citruzy

I first really became conscious of Shimada Haruka whilst Oba Mina was in disgrace. A member of the ninth generation alongside her former classmate, Nakamura Mariko, Mori Anna, Yamauchi Suzuran, Yokoyama Yui, and, of course, Oba herself, Haruu was brought in as temporary captain of Team 4 during 2nd September 2011 through to 4th January 2012 when Oba finally made her triumphant return. This wasn't her only brush with leadership either, as in 2015, she was appointed as co-captain alongside Kitahara Rie as she was moved to Team K, a position she held for several years until it was done away with in 2017 and she announced her graduation. Haruu was always a smart girl, having no catchphrase, just a simple "I'm Team K's Shimada Haruka," and having some prior experience of shepherding wayward members in her school's tennis club. It's no surprise then that she went on to become the CEO of clerical and IT related company DCT.inc, based in Shibuya-ku... wait, looking at this, maybe I should try and get a job here?

Haruu joined AKB in 2009 as a kenkyuusei member and several months later debuted in the theatre during a revival of Team B's fourth stage, Idol no Yoake, during which she performed Itoshiki Natasha, a song that also featured on Sashihara Rino's debut single, Soredemo Suki da yo. As with Kato Rena, the only A side she appeared on was Manatsu no Sounds good!, yet that didn't stop Haruu from fast becoming popular with fans even if she wasn't able to rank in the successive general elections that followed. In 2010, however, she was moved to Team Unknown, and from that moment, the irrepressible Team 4 was born.

In 2012, having returned captaincy of her team back to Oba, she was moved to Yokoyama Team K during the fateful Tokyo Dome Team Shuffle, and from here she built her career as a Team K stalwart, appearing frequently on B sides during the years before she announced her graduation during a 2017 SHOWROOM stream. Having taken a break from the entertainment industry, Haruu has gone from strength to strength, with the establishment of DCT.inc, her marriage in 2023, and the birth of her first child in May 2024.

Since last year, I thought briefly of maybe staying in Atami for a longer period of time than just a daytrip. When I discovered that Haruu was the owner of a guesthouse in Atami, I thought very briefly about what it would be like to stay there, but I really don't have the courage for guesthouses, let alone guesthouses run by former Team 4 captains, I'd absolutely make a fool of myself.

Yet still, maybe one day...

Haruu!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Cranes - Adoration

girlrock

said i would make this post a few days ago! i have more non-jc plushies too but again this is already enough... as of this post i have 25 plushies + 2 keychains (i forgot to add the cherry charm but it's on my snoopy bag).

( Read more... )

skygiants

For the first few chapters that I read, I was enjoying Ava Morgyn's The Bane Witch, as heroine Piers Corbin heroically Gone Girled herself out of an abusive marriage by faking a combo poisoning-drowning and flailed her injured way north to seek refuge with a mysterious aunt, accidentally leaving a fairly significant trail behind her. Satisfying! Suspenseful! I was looking forward to seeing how she was gonna get out of this one!

Then Piers did indeed get north to the aunt and tap into her Family Birthright of Magical Revenge Poisoning. As the actual plot geared up, the more I understood what type of good time I was being expected to have, and, alas, the more it did, the less of a good time I was having.

So the way the family magic works is that all of the Corbin women have the magical ability -- nay, compulsion! -- to eat poison ingredients and convert them internally into a toxin that they can -- nay, must! -- use to murder Bad Men. It's always Men. They're always Bad. They know the men are Bad because they are also granted magical visions explaining how Bad they are. They absolutely never kill women (there are only ever women born in this family; they have to give male babies away at birth in case they accidentally kill them with their poison, and I don't think Ava Morgyn has ever heard of a trans person) or the innocent!

...except of course that the whole family is actually threatening to kill Piers, to protect themselves, if she doesn't accept her powers and start heroically murdering Bad Men. But OTHER THAN THAT they absolutely never kill women, or the innocent, so please have no qualms on that account! Piers' aunt explains: "Yes, Piers. Whatever has happened to you, you must never forget that there are predators and there are prey. We hunt the former, not the latter."

By the way, both irredeemably Bad Men that form the focus of Badness in this book -- Piers' evil and abusive husband, and the local serial killer who is also incidentally on the loose -- are shown to have been abused in childhood by irredeemably Bad Women, but we're not getting into that. There are Predators and there are Prey!

The book wants to make sure we understand that it's very important, righteous and ethical for the Cobin family to keep doing what they're doing because everybody knows nobody believes abused women and therefore vigilante justice is the only form of justice available. There are two cops in the book, by the way. One of them is the nice and ethical local sheriff who is Piers' love interest, who is allowing her to help him hunt the local serial killer despite being suspicious that she may have poisoned several people. The other is the nice and ethical local cop investigating her supposed murder back home, who is desperate to prove she's alive because she saved his life and he's very grateful. He understands about abuse, because his name is Reyes and he's from the Big City and his mother and sister were both abused by Bad Men. The problem with these good and handsome cops is that they're actually not willing enough to murder people, which is where Piers comes in:

HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: You don't want to help me arrest him, do you? You want to kill him.
PIERS: Doesn't he deserve it?
HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: That's not for us to decide.
PIERS: Isn't it? This is our community. You're an authority in maintaining law and order, and I'm a victim of domestic and sexual violence. Surely, there is no one more qualified than us.

