posted by bzedan at 11:40am on 12/04/2025 under meta
I think one can do pinned here? Or "sticky"?? Anyway, I just went and cleaned up some weird code that the linkback from my WP plugin was doing and figured that I should note: more often than not, what you see here is just mirroring my blog-blog! But I do reply to comments here, obvi, the posts just *originate* mostly from another place.
In the spirit of putting some useful things right up top, here's a the intro from my Tumblr, where I am the most active:
I’m rather behind, in many things I suppose right now, which is fine! It’s fine. I’ve had full (and lovely) weekends recently and was hoping I could have something nice and restful and fruitful this long weekend but that’s not how it’s going to shake out which! is! fine!! So let’s just have a tab cleanout for the blog post this week.
human.json, as it is described on GIT “A lightweight protocol for humans to assert authorship of their website content and vouch for the humanity of others.” It’s very interesting and seems straightforward and easy to implement. status: moved to REF: Web & Computer
Corridor Crew’s video on Disney’s sodium vapour effect process, which was represented in my phone by a tab that was a search on DDG for “mary poppins special effect background.” I can’t even remember why I was looking for it, it certainly wasn’t to watch a video essay? I wanted to know what it was called, I think? In finishing the search sat undone until now I also found a post saying they did not find the prism, or otherwise disputing the stories around the prism. status: whatever caused me to care has passed, but I did find what it was called hooray
Harvard Sentences, which are “sample phrases used for standardised testing of Voice over IP, cellular, and other telephone systems.” I suppose the “quick fox jumps over the lazy dog” of sounds, then. Fascinated by this, not sure I want to test my voice against them, but I love their existence. status: moved to Sounds
Game accessibility guidelines, with why/how, three levels of guidelines, an Excel checklist download. And, of course, the guides. Important stuff to know and have!! status: moved to WIP/REF: Gamewriting
Webcomic Studio, a hub for reading and publishing indie webcomics. status: moved to LINKS: Websites (Retro/Coding)
posted by bzedan at 03:06pm on 14/05/2026 under books
We recently went to Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair, which we went to last year and loved, this year not so much. We’re going to try one more time next year on a paid day in hopes that the crush of people doesn’t feel so fire-hazardy and frustrating. Hyperallergenic has some nice photos here.
As usual, I found more things that tickled my brain in the “zine” area that fills up the studio and workspaces building, but there were lots of interesting things to look at. And look only is what I did, no money or space for new books this year, though we did splash out for Sci-fi, Magick, Queer L.A. | Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation from Inventory Press (which grew from theSci-Fi, Magick , Queer L.A. archive show at USC), which makes lovely books. Look at this fore-edge!!!
What I did grab lots of were business cards–it’s wild to me, someone who used to do cons, how few places tabling ever have them, or have enough of them–and hooray most didn’t just send me to Instagram. Like, my friends, I want to go buy or look at your stuff, I don’t have Instagram, I’m not going to Zelle you $3 for a zine, please god. Anyway! Some faves in a little link roundup.
These were gorgeous and simple books, but what caught me was seeing they were based in Corvallis, Oregon. And! On further inspection, were part of OSU?!! Turns out the press is run on a curricular structure, is student-staffed, and is probably giving these kids one of the better hands-on experiences possible about printing.
I did almost go home with We’re Sorry You Applied This Year, from Natalie Krick, which makes sort of black-out poems of rejection letters collected over the course of a year. I may still end up getting it, it’s a real treat and an eternal mood.
Natalie Krick – We’re Sorry You Applied This Year. Composit Press.
The problem with buying nothing at fairs like this is that you’ll probably never get a chance again. Salt and Pepper doesn’t ship to the United States currently, alas forever.
Also mercurial was exactly why I grabbed their card. I believe they had heavy silver ink printing on some magazines and I will love that style forever and ever. I cannot find the items that grabbed my eye on their site, sadly, but there’s lots of yummy stuff in there.
A super clean design style that also seems like it is true to the designer will always grab me and Special Special has that. Bonus also for having quirky stationary that doesn’t inexplicably piss me off. The sold out Illegal Pad (three columns of lines, grid, dots) is a delight. This tote was not at the show but absolutely rips.
