Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

Current Mood: busy

nineweaving

Happy birthday, W.S!

Nine

conuly

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

************************************

Link

abyss_valkyrie posting in

c_ent

Preview:

Find the icons in my journal here.

redbird

I had an appointment with my neurologist this afternoon. The weather was nice enough that I got onion soup at the Panera in the clinic lobby and ate it outdoors before seeing Dr. Sloane.

The doctor did some low-tech neurology, including watching me walk quickly down the hall, having me walk tightrope-style to check my balance, and testing my grip strength by having me squeeze his fingers. The doctor said there was no change in those, but I think my balance was better today than at the last visit. He then sent me downstairs for blood tests: my vitamin D is where we want it (at the top of the "normal" range), and the abnormally low antibody count is what we expect from the Kesimpta.

I asked about reducing the gabapentin dose to 900 mg, since when I went from 1500 mg to 1200 the medication continued to be effective at stopping my legs from twitching at night. (For a while, it was 1500 mg, with the option of taking another 300 mg capsule if necessary. I went to 1200 after a few months of never needing the extra capsule.) The doctor said I could try it, but he would prescribe 1200 mg/day (I think the last refill was for 1500 mg/day.)

I then walked up the hill to Brigham and Women's Hospital to keep

adrian_turtle company in the epilepsy monitoring unit. We talked some, I made some phone calls on her behalf, and I sat quietly reading next to her bed for a bit.

All in all, I did a lot of walking today, despite taking a Lyft to the neurologist; some of that was because I got turned around a couple of times, including inside the hospital. (I stayed home yesterday because my knee was bothering me, and wasn't sure how much walking I had in me today.)

ranalore

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Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: it's a decent temperature so I'm enjoying it for all I'm worth

lycomingst

Guys have been building a new fence around part of the mobile park. They finished at my place yesterday. It needed it, part of the old fence was hanging down leaving a gap. The blackberry vine that was clinging to the fence is just a small stump.

I really wanted to grow blackberries. They have some weird pattern of growing berries on the second year growth. I've tried to understand it by watching YT. Anyway, I cut a lot of it down previously and I think there were going to be flowers this year, then berries. Now nothing. But you can't kill blackberries, not without a nuclear option. So that plant will rise again. With its wicked, wicked thorns. You want berries, well berries cost. And right here is where you start paying…

musesfool

It's been a few years since I posted some Shakespeare on his birthday, but I am tired so have one of the most famous poems in the Western canon:

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

*

I was all excited that it's Thursday, thinking about how there'd be a new episode of The Pitt until I remembered, alas, that there will be no new episodes until next January. Sigh.

I keep meaning to post my thoughts here and not doing it, so in brief, my thoughts on the season 2 finale of The Pitt: ( spoilers )

I guess this sounds like I had a lot of complaints but I really loved this season - I just thought the writing fell down a little sometimes, for some characters.

*

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Get Him Back - Olivia Rodrigo

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: restless

sholio

Finally getting back to my Dragaera reread, which was originally rereading happening in late 2025. My reread is all over the place - I'm not doing every book - but the last one I read was Vallista in December, and now I'm rereading Hawk, and I just got to A Thing.

( Spoilers for Hawk and Tsalmoth )

Edit: originally had noted this as spoilers for Lyorn and changed it to Tsalmoth, as I had apparently forgotten which book that happened in ...

Edit2: Another spoiler for Hawk: ( Under here )

oursin

Involved in proving, for certain life admin purposes, that partner and I are real people who are who we say we are, involving downloading an app, which one then has to validate by entering one's ID and they will send a code by text 'may take a few minutes', they have a very capacious definition of 'few minutes', ahem. Then entering various details, scanning various documents to a satisfactory quality (don't ask, just don't ask, I have done screaming now, thanks), and taking a selfie.

***

Do we even wish to detain ourselves over Michael Billington's ranking of the works of the Bard? I pretty much Dorothy Parkered, as much as one can with a newspaper, when I saw he had not only put Much Ado 20th out of 35, but considers B&B the subplot.

Light the barbecue in the marketplace, I have a heart to eat there!

***

Though it is hardly anywhere near the same class for utter crassness of this - honestly, why are these people? A tourist has been charged after allegedly climbing a colossal marble statue in Florence to touch its genitals for a pre-wedding prank.

raven

So mostly these days I am obsessed with The Pitt! I love the show so much, for itself, and because it's such a natural successor to MASH and other shows I have loved. I've said on Bluesky that it's the only show I've ever come across that really understands how teaching and growth and mentoring happen in a professional environment - fandom is full of academia stories, and indeed academics, and school and high school stories, but not so much the grown-up, affirming, important work of teaching someone to do your job because you, they and the job all matter. (What do I teach people to do! Not save lives. But it matters. I had a lovely, lovely email from one of my team before she went off on maternity leave that said wonderful things about my teaching, about what she'd learned from me, how her practice had changed as a result of me, at which point I had to go and lie down and cry for a while. When Robby says with emphasis, "This is a teaching hospital", it makes me think of it.

