fic: boiling over
Mar. 19th, 2026 07:11 pmFic: boiling over
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Frank Langdon & Samira Mohan
Characters: Samira Mohan, Frank Langdon
Additional Tags: not tagging robby because he doesn’t come off well here, but he’s haunting the narrative, Missing Scene, Post-Episode 10, eldest daughter prodigal son, the kids from robby’s first marriage that he doesn’t care about anymore because he’s got a new family, oh sorry was that snarky?, anyway the senior residents should unionize, let them commiserate over the way robby treats them, my ‘langdon should be the brother of every woman in the ed (except mel)’ agenda, my ‘samira has done nothing wrong and someone needs to acknowledge that’ agenda, another name checked off of langdon’s amends list
Summary:
“How’re you feeling?”
Samira looks up to see Langdon coming through the door of the breakroom, pulling it closed behind him.
“I’m fine,” she says, aiming for wry, though it comes out more terse than she’d hoped.
“By which you mean ‘kind of tingly but also wrung-out’?” Her surprise must show on her face, because he shrugs as he sits down at the chair across the table from her. “I have some experience with panic attacks.”
“You?” It doesn’t fit with how she thinks of him, easy confidence that tilts over into cockiness more than it should. But then, she’s never known him well.
fic: no-fault
Mar. 19th, 2026 07:10 pmTitle: no-fault
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Melissa “Mel” King/Frank Langdon, Abby Langdon & Frank Langdon, Melissa “Mel” King & Abby Langdon
Characters: Abby Langdon, Frank Langdon, Melissa “Mel” King
Additional Tags: Future Fic, POV Outsider, abby does not deserve this but at least she’s going to get some amusement out of it, ‘just friends’ huh?
Summary:
She tosses the plastic bottle into the buggy just as Tanner says, “…and Mel says that ponies aren’t baby horses, they’re something different. A baby horse is called a colt.”
“That’s right,” Abby says automatically, the words snagging on long-buried memories of Saddle Club and Misty of Chincoteague. And then, a delayed second later: “Who’s Mel?”
Because she usually does listen when he talks, and she thought she knew the names of all of his friends and all of his friends’ siblings and that she and Frank have both trained him well enough that he wouldn’t call an adult by their first name without some kind of title in front of it. But she definitely doesn’t remember hearing about a Mel before. A new kid in class? Or, God, a character from one of the more annoying shows he and Penny watch, the kind whose shrillness and obnoxious flashing make Abby flee the room?
She absolutely isn’t expecting the explanation Tanner gives.
“Daddy’s friend.”
The buggy jerks to a stop, the broken wheel—there’s always a broken wheel—dragging across the linoleum. Penny giggles at the sound it makes, but Abby doesn’t hear her, her mind suddenly gone blank.
Media Roundup: On the Mend (I hope)
Mar. 19th, 2026 11:53 amKareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi— For kiddo’s school book club. This is so not my kind of book and I wouldn’t have read it if the kiddo hadn’t insisted. I just find contemporary books with political themes really really stressful! So this book about a Syrian-American boy in 2016-2017 was really not my cup of tea. So I think it was doing ok at being the book it wanted to be, but that book is not for me. Also the whole book was in poetry, and I don't think that actually added much – but also I’m not really a poetry person.
Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton by Ryan North and Mike Norton— Since I've been reading a lot of superhero stuff an algorithm showed me this, and it's got a cute dog and is written by Ryan North so I thought I'd check it out (What has Ryan North been up to since Squirrel Girl? Maybe I should find out. Maybe I should reread Squirrel Girl)* This was a bit darker than I was expecting! And did really feature the elements of North’s style that I remember enjoying alot (witty dialogue and certain wacky over the top-ness) Though still mostly a sweet story. (Content note: abusive training/animal harm, animal death, children in peril)
Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks and Lumberjanes: Campfire Songs— These are single issue Lumberjanes stories by a bunch of different writers and artists. I enjoyed the variety! I think my favorite story was the one that had Last Unicorn vibes (Look I watched that movie a lot as a kid)
Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass by Lilah Sturges, polterink, et al— Lumberjanes original graphic novel – this was honestly a little disappointing, I didn’t feel like it really captured the vibe of the original comic. It did not help that this was one of those graphic novels with a very limited color palette (black, white and green) and I really missed the colorfulness!