Symposium Tote Bag with Symposium Publication by Cai Studio. From Special Special.
I love when a book or object is lovingly and beautifully made and Gong Press creates Objects ™ that are pleasant to touch, and delightful to interact with. What caught my eye particularly was theirI Ching Hexagram “bookmark book.” The paper stock of the pages within was lightly waxy, the holes in the cover unique to each, the content perfectly printed.
I almost couldn’t find their sites after the show, this was one of those (very cool design, like a little book wit ha quote in it) cards that only had an @ to find somebody by. But the work had such a delicious ephemeral vibe I really did want to find them beyond what I can see of Instagram before it blocks my scroll. And I succeeded!
Once more, I’m not 100% what had me ask for a card, but Love Letters, Fireworks, and Time Travel may well have been it. Collected letters from a time-distant stranger? Beautiful paper choices?!
Love Letters, Fireworks, and Time Travel. Howling Cactus.
The only thing that saved me from buying a riso print of a still from a horror movie from this table was that I am incredibly picky. But boy, did I enjoy paging through them hungrily. I love typologies and collections (rave flyers), I love spiral bound books that don’t feel like they’ve chosen that binding to be trendy, I love horror and weird stuff.
Sadly, I learned once I got home that Colpa is an event-only vendor currently but their site says they’re “working on building out the USED section of our site” which has me at 100% eyes emoji.
I love a good or notable business card and Figure Bound had ones that were the kind of bookmarks that slide over the top of a page. Delightful!!! Also just a really pleasant site to browse. The paper choices are delicious, the printing clean, the content good and the prices exquisite (you can make good artist books and not make them all $60!). Trees of America was particularly fun. I’m showing a screencap here so you can see the cute thing the menu does as you scroll on the site (tips to the vertical).
Trees of America, Samuel Alexander Forest. Figure Bound.
And that’s it! I also enjoyed the area set aside for Riso Studio Arts, which has locations in Portland (Oregon) and Los Angeles both. Riso will get me eventually, I’m sure. I’m soft for all fibre arts and printing types and will slowly collect them all as I continue onward.
And the THING is, at one point I was letting the tags just happen when I posted to Tumblr from Flickr and the use of tagging is very different in those two contexts.
In Flickr (for the most part that I encounter!) you’re tagging the content of the image (example: baking, cupcakes, frosting, white chocolate) and the methods used to create the image (the types of cameras or lenses, most often). So folks who want to look at a lot of pictures of [thing] or whatever can find them.
Tumblr, overall-ish (or at least the bits I see), you are more likely (when not using tags to have conversations or footnote or whatever) is about the subject of the post (example: #vent, #/negative, #vampires, #dracula daily).
Subject versus content is a very permeable membrane–for some folks they’re using tags to also log how something is created (example: #procreate), or to make it easier to find images or stories that contain a specific thing (example: #fangs) or so that people can filter them out (example: #blood). Then, of course, there’s the negative tagging system where tags are used to call out the non-theme posts (example: #not naruto).
Like any user-managed tagging system it really does come down to the user’s intent. And that’s great because it’s surprisingly easy to adjust to different people’s styles of tagging within their blog, even if it is different from how the larger sub-system they’re in tags. You’ll note I’ve been putting a lot of (but not EVERYONE) kinds of things in parentheses because if I’ve learned one thing over the years it’s that non-moderated tagging and categorisation can create the most beautiful variants of logic I’ve ever seen, the kind of creatures that could not survive beyond their hyper-specific islands of user and their posts (which makes AO3 tag wranglers a kind of zoologist, maybe, performing vital functions).
The point of this is that I was not maintaining, for myself, an internal consistency in the tagging. We’re not trying to be perfect here, just attempting to normalise some sort of reasonable, repeatable consistency.
Much of what I’m doing is normalising the control vocabulary. What is “control vocabulary”? A term I learned when my partner got their MLIS that I then imprinted on like a baby bird. The short of it is: a selected (controlled) list of words or phrases (vocabulary). By selecting from the preset list, you make it easier to find what you’re looking for. Only one post tagged with the word “#equipment”? Well that can be corrected for the tag “#tools,” better grouping like items.
