serosedserio | Reading

Alex Pretti, who was an RN, a helper, and a legal observer, was executed by the state yesterday afternoon.

I fully believe this death was in retaliation for the successful Twin Cities wide general strike, the clergy sit-in at the airport, and the of thousands who flooded the streets on Friday. Yes, Alex owned a gun and was carrying it, but that is his right as guarunteed by the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States (usually my least favorite given how often it is perverted by the opposition.) But, he was not threatening anyone as the video evidence clearly shows. Believe your eyes, not the lies. This is actually why they hate us so much. Everyone comes with their phones charged and video on. Our very own Greg Ketter of Dreamhaven Books and Comics was on the scene: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/minnesota-man-curses-out-ice-agents-at-scene-of-fatal-shooting-tktktk-fuck-you-tktkt_n_697506d2e4b0dcc40307a358 and has a few choice words for the ICE agents.

I got the news of Alex's murder on Saturday during a bio-break in my D&D game. Ironically, we were just starting to try to get back to a kind of normal. We were able to play a bit, but the second half turned into leveling up characters and planning next sessions. Everyone's ability to play pretend was just sort of unwound.

The neighborhood that Alex Pretti was murdered in is called Whittier and is named after Quaker poet and abolishonist, John Greenleaf Whittier. The local Friends groups sent out a call to ask people to not gather en masse (there was concern, of course, that this second murder was an attempt to incite a riot so that the Trump Administration could invoke the Sedition Act,) but to instead stand in small neighborhood groups, light a candle and sing. For those who could not get out, they asked that people put candles outside or in a window.

I had already seen on a Signal group that a bunch of my singers were planning to gather at Snelling & Minnehaha, near Ginko's Coffeeshop. So Mason and I headed over there to sing with people and hold up a light in the darkness. We had a big group. We sang a lot of excellent songs that helped soothe the soul. A couple of assholes (possibly ICE) revved their engines threateningly at us and flipped us off as they drove by, but we just raised our voices to drown them out.

It was an awful day, but our gathering was peaceful and beautiful. Collin from the Food Communists was there with his wife, and two of my D&D players, Shawn and Carillon, came as well.

I missed telling you all about Friday. I did tell you what I was planning to do, and that was pretty much how it went. We have a guest (Mason's partner) and my toes were frost-nipped several years ago while waiting for a tow-truck after an accident on one of these horribly cold days. I was in my super butch phase and had cool looking footwear that wasn't actually very climate resistant. I know, I know. I have since learned my lesson! But, because my toes will start feeling like they are on fire after a couple of hours in this kind of weather, so I decided to just focus on protecting the mosque during Friday prayers since that is something that is very drop in/drop out.

I needed to go anyway to the mosque because I have a couple of neighbors who needed introductions into the rebellion, so we drove over together (it was -11 F/-24 C). I found someone who was part of the Rapid Response team and so my neighbors got connected to the right groups. It was cold enough that we had planned on just having Constitutional Observers at the doors. We were introduced to the imam, imam Hussein, who was so incredibly generous. The folks there always thank us, which... as a Minnesotan I want to demur, but I've been learning to just accept. Someone in the community put down $60 at the little deli in the food mall that's attached to the mosque so that folks could have free tea and sambusa. My friends who had come for introductions were on street detail (in my car) watching for ICE and so I brought them out a couple of sambusa. They couldn't believe the generosity and I jokingly said to them, "I bet you didn't know that the revolution has perks."

There's been a lot of Star Wars imagery going around and I kind now want someone to make some art about how we all used to say "Come to the Dark Side, we have cookies," and we could now say, "Join the Rebellion, we have sambusa!" (This is not localized. There are a lot of Somali folks who have been handing out sambusa to protectors and protesters.)

The usual mosque group were told to stay away or go to downtown because of the cold, but by 2:00 pm a decent-sized crowd joined and so I went home, honking and waving at all the people taking the lightrail to the big rally.

While we were still quite small someone snapped a picture for us to post on Facebook. (Only people who agreed to be photographed are in this picture!)

mosque protectors

Our small group outside of the mosque. I am in the back row second from the left (before the bright yellow hat.)

Not as impressive as the downtown rally, but everyone is doing their part.

Including the drag queens (see below):

Dictators are a Drag

Image: a fabulous laser-eyed loon advertising for a drag show and dance party for the revolution.