Lumberjanes: The Shape of Friendship by Lilah Sturges, polterink, et al— Another lumberjanes graphic novel – I liked this one a lot better. It probably helped that my expectations were lowered after the first one but I do think it was a better story overall as well.
The Ribbon Skirt: A Graphic Novell by Cameron Mukwa— A middle grade graphic novel about Anang, a two-spirit and nonbinary Anishinaabe kid, who wants to wear a ribbon skirt to an upcoming powwow. This is very sweet! There are talking turtle spirits! There’s also Anang’s friend who is uncomfortable with Anang’s identity and kinda transphobic about it as heads up
* after writing this I did look up what Ryan North has been up to, some library holds have been placed. Also I noticed that he has PDF’s of all of his academic papers available on his website and I think that’s very charming and helpful of him.
(no subject)
Mar. 18th, 2026 10:50 pmThe central character of Thrall is Lucy Easting, who has just transferred into beautiful, isolated, mountainside Rollins University from community college, in a bid to get away from her stressed and depressed mother and live a life she's excited about for a change.
Alas! her first college party results in a couple of neck puncture marks, a marked tendency to experience severe migraines in sunlight, and a tragic susceptibility to the ominous vampire voice in her head that occasionally takes over her consciousness and directs her towards uncharacteristic action.
Fortunately! the college is full of prospective allies who are willing to take a chance on Lucy despite her regrettable thrall situation, including but not limited to the host of the local college late-night radio show, who has been a target of the vampire since her sophomore year and has been using the airwaves to try and fight back; Lucy's RA, a determined young woman with very nice arms, who came to the school to investigate after a terrible fate befell her high school ex-boyfriend Jonathan; and the very nice, normal party host who has no previous vampire experience but feels just terrible about the whole situation and is not about to relinquish responsibility for sorting the situation out! it was her party!!
It's a really charming book on a number of levels, but my favorite thing about it as a Dracula riff specifically is how much it's thematically invested in Lucy as a side character -- the narrative is consistently very clear that the vampire is not particularly interested in Lucy; he's obsessed with Athena the radio show host and everything else he's doing is part of his elaborate cat-and-mouse game with her, including incidentally overturning Lucy's life as a by-the-by -- and how Lucy makes the book her own story anyway by sheer force of determination not to be cut out of it. Lucy's energy really drives the book: she wants to live, and she wants to live a life on her own terms, and she's not about to let one horrible encounter take that away from her.
Also, I think it's not a huge spoiler ( but I guess is technically a mild one: lesbians! )
Fanmix: This Tornado Loves You (Oz, Keller)
Mar. 17th, 2026 05:15 pm
Title: This Tornado Loves You
Fandom: Oz
Pairing/Episode/Whatever: Chris Keller (Beecher/Keller implied)
Etc.: Music by Patti Smith, Neko Case, Manic Street Preachers and more.
Tracklist and other links on my dreamwidth
Would-be Caesars should always be worried about getting stabbed in the back. - Early March 02026
Mar. 16th, 2026 05:29 pmA lovely profile on Diane Duane, who has been in fandom and making fandom and having her own fandom for many decades at this point.
Bruce Campbell, star of Evil Dead, Brisco County, Jr., Bubba Ho-Tep, and frequent guest star on Xena: Warrior Princess, among other roles, revealed a cancer diagnosis that was going to make his tour for a new movie come up short. Gods-cursed cancer. Here's hoping Bruce can beat it and the treatments are effective.
Permission to use more modern music in figure skating programs has meant an entire series of headaches to obtain copyright clearances to use the music, because skating has not yet worked out appropriate blanket licensing permissions, I guess, with all the relevant countries and possible artists. I'm interested as to why copyright holders and/or companies would reject the use of their music during skating programs or the Olympics, outside of "this person using this music is not someone we want associated with the music."
Because the United States is not a safe place to be, nor to try and enter and exit legally, the Ig Nobel Prizes have moved their award ceremony to Zurich, Switzerland. The Annals of Improbable Research have found something far too probable, about the way that U.S. immigration is treating everyone, so they went somewhere safer.
( And speaking of ignoble people... )
Last for tonight, Black Africans are everywhere in history, including in places where the average studier has their focus pinned down to the whiter side of Europe, instead of the greater world Latin Christendom interacted with.
And a searchable database of ukiyo-e prints through several eras of Japanese carving and printmaking.
(Materials via