The bulk of the rest of the work I was doing in cleaning tags was removing extraneous tags that mean and do nothing in the greater intent of “grouping like with like.” There’s only one post tagged “#teens” and it’s a gift set of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Goodbye forever, tag. It takes use consideration sometimes. “#Velvet” seems like a logical tag, one that would be paired with “#textiles” or any similar types of fibre arts tag, but in the context of a photo with a velvet background? Nope, not for this blog.
Other seemingly deletable tags (example: #msn) were actually just me talking in tags, either single word in a tag for emphasis or answering a poll (about my first social media, in this case). After the last tag cleanup work I began to make sure I answer polls in tags with multi-word responses to make the differences more clear for any future maintenance efforts.
The way I’m even picking out individual label-type tags to check from the hundreds I’m cleaning is by having a little program running in my head that tries to guess what a tag might contain. I’m out here tagging posts on the regular, so if I see “#finals” I can go “hmm, either this is something to be deleted or it contains tips for folks doing finals in school.” Then, I check it out and if it’s the former it is delete time and if it’s the later I probably also add “#resources” or “#tips and tricks” and move on. A tag like “#metal” on my blog needs to be checked to see if I mean the thing people make sculptures from or the music genre–and if it is used as the music genre then it needs to be clarified to “heavy metal.”
And here’s the thing, I’m going to get it wrong. I’m going to skim over a tag like “#meat” because I do have a few sub-tags for recipes or cooking, or animal husbandry. And I won’t realise it’s a tag used ONLY on some random fan art of some character from a book. That’s okay, I know that a categorisation system is a living thing that grows and changes and I will come back and prune and tidy again–which is really also important because not only will I catch stuff I have missed, but I’ll see new groupings that have grown and deserve a new term in the control vocabulary.
Sometimes a tag is useless to the subjects I currently reblog, or is about topics I no longer care about, but the relevant tags can stay, though I did make sure they were brought to heel with the modern control vocabulary (pluralising, correcting caps or tense, etc.). The tags that you look at and see no posts more recent than 2014 are valuable for their absence, tracking the rise and fall of interests.
What’s maddening is that some of these tags seem baked into posts in a non-removable way, particularly on some old Flickr/Tumblr cross posts. No matter what I do, there are tags like “twins” that will never be extricated from posts like this one, for whatever hell coding reason.
There’s no point to this, I just wanted to document my thoughts as I went (and a lot of this was written while I was finishing up the last of the project). I ALSO want to share some of the cool stats I uncovered while doing this project but that’ll be another post.
Read more books this month than last, which means nothing in the scheme of things. I did finish a physical book that I’d put down the month prior and forgot to pick back up (collection of short stories), which absolutely torpedoed my average read time–which also means nothing. Stats are interesting numbers and not reflections of Self!
This month I both picked up an author I hadn’t read in a while to my delight and also gave an author a last chance that they did not pass. Lol, the spectrum! Let’s look at April reading stats. NO non-fiction this month, wildly, and tbh thank god. I can only hold so much new facts in my head before saturation means new additions will overspill. Gotta give things time to soak in.
Every Magic Shop book is a delight and this one even changes up the formula with a twist!
I mean, what else can one say?! I had no idea Coville had this newer addition to one of my favourite middle grade series. If you didn’t know, the books are set around the incredibly ’80s-era concept of a magic shop that appears just when a kid needs it. There’s often a bit of a “careful what you wish for” situation and lots of learning about feelings, and silliness and sorcery. It’s great stuff. This was a particularly interesting entry as it sort of ties together previous stories, gives us more (fascinating) information about the magic shop proprietor and how things work. It feels, in a way, like the end of the series and it’s a satisfying one.
Mad and hungry, this book tangles three women together ever more tightly as the reality of their world and their places in it melt into something new and wild under the eyes of creatures both more and less than saints. Delicious.
If I had a copy of this book it would live on a particular bookshelf I keep that has titles like Delicious in Dungeon, The Locked Tomb, California Bones, and other hungry books. So, you know, big ol’ content warning for cannibalism and madness. Starling is able to sell it though, with a frenetic and hallucinatory kind of prose that whips you along in the horror and hunger of a long siege.