This book was a USA Today bestseller, which does not surprise me. It taps into exactly the part of the cultural hindbrain that loves true crime, and serial killers, and violence that you can feel good about, in an uncomplicated way, because it's being meted out to Unquestionably Bad People. Justice is when bad people suffer and die. We're not too worried about how they turned out to be bad people. There are predators, and there are prey.

michaelboy

According to Miss Stephanie Crawford... Atticus was leaving the post office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on him, and threatened to kill him. Miss Stephanie said Atticus didn’t bat an eye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and stood there and let Mr. Ewell call him names wild horses could not bring her to repeat. Too proud to fight?’ inquired Mr. Ewell. Miss Stephanie said Atticus said, “No, too old,” put his hands in pockets and strolled on. Miss Stephanie said you had to hand it to Atticus Finch, he could be right dry sometimes.” Later when explaining his actions to his son Jem, Atticus says, “Jem, see if you stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some sort of comeback. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved his daughter one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. You understand?”

From: To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960

While not universally so, as there are times when a fight is completely appropriate and justified, that a more carefully measured response to aggression sometimes brings a more effective and desirable result.

The hard part for me, is figuring out, given any circumstance, which approach will be felicitous and which will not. When I was very young, I hoped to be much wiser than I am now -- especially at my age. However, finding the right answers may be more of a stochastic process and according to principles of the random walk theory, I should eventually run into them. So there's that.

regshoe

I had high hopes of this book because it is a favourite of boy's boarding school story expert

phantomtomato, and it did not disappoint. It's an excellent entry in the genre of Tom Brown's School Days, The Hill and Fathers of Men, and a new favourite of mine. However...

( Your cheatin' heart will tell on you )

Well, it's been a while since a book has inspired me to write that much! I am pleased. :)

dolorosa_12

A busy work week like the one I described previously requires a quiet weekend, so that is exactly what happened. Gym, swimming, market shopping, and a loop around the river, market, and high street today with Matthias (we bought hot drinks from the coffee rig and browsed in the bookshop without buying anything), and otherwise no other excursions out of the house. I tried making these brown butter miso chocolate chip cookies as recommended by

rekishi, and they were very delicious indeed! I've just taken more pine and red berry branches from the disassembled Christmas wreath, and they'll go on the fire in the wood-burning stove tonight.

Two nice things happened on Dreamwidth yesterday:

fandomtrees reveals went live, and

threesentenceficathon is open for prompts and fills for 2026. I wrote one Six of Crows Kaz/Inej ficlet and made a couple of recipe recommendations for the former (and got given so many soup recipes in response to my own request — I can't wait to try them out), and in general had an enjoyable time. I haven't had a chance to plunge into the latter so far, but I always enjoy it when I do. The first post of prompts is here — I think it's a great, low-pressure way to rekindle the creative spark, and the atmosphere is always so friendly.

I've read three books, and one serialised short story this week. All but one of these (the third in a really silly romantasy series that I'm grimly carrying on with for completionist reasons; it involves human women falling in love with the personified gods of the North, South, East and West winds, and is really not good) were excellent.

The other two books were The Left-Handed Booksellers of London (Garth Nix), and The Stolen Heart (Andrey Kurkov, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk). Booksellers is Nix's first foray into novel-length fiction for adults, and is set in alternative version of 1980s Britain in which the titular booksellers have a secret life acting as a sort of supernatural security service. Back when I was a book reviewer, I interviewed Nix in his Sydney office, which was packed to the rafters with all the books he used as inspiration — encyclopedias and folklore dictionaries, fiction of all genres, popular history, anthologies of folktales and mythology, etc — and I could see the varied, myriad works of this personal reference library put to good use in this novel, which is heaving with references and allusions from all sources. There's Arthuriana, British children's fantasy (such as Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones), Terry Pratchett, Romantic poetry, local folklore, weird bits of London history, Cold War-era spy novels, and so on. It's the sort of book that will appeal to people who enjoy playing spot-the-reference to all the ingredients of this genre salad, and Nix clearly had the time of his life writing it.

The Stolen Heart is the second in Kurkov's series of historical mystery novels in which his hapless protagonist Samson (who fell by accident into a job working for the Soviet police force in 1919 Kyiv) tries to solve another bizarre mystery while struggling to survive the chaos around him. As with the previous book in the series, The Stolen Heart is written with a careful balance of humour and empathy, conveying both the terror and the absurdity of living in a place and time of violent, destabilising transition. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm confident that I'll enjoy its conclusion.

Finally, I read 'The Road Less Taken', a serialised short story by Amal El-Mohtar. The link goes to the final chapter of the story, with links to the previous six chapters gathered at the top of the page, so if you are interested in reading it, ensure you start at the beginning. The story interweaves a relationship breakup with the recent jewellery theft from the Louvre and the folktale of Thomas the Rhymer in a manner so clever that you will feel by the end that these three things are, of course, connected in reality! It's an Amal El-Mohtar story, so all her trademarks — the power of music and of female friendships, and food and cooking as a way to show love and care — are of course front and centre.

The most recent

snowflake_challenge prompt is all about tropes: Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

Snowflake Challenge: A pair of ice skates hanging on a wood paneled wall. Pine boughs with a few ornaments are stuffed into the skates.

( Fictional cities, and more )

In the time it's taken for me to write this post, the light has left the sky, although it's still silvery blue at 4.30pm, as opposed to total darkness. The Earth moves on its slow tilt back towards the Sun.

china_shop

Life Update

Andrew was discharged today and is currently napping on the couch. \o/!! That was his shortest hospital stay yet.
I have done something terrible to the back of my left knee, argh. At least I don't have to bike on it anymore.

