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Jun. 7th, 2026 03:56 pm
Sapphic Summer 2026, Olympia/Glacia, Writing Poetry
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pitchblackrenegadeVisionary, you
Gaze up at the stars, transfixed
Oh, to be your star
What is this I see?
Writing poetry, are you?
Enjoying yourself?
You're far better, dear
I am not a poetess
But I'll write for you.
Gaze up at the stars, transfixed
Oh, to be your star
What is this I see?
Writing poetry, are you?
Enjoying yourself?
You're far better, dear
I am not a poetess
But I'll write for you.
Jun. 6th, 2026 10:52 pm
this is a movie post I guess
snickfic- Gutted by the death of Anthony Stewart Head.
- I've been watching so many movies lately. Many other life tasks and ambitions have been iffy, but an A+ in movie watching. Yesterday I saw Backrooms again. Still good a second time! Cosmic horror and impossible spaces are exactly my jam, but also it turns out the A24 vibe really works for it. I've spent a lot of time scrolling social media about it. Tomorrow I might go see Obsession again.
- The thing about the backrooms is their basic concept and visuals are very easy to replicate, so no doubt we're all going to be totally sick of them within two months, but in the meantime, this backrooms riff on the official McDonald's channel is a lot of fun. I can't say it makes me want to go eat a burger, but as an elder millennial some of the imagery definitely got me.
- As someone who likes both numbers and horror movies, it's been a hell of a time to be watching the box office. Obsession INCREASED its receipts for the second AND the third weekend, which is absolutely absurd outside of the Christmas holidays (when releases and days off shift a lot of patterns around). "Little horror wins big" obviously calls The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity to mind, but in terms of percentage increases the most recent comp is probably freaking E.T.. Incredible.
Meanwhile Backrooms obliterated all A24's previous records in the first weekend and is now, in week 2, their biggest movie ever.
- Speaking of Youtubers making good: The Future Of Horror Filmmaking Is YouTube ... If You're A Dude. Yeah. :/
- The Dog Stars doesn't look good, but Jacob Elordi looks good in it, so I'll probably still see it. ;__; And Margaret Qualley, too!
- The Dead Meat Horror Awards have released their list of movies, although not the categories yet. I did such a good job watching horror movies last year that there are only 2-3 here that I haven't seen and might want to. (Dangerous Animals, The Toxic Avenger, maybe Black Phone 2. Maybe Ick??)
- I've been watching so many movies lately. Many other life tasks and ambitions have been iffy, but an A+ in movie watching. Yesterday I saw Backrooms again. Still good a second time! Cosmic horror and impossible spaces are exactly my jam, but also it turns out the A24 vibe really works for it. I've spent a lot of time scrolling social media about it. Tomorrow I might go see Obsession again.
- The thing about the backrooms is their basic concept and visuals are very easy to replicate, so no doubt we're all going to be totally sick of them within two months, but in the meantime, this backrooms riff on the official McDonald's channel is a lot of fun. I can't say it makes me want to go eat a burger, but as an elder millennial some of the imagery definitely got me.
- As someone who likes both numbers and horror movies, it's been a hell of a time to be watching the box office. Obsession INCREASED its receipts for the second AND the third weekend, which is absolutely absurd outside of the Christmas holidays (when releases and days off shift a lot of patterns around). "Little horror wins big" obviously calls The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity to mind, but in terms of percentage increases the most recent comp is probably freaking E.T.. Incredible.
Meanwhile Backrooms obliterated all A24's previous records in the first weekend and is now, in week 2, their biggest movie ever.
- Speaking of Youtubers making good: The Future Of Horror Filmmaking Is YouTube ... If You're A Dude. Yeah. :/
- The Dog Stars doesn't look good, but Jacob Elordi looks good in it, so I'll probably still see it. ;__; And Margaret Qualley, too!
- The Dead Meat Horror Awards have released their list of movies, although not the categories yet. I did such a good job watching horror movies last year that there are only 2-3 here that I haven't seen and might want to. (Dangerous Animals, The Toxic Avenger, maybe Black Phone 2. Maybe Ick??)
Tags:
Jun. 6th, 2026 11:55 pm
"Courtney wants to fight!"
sonofgodzillaI saw my lovely friend Katie for coffee on Friday after-noon and was delighted to discover Foyles on TCR now has a designated yuri bookcase. I had to stop myself from leaning against the counter whilst buying books and shouting, "Please let me curate your yuri section." I did make Katie take a photo of me by the bookcase in question however. It's such a narrow thing and it's just filled with whatever volumes they had in stock arranged by series and with very little care, but I'm so happy it exists. I would be remiss if I mentioned that Foyles hadn't introduced a yaoi bookcase as well but because my only interest in yaoi is narratives about pretty boys dressing as girls, I feel like I can't offer you a detailed report on this side of things.