A dreamy collection of short stories with an emphasis on identity, monsters and, predictably, imaginary places.
Goss clearly loves to dip into the well of telling the stories of literary characters who didn’t get the page time they deserve, and I am not mad about it. Oh no, shall we dally again by the babbling brook of Borges as well? It’s one of those rare short story collections where they basically all are enjoyable to read and do something interesting, which is a bonus.
And here are rest of April’s reads:
I only just now realised that I could upload a cover for the 1960s one missing it up there. But you can have a fancier picture. It’s one of the ones Chase’s mom sent, the lot of which I picked purely on vibes. Delicious, isn’t it? Nothing much going on in its head, but it’s pretty.
Huh, quite a lot of the books in April were collections of a sort – The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel, for all that it’s one book, is more a collection of tales. And I think one worth checking out, it’s very short but just the right size for what it’s trying to do.
Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. This is my fifth year doing it!! Check out the zine for 2026’s flash fiction here, and then enjoy a favourite from 2025’s collection.
A fun bonus for this flash, it’s set in the same world (with the same character) as the Growlers minicomic.
Andy pedalled slowly, the cart bumping along the broken asphalt behind her. The trike had an electric assist but, mindful of the season and its weak sunlight, she didn’t like using it more than she had to. She was sweating lightly, even in the autumn chill, partly because of her suit and partly because Andy sweat easily, to her annoyance.
Ahead, she saw a stumbling figure. She squinted through the eyes and shield of the suit, reaching down to slip her pusher from its cradle, keeping her pedalling even. As Andy drew closer, she could see it was one of the old ones, barely holding together despite whatever messed-up shit was keeping it ambulatory. Carefully, using her pusher, she softly batted at the thing so it would keep its distance. The wide plastic end of the modified oar poked the creature in its midsection and Andy heard something crack.
Startled, she pulled back, glancing at the paddle. It was intact, but the thing’s midsection was not. Turning her head as she passed it, Andy expected to see some sort of glistening wetness, rotted remains of intestine, but the creature’s insides looked like they’d been turned to dust. The sound Andy made was muffled by her suit.
She re-holstered the pusher and pedalled on.
The exchange at the town went like it always did. Andy dropped the supplies into a yellow-painted square, carefully laying out the boxes so nothing was touching each other. Stepping back behind the red line that bordered the square, she punched a button and turned away while the boxes were flashed with UVC before settling into the less powerful glow that would nuke them for the next hour. That done, she walked to a yellow barrel sloshing with sanitiser and used a rope to pull up her payment, sealed in a bag. Examining it through the clear plastic as she carried it, dripping, back to the trike, Andy felt it was a fair trade.
As she manoeuvred the trike and cart around in the narrow open space in front of the gates, she waved up to the guard in the tower. It looked like Tasha, from the silhouette, which made Andy all the more aware of the picture she painted in her bulky suit, coaxing the fat bike and unwieldy cart into the world’s most inelegant u-turn.
On her way back home, Andy didn’t see any more of the things, which she was grateful for. The first few months of it there had been a lot of zombie apocalypse fantasies being played out with guns, which had swelled the initial population to an unavoidable volume. A gun was a great way to avoid getting bit, but they were not so great at avoiding blood spray.
This many years out though, that initial group was like the thing she’d accidentally poked a hole in today. Annoyingly, even though most were growing older and weaker, there was always someone stupid enough to get infected, with all the energy and reflexes that a fresh body offered. By now everyone knew that you mostly just had to suit up and avoid fluids to not get infected but there was always somebody who had a festering well of machismo to prove.
Andy unlocked the lobby of the apartment building and wheeled her bike in. She adjusted the boxes still in the cart so they weren’t touching, laying the bag from town next to them, then set the timer for her own UVC, stepping back from the glow. The pusher went into a five-gallon bucket of bleach-water by the door like an umbrella stand.
Trudging up the first floor steps, Andy idly wondered if they’d reach a point she felt comfortable going outside unsuited. Probably not if there were still raccoons. They couldn’t get infected, but they were excellent carriers and liked to touch everything.