Books & TV Update

On the second Penric & his Demon audiobook by Bujold. I'm not following it super-closely, but it's a pleasant enough tale to accompany me through chores and so on. :-)
Started Kdrama Can This Love Be Translated?, and I like it a lot so far. Kim Sun-ho has come so far from his geeky supporting-cast character in Good Manager (AKA Chief Kim). (Do I want to rewatch Strongest Deliveryman? IIRC, it was a bit weak, but otoh, it had enemy-to-hyung slash potential...)
Looking forward to watching The Pitt s02e02 tonight.

Fandom/Making Stuff

Inbox and tabs are out of control. I've started ruthlessly closing tabs.
I didn't manage to finish any gifts before fandomtrees reveals. The last three days, I've been shuttling back and forth to the hospital for epic Scrabble bouts. I have two fics back from beta that I still hope to finish and post as late treats (both need rewrites), but I haven't had the brain to word. I spent a lot of my spare moments over the last 24 hours icing my knee and trying to draw an art gift, with no success. (Why are faces?? ;-p) So my plan is to finish the fics, and then go back and finish the things I started for Yuletide. And then go back even further and finish the thing I started for guardian_wishlist. ;-p Also, to continue on with *Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain* in the hopes it will make me better at faces.

fandomtrees gifts, yayayay!! I received five deliciously wonderful gifts for fandomtrees!! FIVE!!

Desperately Seeking Susan - delightful post-canon drabble sequence Pillars of Their Community by sanguinity :D
Guardian by Priest (novel) - beautiful little Shen San/Wei & Daqing interlude by facethestrange
Good Manager - hilarious podfic of my Kim Sungryong/Seo Yul crackfic, The Yul3000, ahhh! I've listened to this three times through already.
Good Manager - flirty/sexy kisses drabble sequence by maggie33 <3 <3 <3
Bluey! - adorable timeline-refreshing Bingo fanart by lomelinde_laurea. <3 <3 <3

ETA: What is even the point of Markdown if you can't nest formatting inside lists? ;-p

dolorosa_12

Russia's tactic of targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure is not new, but it has been particularly brutal this winter, with the combination of four years of relentless attacks on civilian infrastructure, the near cessation of US military aid (in particular air and missile defence) and an incredibly cold winter proving particularly devastating. Here in the safety and comfort of the UK, I spent most of yesterday reading increasingly panicked internal mailing list items at work as the main university library was closed for a single day (in 10ish-degree temperatures) due to a lack of water and heating. Meanwhile, Kyiv has experienced weeks of sub-zero temperatures, and most of its residents have no (or limited) electricity, heating, or water in their homes: a situation that has become a severe crisis.

Anastasiia Lapatina is a journalist and young mother in Kyiv, and she describes the situation in a recent Substack newsletter with devastating clarity. Kyiv's brave and resilient people carry on — businesses adapt and stay open, the government implements crisis planning, ordinary people find whatever workarounds they can to stay warm and fed — because they have no other option.

While we cannot stop Russia from continuing to perpetuate this cruelty, there are, as usual, concrete things that we can do in response. If you live in a country whose elected politicians are meant to represent and be responsive to the interests of their constituents, contact them about this situation, and ask what they (whether in government or opposition) are intending to do in response to it.

Investigate Ukrainian advocacy groups in your country or region. In the UK, I've been to protests, vigils and other advocacy events organised by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, and being signed up for their newsletter (or following their or equivalent groups' social media accounts) is a good way to stay informed about upcoming ways you can show your support (or protest your government's actions or inaction) in person.

If you are financially able, the Anastasiia Lapatina newsletter item linked above includes a fundraiser that she and some American colleagues are running to buy large (expensive) batteries for struggling residents of Kyiv. This will, at least, allow them to power some appliances, including portable heaters, for a few hours a day. They have already bought two batteries for two families. I have donated to this fundraiser and trust these individuals to be responsible with the money they collect.

I had expected that United24, the Ukrainian government fundraising platform, would have had a targeted campaign to gather funds to support residents struggling without heat and water, but I can't see anything specific on their website as of 17 January. I do know that the government organises 'invincibility points' (sites in cities and large towns where residents can go to warm up, get hot drinks, and power mobile phones and other devices), so I would assume a donation to their 'Rebuilding' or 'Medical' strands may help in that direction.

This current state of affairs is chilling in a literal and psychological sense.

Please feel welcome to share this post.

sonofgodzilla

Title: Care in the Community
Universe: AKB48, SKE48
Character(s): Matsumura Kaori, Sashihara Rino, Watanabe Mayu
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Had those years really been the best years of her life? Surely the happiness she had now, the feel of her daughter’s hand in hers, was more important to her than standing on that stage? And yet part of her ached for it, part of her felt lonely without it. All of a sudden, she begun to understand why Sasshi had brought Mayuyu with her.
Length: 875 words
Author's Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATSUMURA KAORI!! 🎉💖🍰🎊🎂 AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #118: Matsumura Kaori | Written for prompt "quite literally hamstrung by constantly wearing heels" for bleak idol bingo. also: external link.

chooseher!

( Care in the Community )

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Xasthur - Murdered Echoes of the Mind

dolorosa_12

I am absolutely flattened by work this week, and next week promises to be more of the same. It's the point in the academic year when all the Master's and PhD students have to hand in literature reviews and project proposals, and all of them suddenly panic and realise that the classes I taught them (carefully timetabled to coincide with the point at which they were meant to start work on their literature reviews and project proposals) actually contained crucial, useful information and they probably should have been paying more attention and doing the suggested follow-up activities while what I taught them was fresh in their minds. Because they haven't done this, they all, of course, contact me at once, now. It's good to be needed — I wouldn't have a job, otherwise — but I wish they didn't all need me so much and all at the same time.

