james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


One determined man struggles to save humanity from the mutant scheme to avert doomsday.

Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak

đź’ż

Mar. 22nd, 2026 09:48 am
soemand: (Default)
[personal profile] soemand
Yesterday I found myself deep in a nostalgic little project: making album‑side cassettes. I pulled out a few classics—Ziggy Stardust and Amy Winehouse, for example—and set about fitting each onto a C‑60, with its strict 30‑minutes‑per‑side limit. That constraint forces choices. Ziggy Stardust runs about 38 minutes, so three tracks had to go. Surprisingly, trimming Star, It Ain’t Easy, and Hang On to Yourself made the album feel even tighter, the narrative more focused.

It reminded me of an old mixtape technique from back when you either hunted down obscure, perfectly timed Japanese blanks or learned to edit with intention. I’d done something similar with Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, whose cassette and LP versions never quite matched. By dropping a song or two, the album finally slipped neatly onto a 45‑minute C‑90 side—much like the official cassette and album did by shortening “Walk of Life” in contrast to the CD version.

There’s something oddly satisfying about reshaping albums within physical limits. The format imposes boundaries, and the music reveals what truly belongs. It’s a reminder that formats used to shape the music as much as the artists did, and revisiting that constraint can reveal surprising new versions of albums we thought we knew.

Disaster Otter

Mar. 22nd, 2026 11:18 am
[syndicated profile] daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

You can’t tell me this doesn’t have the same energy as this old meme - and more so when you know the mischief behind it! Via MTSOfan:

Piper was torn. As I squatted on the other side of the window, she wanted to interact with me. On the other hand, she'd had a quarrel with her roommate, Luani. She wanted to watch what he was doing.

weekend

Mar. 22nd, 2026 06:23 pm
tielan: Wonder Woman (WW - leap)
[personal profile] tielan
Weekend was crazy busy, and I ended up with a spoons crash on Sunday midafternoon. Ended up skipping church.

It was a really good weekend, though.

Mind you, it's now quarter to ten and I'm not yet in bed.

Going now.
queenslayerbee: blended image of a young blonde woman showing off a tattoo on her lower back, a young blonde woman laughing and dancing with her arms dressed, and decaying light pink roses. (dead girls (one over many))
[personal profile] queenslayerbee
This is a fic I wrote way back when for the Shadowhunters Rarepair Network Halloween Challenge.

Title: lonely lover's charm.
Fandom: Shadowhunters (TV show).
Character/Pairing: Magnus Bane/Maia Roberts.
Rating/Warnings: E. Sexual content.
Summary: Halloween Party at Pandemonium! Downwordlers only. Please don't come disguised as your own species. Nobody thinks it's cute.
Word count: 1.3k.

read more
-

Once, Maia noticed that when Magnus came into a room, everything else around him seemed to move slower in comparison. He had entered the Hunter’s Moon not twenty seconds ago, and he’d already talked to half a dozen people, all fluid movements and bedazzling smiles.

He approached the bar, and for once, instead of immediately ordering, he made a flyer appear out of thin air and handed it to her.

“Downwordler Halloween party at Pandemonium. You cannot miss it.”

“You came all the way down here to hand invitations?” she teased.

“Sadly, no.” He dramatically let his weigh fall on the bar, his metal belt chain tingling against it. “I need to talk business with your alpha. Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.”

“He’s in the back.”

“Thank you.” He stood up to leave, but he turned and pointed to the flyer. “Costumes are mandatory.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He sent her a quick smile and started walking towards the door. And without turning back he said: “By the way, I like the new hair. Really suits you.”

His voice carried, making some people raise their heads to look her way, curious. She touched her shorter hair, a bit self-consciously, and shook her head, amused.


The full moon was set to arrive just a few days after Halloween. Maia, still not completely used to her new self, wasn't sure she’d be up to go to the party until the almost literal last minute. In the end, she figured: what the hell, she deserved to have a good time for a change. Go a bit wild, get a bit drunk, get a lot laid, whatever. She felt pent up, like she needed to release some energy. So she threw on last year’s costume and set out to go to the pub.

