paper slips delivered by a bird) battling the forces of hell. Very entertaining, nicely shot and loveable characters. Strong found family tropes (humans and ghosts live together in an old “market” building.) The length was what actually made me check it out, it’s only 8 episodes long. I simply do not have the energy or time to invest in something long right now.
Someone on Tumblr compared its vibe to 2010s Canadian series and I can sort of understand what they mean.

Has anyone here watched it as well?

douqi posting in

baihe_media

Yu Huan (于欢) has a good reputation as an author who specialises in the decidedly niche subgenre of serious historical baihe novels, so I've been meaning to read something by her for some time. For a long time I was put off by the sheer length of most of her novels: her most popular titles are in the one million word plus range. Which is why I settled eventually on Calming the Wind and the Waves (定风波, pinyin: ding feng bo), which is a manageable 543K words. The title is a name of a popular tune to which ci poems were set.

The novel is set very specifically in the Tang Dynasty during the Wu Zetian's reign, starting just before she elevated herself to the throne. Our protagonist is Wang Jinyu, who comes from a respected literary (though not politically influential) family, and was raised as a boy by her parents for reasons I found deeply unconvincing (of which more below). As a child, she was playmates with Xiao Wanyin, daughter of a powerful and politically well-connected family. The plot fundamentally revolves around their long-running attempt to get married. There are many obstacles in the way, chief among them Wang Jinyu's relatively lower social status (her mother is her father's concubine, not his principal wife) and the Wang clan's lack of status at court. The situation is further complicated by the multiple proposals each of our leads receives from other quarters. Xiao Wanyin is pursued by sons of high-ranking nobles seeking an advantageous family connection, Wang Jinyu by young women who find her refreshingly and unconventionally courteous and gentle. Things come to a head when Wang Jinyu decides that the only way for her to achieve her aim of marrying Xiao Wanyin is to gain sufficiently high political office before Xiao Wanyin is married off to someone else. This is against the wishes of her parents, who're concerned about the whole 'the entire clan will be put to death if anyone, especially the emperor, ever discovers that you're a woman' thing.

I found this an incredibly frustrating read for a number of reasons.

( possible general spoilers )

( major ending spoiler )

This is one of those cross-dressing books where the protagonist's gender is very non-salient. Socially, politically and materially, very little of the story would have changed had Wang Jinyu been a boy instead.

I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC.

mere_mortifer posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: amused

precuretokumod posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: zts - lastendconductor

dancing_serpent posting in

c_ent

The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
or

extrapenguin posting in

videogamefanworks

space_swap has one PDPH remaining! The minimum is 1000 words for fic OR a complete artwork:

Phantasy Star, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Live a Live, and 2 non-video game fandoms

The deadline is ASAP/negotiable; ideally before 17:00 CEST (Paris) on Sunday.

For details and to claim, comment on the linked post above OR email extrapenguin@gmx.com OR message me on discord. Given the tight turn-around and the fact I can't reply to emails while sleeping, please don't feel like you need to wait for confirmation you got it.

duckprintspress

A blue graphic with an outline of the United States. Red and white text reads: CALL. National Book Banning Bill Proposed in US House of Reps. Tell your rep: Vote no on H.R. 7661. Because the government has no business dictating what books our kids read. Authors Against Book Bans – Freedom to Read, Freedom to Write

Whether you’re a parent, a child, or just a book-loving citizen, we all agree: the government has absolutely no right telling us what we and our children are permitted to read. HAVE YOU HEARD? HR 7661, a dangerous nationwide censorship bill that steals the freedom to read from kids and families and holds school funds hostage, is on the move through the US Congress. Pick up the phone, grab this script, and call your rep today!

stardust_rifle

research for the mamogya fanlore article is going down some dark places, a word which here means that m thought "good god if you're going to be cutting yourself for a bandman and @ -ing him the pics please at least pick one that makes good music" while collecting primary sources