I just love the community that is happening around these things, too. I met several neighbors and discovered one of them was a longtime roommate with my college friend, Nick. Several others were part of the Twin Cities Geek group. We talked about the resistance and D&D and crafting while sipping tea and waving at passing cars (only a couple of which flipped us off and one, likely an ICE agent filmed our faces.)

There was another lovely moment when the imam was reminding us to go eat sambusa when one of his congregation really, really wanted to explain halal to us and the imam gently put out his hand and said, "Brother, these people understand us. They know halal." And.... I could have cried honestly? It's so nice to see the love going in both directions.

Okay, y'all go be Pretti Good.

muccamukk

These are all taken with my phone, but some of them turned out okay, and I figure it's a good time for nature and bunnies?

( Ten pictures: Some nature, one cat, one rabbit, the northern lights )

lydamorehouse

I tried to embed the list of businesses shutting down, but here is a link: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1556336315616701

There are so many more... yes, this is adided by the fact that we have -15 F /-26 C air temperatures out there(does not include windchill), but this city is shutting down in solidarity with the anti-ICE movement in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Y'all, general strikes like this normally do NOT work in the United States, they just don't.

Except here.

And the best part? If a business needs to stay open for reasons no one is shaming them, as the statement from the Minneapolis City Council noted it's understood that some businesses are supporting the movement in other ways (including continuing to employ vulnerable people.)

I am about to head out to our local mosque with some neighbors who want to be introduced to the local protectors, but my day yesterday was much the same as the day before. I spent about an hour and a half loading groceries and diapers into cars that are then taking them to our immigrant, refugee, and other folks in need so that they can continue to stay inside and stay safe.

Mason's partner arrived just as the protest was starting at the Minneapolis International Airport where we are demanding that airlines stop collaborating with murderers and kidnappers. I'd gotten the call to go out there, but I have chosen to leave that fight to others. Pictures of the event underscore my choice. There are hundreds of people marching in this weather!

loon art by juliessa figueroa No laser-eyes today, but the cool thing about loons, actually, is that they carry their babies on their backs!

muccamukk

Canada Reads 2026 short list is out. Thoughts? Feelings? I've only read one book and didn't like it. Very excited that Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a champion. I could stare at her face until I die.

Cinder House by Freya Marske
This was getting hyped up by someone at my bookclub, and I probably should've known better (not because they don't have great recs, just that I'm more miss than hit on fairytale retellings), but it was a novella, so I thought I'd give it a go. I indeed should've known better.

It's a cute idea: the step mother murders both Cinderella and her father on the first page, and the rest of the story is about Cinderella's ghost haunting the house. I appreciated a lot of the little twists on the story (which seemed pretty closely linked to the Disney version, but I also haven't read a tonne of other versions, so maybe not). There's some neat worldbuilding around how society treats magic, and the author did a good job incorporating the history and politics of the country without info dumping. I liked how the glass slippers worked.

Unfortunately, I had a difficult time connecting with it, and I'm trying to work out how to describe why. The story had a certain smugness to it, maybe? Like it was aware that it was telling the version of the story that would appeal to someone who thought a bisexual ghost polycule was the solution to every love triangle, where of course the other woman was a secret badass, because this is the kind of story that has Awesome Women who Subvert Tropes. Which is something that I ought to enjoy, and have enjoyed in other contexts, but not here. Maybe it was just that it should've been a novel with a few more subplots to hold it up, but either way the emotional beats never felt all that earned to me. What should've been crowning moments of awesome kept feeling like they were happening because this was the kind of story where they had to happen? It's all very clever, but never felt like it had any grounding in real emotion.

I thought this was a first outing, but it looks like Marske has written a bunch, so maybe she's just not my thing.

Leave Our Bones Where They Lay by Aviaq Johnston
Found this in a library display of books advertised as short reads to help you make your year-end goal, which made me laugh.

Short stories set inside a framing device: every season, an Inuit man travels into the wilderness to meet with a monster, and every season he must tell the monster a story. As he grows older, he struggles to find an heir to continue the tradition, but his immediate family is shattered, and won't go, so he ends up leaning on a young granddaughter. The stories are a mix of twists on traditional Inuit legends, and contemporary snippets of life in the high arctic, with or without supernatural elements.

The chapters are also interspersed with line art of traditional Inuit tools, and beautiful full page black and white photographs of lichen. It's physically a really beautiful book.