It felt progressive when Foyles introduced specific bookcases for shoujo and shonen manga, but I've been spoilt by animate and HMV abroad, and whenever I've been in central, I've always found myself quietly yearning for some kind of collective space for yuri titles so I'm really, really happy and really, really grateful for this, and that sheer joy momentarily overrides my need to argue with everyone—especially Rebecca Silverstein—over what is and isn't yuri in my need to become the old-man-heading-towards-the-jukebox meme but for niche comic book genres.
Lately, I find myself really missing jelly sandals. Even though we've had a week of rain, I keep thinking about buying a new pair of jelly sandals, the type with a little wedge heel, the quintessential British summer shoe. I've also been reading the Higurashi missing scenes light novel, Kuradishi-hen, translated by 07th translations this week, which is full of small treasures. As well as this, I've been reading A White Rose in Bloom by Nakamura Asumiko, who I think is often more popular for her yaoi series. One of the things I like about this title is how it touches on traditions from English literature, the kind of books I read as a child—although this does make feel bitter anew about the fact I'm going to miss that Mallory Towers production!
Now that work is coming to a close, I'm pretty fired up about moving on and trying to get back into the swing of things. Like British summertime, however, that may change at any moment.
It felt progressive when Foyles introduced specific bookcases for shoujo and shonen manga, but I've been spoilt by animate and HMV abroad, and whenever I've been in central, I've always found myself quietly yearning for some kind of collective space for yuri titles so I'm really, really happy and really, really grateful for this, and that sheer joy momentarily overrides my need to argue with everyone—especially Rebecca Silverstein—over what is and isn't yuri in my need to become the old-man-heading-towards-the-jukebox meme but for niche comic book genres.
Lately, I find myself really missing jelly sandals. Even though we've had a week of rain, I keep thinking about buying a new pair of jelly sandals, the type with a little wedge heel, the quintessential British summer shoe. I've also been reading the Higurashi missing scenes light novel, Kuradishi-hen, translated by 07th translations this week, which is full of small treasures. As well as this, I've been reading A White Rose in Bloom by Nakamura Asumiko, who I think is often more popular for her yaoi series. One of the things I like about this title is how it touches on traditions from English literature, the kind of books I read as a child—although this does make feel bitter anew about the fact I'm going to miss that Mallory Towers production!
Now that work is coming to a close, I'm pretty fired up about moving on and trying to get back into the swing of things. Like British summertime, however, that may change at any moment.
Tags:
Jun. 6th, 2026 09:28 am
"I plan to live forever. Or die trying."
thisbluespiritBefore I had the cold (which is not entirely over, but is much better now) I had a few things I was going to put into a post. They are now extremely random, mostly belated, and not equal, so apologies for a motley post, but I did want to note:
1.beccadg is having a lot of health issues and has a GoFundMe.
2. I saw two posts about Small Prophets, one talking about the influence of all the stopmotion children's animation in it, and another person saying that whatever you'd call the exact inverse of English folk horror, that's what Mackenzie Crook's work is. All of which smashed together in my head to make me go: OMG, he made Bagpuss for adults! (I mean, it's not, but also it is. And Bagpuss is also some sort of exact inverse of 70s folk horror, too. Artisanal children's TV in terms of being literally crafted by hand and its simple but beautiful storytelling structure.)
3. Before I got too ill to do such radical things as watch TV on my PC again, I managed to actually watch ep1 of Miami Medical (with Jeremy Northam and Lana Parrilla), and discovered that when you watch a full ep instead of just Lana clips, what's up with Jeremy Northam's accent is much clearer, in that it was never meant to be a US accent, just that his character had been working in Maryland for 10 years and the "I'm from Maryland, as you can tell by the accent" was actually ironic. Someone calls him "Mr Tea and Biscuits" in the next scene. (Most of the eps are there. Hopefully I shall be able to watch them sometime and all will become clearer than the random Lana snippets.)
4.sovay pointed me to uploaded episodes of The Expert on YouTube, including 2 from 1971 that I had managed to miss featured... James Maxwell! \o/ I was even too ill to manage watching this on my tablet for ages, too.
In true JM form he was very nervy and awkward and also unfortunately too gentle and unmanly to survive a small push in the 1970s. Alas. He is such a delicate 6"3 baritone flower, lol. He fell over in the beginning of part 2 and next thing I knew they were doing an autopsy on him and now I'm too worried about where this is going to watch the rest (yet). (The channel also seems to have a lot of rare stuff - this is a never released on DVD or repeated item, so they must have a collection of their own, presumably.)