Anyway, let's use another

snowflake_challenge prompt for the Friday open thread: Talk about your creative process.

I know a lot of you have already answered this in your own journals, so feel free to link to your posts in the comments rather than writing things out again. Or, answer in the comments if this is a brand new topic for you!

( My answer )

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

What about you?

china_shop

1. I am ridiculous and not even managing to keep up with Dreamwidth.

2. Just listened to Bujold's Penric's Demon in audio. Aww!

3. Watching Younger on Netflix, and wow, nothing dates an American show like all of the regular cast members being white. In New York. (Other than that, it's light fun and about what I'm in the mood for. Kind of like an Amy Sherman-Palladino show with less wealth porn.) Also started season 2 of The Pitt, despite intending to rewatch season 1 first.

4. (Burying the lede.) Andrew's surgery went well! We played two games of Scrabble this morning. I'm spending most of my time at the hospital.[a] Halle is confused by his absence and seeking an injunction.

[a] I've spent so long in North American fandoms that I've forgotten when we put "the" in front of "hospital", but I'm pretty sure this is one of those times, it being a specific hospital.

michaelboy

It probably doesn't make much sense, but I prefer eating pistachios by cracking them out of the shell.
I know, I could buy them pre-shelled and simply stuff them in my mouth but, for some reason, I prefer to slowly work at each one separately.

dolorosa_12

I'm so far behind on this, so let's attempt to catch up somewhat.

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Challenge 6 is Top 10 Challenge — a list of top ten anything. I was going to do something music-related, but a better idea popped into my head this morning:

( Top 10 things to do with tomatoes )

Challenge 7 is LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

( List of three things behind the cut )

skygiants

On the first weekend of January

genarti and I went along with some friends to the Moby-Dick marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which was such an unexpectedly fun experience that we're already talking about maybe doing it again next year.

The way the marathon works is that people sign up in advance to read three-minute sections of the book and the whole thing keeps rolling along for about twenty-five hours, give or take. You don't know in advance what the section will be, because it depends how fast the people before you have been reading, so good luck to you if it contains a lot of highly specific terminology - you take what you get and you go until one of the organizers says 'thank you!' and then it's the next person's turn. If it seems like they're getting through the book too fast they'll sub in a foreign language reader to do a chapter in German or Spanish. We did not get in on the thing fast enough to be proper readers but we all signed up to be substitute readers, which is someone who can be called on if the proper reader misses their timing and isn't there for their section, and I got very fortunate on the timing and was in fact subbed in to read the forging of Ahab's harpoon! (

genarti ALMOST got even luckier and was right on the verge of getting to read the Rachel, but then the proper reader turned up at the last moment and she missed it by a hair.)

There are also a few special readings. Father Mapple's sermon is read out in the New Bedford church that has since been outfitted with a ship-pulpit to match the book's description (with everyone given a song-sheet to join in chorus on "The Ribs and Terrors Of the Whale") and the closing reader was a professional actor who, we learned afterwards, had just fallen in love with Moby-Dick this past year and emailed the festival with great enthusiasm to participate. The opening chapters are read out in the room where the Whaling Museum has a half-size whaling ship, and you can hang out and listen on the ship, and I do kind of wish they'd done the whole thing there but I suppose I understand why they want to give people 'actual chairs' in which to 'sit normally'.

Some people do stay for the whole 25 hours; there's food for purchase in the museum (plus a free chowder at night and free pastries in the morning While Supplies Last) and the marathon is being broadcast throughout the whole place, so you really could just stay in the museum the entire time without leaving if you wanted. We were not so stalwart; we wanted good food and sleep not on the floor of a museum, and got both. The marathon is broken up into four-hour watches, and you get a little passport and a stamp for every one of the four-hour watches you're there for, so we told ourselves we would stay until just past midnight to get the 12-4 AM stamp and then sneak back before 8 AM to get the 4-8 AM stamp before the watch ticked over. When midnight came around I was very much falling asleep in my seat, and got ready to nudge everyone to leave, but then we all realized that the next chapter was ISHMAEL DESCRIBES BAD WHALE ART and we couldn't leave until he had in fact described all the bad whale art!

I'm not even the world's biggest Moby-Dick-head; I like the book but I've only actually read it the once. I had my knitting (I got a GREAT deal done on my knitting), and I loved getting to read a section, and I enjoyed all the different amateur readers, some rather bad and some very good. But what I enjoyed most of all was the experience of being surrounded by a thousand other people, each with their own obviously well-loved copy of Moby-Dick, each a different edition of Moby-Dick -- I've certainly never seen so many editions of Moby-Dick in one place -- rapturously following along. (In top-tier outfits, too. Forget Harajuku; if you want street fashion, the Moby-Dick marathon is the place to be. So many hand-knit Moby Dick-themed woolen garments!) It's a kind of communal high, like a convention or a concert -- and I like concerts, but my heart is with books, and it's hard to get of communal high off a book. Inherently a sort of solitary experience. But the Moby-Dick marathon managed it, and there is something really very spectacular in that.