Both the frame and the stories examine how colonisation has affected Inuit society, and the ways families and individuals figure out how to recover their culture and even thrive. There's a mix of horror, humour, and quiet sadness. Johnson had originally published some of the short stories independently, so there isn't an explicit connection between the stories and the frame. However, they are arranged so that the stories fit with who's telling them, and match the tone of the frame story, so it never felt cludged together.

I loved the conclusion, and finding out who the monster was, and why we were telling it stories, and the tender relationships between all the characters. Really beautiful, hope Johnson keeps publishing.

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold, narrated by Kate Reading
Third time through this (maybe fourth?), and I still get new things out of it every reread.

Our heroine is middle-aged mother who has recently been freed from a curse, and now has to figure out if she's going to take another shot at having a life, or if she's just going to sink back into helplessness (which is a valid choice, considering how the rest of her life has gone!). She goes on pilgrimage, mostly to get out of the house, and then the gods get involved.

It's all about trying to figure out how to make choices, especially when your history with making them has been utterly catastrophic. It's also coming to understand that the narrative of your life has been told by other people, and maybe they didn't have your best interests at heart, even when they said they did. I also love how unrepentantly horny our heroine is. She hasn't gotten laid in a good twenty years, and is starting to think she should do something about that.

There are also a handful of beats about how women navigate in a patriarchal society, for good or ill, that largely avoid the way that a lot of books in these settings shame women for wanting power. Some characters we initial dismiss turn out to be capable of heroism, if someone thinks to ask it of them.

I just really love this duology.

Wounded Christmas Wolf by Lauren Esker
(Know the author disclaimer.)

A new series, with slightly different rules for the shapeshifters, which I enjoyed, and am interested in seeing how it builds out in future books.

I enjoyed how cheerfully over the top the set up was, with a family matriarch who was so into Christmas that the kids all have Christmas-themed names, and there's aggressively Christmas-themed cabins on the property, which is also a Christmas tree farm. And that the natural reaction to the relatively normal-person hero is, "Holy cow, this is all a lot." Which it was, and all the characters admitted it was, but we're just rolling with it now.

We have a classic Esker hero who's not sure where his place is in the world, or if he has one. He's got a whole traumatic backstory to heal from, and just falling in love isn't going to be enough to fix him. (I thought the fire theme could've used a little more set up). And a heroine who's also at loose ends and second guessing herself. The sparking romance built naturally around their foibles and hesitations, and was really sweet. I liked what we met of the rest of the family, especially the heroine's dad, and look forward to them getting their own books.

lydamorehouse

Your laser-eye loon art for the day is a faux Antifa Regimental Badge for the Northern Defenders, Loon Liberator Brigade.(warning: this may be AI generated. I never saw an artist attribution.)

It is such a shame that antifa is actually just a bunch of collective action groups because I would sign up for this brigade just for the gear! (Well, and the paycheck if that were real.)

So, yesterday in the Defendre le Nord regiment, I did a bunch of stuff that felt a little bit like nothing, but which is probably 100% mission critical. I have a friend who is acting as a drop-off point for folks who are donating things from out of state and I went over to their house yesterday to help them open packages, sort, and get stuff ready for delivery. Then, we drove together over to their contact's house and unloaded everything for distribution.

As we unloaded the last box, I asked the contact if there was specific immigrant owned/operated restaurant nearby that they knew was struggling and needed a couple of customers. Having gotten that info, we drove over and had lunch.

I should explain to folks from out of town what it is like to go into a Mexican restaurant right now. You don't just walk in. There's someone standing guard inside over a locked door, they unlock it long enough for you to slip in, and then they lock it up tight again. Somewhere on the door is posted a 4th amendment statement that says something to the effect that this business does not give permission for any search and seizure operations, including but not limited to the seizing of persons.

The atmosphere was a bit grim, but the food was amazing and I double-tipped the folks working there because holy shit none of this should be happening. They fucking kidnapped another child, y'all. None of this is right? But, that's fucking cruel beyond measure. (Not that that's news to them. They have no problem roughing up grandfathers either.)

I had hoped to join my singers again last night, but they have a tendency to gather exactly when I am making or eating dinner, so tonight I will have to try again. I just saw on Facebook that my mutual aid group, the Food Communists, are in desperate need for hands, so after I drop Mason off at his haircut (his partner is coming to town tomorrow!) I'm headed over there to help out for a couple of hours.

K. Also have to clean the house ocassionally, so I am off. Yesterday's dinner was knuefle soup, today's lunch: egg salad on an everything bun with cottage cheese! Fueling the revolution one meal at time!