Entering the first apartment off the landing, Andy stripped off her outer suit, hanging laying it in its own little yellow square in the middle of the room. The head of the suit, which looked like a frog wearing a baseball hat, had its own square. She’d found early on that a mascot suit was basically impermeable to human teeth and most weapons. Although she knew it was objectively stupid, she’d grown fond of the thing. Shaking her head, she turned a dial for the set of sterilising lights and stepped through the connecting door to the next apartment.
De-gowning had become as automatic a procedure as removing her bra at the end of the workday had once been. Shoe covers in a bin, coverall gown on its hook, hood set aside on what had once been a kitchen counter. Glancing at her supplies, Andy made a mental note to do another run for more. Some were washable but others—like the mask, cap and gloves—went into the garbage chute and down into the building’s incinerator.
Through the anteroom, which had been a bedroom, to the bathroom and a shower, which was cold. Andy used most of the electricity she got from the panels on the roof to charge her bike and power the UVCs. When she did heat water it was for baths, anyway. She looked wistfully at the toilet, which was bone dry. She reminded herself that adding another chemical toilet here would mean another toilet to clean.
If you follow me on Comradery (or Patreon), or elsewhere, you may have heard me mention a tedious-to-work-on current project that I’d be sharing soon. Well! I’m serialising another book!! The tedious parts were doing an edit and breaking the book up into nice chunks (and queueing it). Starting June 21, 2026, I’m serialising The Consoling Divide! You may remember (or have been signed up to get the emails for) The Audacity Gambit, this is both a sequel to TAG and also a story that can stand on its own.
If you’d like to know more about this upcoming story, check out the info page here! Also please, enjoy the cover and a blurb:
Here’s the blurb:
Five years ago, Emily Anderson of Royal Oak Court Trailer Park was declared the Chosen One and sent on a quest to the Sidhe realm to end the exile of the adults who raised her. She succeeded, because that’s what Chosen Ones do, but the aftermath left her alone and in charge of the rest of the children in the trailer court.
Since her return, they’ve all found a kind of peace and stability, but nothing can stay the same forever. When Emily learns she has to plunge back into the fairy world she gladly left and reopen emotions she’d even more gladly bottled up, her reluctance is met by the one thing she knows is true: she can only rely on herself. One of the children Emily raised needs her, but first she needs to find them. The world she’s returning to is a different one than what she experienced as a hopeful teen, and even when it is familiar her place in it is no longer as clearly defined, the path not so easily followed.
I had fun going back and getting this ready to serialise, I hope all y’all have a nice time reading it. In case this is a blog post and not just an email (I am writing this ~ in the past ~ oooOOOhh ~ here’s a signup for getting The Consoling Divide delivered to your inbox. Of course, as always, you can as easily add it to your RSS, which is very sexy too.
If you were signed up for updates for TAG, I’ve (I believe) set up things so that you either start getting emails for the new story as before and can also easily unsubscribe from TCD updates if you prefer. Please let me know if you have trouble with it! Goodness knows its been a bear from my side.
The intent is to be annoying (ie: somewhat regular, rather than easily distracted) about promo’ing this one, I have promo images and everything. So expect to keep hearing about this for a bit! It may not start until mid-June, but hey, I’ve got plenty of other stuff for you to read until then.
This week started off with a water leak and dealing with the mess of that, so of course the whole schedule was thrown off. Then, I had dentist on Friday, which also begun my annual chunk of time off that I take each spring, so I quite nearly missed blogging this week. HOWEVER I want to keep the weekly thing going so here we are. A post.
I would do a link roundup but currently my second monitor is at the doctor’s (Chase is fixing how it is mounted), and I’m incapable of doing that sort of thing quickly with just one little laptop screen. Wait, maybe I am strong enough.