5. Bookending this, Michael Keating, better known to me as Vila from Blake's 7 died when I was too numbed from the cold to really comment on it - and then yesterday, the news broke about Anthony Head, too, and I was very sad to hear both & both by all accounts, lovely people too. Michael had apparently had dementia for some years and after B7 worked mainly in theatre, and also got very into rambling, but he didn't need to do more TV to leave an impact: Vila was iconic, someone he made a very likeable and relatable figure in the midst of all the rebels vs. Federation struggles. I'm watching Sesskasays react to B7 for the first time and, in these early stages, Vila is her favourite. Mine too. I love all the characters, and adored Jacqeline as Servalan, but Vila is my favourite. He's the 'small man' archetype out of a fantasy story, living in a snarky fascist space universe. How could he not be?
I was late to the party with Buffy (although I remember watching the Gold Blend ads as a child!) but as a newbie librarian, I borrowed the VHS tapes from our library, and Giles was of course immediately my favourite, and then Anthony Head was always marvellous in everything. I hadn't dreamed we weren't going to get a few more years yet of unexpected bonus ASH in random TV or radio. He was in DW (audio and visual), Jonathan Creek's pilot, Cabin Pressure, but 3 things other than Giles I'll remember him for, particularly:- his first TV appearance in Enemy at the Door, where he played the Martels' son Clive, trapped on the island after a misguided raid by the British army goes wrong; an outstanding performance in s1 of Spooks, where he played Tom Quinn's mentor, jaded and screwed up, in a tragic crash-and-burn guest turn (N.B. warning for all the things, this is Spooks); and at the other end of the scale, being absolutely marvellous and hilarious every episode of 5 series of Bleak Expectations as the villainous Mr Gently Benevolent, whether exercising his trademark evil laugh, reincarnated as a pigeon, reformed, unreformed, or cheeseboarding Pip (with a break for tea and biscuits). It got me through a rough summer in 2013. Washing up badly is not the same as washing up evilly.
1.
beccadg is having a lot of health issues and has a GoFundMe.2. I saw two posts about Small Prophets, one talking about the influence of all the stopmotion children's animation in it, and another person saying that whatever you'd call the exact inverse of English folk horror, that's what Mackenzie Crook's work is. All of which smashed together in my head to make me go: OMG, he made Bagpuss for adults! (I mean, it's not, but also it is. And Bagpuss is also some sort of exact inverse of 70s folk horror, too. Artisanal children's TV in terms of being literally crafted by hand and its simple but beautiful storytelling structure.)
3. Before I got too ill to do such radical things as watch TV on my PC again, I managed to actually watch ep1 of Miami Medical (with Jeremy Northam and Lana Parrilla), and discovered that when you watch a full ep instead of just Lana clips, what's up with Jeremy Northam's accent is much clearer, in that it was never meant to be a US accent, just that his character had been working in Maryland for 10 years and the "I'm from Maryland, as you can tell by the accent" was actually ironic. Someone calls him "Mr Tea and Biscuits" in the next scene. (Most of the eps are there. Hopefully I shall be able to watch them sometime and all will become clearer than the random Lana snippets.)
4.
sovay pointed me to uploaded episodes of The Expert on YouTube, including 2 from 1971 that I had managed to miss featured... James Maxwell! \o/ I was even too ill to manage watching this on my tablet for ages, too. In true JM form he was very nervy and awkward and also unfortunately too gentle and unmanly to survive a small push in the 1970s. Alas. He is such a delicate 6"3 baritone flower, lol. He fell over in the beginning of part 2 and next thing I knew they were doing an autopsy on him and now I'm too worried about where this is going to watch the rest (yet). (The channel also seems to have a lot of rare stuff - this is a never released on DVD or repeated item, so they must have a collection of their own, presumably.)
5. Bookending this, Michael Keating, better known to me as Vila from Blake's 7 died when I was too numbed from the cold to really comment on it - and then yesterday, the news broke about Anthony Head, too, and I was very sad to hear both & both by all accounts, lovely people too. Michael had apparently had dementia for some years and after B7 worked mainly in theatre, and also got very into rambling, but he didn't need to do more TV to leave an impact: Vila was iconic, someone he made a very likeable and relatable figure in the midst of all the rebels vs. Federation struggles. I'm watching Sesskasays react to B7 for the first time and, in these early stages, Vila is her favourite. Mine too. I love all the characters, and adored Jacqeline as Servalan, but Vila is my favourite. He's the 'small man' archetype out of a fantasy story, living in a snarky fascist space universe. How could he not be?