Stay strong!

P.S. Vance is visiting us today, apparently. Wish us luck. They'll probably try to plant some aggitators to get violent.

tozka

Welcome back to another Community Thursday! Original Community Thursday info here, if you're interested and want to participate, too.

Posted/Commented

Rec'd a Star Wars fic for fancake's January theme of "crack treated seriously"
Also voted for next month's theme in fancake

New-to-me Comms

vkotd -- Visual Kei of the day! A song-sharing comm focused on Japanese rock bands
fanmix_monthly -- recently-opened fanmix community
pkmnkinkmeme -- a new Pokemon Kink Meme comm!

Interesting Comm Posts

goals_on_dw is doing a slightly more formal Community Thursdays thing this year

tozka

The rain let up yesterday so I went into town to do some thrifting! I spotted some interesting knick-knaocks, like a tiny Limoges decorative bowl and some bone china stuff but nothing that wowed me (or that I wanted to haul around until I get back to the US, for that matter). I DID find a decent book selection, though! I got 5 books for £17/$22 USD, which I think is pretty good.

A stack of 5 books on a kitchen table

Titles:
1. Viva South America by Oliver Balch
2. Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving (comes with a soundtrack CD!)
3. Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
4. I Planted Trees by Richard St. Barber Baker
5. Peregrinations of a Pariah by Flora Tristan, translated by Jean Hawkes

I'm pretty sure I have at least one of these books as an ebook already, but whatever. Now I need to track down a CD player...

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Chichester, UK

lydamorehouse

Image: no laser eyes this time, but this is a loon in the shape of the Rebel Alliance symbol from Star Wars.

So, let's see. Yesterday started out a little rough for me in part because I was feeling EXTRA anxious because helicopters were buzzing our neighborhood. So much information getting shared is people guessing at what's going on and people who seem to maybe be reporting on what's happening? But, it's often unclear where they are getting their information? So, it's very paranoid here.

What I heard was that ICE was back at the MidwayTarget just up the block from me, specifically targeting the protestors there. Target has been a target for resistance efforts because of the video that was widely circulated of Greg Bovino, the ICE commandant/literal SS officer cosplayer, stopping to take a piss flanked by his goons. Rumors have also circulated that Target is not what we are calling a "Fourth Amendment business." (For our international friends, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the US states that there must be probable/reasonable cause for search and seizure--including of our persons, our bodies--basically no one has the right to just snatch people out of homes or businesses.) So, here in the Twin Cities, if a business appears to cooperate with ICE, even to the point of not protecting their employees, people have been mad. And supposedly Target was compliant with ICE. So,the day before yesterday there was a big sit-in in Target. Yesterday, there was a group of people doing retail resistance? They would buy salt (or other metaphorically appropriate things) and then immediately return it, so that Target would have the hassle of all this merchandise to deal with and refunds to issue.

There was another rumor that ICE was at HarMar Mall in Roseville, which is literally a shopping mall? But, as someone who has taken the bus out in that direction, a lot of folks who might be targets of the gestapo do work in those retail stores.

What I should have done when the helicopters were circling was just get in my car and drive up to Target and see what I could see or head out to HarMar, but I was waiting for Mason to be up to find out what he wanted to do for lunch and whether or not he was going to his uncle Keven's to do some odd job work. Mason was justifiably cranky with me when he came down to find me in a state. As he pointed out, I can just go. He is an adult. Not only can he make himself lunch, he can figure out how to get to Keven's if need be.

But, having talked that through, Mason and I decided to drop by the folks I lovingly call the Food Communists and see if there was work to be done. Sure enough! We arrived in time to help load up one car that was delivering diapers. We packed several bags of groceries, helped load more stuff to go, and then spent the "downtime" making individual packs of various bulk food items, while chatting with neighbors--and one guy who and I am not kidding, came from the Gunflint Trail in Northern Minnesota order to help with the resistance. That is 288 miles from us, about a 5 hour drive (if you drive without stopping.) People in the UK? He basically came from another world. (And honestly? A few more miles and he would have been coming from Canada.)

Speaking of my non-Minnesotan and foreign friends, here's

naomikritzer 's write up of things to do for us if you are interested in helping the resistance: https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how-to-help-if-you-are-outside-minnesota/ Even if all you want is some links to reliable, detailed information about what is actually happening here, this is a good resource to start with!