She knew some of the other wolves would be in attendance, but when she arrived the place was so packed she couldn’t find them at first glance. The myriad of scents made her dizzy for a few seconds. She decided to go straight to the bar, down some quick shots and start to enjoy herself as quickly as possible.

That’s exactly what she did for the next hour. She eventually found the pack, danced with Gretel for a while. She drank, and danced, and talked with every Downwordler around; even a very grumpy, very elegant vampire, for just a few minutes.

On one of her trips to the bar she felt a tap on her shoulder, and when she turned back Magnus was there, as stylish as ever, with his cat-eyes on display and highlighted with make-up.

“A siren. Good choice.” He said, pointing at her costume. “Are you having a good time?”

“A great one.” She smiled up at him, feeling her head a little clouded after all those shots. “And you’re a pirate. Wait.” She paused, looking at the rope and (fake?) bruises around his neck. “A hung pirate.” She lowered her eyes to his arms. “Really hung.”

He threw his head back in a witchy cackle, resting his arm on the bar and getting closer to her. “You look gorgeous too. I would gladly let my ship sink for you.”

“I doubt it. You clearly haven’t heard me sing.”

“Nonsense,” he dismissed, ”I’m sure it’d be beautiful. Though probably,” he paused to look around, “this is not the best place, acoustically.”

And Maia was great at recognizing openings.

“And what would be a good place for me to sing to you? Acoustically.”

“My office.” He said directly, looking straight into her eyes, without a hint of coyness. She felt her heart speed, the slight tipsiness brought those shots slipping away, as the whole room seemed to come into focus.

“Lead the way.”


She followed him to a softly lit room, with an elegant couch that was definitely big enough for a fuck.

She couldn’t resist the impulse to draw him in by the rope, head first into an immediately heated kiss. She had almost forgotten how easy sex could be. And how good kissing felt like. She hadn’t even kissed anyone since— well, since that night.

They took each other’s clothes off with some minor complications; sex in costume: not her brightest idea. Magnus started kissing down her neck, leading her towards the couch until they were both sitting on it.

The room was completely isolated from the noise of the club, so the only things she could hear were the sounds of their breaths, their kisses, their bodies in movement. She didn’t know if it was the alcohol, or her new enhanced senses, but everything suddenly became a little too overwhelming.

Seeing where it was going, she pushed him away a little more brusquely than she would’ve wanted. He stopped immediately.

“I don’t like to be laying down.”

He nodded, understanding. “Then you’ll have to sit on my face, because I want to eat you out.”

She laughed at his deadpan tone, and just like that, the weird tension in the room dissipated. Magnus laid down then, caressing her legs as she did what she was told. The posture, wearing only her bra, made her feel a bit exposed, as it always had. But she talked herself out of it in a second; she wasn’t going to renounce to oral sex, after all.

“Tell me if I’m pressing to tight.”

The look he directed at her couldn’t have been more charged with skepticism. “I’ll be fine.”

“It’s just I’m not fully used to my new strength and—“

Turns out, oral sex is a great way to shut someone up.

The man clearly knew what he was doing; sex with an immortal: a damn bright idea. He pressed just right with his tongue on her clit, and she had to grab the backrest of the couch to maintain the equilibrium, pulling his hair a little too roughly with her other hand. He brought her to the orgasm ridiculously fast; as she stood up, she idly thought that she would have beard-burn the next day, but it was fucking worth it.

She gave him space to sit up and proceeded to undo his belt and pull down his pants, as a condom magically got out of the desk and traveled through the air. She opened and directly put it on him, lowering herself on his cock without any more fuss. She loved that part, the full control of the movement it gave her. Just as she felt she was getting over the edge, he rubbed her clit, and she bit hard on his shoulder to drown the sound that wanted to come of her throat.

