azdak

Using my Asian drama boardgame.

I completed 6/6 from my last challenge and I DNF'ed one of them. I'm too tired to care what I get this time let's just do this lol

Avatar: Supernatural (Guardian)
Skill: Move two extra tiles once (trap tile if Even)

Roll #1

A 9, prompt: rivals to lovers. Ughh why do people have to lump rivals to lovers, hate/dislike to love and enemies to lovers together, they're all different things! And why is it so hard to search by tag in MDL? Anyway Not Me is tagged rivals to lovers though not sure why as of yet.

Roll #2

A 7 and the trap tile. I was able to roll Even for my skill. New roll is a 6: prompt: favorite genre. I only have one real fantasy on my watching list and that's Love Between Fairy and Devil.

Roll #3

A 10 and 'generate from PTW list' tile. #26 which a GL called Blank, it's in the same world as GAP. This will be my first GL focused drama!

Roll #4

Aand a 12 and the end. Reward: A Tale of Thousand Stars!

Where to watch:
Not Me
Blank
LBFaD

Episode 5: They meet and talk with the other train car group. Supposedly, the guy who stabbed Kato was just scared and he apologized, but what about the article about the train killer then?

The leader of their group found a radio in an old ship and managed to talk to someone in Canada who explained that three years after their disappearance, space debris hit an asteroid, changing it's course and hitting Earth. The leader wants them all to work together to figure out how to get back and warn everyone.

Yonezawa pretended to be with Hatano after some guys from the other group acted weird about her. Kayashima was displeased.

We get a little more backstory on Rena. Her parents were always fighting about money and it made her resentful and angry at them and the world. She's happy to be away from all that and doesn't want to find a way back.

Kayashima continues to be his pessimist self about their chances, but he's not wrong that they need to stay grounded and cautious. Meanwhile his little brother stole cash from the salon lady helping him. 😭

The bath scenes haha. I'd prefer a shower. That Akashi is cute.

Kayashima reassuring Hatano about Yonezawa even though he likes her. And I'm confused about that okonomiyaki lady.

'Mrs. President' is nice, I'm glad she's doing okay now.

Tanaka continuing to be a rat, not surprised. *smh*

Rena and Hatano stumble upon a buried dead body with blond hair just as Tanaka's reading the newspaper article about the killer having blond hair. Rena escapes but Hatano gets trapped with them, ending with her jumping off a cliff...

Oh yeah, what is the stones about? Are they pieces of the asteroid?

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/28/lbcf-faith-and-reason/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72020

In Left Behind, "faith" is good and "reason" and "intellect" are bad. But none of those words are used to mean what they normally mean.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/28/lbcf-faith-and-reason/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72020

While I’m thinking of it: December’s coming up and about time for me to think about sending New Year’s cards. You know the drill: if I haven’t sent you a card before and you’d like one, DM me with a name and address to send it to, likewise if your name/address/etc. has changed, or if you’d rather not get one this time around.

Silly language stuff: I realized the other day that I’d inadvertently done a Tom Swifty in the thing I was writing, along the lines of “he was making tea adroitly with one hand.” (Of course, it could have been his left hand! But still. I guess in that case he would have been making tea gauchely, or else sinisterly… .) Also, I keep seeing people refer to the well-known dictionary as “Miriam Webster,” and now I want to work a minor character with that name into a story somewhere, just for fun. I always liked the name Miriam.

While Y is not what I would call fannish per se, he is sort of fannish-aware thanks to a long history with manga, anime, and games, plus he looks tolerantly on my fandom-related hobbies (“oh, is it time for the Christmas transformative-creation event already again? good luck!”). He texted me the other day to say “there are two girls in archery-club gear sitting in front of me on the train canoodling like nobody’s business, pure yuri!”