I was late to the party with Buffy (although I remember watching the Gold Blend ads as a child!) but as a newbie librarian, I borrowed the VHS tapes from our library, and Giles was of course immediately my favourite, and then Anthony Head was always marvellous in everything. I hadn't dreamed we weren't going to get a few more years yet of unexpected bonus ASH in random TV or radio. He was in DW (audio and visual), Jonathan Creek's pilot, Cabin Pressure, but 3 things other than Giles I'll remember him for, particularly:- his first TV appearance in Enemy at the Door, where he played the Martels' son Clive, trapped on the island after a misguided raid by the British army goes wrong; an outstanding performance in s1 of Spooks, where he played Tom Quinn's mentor, jaded and screwed up, in a tragic crash-and-burn guest turn (N.B. warning for all the things, this is Spooks); and at the other end of the scale, being absolutely marvellous and hilarious every episode of 5 series of Bleak Expectations as the villainous Mr Gently Benevolent, whether exercising his trademark evil laugh, reincarnated as a pigeon, reformed, unreformed, or cheeseboarding Pip (with a break for tea and biscuits). It got me through a rough summer in 2013. Washing up badly is not the same as washing up evilly.
Jun. 5th, 2026 10:46 am
The Wild Hunt
dannye_chaseOn this day in 1948, songwriter Stan Jones released Ghost Riders in the Sky, which tells a version of the Wild Hunt legend.
As the riders loped on by him
He heard one call his name
‘If you wanna save your soul
From hell a-riding on our range
Then, cowboy, change your ways today
Or with us you will ride
Trying to catch the devil’s herd
Across these endless skies
A mighty hunter and a pack of dogs, horses, or other beasts racing across the horizon, making a terrible noise as they rush above you! What could it mean? Well, that depends on who you are.
First, let’s say you might be—well, someone who’d end up on Santa’s naughty list. For you, the Wild Hunt can be more than a vision. It’s interactive! We’re talking Ghost Riders in the Sky here, aka Jacob Marley as a cowboy. This type of Wild Hunt is a warning from beyond.
Check out my Weird Wednesday blog post on the Wild Hunt for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:
Doomed riders. You could focus on the sadder figures— the poor souls (literally) who are already in the hunt for eternity. Sometimes these people committed the usual infractions: murder, theft, or just too much drinking. But other times, these folks have done a Very Specific Thing they may have be warned not to do, like hunting on the sabbath, or some other odd thing like don’t get off your horse until your dog jumps down. Fairies (and the devil) love this sort of warning! You can make it as absurd as you want, that’s the point. And if your character fails in this one strange thing, they can be doomed to the hunt forever.
DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers
Jun. 5th, 2026 09:21 am
Reading post
lucymonsterThe Employees by Olga Ravn, trans. Martin Aitken: This Danish novella tells the story of a corporate space expedition gone wrong through a series of transcribed statements from employees aboard the ship. The statements are framed as having been given to a review team sent by the head office; no further context is supplied, except what can be pieced together from the statements themselves. The employees comprise natural born humans and lab-made cybernetic individuals called humanoids. Conditions are dire; both kinds of employee are effectively slaves, and devotion to the company has been deeply embedded in their psyches. Despite this, a rudimentary sort of rebellion is fomenting. The higher-ups have been rolling out a series of cheap, easily scalable technologies designed to paper over the catastrophic emotional wounds they are inflicting on their workforce, the latest of which are a mysterious set of objects from an alien planet that seem to exert some sort of lulling effect on people who get close to them. This ends about as well as anyone who doesn't sit on a board of directors could have told you from the start.
So basically, this story is a critique of late capitalist office culture. The message is not exactly subtle, but the trappings are so enthrallingly weird and creative that it ends up feeling like a lot more than the sum of its parts.
And Then There Were Nuns by Jane Christmas: This is a memoir by an established travel writer and devout Anglican who spends a year trying to become a nun. My first temptation is to scrutinise whether she really meant to be a nun or had just scented another marketable adventure, but I'm intentionally slapping that impulse away, because the book is lovely and deserves to be taken on its merits. And regardless of her initial purity of intention, the experience takes Christmas to some very heavy places. A session of lectio divina near the start of the process stirs up the memories of a rape she's spent decades of her life pretending never happened, so while discerning a possible vocation and grappling with her religious identity, she also ends up having to walk this painful path of trauma healing.