My singing group was supposed to gather last night at 7:30 pm and I made an effort to join them, but I think I screwed up the where or the when because I wandered around in the place I thought they'd be and no one was around. To be fair to me (and them) it was supposed to be outside a church and there are a number of churches with similar names in the neighborhood and I suspect I just ended up at the wrong one. They sing every day, so I'll get other chances to join them.

I've been trying to also focus on feeding myself and my family, so yesterday I made a lovely mapo tofu for lunch and then we had bibbimap for dinner. Two rice meals, but both hearty, filling, and sustaining. I went this morning to get my blood drawn for all the various health checks, so I am remembering to take care of myself and my family. I've been joking that all of this stress has actually made me better about remembering to hydrate, so that's something.

And, with luck, I'll be running D&D this weekend. So, we can keep up our mental health!

Okay, everyone, stay strong!

lydamorehouse

Your daily laser-eyed loon, this one facing forward, determined, shooting its lasers to say "Melt Ice." (by Rin Mix)

Yesterday, as noted it was one of our colder days. It was also Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so Shawn had the day off work. I decided to limit my activities, though I did sign up to a Discord group which is organizing around doing laundry for people who have now been stuck indoors for so long trying to wait out the gestapo occupation.

One of the things I decided to do, however, was go singing. Our hyper-local singing group decided that due to the temperature, people would start inside a coffee shop. Our organizer made sure it was okay for us to sing a little bit indoors, but since people in the Twin Cities often gather at coffee shops to do work, we kept our indoor songs to a minimum. We then braved the outdoors for a couple of rounds of various songs, including this incredible re-working of Pete Seeger's "Which Side Are You On?"

The chorous remains the same, but the verses now read:

Come all you good people
Some news to you I'll tell
Of how your loving neighbors
Have come to give ICE hell

Chorus:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

Another neighbor killed today
Oh when will this all cease?
Another mother dead, my friends
Murdered by police.

[chorus]

My mother was a feminst
And she taught me how to see
The road to ruin is paved with gold
by the patriarchy

[chorus]

So let the North Star* guide us
Back towards democracy
Reject the threats of fascists
Or we can not be free

[chorus]

Oh, neighbors, can you feel it?
Oh, tell me that you can.
Will you stay silent?
Or will you take a stand?

[chorus x2]

I found this version to be incredibly powerful and while we were standing outside the coffee shop on Snelling Avenue singing our hearts out, a car at the stoplight opened its doors. I turned, expecting the worst, but it was a beat-up Toyota and probably the window crank didn't work and so the people inside were trying to hear what we were singing/saying. They were a couple of Lantinx guys and hearing what we were singing brought HUGE SMILES to their faces. When they noticed us noticing them they gave us big thumbs up, smiles, and waves.

That reminded me that even small acts are sustaining... to the fighters and those we fight for.

I also ran into a friend of a friend who also lives in Midway, so it was really nice to actually see a familiar face while out and about.

I was also happy to see that the New York Times finally had a big article about the mutual aid efforts in today's paper.They focused exculsively on the food donattions, and again, I wish that people could see the whole huge variety of things people are doing--the scope of which is truly staggering. However, it's a good article and if you are local (or are interested in what I'm talking about),

naomikritzer did a lovely round-up of ways to get involved on her blog: https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/19/how-to-help-twin-cities-residents/ She has promised to work on a similar list for folks from out-of-town/national/international who want to help as well. I'll post that here once she writes it.

All right, comrades. Stay warm! Stay strong!

===

For those of you who might not know, the Minnesota state motto is E'toile du Nord (in French) which translates as The Star of the North. If you see protestors shouting that phrase, they are not Canadian (or French) agitators, but folks who have decided that being the star of the north means that we are leading the country in how to defend democracy.

muccamukk

Watch on YouTube

lydamorehouse

Image: Laser-eyed loon flying away with the "Don't Tread on Me Snake" in her beak. The words "Don't Tread on US" appear in laser light trails around her head (by Cas Fern, local tattoo artist.)

I took a break on Sunday. The weather here in Minnesota has finally stepped up to join the resistance. Today we are expecting -20 F/ -29 C windchills and yesterday the windchills were around -11 F /-23 C. I won't lie. I let Mother Nature take my shift. There were things happening, including my singing group, but I spent the day baking hot cross buns and snuggling under blankets.

Rest is resistance, too.