Anyway, as much as we all like Moby-Dick, at some point on the road trip trip, we started talking about what book we personally would want to marathon read with Three Thousand People in a Relevant Location if we had the authority to command such a thing, and I'm pitching the question outward. My own choice was White's Once And Future King read in a ruined castle -- I suspect would not have the pull of Moby-Dick in these days but you never know!

sonofgodzilla

Kato Rena, alongside Abe Maria, Iriyama Anna, Izuta Rina, Nakamata Shiori, Fujita Nana, and several others, were announced as AKB48's tenth generation in March 2010. Together they passed the selection exam several months later, and although they made their debut, this new generation of kenkyuusei flew mostly under the radar until the 2012 Saitama Super Arena concert in 2012 and Rena joined Maria, Shiori, Anna, and our fresh lemon, Ichikawa Miori, all of whom had been promoted a year earlier to the ranks of Oba Mina's Team 4.

Renacchi!

Manatsu no Sounds good! came out in May 2012. The original MV is still unavailable on youtube as it was kind of bleak, something that surprised me for a summer single. At the time, I was really enthusiastic as we'd just got the very heartfelt GIVE ME FIVE! in the same year, but I was a little embarrassed by this single being a summer bikini single. The video doesn't shy away from its focus, and I find it uncomfortable seeing the members on the beach in white bikinis before the dancing starts. At the same time, this discomfort is what I really like about AKB. It's easy to dismiss AKB as the mainstream, certainly they were absolutely the mainstream in 2012, but this sense of antagonism and subversion runs through the images for these releases, and Manatsu no Sounds good! is no exception in either of its forms. Although Renacchi was one of the last of her generation to be promoted into Team 4, someone in management clearly had an eye on her as she was immediately drafted for the media senbatsu amongst the big names and alongside Iriyama Anna, whilst other members of Team 4 were left to make up the numbers. It feels wild to talk about being in the senbatsu in such a way but that's where we were in 2012.

During her eleven years, almost twelve years in AKB, Renacchi had a good run in the senbatsu, appearing on fourteen singles, some of which—Labrador Retriever, Kibouteki Refrain—were really big songs for the group, some of which—Tsubasa wa Iranai, 11gatsu no Anklet—she was also in the media senbatsu for. On the B sides of these singles, Renacchi also appeared frequently, and whilst she never had a solo centre position, she did appear on Kaisoku to Doutai Shiryoku with Suda Akari as part of a Wcentre and had no less than three joint centres with Kizaki Yuria.

In late 2012, she was moved to Team B, but returned to Team 4 in 2014, now brought back under the captainship of Minegishi Minami, and then between 2017 and her graduation in 2022, went back to Team B, then to Team A, then to Team B again. Last year, several years after leaving, she announced her marriage.

Renacchi was always one of the hardest workers in AKB during her years in the group, continually going back and forth between the senbatsu and the Undergirls, she was one of those girls who was popular enough to be recognisable in the lineup of each single, but was also someone you could meet properly as the Kami 7 became ever more distant and then eventually began to graduate. Coming off the 20th anniversary celebrations, it is easy to be blinded by nostalgia for what we remember AKB to have been, but it was members like Renacchi who got us through to where we are now, we helped us reach a place where we can comfortably celebrate that anniversary.

Kato Rena made her mark in AKB48. The ninth and tenth generations gave us Team 4, and though we did not appreciate it at the time, they very much bridged the Homeric golden age of AKB antiquity with the modern day. Renacchi might not be the first name you think of when you recall AKB48 in 2012, but I have no doubt that it is her you will remember when you think back on those PVs and see past the Kami 7, and for this, for working so hard for the group, we owe her a debt of thanks.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Circle II Circle - Heal You

china_shop

After the Waiting (10,195 words, Guardian, outsider POV on the SID & on Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan's new relationship, post-canon)

The Best Thing for Everyone (8,726 words, Time of Fever/Unintentional Love Story, Go Hotae/Kim Donghee, bridging the gap between the two canons, angsty ending with hope for the future)

Breakage and Repair (5,247 words, Guardian, Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, post-canon, angst --> get-together)

( My 2025 fanworks and modding )

( The Meme (for 2025) )

michaelboy

In Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables... Jean Valjean steals the silver spoons and forks from Monseigneur Bienvenu - even after being shown a great hand of kindness. The gendarmes return Valjean promptly where, without reproachment, the bishop insists he had given Valjean the silver and furthers to mention that Valjean has forgotten the very valuable silver candlesticks. It is then, in a moment, that a new path begins to open for the man....

”No one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself. In order to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think of the most violent of things in the presence of the most gentle.

Even on his visage it would have been impossible to distinguish anything with certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and that was all. But what was his thought?
It would have been impossible to divine it. What was evident was, that he was touched and astounded. But what was the nature of this emotion?”

Ultimately this terrible rapscallion becomes a person of great character....all for a few candlesticks - or rather, for the gesture to which they are a symbol. (okay, just like a grade school book report - You’ll have to read the book to find out how it ends) I will say though, It amazes me how such small acts of kindness, understanding and generosity often have the power to affect a person’s life in very positive and substantial ways. Especially when they may seem undeserved.

* * *

For those who showed me kindness for all the times when even "I was a girl"...

Watch on YouTube

dolorosa_12

I've had this post written and locked for over 2.5 hours, hoping that the next

snowflake_challenge prompt would be posted so that I could add it here and then unlock things, but it's getting to the point in the day when I close all screens and step away from the internet, the next prompt is still not posted, so I'm going to unlock things now and update ... who knows when?