I also suspect that Christmas' obvious unsuitedness to cloistered life is exactly what makes the book work: she makes a good mediator between the kind of woman who is capable of becoming a nun, and the kind of woman (hi) who is not remotely capable of becoming a nun but could stand to profit from learning more about their ways. Christmas' fantasies of a life spent in an aesthetically pleasing state of leisurely communion with God are promptly supplanted by a hefty chore load, a jam-packed worship timetable, and the demand for a total renunciation of self-will. It’s not the big picture stuff she ends up chafing against. It’s the petty deprivations, like the dowdy habits (Christmas considers herself a fashionista) and the annoyance of not being allowed to finish her game when the hour of recreation ends. I get this. I think almost all of us probably get this, regardless of our vocation. I would give my life for my kids without a moment’s hesitation but will I give my morning coffee? Will I close my browser window, right this second, and go do something that benefits them instead? Because that’s what convent life is set up to train nuns to do. And watching an ordinary, self-willed woman fail at it is somehow very inspiring: I couldn’t do it either, not properly, but perhaps I could start doing a little bit more of it here and there! And perhaps that would be better than nothing!
At one point Christmas shared a remark from a priest, that taking confession from nuns is like being stoned to death with popcorn. I think that image will stick with me for a long time to come.
So basically, this story is a critique of late capitalist office culture. The message is not exactly subtle, but the trappings are so enthrallingly weird and creative that it ends up feeling like a lot more than the sum of its parts.
And Then There Were Nuns by Jane Christmas: This is a memoir by an established travel writer and devout Anglican who spends a year trying to become a nun. My first temptation is to scrutinise whether she really meant to be a nun or had just scented another marketable adventure, but I'm intentionally slapping that impulse away, because the book is lovely and deserves to be taken on its merits. And regardless of her initial purity of intention, the experience takes Christmas to some very heavy places. A session of lectio divina near the start of the process stirs up the memories of a rape she's spent decades of her life pretending never happened, so while discerning a possible vocation and grappling with her religious identity, she also ends up having to walk this painful path of trauma healing.
I also suspect that Christmas' obvious unsuitedness to cloistered life is exactly what makes the book work: she makes a good mediator between the kind of woman who is capable of becoming a nun, and the kind of woman (hi) who is not remotely capable of becoming a nun but could stand to profit from learning more about their ways. Christmas' fantasies of a life spent in an aesthetically pleasing state of leisurely communion with God are promptly supplanted by a hefty chore load, a jam-packed worship timetable, and the demand for a total renunciation of self-will. It’s not the big picture stuff she ends up chafing against. It’s the petty deprivations, like the dowdy habits (Christmas considers herself a fashionista) and the annoyance of not being allowed to finish her game when the hour of recreation ends. I get this. I think almost all of us probably get this, regardless of our vocation. I would give my life for my kids without a moment’s hesitation but will I give my morning coffee? Will I close my browser window, right this second, and go do something that benefits them instead? Because that’s what convent life is set up to train nuns to do. And watching an ordinary, self-willed woman fail at it is somehow very inspiring: I couldn’t do it either, not properly, but perhaps I could start doing a little bit more of it here and there! And perhaps that would be better than nothing!
At one point Christmas shared a remark from a priest, that taking confession from nuns is like being stoned to death with popcorn. I think that image will stick with me for a long time to come.
Tags:
Jun. 4th, 2026 02:32 pm
"the modern world has built this little bubble for me."
sonofgodzillaAs hinted at by Tanaka Kohei, the composer of the series, there was a new announcement regarding Sakura Wars recently and it's a new stage play based on 2019's Playstation 4 game, Shin Sakura Wars, a game that Sega refused to port to Switch because they hate me. I'm really excited about it! Not only is former Team 8 member Oda Erina and 22/7's Kawase Uta in the cast, but it also features Chitose Machi, who previously played Glotta in Kamen Rider Gavv and continues to prove that her target audience is middle-aged women. I don't have as much attachment to the new game due to having only bought a copy immediately as my PS4 decided to die, but I do have a love of Sakura Wars that goes back years. Hiroi Oji, the creator of the original story, is again involved in the production, alongside Tanaka, and that gives me a lot of hope, and if you're curious about what it takes to put a Sega Saturn game on the stage, then again I want to recommend the fifth Sakura Wars musical, Kaijin Bessou, subbed by taisho_fansubs, and OSK Revue's The Sea God's Villa, subbed by nightless_castle as good places to start! Both were written by Hiroi, both explore the myth of Urashima Taro, and both are wonderful productions, enough to make you fall in love, I dare say!
I thought I should make an effort, having already written this month's Project R.O.S.E. entry, to start reading the plays of Taisho era writer, Izumi Kyouka, whose work of the same name originally inspired Hiroi's Kajin Bessou adaptations. I will keep you posted, friends, as I currently have more things to read than I have hours in the day to read them.