If you are not from around here and/or would like to watch

naomikritzer talk about her experiences "commuting," and talk generally, along with Diana McCleery, about what things are like on the ground here in Minneapolis and St. Paul. My friend Cliff interviewed her on an SFF videocast:

Watch on YouTube

It's a good watch? I will say that the guy who opens and closes the video, Bob, is a bit of a character, but if you can get past that and some of the echo in Naomi's microphone, it's very informative. Naomi recently did a ride-along with the folks who are self-organizing to follow and harrass ICE vehicles and so it's fascinating to hear how it's being done.

I always feel that people don't quite talk enough about the mutual aid that folks are up to--but the truth is the quiet revolution just isn't splashy enough for the front page.

muccamukk

Mostly posting these without commentary.

Uncategorised Stuff:
CCF: Anger is beautiful. Anger is generative. Anger is ancestral. By Chantelle Ohrling, a justifiably angry defender of Turtle Island.

dolorosa_12: Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure: suggestions for concrete actions.

Technology and Media Criticism: ( L.L.M. slop, gender-based violence, transphobia. )

Canadian News That's Pissing Me Off ( Various human rights violations. )

The United States Immigration Stuff: ( No images of violence, but cutting for folks already burned out. )

lydamorehouse

A sled in the shape of a jug of windshield de-icer with ICE out of MN on it with a laser loon! (photo credit, Naomi Kritzer).

...I should probably try to remember to post more often, least you all think that something dire has happened to me.

I think when I last checked in MONARCA was still up in operation and I was responding as a legal/constitutional observer. Well, as you may have gathered from the news things have gotten more chaotic here and so MONARCA was overwhelmed and is no longer functioning as a coordinated way to send people to active abductions by ICE.

Thus, since none of the calls I responded to were anything more than ten minutes too late or false alarms, I have switched to mutual aid work. (Activists are being careful not to sully the waters if you will since ICE is also keeping tabs on the watchers. So we don't want anyone who has been actively protesting or observing to be delivering groceries to people sheltering in place/hiding out from the gestapo, lest we lead the bad guys right to their doors.) I've found a local organization that was already in the business of giving out free food, a group that I lovingly called the Food Communists, who have pivoted their efforts towards feeding people who are sheltering in place/hiding from the gestapo.

They basically have open doors for folks to drop by and help when and how they can and that's been really good for me because it means that if I start to feel anxious about the police state at any point during the day I can wander down the street and see if there something I can do to aid the resistance. So far, it's been organizing doubled-up grocery bags and breaking down cardboard, but I think that all of us in this fight (and there are a lot of us) feel like all effort is good effort if it's helping our comrades and neighbors.

I have also been showing up to the various protests around the city.

There is a group of Midway neighbors who have organized a daily protection/protest gathering in front of our local Somali mosque so that we can defend people while they are vulnerable and in prayer. I joined them the other day while the temperatures plummeted and the wind whipped around our faces. But, it was so warming to the soul when the imam came out and thanked us all for being there and we waved to everyone heading out from safely prayers.

I'm in a Signal group for people who are gathering every day on a different street corner to sing songs of love, resistance, and hope. I've only been able to make one of their gatherings, but it was lovely to sing and be in community.

Mason and I joined the student walk out at the Saint Paul capitol a few days ago and it was nice to see all the youths being just as fierce as their more grown-up counterparts.

And then yesterday, I met

naomikritzer at Powderhorn Park and we watched a bunch of folks crash their art sleds.

Naomi and I out at the art sled rally

Image: Naomi (left) and me (right) out at the art sled rally. Very bundled up. There was a high of 12 F/-11 C yesterday.

Because Minnesota is like that.

And if there is one thing that I could impart to my out of state and international friends it's that, yes, everything you see on the news is 100% happening, and also? We are sledding.

Mostly, what you see on the news makes it look like the streets are full of tear gas and, yes, it's true, ICE agents are deploying tear gas, rubber bullets, real bullets, flash grenades, and smoke bombs, but people are also still going to work and walking their dogs and singing. A lot of us are doing anything we can. People are carrying whistles and charging our phones every night to get all the film possible of the atrocities we are facing at the hands of masked, domestic terrorists who are abducting people without due process. We are standing guard over daycares and mosques and restaurants and sex shops and toy stores. (Because our sex shops have become food distribution centers and our Toy Shops have been giving away free whistles.) We are showing up and baking cookies for people on patrol. We are sweeping up after the people packing bags for people too afraid to leave their houses. We are taking to the streets with signs, sometimes all alone, but we are showing our neighbors, our immigrant and refugee families, that we want them, we love them, and we will not let them be taken without a fight.