We were promised apocalyptic storms and snow all weekend, but apart from a bit of sleet on the ground yesterday, and now some wind that keeps blowing our green bin out of the front garden and onto the footpath, the dire warnings were not necessary in this part of the world. Nevertheless, it was a weekend for hunkering down at home, although I was out at the sports centre for my classes yesterday and my swim this morning (nearly slipping over on the ice as I walked there both days), and Matthias and I did a quick run into town to return a bunch of library books this morning. The heating has been on almost constantly all week, and I supplemented it last night with a fire in the wood-burning stove. I added branches from the Christmas wreath, and the whole living room smelt of pine sap.

The combination of global politics and some difficult stuff with my family back in Australia have rendered me incapable of getting to sleep without watching dialogue-free cottagecore videos of Youtubers gardening, cooking and cleaning their cosy houses, but between that, and deliberately selecting yoga classes which feature kittens (my yoga teacher fosters cats, and tends to foster mother cats with new kittens when she does so), and ruthless avoidance of social media and news websites, I'm doing about as well as I can to manage the situation.

Last night Matthias and I picked the Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein adaptation for our Saturday movie night. It's been over twenty years since I read Shelley's novel, but as far as I could remember, this was a pretty straight adaptation — some characters fleshed out and some details added, but in essence faithful to the ideas of the source material, unsubtle biblical and birth and death metaphors and Victoriana included. This was a real labour of love for del Toro, and he and the cast clearly had a fantastic time bringing the story to life.

This week's reading was two novels, and a couple of SFF short stories, one of which I found bafflingly unsatisfying (the characters' choices and motivations seemed to boil down to 'I love you so I'm going to order my underlings to stop torturing you' and 'I love you so I'm going to forgive the fact that your underlings tortured me and we are on opposites sides in a cosmic battle, and clearly your side is in the right'), the other of which I found hauntingly folkloric and charming.

The first of the novels was The Lantern Bearers, as I continue to make my way through Rosemary Sutcliff's works for the first time. This one is set at the moment in which the last Roman legions are withdrawn from Britain; our point-of-view character is a legionary who opts to desert rather than forsake his family and their farm in Britain, and then barely survives defending said family and farm against Saxon raiders, in an attack in which his father and most of their employees (their farm does not use slave labour) are killed, the farm is destroyed, and his sister is carried off by the raiders and later goes on to marry one of them and bear his child (with, it is assumed, not much choice in the matter). Aquila — the protagonist — is left embittered and broken, unmoored in the aftermath, drifting into the orbit of the remnants of the Romano-British order, pushed out into what is now Wales, struggling to hold back the tide. Here we are treated both to a retelling of some Welsh Arthuriana, and also a very painful personal story of the limits of revenge as a motivating factor, and how to survive and carve out a life when you are hollowed out by grief and loss. I liked it a lot, but found in this book that Sutcliff's appparent absolute lack of interest in the interior lives of women almost tipped over at times into actual misogyny, which I had to essentially push aside and ignore in order to enjoy and appreciate the story she was interested in telling.

Also, sentiments like:

'I sometimes think we stand at sunset. It may be that the night will close over us in the end, but I believe that morning will come again. Morning always grows again out of the darkness, though maybe not for the people who saw the sun go down. We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind.'

are almost painfully relevant but also excruciatingly optimistic, given the state of the world. Ooof.

Finally, I picked up The Silver Bone (Andrey Kurkov, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk), the first in a series of historical mystery novels set in post-First World War Kyiv. This one takes place in 1919, at a point when the city kept changing hands between White Russian, Red Army, and Ukrainian nationalist control, and Kyiv residents are just trying to keep their heads down and survive. Kurkov strikes a great balance between conveying both the terror (the novel begins with the protagonist's father's death before his eyes at the hands of a bayonet-wielding Cossack, an attack which he survives but costs him his ear), and the absurdity (all these different armies keep issuing different documentation and currency and the population struggles to know what to use, in the end settling on bartering things like fuel, salt and sugar, which at least remain useful no matter who is in charge). Via a convoluted series of almost comedic events, Samson (the protagonist) falls into a job working with the police while Kyiv is under shaky Soviet control, and, after overhearing (via an almost magical realist mechanism) the nefarious plans of a pair of Red Army soldiers who have commandeered most of his flat, he has his first case to crack. There's also a charming subplot about Samson's halting courtship of Nadezhda, an earnest, idealistic young woman who works in the Soviet bureau of statistics. In terms of historical mysteries, I would say this is heavier on the history and lighter on the mystery — a great evocation of a city and its people experiencing (as they are also, tragically, now) turbulent change. I'm very much looking forward to the following books in the series.

I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon watching the rain on the windows and the wood pigeons frolicking in the hedgerows over the road, as the weekend draws to its grey, windy close.

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the Comfort food poll, 55.6% of respondents said their preferred comfort food is chocolate, and 46.7% said savoury carbs. In ticky-boxes, 'juicy intricate poetry words' and 'pushing on through' came second equal (40% each) to hugs (80%). Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
I listened to half an m/m romance audiobook that I selected for one of its readers (Will Watt), but the overuse of "fucking" as an intensifier (and in particular, the repeated phrase, "he was so fucking hot") kept making me roll my eyes. It might be a faithful reproduction of the inner monologue of a first-year uni student, but I don't read romances for verisimilitude. So I switched to The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, read by Carrie Hope Fletcher and Kwaku Fortune, seen mentioned on my flist. I'm halfway through and enjoying it immensely. ETA:

Warnings.

Contains past emotionally abusive relationship, stalking, and PTSD.

A little more Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in hardcopy. Nothing in ebook.