(Brief outline: Robby, otherwise Dr Michael Robinavitch, is a warm, scathing, compassionate soul who runs an emergency department in Pittsburgh, it's an ensemble cast of interns, resident doctors, patients, nurses and others and Robby is the keystone of it all in a tired, mentally ill kind of a way. Each episode of the show covers an hour, so the entire season covers a single shift. It's very good. Also Robby is played by Noah Wyle - and, as the show's executive producers lost a litigation against the IP-holders for ER, he is emphatically not John Carter. I love this. Robby feels, and is, beautifully imagined: a working-class Jewish man, who wears a magen David necklace, all because Carter was a WASP with a trust fund.)

I also love Trinity Santos, a brilliant lovely Filipina asshole of a lesbian, and Jack Abbot, who is Robby's friend and also mirror image - being to the night shift what Robby is the day - and also fascinating for himself. He's a former MASH combat medic which is what decided me for sure that the show deliberately draws on its predecessor. The Pitt isn't a sitcom, but it has the warmth MASH had; and Abbot, who is a lower-leg amputee, embodies some of its ambivalence. (And! In s2 they have someone deliver Henry Blake's "young men die" speech, with the same blocking as the original. I love it.)

Anyway I love this show. It is so rich and funny and so fucking human, all the damn time. Robby's PTSD is from covid, and his nightmares are of full PPE - and I was like, okay, do I want to watch this. Robby has PTSD from treating covid patients but my dad died from treating covid patients. But I did want to watch it, because it takes what it does seriously. I want to write a fic, about Robby and ( s2 spoiler ), and I also want it to be a daemon AU, because I am insane. I haven't written anything good in a year and like I said I am insane. Maybe I should just ask people to give me fic prompts.

the_shoshanna

No, not that kind. The hard-to-find kind.

I carry a backpack rather than a shoulderbag, because I like to have my hands free and I don't like the way a shoulderbag can flop down in front of me when I bend forward. Also it's easier to carry a lot in a backpack, which is important for grocery shopping, day hiking, etc. For a decade or more, up until last summer, my everyday carry was a basic Jansport school-type backpack. But while we were in Wales I realized that a) the rain cover I'd put on it was useless (almost lost my passport to water damage, YIKES) and b) it was fraying dangerously thin. Which, after so many years, it was entitled to do! But that has sent me on A Quest.

I'd made do with that basic Jansport for years, but now that I'm exploring options, I have very particular requirements! And I can't find a pack that meets them, argh.

I want a 28- to 32-liter capacity, a proper hip belt, and a flat back so that I can put an iPad or a folder of papers in it, against my own back, without risking them getting bent. (In other words, not a curved-for-ventilation back like this one.) I very much want panel loading rather than top loading, which I find awkward and inconvenient, although I might settle for top loading if everything else were amazingly good. It's hard for me to imagine a really good pack without load lifter straps. And I'd love it to have shoulder straps styled after running vests, with lots of storage, although now we're getting into "I want sparkles on it!" territory.

On the spot in Wales, I bought a pack at a local Trespass store. Its hip belt was reasonably good, but had no storage pockets. It claimed a 30L capacity, but I think it lied; it felt more like 25. And when I bought it I wasn't thinking about the fact that the curved back was going to be a dealbreaker; I didn't have the iPad or a portfolio of papers with me and since it hadn't been an issue with the old Jansport, it didn't occur to me. So when we got home I offloaded it; tried unsuccessfully to sell it and ended up giving it to Geoff, who wants to give it a try.

To replace it, I bought a North Face Surge 2 off Poshmark. It claims a capacity of 32L, but it sure doesn't feel like it; more like 25? And it's relatively heavy, which isn't great for day hiking. It does have a flat back, but its hip belt, although it exists (and can tuck away when I'm just carrying a light load around town), is fairly minimal, doesn't transfer as much weight as a proper one would, and also has no storage pockets.

So I bought an REI Venturi 30 off Goodwill. It has much better capacity while weighing less, and a good hip belt. I think the torso may be a little short for me, but it's okay. However, the photos I scrutinized online before buying it still misled me; its back is curved. I've bought a storage clipboard to put the iPad and papers in, but it's still a bit of a kludge; it's an awkward thing to pack other things around, and it's a bit flimsy.