This is what resistance looks like and it is awful, but it also hopeful and kind and loving, and, yes, even sometimes we make time for fun.

muccamukk

(I've got so many links right now I'm splitting it up. The depressing shit one to follow in the next few days.)

magnavox_23: The One With All The Icons From All The Fandoms...
These are gorgeous! All the fandoms being: Good Omens, Our Flag Means Death, Doctor Who, Xena: Warrior Princess, Reservation Dogs, Star Trek TOS, Heated Rivalry, Hazbin Hotel, Hellava Boss & What We Do In The Shadows...

With the Dawn by

SweetSorcery
Fandom: Kidnapped! (Davie/Alan)
Word Count: 1,300
Rating: General
Summary: Alan's own safety is worth very little to him, if it means leaving David behind ill and defenseless.
Notes: I've missed so much fic in this fandom, and was really happy to read this one from last year. The sweetest lil h/c missing scene from the book. Great voices for both of them, and very tender.

The Worst Part of Waking Up by

Sanguinity
Fandom: Hornblower (William/Horatio)
Word Count: 6,600
Rating: Teen
Summary: At the end of "Loyalty," Bush is too late to save Hornblower. With his dying breath, Hornblower requests a kiss from Bush… …only to wake up a week later and discover he's going to live after all. Damnit.
Notes: More very excellent h/c featuring Horatio Hornblower being Olympic levels of Bad at Feelings. Also extremely sweet, once he gets his shit together. I love the tag: "When He Made This Bed He Wasn't Expecting to Wake Up In It"!

ThatDisasterAuthor: Put the light out. | Turn the light on.
Gorgeous Lighthouse | Fire Tower art!

Tractor Beam: The Valley in Thaw by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall and Xiang Yata.
Beautiful graphic short story about a soil remediation robot and a band of humans who survived the apocalypse. More like this, please.

Humble Bundle: Fierce Women of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror.
Great selection, open for another couple weeks. You get epubs, not the weird kobo link thing.

CBC Books: The Canada Reads 2026 longlist is here.
I really wish they'd announce this earlier so you could take a proper shot at the long list before they drop the shortlist. I'm like half way through one of these. Lots of hockey books this year. Hmmmm.

University of Pennsylvania (for some reason?): "Introducing Myself", 1992 by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Extremely funny and extremely gender.

Fantastic Mr. Fox on Bluesky: A Recipe for Disaster.
This meme is such a whole entire mood.

sanguinity

Today is Christmas, three times over!

1.

luzula finished Far Frae the Bonny Hills and Dales, a Flight of the Heron longfic that I have been following for the past eighteen months. AU where Ewen is transported and sold to the Caribbean sugar fields. There are tragic parts to the story (note the "major character death" warning), but it ends in a good and satisfying place. One of the things I love about

luzula's writing is that she makes her characters earn their happy ending -- and they do.

Congratulations to

luzula, and happy Christmas to me!

2.

fandomtrees revealed! I received some beautiful maritime-fandoms icons (William Bush, Frederick Wentworth, and Anne Eliot), thank you to

sarajayechan and

chewingbottles! I am looking forward to using them!

I also made a half-dozen things (which will have their own reveals post later), and that's been fun, too.

3.

Family Chistmas celebrations got delayed twice, first by weather, and the second time because my brother called up and said he was still waiting on my Christmas present to be delivered. He insisted he had ordered it in good time, but repeated shipping delays, it was supposed to be delivered any day now, etc. etc. And I was all dude, it's fine (while wondering what the big deal was, but whatever, if he wanted to hold off so we could do it all in person, that's fine, too.) I get a long weekend for MLK Jr. weekend (for non-USians, this weekend), so we pushed it all back to today, when we convened at Mom's house for delayed Christmas celebrations.

grrlpup and I got everyone a lot of Japan souvenirs -- my brother got squeaky-toy katana and a whole big box of the bubblegum he had adored as a kid (which, fair enough, took us WEEKS to find, it no longer being in every convenience store like when we visited Japan as kids) -- and we also got some beautiful hand-made art from my sister-in-law. I thought present-opening was done. When my brother dropped in my lap a great big box the approximate size, shape, and weight of an autoharp. Although a bit heavy for an autoharp? Weirdly balanced for an autoharp, too. (Not that he would ever get me an autoharp!)