She felt him spill into her, both breathing heavily. He put a hand on the back of her head and brought her down for one last, languid kiss. With one last nip at her lower lip he drew back, an easy smile on his face she couldn’t help but return.

As they separated, she prepared herself for the awkward post-coital moments. In her experience, the best way to avoid as much as possible was to just power through it, so that’s what she did. She started dressing, her hands still trembling slightly. As she tied her boots, Magnus handed her a glass of water. He was already fully dressed, with his make-up intact, as if nothing had happened. Neat trick.

“Thank you.”

They smiled at each other one last time, as she stood up to leave.

“Go, I’ll leave in another minute.”

That was probably more for her benefit, but she was grateful for it. She could think of very few people it would be less embarrassing to sleep with than Magnus Bane, but a girl liked her privacy. The other wolves would smell it all on her, but she'd seen they knew how to be discreet when it came to those matters, thankfully.

She closed the door quietly as she left the room, taking a deep breath before going back to the dance floor to look for Gretel and the rest of the pack, a smile still on her face.

She couldn't have come up with a better way to end her dry spell if she'd tried.

toothpastepancake: (anisha)
[personal profile] toothpastepancake
Sigh. I cannot catch a break!

The fun of running Sunset is slowly being siphoned out of me, and it's very sad because it was very much one of my few reasons for sticking around a few days ago. I don't want to go into it, and I'll get over this eventually, but the shit I've faced while running it just for trying to do a Fun  Hobby Community Project has been very overwhelming lately. It doesn't help that I have spring pattern seasonal depression And that this time of year is a trauma anniversary so I'm pretty much constantly on edge already.

I'm really feeling the loneliness lately, y'all. I don't know. I left exchanges and decided to stop doing them because I just don't fit in or mesh there, I guess. And I used to be so excited about exchanges, but I can't seem to make it work. I find that in general, my autism and intellectual functioning issues get in the way of me living a fulfilling life in almost every way. I love being around people and doing things for others to make them happy... that is all I have ever wanted to do. I don't know how to tell people "please be patient with me I'm intellectually disabled" without sounding like... oh poor me pity me or making people see me as lesser. But the truth is I just do not function the same way as other people in these spaces do - even other neurodivergent people - because of that disability and it is turning out to be an insurmountable barrier.

I don't like to talk about being intellectually disabled. It's not something I try to think about and having such a low IQ is notsomething I really was aware of until rediscovering old paperwork a bit ago. I have a lot of internalized ableism around it and I don't really have anyone to talk to about it because I bring it up in therapy and am told to not put myself down even though it's... just a fact? So it's just sort of a specter that hangs over me at all times, constantly mocking me in ways only I can see and hear. It's like plastic wrap around my head, suffocating me slowly and keeping me isolated from the rest of the world because all I can do is focus on the simple mechanics of maintaining breath. I don't know where I'm going with this metaphor. The point: it sucks, and it hurts, and I feel like an alien plucked out of its home universe and forced into a different, cruel world! I feel like the thing that doesn't get bought at the yard sale so you leave it out on the curb for free and then it doesn't even get picked up by trash collection. I feel like a seedless peach pit, just hard and useless. You know? I would never judge anyone else for this but I have a lot of internalized ableism I'm going to have to work through all by myself and it's hard.

Anyway, I'm never going to stop searching for that one place I fit in but man. It's going to be a long journey I think. 

I'm just sort of hanging in there. The month is almost over and I haven't even reached my writing goal for it. I'm going to try and get some writing done soon. I did write one fill for Rare Kink Buffet and I wrote 300 or so words on my original novella and I am now 3/10 on 10trueloves! So that's pretty fun. I'm trying to focus on getting through my many hoarded prompt lists/cards/tables/challenges. In 2025 I wrote for others and in 2026 I think I write for me.

I hope you are all well.


Soundbite

Miscellaneous. Eclectic. Random. Perhaps markedly literate, or at least suffering from the compulsion to read any text that presents itself, including cereal boxes.

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