Meanwhile I've kept on surfing alllllll the dealer and review sites, looking for my perfect pack. For a while I thought I'd found it in the Osprey Tempest Velocity 30; I love Osprey packs in general (that's what I use as luggage), and this one was where I learned that running-vest-style shoulder straps are a thing and fell in love with the idea. I almost bought it -- but the fact that it's not only top loading but has a stupid little flap over the top, rather than a proper lid, killed it for me. (At least at list price; if I can find a used one going cheap, I might give it a try.)

Then I stumbled on what may actually be my unicorn! The Arc’teryx Aerios 30 looks absolutely amazing and I wants it, precious, I wants it nowwwwwwwwww.

It's discontinued, nobody has it in stock, and I can't find anybody selling a used one. Sigh.

ETA: I swear I didn't see any yesterday, but today there are a handful of them showing on eBay! ...but they are CA$400 and up, not counting any import duties or taxes because they're all coming from the US or Asia, and I'm certainly not paying that much for something I can't return, and possibly not for something I could, since I have a hard time imagining that even this pack is that good. I mean, I paid US$33 for the REI Venturi, and it's acceptable.

smartbitches_feed

Posted by Amanda

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2026/04/dukes-hockey-romance-more/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=172151

Starter Villain

Starter Villain by John Scalzi is $4.99! I thought we ran a review of this one, but perhaps I’m just getting mixed up with Carrie mentioning she was reading it. Have you read this one?

Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.

Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn’t all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they’re coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It’s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world…be a cat.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

Making a Play

Making a Play by Victoria Denault is $1.99! This is a hockey romance set in a small, isolated town. Some readers mentioned that the last quarter of the book seems rather abrupt, while many loved the “former crush” trope of the plot. This is book two in the Hometown Players series.

He’ll do whatever it takes to win—on and off the ice.

Luc Richard is the hottest player in the NHL—and it has nothing to do with hockey. His racy relationship with his supermodel ex set the tabloids on fire but nearly put his career on ice. To avoid being traded, Luc agrees to take a break from the spotlight—and from women—and spend the off-season at home in Silver Bay, Maine. It’s the perfect plan… until he reconnects with Rose.

Rose Caplan is tired of being shy, sweet, and safe. She’s ready for passion, romance—and Luc. Having loved him longer than she can remember, she’s finally ready to prove she’s not the same innocent little girl he once knew. Off the ice Luc doesn’t do games, but this new Rose makes him feel like playing a little dirty. If he’s really got a shot at her heart then he’s not just playing to win. He’s playing for keeps.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

Dukes Are Forever

Dukes Are Forever by Anna Harrington is $1.99! This is a historical romance with what seems to be an enemies to lovers plot. It’s the first book in the Secret Life of Scoundrels series. Some readers found the heroine a bit TSTL, but others really loved the hero and his quest for revenge.

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE
Battlefields and barrooms hold much more interest for Edward Westover, Duke of Strathmore, than a little girl’s fondness for dolls and lace. When he takes possession of his enemy’s estate, everything that villain held dear-including his daughter-belongs to Edward. Hire a governess, arrange a dowry, give a few reassurances, and be off on his way-that’s Edward’s plan. But he’s in for the shock of his life. For his new ward is a beautiful, impetuous, and utterly irresistible woman . . .

. . . AND WAR
Kate Benton is stunned. Who is this arrogant, infuriating man who’s invited himself into her home and taken over her life? Her vow: to do everything in her power to convince him to leave her-and Brambly House-alone. Yet as chilly days melt into sultry nights, Kate sees glimpses of kindness underneath Edward’s cool façade . . . and a passionate nature that takes her breath away. There’s so much she doesn’t know about this man. But does she dare trust this devilish duke with her heart?

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

Useless Etymology

Useless Etymology by Jess Zaffaris is $1.99! Calling all my word nerds! This non-fiction title may be of interest to you, especially if you like word facts or adding more to your random knowledge bank.

Did you know that an “astronaut” is literally a “star sailor,” that a thesaurus is, in fact, a “treasure trove” of words, and that someone who is “sinister” is actually just “left-handed”?

Have you ever wondered why English isn’t considered a Romance language if 60% of our
words are Latin-derived?

Did Shakespeare really invent 1,700 words, and if not, why the heck do we say that he did?

Why is the English language stuffed with so many synonyms?

Let’s be real: English can seem pretty bonkers. And, well, sometimes it is. But through thorough thought and a pinch of curiosity, method can be found within the madness of our modern tongue-even within the disparate pronunciation of the words “through,” “thorough,” and “thought.”