As I've been thinking about retreating into stories from a certain period of time or a formative period of life, I read about a new release via LINE of Higurashi that allows you to create your own character within the story. This fascinates me and horrifies me and makes me think of those time-travel narratives where there is a tourist industry that allows you to drop into the past. Higurashi is such a complex story and the balance of that story rests on such delicate moments that could so easily be disrupted that it feels like dropping in a new character—yourself, as you are now, or a character of your invention—could cause untold havoc to the narrative which... as a premise is a very Higurashi flavoured one. I think it would be interesting to make people feel a new kind of misery, people who, like me, have come to care for these characters so much that they want to spend all their time in game interacting with them at the expensive of the narrative whilst, all the while, the clock is ticking and said reader is forced to engage with the visceral horror in an entirely new and entirely novel fashion. I also think it's interesting to intrude on the story, I think that the large picture of Higurashi is absolutely built to accommodate that kind of descent into a small village near Gifu Prefecture in 1983 from places unknown. In an interview recently, the Butcher, Urobuchi Gen, mentioned that he felt "audiences nowadays aren’t looking for ‘poison.’ They’re probably craving an ‘antidote’ within fiction", but I think there is some comfort in the poison of Higurashi—certainly I've mentioned more than once that I feel there is a sort of nostalgia for works of horror.
I don't want to say I've given into nostalgia completely, but I recognise there are very specific "cut off points" in media for me—like watching older episodes from the Orange Islands arc of Pokémon and getting misty eyed whilst doing my level best to ignore everything about the franchise as it is now. Part of this is maybe because I mostly use youtube kids as my main viewing platform and that is the place where companies shovel any show older than 20 years in the hopes of generating ad revenue from people watching on the normal app or without ad blockers or views from children, so, in a way, the modern world has built this little bubble for me. Yester-day, based on what I was watching, I might as well have been tuned into Toonami in the early '00s.
I'm ten episodes or so into revisiting Gundam Wing—I'm allowed to! It's an anniversary year-ish!—and I'm obsessing over Relena's school friends from the early part of the show. Needless to say, the school setting part of Gundam Wing really captured my imagination when I first saw this show, and, apparently continues to do so.
There's a new adaptation of Mallory Towers happening this summer and it's exactly during the dates I will be away!
taisho_fansubs, and OSK Revue's The Sea God's Villa, subbed by nightless_castle as good places to start! Both were written by Hiroi, both explore the myth of Urashima Taro, and both are wonderful productions, enough to make you fall in love, I dare say!I thought I should make an effort, having already written this month's Project R.O.S.E. entry, to start reading the plays of Taisho era writer, Izumi Kyouka, whose work of the same name originally inspired Hiroi's Kajin Bessou adaptations. I will keep you posted, friends, as I currently have more things to read than I have hours in the day to read them.
As I've been thinking about retreating into stories from a certain period of time or a formative period of life, I read about a new release via LINE of Higurashi that allows you to create your own character within the story. This fascinates me and horrifies me and makes me think of those time-travel narratives where there is a tourist industry that allows you to drop into the past. Higurashi is such a complex story and the balance of that story rests on such delicate moments that could so easily be disrupted that it feels like dropping in a new character—yourself, as you are now, or a character of your invention—could cause untold havoc to the narrative which... as a premise is a very Higurashi flavoured one. I think it would be interesting to make people feel a new kind of misery, people who, like me, have come to care for these characters so much that they want to spend all their time in game interacting with them at the expensive of the narrative whilst, all the while, the clock is ticking and said reader is forced to engage with the visceral horror in an entirely new and entirely novel fashion. I also think it's interesting to intrude on the story, I think that the large picture of Higurashi is absolutely built to accommodate that kind of descent into a small village near Gifu Prefecture in 1983 from places unknown. In an interview recently, the Butcher, Urobuchi Gen, mentioned that he felt "audiences nowadays aren’t looking for ‘poison.’ They’re probably craving an ‘antidote’ within fiction", but I think there is some comfort in the poison of Higurashi—certainly I've mentioned more than once that I feel there is a sort of nostalgia for works of horror.
I don't want to say I've given into nostalgia completely, but I recognise there are very specific "cut off points" in media for me—like watching older episodes from the Orange Islands arc of Pokémon and getting misty eyed whilst doing my level best to ignore everything about the franchise as it is now. Part of this is maybe because I mostly use youtube kids as my main viewing platform and that is the place where companies shovel any show older than 20 years in the hopes of generating ad revenue from people watching on the normal app or without ad blockers or views from children, so, in a way, the modern world has built this little bubble for me. Yester-day, based on what I was watching, I might as well have been tuned into Toonami in the early '00s.
I'm ten episodes or so into revisiting Gundam Wing—I'm allowed to! It's an anniversary year-ish!—and I'm obsessing over Relena's school friends from the early part of the show. Needless to say, the school setting part of Gundam Wing really captured my imagination when I first saw this show, and, apparently continues to do so.