Kdramas
Andrew and I have nearly finished The Guest. I want to ship the OT3, but I don't really care about the priest. (Sorry, priest guy! Alas, you are not my type.) Still, it is a great (gory/horror-y) show, and I've conveniently forgotten some of the developments. We just have one episode to go.

A bit more of While You Were Sleeping, a few episodes of Cashero (I'm not sure I'm in the mood for established relationship, but otoh, Junho! ♥), and a marathon-running BL called Mr. Heart, which was sweet but extremely slight.

Where is the next Love Scout/Family by Choice/whatever??

Other TV
Finished Stranger Things, which got so complex that I lazily stopped following the logic and just watched it as a collection of scenes. But I enjoyed those well enough. So glad they got their victory lap.

Three episodes of Heated Rivalry.

Minor spoilers; tl;dr not my thing.

Wow, I'd heard it was fanficcy, but I wasn't prepared for the total absence of anything resembling an external plot. Like, not even a figleaf. Not even a hockey arc. How??

Anyway, my prediction that it's probably not for me has proven correct. Like, I can tell that the show is made of crack (in the addictive sense), but I'm not into super-buff dudes, and I didn't like the 'fucking but feeling kind of miserable about it' vibe I was getting from Hollander. He deserves better.

But I kept going for episode 3, and I'm really glad I did. There was the ~~coffee~~ smoothie shop not-AU and ♥Kip♥ and his friends and family. And Scott, who fell for Kip in 2.3 seconds like a parched man stumbling into an oasis and, okay, is messed up, but at least self-aware and ~able to communicate~ and ~say nice things~! They were such a breath of fresh air! All the "smoothies" for both of them!

So that (predictably) is me. And I'm actually kind of relieved, because while the show is compelling and well-acted, it's not what I want in a fandom, and anyway, I'm hardly even managing to keep up with my quiet corner of Guardian fandom atm.

I may watch the last three episodes at some point, idk. Wishing those of you who're into it all the very best with your new addiction!!

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Cross Party Lines, Letters from an American, more of Our Opinions Are Correct (Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz's podcast) including the Murderbot episode, Tech Won't Save Us, the starts of a few other things.

Writing/making things
I've been practising drawing, and picking up art supplies in bits and pieces. The moldable eraser is magic.

Have a couple of sketches.

Pencil sketch/outline on a grid of Zhao Yunlan sprawling on an invisible barstool.

(Imperfect, but I think it's identifiable, which is not nothing. I darkened the linework a little in Paint.NET.)

For my future reference, this all started because I wanted to draw Bingo from Bluey!, which led me down a Youtube Art Videos For Kids rabbit hole. Then I bought new colour pencils and was noodling around with them, and people said nice things about some of my doodles... :-)

Art Youtube For Adults is also really lovely, btw -- full of super-talented people being encouraging and helpful.

I've written a treat for

fandomtrees, but I need to make some edits, and I have no attention span. Chances of my finishing it are about 90%, and chances of any further treats are more like 30% at this stage. Maybe one day I'll be able to make art gifts...

Life/health/mental state things
My arms are gradually improving, but I'm anxious about them. Andrew's having an operation this Thursday; I'll need to be able to bike and drive and cook and so on, and I'm still sore half the time. So I've started swimming again. (I stopped partly because I was avoiding public spaces where I couldn't mask, and partly because my long post-lockdown hair stays damp all day. But the outdoor pool is open for the summer, so I'm going for it.)

I just bought a small $2 desk at a junk shop so that I have a workspace to retreat to downstairs while Andrew's recuperating on the couch in the living room. I'll see how that goes.

I have a hand-me-down mini air fryer from my parents which I still haven't taken out for a spin. Quick/easy meal suggestions very welcome, especially if they're things I can throw together late at night, post hospital visits. (NB: I don't do onions or brassicas.)

Good things
Andrew, swimming, drawing, Kdramas, Guardian, Zhao Yunlaaaan, modern medicine. Cat:

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

Poll #34068 Om

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

View Respondents

Do you meditate?

View Answers

yes, regularly
4 (7.8%)

yes, from time to time
12 (23.5%)

I used to
6 (11.8%)

I used to occasionally
4 (7.8%)

what you mean by 'meditate'?
7 (13.7%)

no
21 (41.2%)

other
3 (5.9%)

ticky-box of being squeamish about fingernail clippings
2 (3.9%)

ticky-box full of hockey show squee
6 (11.8%)

ticky-box full of feeling kind of zonky
21 (41.2%)

ticky-box full of skipping across treetops and dancing through the clouds
23 (45.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
38 (74.5%)

mozaikmage

Last month, I had a lot of time to read books!

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

I started this in November but finished it on the First. I liked it less than Triton and found it harder to read, but parts of it would’ve made an incredible romantasy premise. Imagine there’s a guy who’s the only survivor of a catastrophe that destroyed his ENTIRE PLANET, and he’s your soulmate, and you’re his soulmate… This could totally work as a romantasy premise. I did enjoy the examinations of culture and imperialism and knowledge as power and gender and labor and all of those things, but it was very dense and kind of difficult to get through.

Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian

Love triangle between a grad student, her thesis advisor, and her thesis advisor’s husband. Could’ve been gayer, but I liked the meta layers of the story.

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 by Adrienne Rich

Well, the title did include the world “difficult,” so perhaps it was on me for expecting to understand these. I ended up skimming some of the poems and then feeling guilty for skimming. Like, they’re poems! It’s not that many words to read! But I don’t think I vibe with Rich’s style. I May Be Stupid.