Lo, this was my brother's Christmas present to me:
( color me dumbstruck )

I am very much blown away by the gift, and yes that was very much worth delaying celebrations for and also making sure he could watch me open it in person, I very much get it now.

Either he won Christmas or I won Christmas, I'm not sure which, but either way, Christmas was indeed won.

muccamukk

From

snickfic and

slippery_fish.

Go to your Works page on AO3, look at the tags, and see what the answers to these questions are. (Or any other site that has tags)

I'm going to go off both my fic journal (

feast_of_fanfic) and my AO3 page (

Muccamukk). The DW has a handful more fic, and a slightly different rating/tagging system, but should be roughly the same.

What rating do you write most fics under?
DW: Teen.
AO3: Teen and Up Audiences.

What are your top 3 fandoms?
DW: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 & tie of Babylon 5 and The Pacific.
AO3: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 (then several subcategories thereof), The Pacific.

What is your top character you write about?
DW: Don't tag for characters.
AO3: Richard Winters (BoB)

What are the 3 top pairings?
DW: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Band of Brothers Rarepair.
AO3: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Andy/Eddie (The Pacific).

What are the top 3 additional tags?
DW: Drabbles!, PWP, Canon-Era H/C.
AO3: Canon Era, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon.

Did any of this surprise you? e.g. what turned out to be your top tag.
Only giving each fic one genre each on DW skewed the tags much differently from AO3, for the last question. I've also posted a bunch of drabbles to DW that didn't make it to AO3, so that probably also moves the numbers (like tying B5 with The Pacific). If one includes HBO War and Marvel comics each as one fandom, it would go HBO War, Marvel Comics, Babylon 5.

It also leaves out some of my most popular fic, which are for fandoms I didn't write for as much, but got a couple one hit wonders that sailed to the top of my stats page.

(Any word on DW figuring out what's wrong with the AO3 user profile logo? I gather it's some kind of import problem.)

Code for anyone who wants to gank:

sanguinity

Still catching up on things I wrote in 2025, although I believe this is the last of them.

Most people who might care have seen it already, but for the sake of completeness: I wrote a Flight of the Heron story for the "Pomegaverse" square of Keep Fandom Weird Bingo.

What is Pomegaverse? According to Fanlore's page on Pomegaverse:

In these works, a human character experiences so much stress that they transform into a Pomeranian dog. They can only revert back to their human form if the stress is relieved via receiving love and affection from other people.

I haven't made a serious effort at the rest of that bingo card, but as soon as I saw that square, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it:

Form'd for Idleness and Ease

Keith & Ewen

Pomegaverse, Animal Transformation, Bad Things Always Happen to Keith, Let's Get That Man Some Affection For a Change, Or At Least a Mini-Vacay as a Beloved Lapdog

Captain Keith Windham's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day just got worse. Ewen, of course, is a perfect gentleman about it all.

Of course, this all demands an answer to the question of how the war proceeds if soldiers keep turning into lapdogs every time they get stressed out. (The Highland Charge continues to be effective -- perhaps even more so! Culloden... either gets that much horrific, or fizzles out for want of soldiers still standing.) I have no immediate plans to actually do this, but I am a little bit tempted to follow this mechanic through all five meetings of the book, just to see what happens.

tozka

🎬 Wake Up Dead Man: Directed by Rian Johnson. With Daniel Craig, Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin. Detective Benoit Blanc teams up with an earnest young priest to investigate a perfectly impossible crime at a small-town church with a dark history. 🔗

What I liked: the cast; how the director/writer obviously had an itch to scratch re: Christianity and the State of Things Today and really wanted to Say Something; how it's structured like an Agatha Christie novel almost exactly, or at least some old fashioned one (which in that context the plot pacing makes perfect sense). I also liked the makeup/wardrobe, which didn't glam up any of the actors except maybe Josh Brolin.

What I didn't like: the overly long introduction sequence which focused on characters that made barely any impact and weren't even good red herrings; the people who need to hear about the kinder Christianity stuff wouldn't watch this movie anyway so it ends up kind of like, well...preaching to the choir.

Unbeknownst to me, my parents were watching it on the same day-- but it turns out that we liked/disliked almost the exact opposite things. They loved the long intro!

muccamukk

Watch on YouTube

Based on how sad a lot of this album was, I had been wondering if William Prince was okay, but he sounds like he's doing well? This song is so pretty, anyway.