There's a new adaptation of Mallory Towers happening this summer and it's exactly during the dates I will be away!
Jun. 3rd, 2026 06:08 am
AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #224: Tokunaga Remi
sonofgodzillaAs promised, it's Tokunaga Remi time!
I sort of love Team 8's Remitan! Having joined AKB48 in 2019 alongside Sakagawa Hiyuka, Remitan was swiftly announced as the team's representative of Tottori Prefecture. In early 2020, she debuted also with Hiyuka as part of the opening act for the Yuasa Junji curated Sono Shizuku wa, Mirai e to Tsunagaru Niji ni Naru stage performances. When covid hit and we all went into lockdown, performances ended, and Remitan, like the rest of us, was left attempting to express herself in front of a computer screen.
On two successive occasions, Remitan was hit by covid, both in 2021 and 2022. The second occasion was somewhat egregious as it occurred several days before the announcement of her concurrent membership in Team B alongside Suzuki Kurumi, who, at the time of writing, will be now a week and a half-ish into her post-graduation life. This bout of covid derailed Remitan's chances of appearing in the initial performances of the revival of Idol no Yoake, Team B's fourth stage, and it wasn't until November that she finally made it to the theatre stage again, having been absent since the January performances of Sono Shizuku wa, Mirai e to Tsunagaru Niji ni Naru.
A year later, as Team 8's activities were wrapped up, Remitan became a full-time member of Team B.
From Nemohamo Rumor, Remitan has been appearing on AKB B sides! Recently, we got to see her as part of a Wcentre with Hiyuka for Ishi no Taiboku from oh my pumpkin!, but, ah, there's also a slightly weird connexion between the two that I failed to mention during Hiyuka's entry, so, without further ado: AKB48 SURREAL.
This was a sub-unit that performed two B sides, Wagamama Metaverse from Hisashiburi no Lip Gloss and Wonderland from Doushitemo Kimi ga Suki da. At the heart of these performances was, initially, a digital character called SURRY, portrayed by Remitan, who was later joined in 2023 by RERRY, portrayed by Hiyuka, who auditioned within the group and won her place as the character in March of that same year. These two not-quite Eguchi Aimis were the focus of AKB48 SURREAL, and, true to its word, they indeed lived up to the name as being surreal.
Akimoto Yasushi likes this kind of thing. Omoide Scroll aside, having been written entirely by an "AI Akimoto Yasushi" fed endless reams of his lyrics, Akimoto has always been interested in technology and the idea of idols who, in a sense, never fade. I can't remember where it was, but last week I was reading about the idea behind 22/7 and I remember being struck by how wistful Akimoto is about "digital idols," about this idea of eternal impermanence, the cherry blossom that never falls, the rose that never wilts. To bring us slightly back on topic, I think Wonderland is the better of the two SURREAL songs.
Engaging with Akimoto's mortality crisis paid off! In 2024, Remitan was selected for the senbatsu for Koi Tsun Jatta! Having attended famous Horikoshi High School in Nakano, a school for those aiming for careers in the entertainment industry, its alumni including no less than Fukada Kyoko, Hasebe Yu, Iwasaki Hiromi, Oginome Yuko, Ueto Aya, all three members of Perfume, Inagaki Goro and Kusanagi Tsuyoshi of SMAP, Matsumoto Jun of Arashi, and many others, and having been in the same class as her best friend, the actress, Suzuki Yume, I definitely think we're going to be seeing Remitan in the senbatsu a lot more in years to come!
I sort of love Team 8's Remitan! Having joined AKB48 in 2019 alongside Sakagawa Hiyuka, Remitan was swiftly announced as the team's representative of Tottori Prefecture. In early 2020, she debuted also with Hiyuka as part of the opening act for the Yuasa Junji curated Sono Shizuku wa, Mirai e to Tsunagaru Niji ni Naru stage performances. When covid hit and we all went into lockdown, performances ended, and Remitan, like the rest of us, was left attempting to express herself in front of a computer screen.
On two successive occasions, Remitan was hit by covid, both in 2021 and 2022. The second occasion was somewhat egregious as it occurred several days before the announcement of her concurrent membership in Team B alongside Suzuki Kurumi, who, at the time of writing, will be now a week and a half-ish into her post-graduation life. This bout of covid derailed Remitan's chances of appearing in the initial performances of the revival of Idol no Yoake, Team B's fourth stage, and it wasn't until November that she finally made it to the theatre stage again, having been absent since the January performances of Sono Shizuku wa, Mirai e to Tsunagaru Niji ni Naru.
A year later, as Team 8's activities were wrapped up, Remitan became a full-time member of Team B.