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
Insane how much evil these people got away with. I was excited to read this one because I enjoyed Say Nothing so much, and I enjoyed reading this one too, but also I just felt so… aghast, the whole time I was reading, that all of this was allowed to happen, that the pharmaceuticals industry was so corrupted from every direction, and that every single person involved in engineering the opioid crisis is convinced they did nothing wrong?? I like how PRK structured the book.

Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

If this was a fanfiction I would have hit the back button about two paragraphs in, but since I checked it out from the library I read the whole thing and was not impressed.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

Ashamed to admit this was actually my first Didion and since I was constantly referencing her Wikipedia page/her daughter’s Wikipedia page/googling various namedropped friends and associates, I feel like I probably should’ve started with something else. But this was the only ready to borrow Didion book at my library, so I read it and it was quite sad.

Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu

Reading this book felt like being trapped in a cardboard box. A closeted lesbian married to a gay man has to watch her best friend with benefits also go through an arranged marriage in the Sri Lankan immigrant community in Boston. Bleak and miserable! But good.

Leap by Simina Popescu

Graphic novel about lesbian contemporary dancers in Romania! I enjoyed it.

Workhorse by Caroline Palmer

I think this book was about twice as long and covered about twice as much time as it needed to. The pitch– Devil Wears Prada meets Talented Mr. Ripley – made me expect a lot more Intrigues and Schemes, but the protagonist presents herself as kind of an incompetent alcoholic who occasionally does something horrible for no reason whatsoever. I think she’s supposed to be an unreliable narrator, but her narrative voice is more annoying than fun to follow. The rich people subplot was extremely depressing and kind of undermined the Ripley side of things to me.

Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake

I couldn’t get through a page of The Atlas Six, so I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the narrative voice in Girl Dinner. Like, it was fun! It was a fun read! But I was also surprised that Blake called it a “satire” in the afterword, because it didn’t really feel like it was making fun of Sloane or Nina, it felt like the reader was supposed to empathize with them, not mock them. There were some lines that struck me as kind of satirical, but mostly it was just an occasionally funny book. I think it should’ve been picked up by a litfic imprint instead of Tor, though. I feel like it could’ve been a sharper and more interesting critique (or even, like, actually a satire lol), if it’d been edited by a literary editor instead of an SFF one. The SFF element (which is obvious from the title) was probably the weakest aspect overall. The ending felt kind of… unnecessary? Out of nowhere? I didn’t love that part. But I liked it more than I thought I would overall.

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Fine. I like the publishing inside baseball bits and the thriller bits were also fun. The chapter titles bit was very funny.

The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm

Really interesting. Checked it out based on some post I saw on here that mentioned it, and I really enjoyed reading it. Inspired me to read more Sylvia Plath poetry.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

I don’t think I like Highsmith’s writing style overall, but I did enjoy… how easily Ripley got away with so much nonsense somehow. Watched the movie with Matt Damon in it also and was amused the movie made him both gayer and more sympathetic/less of a cold-blooded freak. He is much more committed to the bit in the book.

Work Nights by Erica Peplin

Kind of boring, kind of funny, at least it’s gay I guess? Doesn’t seem to be saying anything interesting about anything, but at least it’s about lesbians!

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

This took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to finish reading, but I did enjoy it. I mostly read it because Rebecca was not available on Libby and this was Ready to Borrow lol. Gothic romance set in the 1800s, very… moody, ambiguous. I thought it was fine.

Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb

I really loved the art, I thought Tim Sale’s use of spot blacks was really innovative and interesting and the paneling was creative and stylish. However, as I was not inoculated into Cape Fandom as a child, I found it difficult to buy into the basic premise of the Batman rogues gallery. I am trying to be a responsible Comics Person and get Into Capes, but it’s hard, because most cape comics kinda suck in various ways.

Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes by Gabrielle Korn

Kind of interesting, but I think the parts where she was talking about broader societal trends were weaker than the parts that were just about herself and her life/work.

Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton

Maybe if I was an obsessive Beach Boys fan this would’ve worked better for me. I found the epistolary framing confusing and unnecessary. Just write the book in second person, you don’t need the letter framing!

Penitence by Kristin Koval

Unfortunately mostly felt like Beartown but worse, because Backman has a very intentional and interesting writing style and Koval does not. Backman also builds atmosphere and environments very effectively, so that it really feels like all of Beartown is telling you its story together, and Penitence develops… some characters a bit. Didn’t like how we stayed out of Nora’s head pretty much until the last page. Also I guessed the endgame reveal ten pages in, while the characters didn’t even think of it as a theory until two-thirds of the way into the book, which annoyed me.

Absolute Martian Manhunter, Vol. 1: Martian Vision by Deniz Camp

The Martian Vision pages were great and I loved the visuals and colors, but overall… I dunno. I understand why my friend who really liked it really liked it, because it’s the same friend who got me a copy of The Crying of Lot 49. I think reading this so soon after The Long Halloween made me tired of comics about men neglecting their families to fight crimes.

Reading

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AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #206: Shimada Haruka

my jellycat collection!

(no subject)

I wish Bob Ewell wouldn’t chew tobacco

The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's by Talbot Baines Reed

The eyes, and what the eyes see

(no subject)

Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructre: suggestions for concrete actions

FIC: AKB48, SKE48 - Care in the Community

Friday open thread: your creative process

Not a full media update

An Insignificant Detail

Snowflake Challenge 6 and 7: lots of lists

(no subject)

AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #205: Kato Rena

End-of-year wrap-up meme for 2025

Silver Spoons

There's a line in the earth and I want to walk over it

Me-and-media update

Everything I read in December

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May 2022

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