FEMICOM Museum, a very cool archive of girly games, toys and consoles. I love small archives and websites are such a nice way to handle that. I’ve not heard of most of these toys, but that’s less about me not being into girly games and more about me being of an age and temperament where most of the games I knew about as a kid were either Sega MasterSystem (then Genesis) or handheld poker games. status: moved to *absolutely random shit (because I haven’t got a folder for these kinds of sites yet, the asterisk indicates a folder to be sorted)
DriftBook by Lur Noise over on Itch. A game about walking and drawing and exploring. I had heard of it then forgotten and was reminded again, thank goodness. status: keeping the dang tab open because I mean to do it this week
Tiled Words. Hey do you like crosswords but want them to be more annoying (positive), but haven’t the mind for the kind with no clues or no numbers or whatever? Tiled Words is a great variant where you build the words that answer the clues. It’s fun and there’s a depth of puzzles at this point (they’re daily!) to support a big zoned out crossword dive if you are so inclined. status: keeping tab open on tablet because that’s where my streak is
Coffee with a Codex, over at UPenn. As they describe, it’s a weekly “informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn’s collections.” It’s nice to sign up for the email reminders to see what is upcoming, but I never end up watching them live, which is fine as they’re archived over on YouTube. status: already signed up for emails, shared here to round the list out
Okay there. A Post ™. My pomodero just blipped and some laundry is coming out of the dryer so onto the next thing.
Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. This is my fifth year doing it!! Check out the zine for 2026’s flash fiction here, and then enjoy a favourite from 2025’s collection.
There were probably better ways to spend a time loop than a job interview. Luz had done them. Made a lot of memories. Great stuff.
She’d been making one of her morning idea lists however many “days” back, realising she’d learned most of the skills, done most of the things, visited most of the places she’d ever wanted. There didn’t seem to be much left to conquer. Which was a couple of levels of depressing in a way she didn’t want to look at directly.
Then she’d remembered.
The actual first day. The true day zero. She’d had a job interview. It had gone pretty terribly, for several reasons. And she’d been that mix of despondent and angry that you get when that sort of thing happens, and the rest of the afternoon and evening had happened and then she’d woken up and had gone through it again. And again.
It had taken Luz about two weeks to really figure out she was in a time loop for real—partly because there was a little Catholic bit still inside her who felt like this was probably a deserved level of hell, partly because there was a little bit of a chemical imbalance in her brain that made her not always sure of how real things were.
Each day of those two weeks she’d done the interview and it had gone badly, in various different ways. Once she’d caught the drift of real-reality it was the first thing to go. Then years or aeons or whatever had passed and now she was back at go.
Well, she’d been back at go for a while now. Her goal was to get them to offer her the job right there, at the interview. And, even all these skills and life lessons and whatever since the time loop began and she was still “not a great fit for the role.” Luz had tried a department store’s worth of various business attire. She’d memorised the interview questions, the HR lady’s answers, she’d learned how to make the horrible blonde HR lady laugh. She’d displayed knowledge of skills not listed on her resume (Luz realised she would have a hell of a resume update when the time loop ended, actually), she’d shown a preternaturally intuitive understanding of the business thanks to doing a month’s worth of research on it.
And yet!
Luz was pretty sure at this point that the answer to getting the job was skin lighteners and hair dye. Being more “naturally femme,” even though she was girly as hell, actually. It wasn’t Luz that was the problem, it was something she couldn’t fix in an infinite number of days. She was feeding the pigeons, who Luz suspected also were aware of the time loop, when she thought of a new angle.
It took several days of preparation, which was fine, she had nothing but days. But one morning that was as gorgeous as every morning because it was every morning, she was waiting for her drink at the same coffee shop as the blonde HR lady.
Deploying a combination of skills built up over a seemingly infinite number of loops, that was assisted by her naturally clumsy demeanour, Luz deftly fumbled her drink when she went to pick it up and simultaneously added a little something extra to the blonde HR lady’s cup. Luz knew that her face was now seared into the woman’s mind, which was fine. Luz’s drink was also hopefully as permanently embedded in her sweater set.
With her interview still a couple hours away, Luz got herself cleaned up, wearing the clothes she thought were nice but normal. No more business costumes, just regular office clothes.
Her heart felt light as she was sent up the elevator and guided by some baby of an office assistant to the small conference room. It soared when the door opened and a stranger entered, apologising while fumbling a folder of papers. Their colleague had gone home with a stomach bug, so sorry, so they’d be doing the interview. Luz smiled graciously. That was absolutely fine with her, she was looking forward to it.
Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. This is my fifth year doing it!! Check out the zine for 2026’s flash fiction here, and then enjoy a favourite from 2025’s collection.
Healthy Habits: One day at a time!
Sol 178
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: x 10k Steps: x Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: Pretty good! I think today was a fruitful day. I did the quarterly check of the water recycler a couple days early because the twice-cycle EVA is coming up and of course they’re scheduled for the same day. It would make sense if there were more people here but, lol, just me. 🙂
Sol 179
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: x 10k Steps: x Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: Counting suit check as a chore today (although I also made some progress on the library re-cataloguing, but that’s a FUN chore). Trying to be gentle with myself because I hate EVAs and can feel tomorrow’s mood already souring from here.
Sol 180
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: x 10k Steps: ? do non-gravity steps count as steps? it’s movement, whatever. Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: AUGH I hate EVAs. I like being outside fine, it’s kind of fun, even. The thing is, the whole time I feel like I’m about to lock myself out of my car, you know? Even though I literally know this is impossible, it always sits there in the back of my brain. All was good on the ship, yay, etc. Patched some spots that were probably micro-meteor fly-bys, or whatever. I know the shielding layers capture them if they get past the skin, but I’m not going to have this thing looking a shit if when I get picked up. Tomorrow is a self-care day!!
Sol 181
Hydration: xx Skin/Bodycare: xx 10k Steps: [ ] Cleaning/Chores: [ ] 8 Hr Sleep: xx
Mood: I knew there was spa music in the library! It was under “atmospheric,” keyword “flute.” I crushed up some asprin from the med store, used half a ration of honey and made myself a mask (the other half went in some mint tea). I made sure the shower room was super sealed and opened the wash spigot. It didn’t mist like I expected it to because: microgravity (full of surprises!), and it was lukewarm but it was nice. I drank my tea and played with bubbles of water and did a body scrub with salt and did no chores today. I also fell asleep under the sun lamp but it’s on a timer anyway.
Sol 181
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: x 10k Steps: x Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: I was doing seal checks and when I was at the port I thought I saw something. Dunno! And also when I was on the cat-wheel I stg there was movement, corner of my eye. Did I pass some psychosis checkpoint at Sol 180, wtf.
Sol 182
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: x 10k Steps: x Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: [ ]
Mood: Couldn’t sleep, heard? A thump? Maybe? Maybe it’s the air cyclers, but I checked those ten sols ago to change the filters. Made myself go through all the stuff and chores today because a routine keeps you grounded. I got this!!
Sol 183
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: [ ] 10k Steps: xx Cleaning/Chores: [ ] 8 Hr Sleep: [ ]
Mood: So! I turned on the exterior lights today!! Or last night! I guess!! I heard the noise again so I was like “let’s prove your mind is making things up” and I turned on the lights, even though I know they add like a thousand steps on the cat-wheel every second they’re on. Guess what was outsideeeeee. I think? Flesh??? I’m not a biologist. The real big point here is that I’m not outside in space any longer, I’m in a Thing. The light reflected off stuff. Kind of spent most of the day on the wheel.
Sol 184
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: [ ] 10k Steps: xx Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: [ ]
Mood: Lights on briefly again today. Still in the thing. When not on the wheel tried to make more progress on library re-categorisation, looking for bio books.
Sol 185
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: [ ] 10k Steps: xx Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: It’s got to shit me out eventually. Do space monsters use the toilet. Does a space bear shit in the space woods. More time on cat-wheel good to tire me out so I sleep.
Sol 186
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: [ ] 10k Steps: xx Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: Will the stomach acid??? hurt the ship? I’m not doing an EVA in this. Found the bio books, they’re not much help because nobody has studied giant space whales or whatever, because they shouldn’t exist. I am having a stress breakout, not skimping on taking care of my body tomorrow. PROMISE.
