jocundasykes

Fandom 50 #23

Untitled Daisuke and Monty by Julia Stark
Fandom: Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho!
Relationship: Daisuke Bucklesby/Monty LaMontgomery
Medium: Art
Length: 1 piece
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: slice of life, happy ending, established relationship, then and now, clothing, nostalgia

Description:

Two full-colour images of Daisuke and Monty, one in the present and one in flashback to their younger days. The first is fully saturated and features the two walking close together with Monty in the lead. Daisuke's hat is tipped forward over his eyes as he looks down with a faint smile and puts away his flask. Monty is watching him over his shoulder, likewise smiling and seemingly mid-conversation with him. Above them, larger and more faded out, is a memory of them sitting together decades ago, Daisuke speaking while Monty watches him with soft-eyed attention.

( Very Minor Spoilers for Episode 6 )
This piece is just so sweet. The whole "getting the band back together" element of Cloudward, Ho! has been right up my alley, and I like that their separation was more about losing something that was holding them together rather than a big falling-out that created any ill will. It's made for a great story so far about some highly competent older characters reuniting warmly with old friends and working well together because of their shared history.

I love how the artist has captured this. The flashback looms large over the two men, creating a sense of those past conversations fuelling their present ease with each other and shared direction. It spot-on conveys Monty's wonderful attentiveness to people and suggests a lot in imagining the usually laconic Daisuke so engaged in talking to him. As someone who loves the aesthetics of this season, I'm also very much here for the details in their outfits and the little ways they've changed over the years.

bluedreaming

With my second load of ordered danmei arriving,¹ I came to the bizarre realization that after so many years I’m…buying books with the intention of…reading them? What a paradigm shift!

This isn’t quite 100% accurate, but through my life I was first in the stage of borrowing books from the library and then buying them to keep if I really liked them, then a lot of ebooks, never mind my massive fic reading numbers, and all throughout I’ve also had a strong general practice of buying select books to have for whatever reason, often with not much intention of reading them, at least not anytime soon.²

I do have rules! I’m only “allowed” to collect things that fall within certain parameters, though some of the new ones (danmei, light novels that are horror/certain others) are a bit loose and will need to be tightened up eventually. I don’t have enough space for an infinity of books. I also generally buy ebooks if I can get them DRM-free, and after that, depending on the title, I may go for an audiobook instead if it exists.)

¹ These aren’t “large” publishers like 7seas that I can get via my local bookstore but rather Rosmei & Via Lactea etc. and are physical-only (somewhat limited run?) publications.
² i.e. I somehow randomly decided to start collecting C. J. Cherryh’s sci-fi books in hardcover, and now I’m too far in.

bluedreaming

text: sunshine revival july 2025, image: fluffy white clouds in a summer blue sky and the hint of power lines like white foss

sunshine_revival

I have been working on the challenges, all signs to the contrary, so I figured I’d better just get this post up even if it’s on my phone (always a fun experiment when there’s more formatting than usual).

I’m not really a journalling person, so it seems like I’ll be going with the creative prompts.

As always, this is also a hello post 👋

( Friending Meme )

( Challenge #1 )

( Challenge #2 )

arcanetrivia

Title: The Night After
Fandom: Monkey Island
Characters: Guybrush, OCs
Rating: General
Words: 2685
Summary: Set immediately after the end of The Secret of Monkey Island. Guybrush learns that the story of his exploits just might be an interesting tale to tell.
Notes: From this prompt: Your character is in a cafe and overhears a conversation. How does it make them feel? Does it change the way they think about something? Write that scene. I think this kinda went out of bounds from that? And certainly it didn't take me a day to write this as a warmup in the way it's intended, lol. Try more like several weeks. But whatever.

The Night After

delphi

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delphi

✓

kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Non-Human POV

(I checked this square off my bingo card last time, but this new release arrived with perfect timing, so I'm doubling up.)

Ew, It's Beautiful is the newest collection of cartoonist Joshua Barkman's webcomic False Knees. It contains around 120 short comics, the majority of which were new to me, separated into sections for winter, spring, summer, and fall based on their setting.

The stars of False Knees are usually birds, but there are some cats, insects, and at least a couple of beavers in the mix here. Barkman's art is legitimately beautiful, with a naturalist's specificity and a knack for combining human expressions with realistic animal features, and his writing captures the universal experience of being a small creature in an unfathomably big world. It's full of absurd humour, occasional moments of awe, and recurring bits about the creative process, self-image, and the way friends or family can be on entirely different wavelengths. The comic is where I got my current default icon from, and it almost never fails to bring me a little joy or give me something to appreciate.

( 3 Comics )

bluedreaming

Maybe it’s just me, today, but I came across the word loach (which I’m positive I’ve heard before; it’s a type of fish after all, and sounds familiar) and the word is so delicious, it makes my mouth water.

Strong contender for next year’s word of the year? I guess we’ll see.

delphi

Fandom 50 #22

Day by Day by

surprisepink
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Ship: Stede Bonnet/Izzy Hands
Medium: Fic
Length: 1361 words
Rating: Teen
My Bookmark Tags: slice of life, romance, humour, happy ending, established relationship, izzy lives, future, flirtation, compatibility, service
Summary: A typical raid for Captain Bonnet and his new first mate.

Excerpt:

“I’m getting the hang of this, if I do say so myself,” says Stede, cheerily.

“And you do.”

“What’s that, Izzy?’

“Say so yourself.” The man looks entirely unimpressed, but it does take a lot to impress Izzy. Stede has accepted it by this point, and knows not to take it personally. Knows, too, that if Izzy actually wasn’t at least a little happy with him, he could leave the ship just about anywhere and find another pirate crew to join. And yet, port after port, he doesn’t.

And all Stede had ever wanted was for people to stay.

This is everything I love about the idea of Stede and Izzy together on the Revenge, with Stede captaining and Izzy serving as his first mate. The way they rile each other up is perfect, tempered to just the right heat by a better understanding of each other. Izzy's ways of trying to serve Stede while keeping his ego in check are moving, and so is Stede's growing sense of what he's doing and what it means.

The story's funny, with a comedic moment early on that made me laugh out loud, and the sexual chemistry between Stede and Izzy absolutely crackles. This one really made my day.

bluedreaming

I meant to post about this months ago, but I'm still somehow not really getting a handle on this year. Sometimes it's like that! Anyway, the

sunshine_challenge was always a really fun landmark for the year on Dreamwidth, and a slightly different type of event, and I was delighted to learn that after a couple of years of dormancy (hoping all is okay!) it's being carried on by a new team as the

sunshine_revival.

I did get as far as making a few banners for it that fit my journal, but I guess I'll have to see which one I pick.

( banner thumbnails )

As a side note though, maybe I'll have more success this year, since I have been writing more this last little while (cheers for

fan_flashworks!), so we'll see!

delphi

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torino10154

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

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REC: Untitled Daisuke and Monty by Julia Stark (Cloudward Ho!, Daisuke Bucklesby/Monty LaMontgomery)

what’s the opposite of tsundoku?

sunshine challenge 2025

fic: The Night After (Monkey Island, G)

Six Sentence Sunday

What I'm Reading: Ew, It's Beautiful: A False Knees Comic Collection by Joshua Barkman

collecting words like tasty snacks: loach

REC: Day by Day by surprisepink (Our Flag Means Death, Stede Bonnet/Izzy Hands)

sunshine challenge in a new form

Six Sentence Sunday

FIC: Two Hours, Thirty-Nine Minutes, Mature, Severus/Harry

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October 2024

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