From Nemohamo Rumor, Remitan has been appearing on AKB B sides! Recently, we got to see her as part of a Wcentre with Hiyuka for Ishi no Taiboku from oh my pumpkin!, but, ah, there's also a slightly weird connexion between the two that I failed to mention during Hiyuka's entry, so, without further ado: AKB48 SURREAL.
This was a sub-unit that performed two B sides, Wagamama Metaverse from Hisashiburi no Lip Gloss and Wonderland from Doushitemo Kimi ga Suki da. At the heart of these performances was, initially, a digital character called SURRY, portrayed by Remitan, who was later joined in 2023 by RERRY, portrayed by Hiyuka, who auditioned within the group and won her place as the character in March of that same year. These two not-quite Eguchi Aimis were the focus of AKB48 SURREAL, and, true to its word, they indeed lived up to the name as being surreal.
Akimoto Yasushi likes this kind of thing. Omoide Scroll aside, having been written entirely by an "AI Akimoto Yasushi" fed endless reams of his lyrics, Akimoto has always been interested in technology and the idea of idols who, in a sense, never fade. I can't remember where it was, but last week I was reading about the idea behind 22/7 and I remember being struck by how wistful Akimoto is about "digital idols," about this idea of eternal impermanence, the cherry blossom that never falls, the rose that never wilts. To bring us slightly back on topic, I think Wonderland is the better of the two SURREAL songs.
Engaging with Akimoto's mortality crisis paid off! In 2024, Remitan was selected for the senbatsu for Koi Tsun Jatta! Having attended famous Horikoshi High School in Nakano, a school for those aiming for careers in the entertainment industry, its alumni including no less than Fukada Kyoko, Hasebe Yu, Iwasaki Hiromi, Oginome Yuko, Ueto Aya, all three members of Perfume, Inagaki Goro and Kusanagi Tsuyoshi of SMAP, Matsumoto Jun of Arashi, and many others, and having been in the same class as her best friend, the actress, Suzuki Yume, I definitely think we're going to be seeing Remitan in the senbatsu a lot more in years to come!
Jun. 1st, 2026 03:24 pm
Write with Other Markets in Mind: a Backup Plan for Rejected Stories
dannye_chaseWrite with Other Markets in Mind: a Backup Plan for Rejected Stories
As writers, we sometimes create a story for a specific call for submissions—winter stories or small-town sci-fi—something that really sparks our muse. It’s wonderful when those stories are accepted, but of course, that’s not always the case. And if the story is rejected, you’ve got to try to sell it elsewhere.
I wrote a piece for SFWA about how to rewrite a story for a different call, but you can get ahead of the game by writing with that possible rejection in mind. If you make the story match common submission guidelines, you’ve got a built-in plan B. Here are three things to consider.
Word count
Many, many publications ask for a story less than 5,000 words, or a flash story of less than 1,000, so those are good targets to aim for. In fact, those word counts are so common that there’s a good chance your call will have them already. But if your call has a longer limit, you’ve got two options: either keep it under 5,000 or have a plan to cut down the story if it’s rejected.
Genre greats
Genres have favorites. You’ll have to research your own genre to figure out what publications are looking for, but as an example, I write a lot of horror. So I know there are quite a few places (especially podcasts) that will take a scary, suspenseful horror piece with common tropes readers love—haunted house, lake monster, ghost train, etc. And I know there are a lot of publications looking for horror with a female main character, and not many want vampires or werewolves. So if I see a call for horror stories with a winter setting, I can write about a woman discovering something monstrous frozen at the bottom of a lake. And that will fit quite a few publications.
Watch out for super-specific calls
A podcast or magazine will run out of stories if they choose to publish only summertime urban horror about clocks. But a one-time anthology or themed magazine issue can be as specific as they like. There’s no problem with writing such a story—those are great markets! The problem comes when lots of writers produce clock stories, and then most get rejected at the same time. This means other publications will be inundated with rejected clock stories, and they’re certainly not going to take very many of them.
One solution is to simply hold onto your rejected story for a while, until the flood of clocks has dried up. Another is to put something else specific in your story that will make it right for other publications, in a way many other clock stories won’t be. Go back to your genre greats. Make it scary, suspenseful horror with a monster, and you’ve opened up more markets for yourself.
Of course, if you’ve got a great idea for a story that won’t fit anywhere else, absolutely write that. If you don’t feel like writing to common word counts or genre greats, then don’t. But if you’re sitting in front of a blank page with no plot bunny hopping about, it can make sense to plot and write with rejection in mind. It never hurts to have a backup plan.
Here’s where to find those calls for submissions.
This article was first published on my writing blog
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