Sol 187
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: x 10k Steps: xx Cleaning/Chores: x 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: Did a mask while on the cat-wheel. Multi-tasking. The “transit time” of a sperm whale is 15-18 hours. That’s “stomach to anus”. Elephants are 18-24 hours, mouth to butthole. Wild actually as the former is ten times the size of the latter. Like you count whale weight by units of elephant. If I’ve been in this thing since Sol 182 then that’s five? days. I haven’t put the lights on since 184, because I freaked myself out about a stomach scavenger ecological cycle. Maybe I’ve been out of the thing since then.
Sol 188
Hydration: x Skin/Bodycare: xx (took two “showers” today) 10k Steps: x Cleaning/Chores: [ ] 8 Hr Sleep: x
Mood: Today I took part unwillingly in a scat film. There was a bunch of actual shaking? Like the ship was being shook around?! Turned on lights and it took me a bit but I realised I was a piece of corn in nature’s trash compactor. Fucking!! Gross!!! I could barely look at those pages in the bio-books, wtf now I’m living it. Now that I’m back in space will this all freeze dry and flake off the ship? Will it freeze dry and stick to the ship? How long will I be able to handle this mentally before I have to EVA about it? Because I’m not letting this ship look like shit if when I get picked up.
Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. This is my fifth year doing it!! Check out the zine for 2026’s flash fiction here, and then enjoy a favourite from 2025’s collection.
You’ve done this before. You’ve defeated magicians, killed kings, rescued the helpless. It doesn’t get easier, it doesn’t. That’s fine, that’s what you signed up for. But you’re stood here anyway, listening to this knight—this paladin—looking sweatless in his gambeson even though the sun is at its zenith, sneering at you and the others about numbers. As if any of this could be quantified.
He’d already yelled at young Drake for filling a cup with cider, saying that cider was for heroes only. Which everyone bristled at, you are all of you heroes of some sort, so who is this man coming in from the city with his definitions?
Most of you have outlasted several royals. Partly because royals have the lifespan of mayflies, and partly because some of you have hair that matches the metal of your armour. And here is this man, his full moustache the same liver-sick colour as his skin, saying you weren’t heroes, you wouldn’t be until you’d met some set of goals. This many beasts slayed, that many outlaws captured, and an amount of tithes gathered that you know couldn’t be achieved without stealing from the villages. Which it would be, stealing. Even if they gave it. The lot of them need seed and the coin to get the things they can’t grow far more than any of this lot do.
Of course, those who do the best at meeting these goals will be rewarded somehow, badges or swords or a plot of land. You have a plot of land. You get to see it once or twice a year, when its so cold out that not even the worst villains dare to leave their lairs. And what would they do, actually, what could they do, actually, to those of you who didn’t deliver what somebody in their silks demanded? Take your land? You’d like to see them try. Tell you to leave the corps? What, so that the gap you left would be filled with witless young things who don’t realise what they’re signing up for?
The knight is saying something about how long he’d been titled. You wonder if he realises how few of you are titled. You’re a rarity in in the group, with your land and your comfort, as uncommon as it is for you to have time to enjoy it. On and on the man is prattling, about what he has that he assumes none of you do. You wonder if he’s trying to inspire jealousy to fuel action, which is poor kindling for any kind of lasting fire.
You’re glad you’re in the back of the group, even with your years of practise you know you can’t keep your feelings off your face. You lean against the table, resting your knee. Your one lasting injury and it’s not even from battle, but a calf getting too rambunctious. That’s what life is, you know that. Your corps know this. You’ve all of you worked together enough that so much of what you is instinctual—the way your hands move, setting the arrow to the string, the way the others take steps aside to clear a path at a single word from you.
This close the shot is good and you marvel for a moment while the knight’s mouth keeps moving in disdain, before it catches up to what his body already knows. Setting the bow back on the table, you walk the cleared aisle up to the body, resisting the urge to kick it, though you do hold it down with your foot as you remove your arrow from the eye.
“Shame he got lost on his way here.” You don’t look up at the others, but you can feel their shoulders relax. Someone in the back suggests that maybe it was those bandits you’d heard about recently. Murmurs of agreement then, and somebody adding that they’d heard the bandits had gotten as far as the castle.
You straightened up then, considering the possibilities. “If there are bandits in the castle, then I suppose it is our responsibility to root them out.”
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