Derived from Germanic, Romance, Hellenic, Semitic, African and Native American languages, English contains multitudes. It has been (and continues to be) transformed by war and conquest, art and literature, science and technology, love and hate, wit and whim.

Useless Etymology takes readers on a time-traveling adventure to unlock the beauty, wonder, and absurdity within our everyday words, how they came to be, and the unexpected ways their origins weave a global, cross-cultural labyrinth of meaning.

Filled with fun facts and delightful discoveries, this is an enlightening read for anyone who wants to know more about why the English language works the way that it does.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2026/04/dukes-hockey-romance-more/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=172151

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: busy

bjornwilde posting in

ways_back_room

Happy Thursday!

What is your pup's Roman Empire? I.e. what is a subject your character can't help but think about at least once a day?

kivutio posting in

fandomcalendar

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wychwood

So basically these are all the same song, right:

Paul Simon - Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend
Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend

What else am I missing that goes on this list? And are there any equivalents about boyfriends? The only thing that came to mind was the Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You, which isn't quite the same vibe.

sovay

Actually it appears that when younger I read several books by Leon Garfield without at any point committing his name to memory, which seems rude. I fell down a rabbit hole of recognition on the Internet Archive. I hadn't clicked with Black Jack (1968) because I expected more piracy from it, but the crash of affectionate recall prompted by The Stolen Watch (1988) should have translated into a copy of my own even before it could read like a direct ancestor of Frances Hardinge. I remembered the ending of Devil-in-the-Fog (1966) without any of the twists the story took to get to it. I must not have had access to The God Beneath the Sea (1970) or I would have tried it on the strength of the title and almost certainly bounced. I had not read either the comedy of misapprehensions that comprises The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1971) or the sweetly macabre triangle of The Valentine (1977), but highly enjoyed both. At this point my ability to read novels off a screen conked out, leaving dozens yet of historical titles for me to explore at some more library-convenient date—Garfield seems to have been fully as prolific as Dickens who left an imprint on him that can be seen from Carroll crater. His closest contemporary in Georgian-Victorian picaresque-grotesque looks like Joan Aiken, whom I discovered around the same time and have never lost track of. I was reminded also of Sid Fleischman and Ellen Raskin. I would feel worse about mislaying him if I had not famously had to re-find Vivien Alcock's The Haunting of Cassie Palmer (1980) from a single scene that terrified me as a child sans author, title, or any hint of the wider plot; the late eighteenth century origins of that novel's ghost now look like plausible bleedthrough from one writer in the household to the other, especially since it was her first, although marked already with her own concerns of children and ambiguous adults. For people who like morally messy mentors, Garfield is a must. Most of his novels seem not to be supernatural, but the kind that wouldn't surprise if they suddenly turned into it. I hope he still fetches up in used book stores.

Current Music: Atomic Fruit, "Medicine"

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la_rainette

January 2018

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ysabetwordsmith in followfriday - Follow Friday 4-24-36
nineweaving - Willingly
conuly - Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
abyss_valkyrie in c_ent - 20 Zhu Yilong icons
redbird - (no subject)
ranalore - A fog gathers generations
lycomingst - (no subject)
musesfool - But thy eternal summer shall not fade
princessofgeeks - 8 things make a post
sholio - Dragaera reread: Hawk
oursin - Expense of spirit
raven - (no subject)
the_shoshanna - ISO a unicorn backpack
smartbitches_feed - Dukes, Hockey Romance, & More
princessofgeeks - New Heated Rivalry fic
prisca in fandomcalendar - Sweet and Short - A low pressure, multifandom writing community
bjornwilde in ways_back_room - Thursday DE
kivutio in fandomcalendar - All But Romance Fanwork Exchange 2026 - sign ups open
wychwood - side-effect of shuffling playlists
sovay - Now there's always someone else in the back of your mind

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Page generated Apr. 24th, 2026 05:22 am

Ce qu'en pensent les potes

Network

Follow Friday 4-24-36

Willingly

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

20 Zhu Yilong icons

(no subject)

A fog gathers generations

(no subject)

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

8 things make a post

Dragaera reread: Hawk

Expense of spirit

(no subject)

ISO a unicorn backpack

Dukes, Hockey Romance, & More

Starter Villain

You can find ordering info for this book here.

Making a Play

You can find ordering info for this book here.

Dukes Are Forever

You can find ordering info for this book here.

Useless Etymology

You can find ordering info for this book here.

New Heated Rivalry fic

Sweet and Short - A low pressure, multifandom writing community

Thursday DE

All But Romance Fanwork Exchange 2026 - sign ups open

side-effect of shuffling playlists

Now there's always someone else in the back of your mind

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January 2018

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