Jiang Dunhao song of the post: 赫马佛洛狄忒斯, an enormous transliterated mouthful of a title that renders down to “Hermaphroditos” (nicknamed 小赫马 by fans). The lyrics, by the pseudonymous 沃特艾文儿 (“Whatever”), always strike me as really surprisingly queer for a mainstream Chinese song, when you put together 每个名词都分男女，标签贴给我也贴给你，可仍有人坚信不疑牵手同行就能做情侣 (all the nouns are divided between male and female, with labels stuck on me and you, but there are still people who never doubt that you can be a couple if you hold hands and journey together) and 愚人的眼光里才没彩虹悬挂天际 (it’s only the fools who can’t see the rainbow hanging in the sky) and 世界是个什么东西，是个巨大的柜子而已…容纳谁都容纳不了你 (what is the world, it’s just a giant closet…no matter who they enclose, they can’t enclose you) and 深知爱就该百无禁忌 (deeply knowing love means having to ignore all taboos) and 我爱你是你，只因你是你 (I love you being you, just because you’re you). All that aside, it’s also a just plain good song with an irresistible rhythm in the chorus.

In ongoing architectural exploration, we went to see another Vories building, the Osaka Church, which is very simple and very lovely, although I have to say if you’re going to have a rose window I want it to be stained glass, not plain. Planned down to the angle of every pew. Old-fashioned portative organ in very beautiful wood sitting next to a modern piano, plus a pipe organ up in the loft. The church is open to visits on condition that visitors attend a service first, so we sat through half an hour of a noonday service: organ music (a Messiaen piece and something from the Messiah, I forget which one, and one I didn’t know), hymn-singing, the Lord’s Prayer (having spent six months in my youth attending a CoE school for reasons, I found I could still back-translate from the archaic Japanese to the “hallowed be Thy name” version), and a short sermon by a young woman pastor, possibly Chinese or Korean from her first name and very faint accent, wearing an immaculate trouser suit. No proselytizing of the visitors, much appreciated; if I lived nearby I might even visit the services regularly for the organ and the windows.

Because I do some volunteering for the local YMCA (very long story), I spent a day as a volunteer interpreter for…how can I explain this succinctly…a group of professionals (social workers, pastors, farmers, teachers, etc. etc.) from various developing countries who are spending several months in Japan studying to become “rural leaders.” They were visiting the day laborers’ district here, with a tour in the morning and a lecture and discussion in the afternoon.

All of them speak some amount of English but very little Japanese (although they had all picked up “daijobu”), so interpreters were needed. There was me and a younger American woman and two older Japanese women, one a high-school English teacher and one a sometime tourist guide, as well as two adorable high school girls. My group for the morning tour was me and the former-guide lady and half a dozen of the rural leader students (from India, Indonesia, Zambia, Cameroon, Vietnam and I forget where else), as well as the Japanese tour leader; I ended up doing all the interpreting (I urged the other lady to jump in but she just said “oh I couldn’t possibly)," which was not bad because I already know the district and its history quite well (a friend wrote a book about it that I might translate some day).
For the lecture in the afternoon, five of us switched off interpreting: it was clear that the two high school girls could only get through with constant help and even so managed only a sketch of the original lecture, while the American girl and the older Japanese lady did okay but missed some of the nuances in each direction; to brag unrestrainedly, I think I was the clearest and the most stable and accurate of the five. And really I should be ashamed not to be, after all, being the closest to a professional among them (although interpretation and translation are very different).
I had fun—interpreting is always exhausting, but almost always exhilarating as well—and enjoyed getting to interact with the visiting students a little (a very serious woman from Vietnam with a series of complicated questions, a Cameroonian pastor with a long beard and shorts, and so on). I was also really annoyed (typical, I’m afraid) at the way the whole thing was run. Mostly the people in charge of the event just sort of sat there looking hopeful rather than doing anything useful, and the group discussion was particularly badly run (the discussion questions were TERRIBLE, and I signed on to be an interpreter, not a facilitator. Although I did get to explain to a doubtful Zambian guy just why the Japanese birth rate hasn’t gone up in sociopolitical terms, with an Indian lady cheering me on). Also, in theory I am absolutely in favor of giving high school kids a chance to try out interpreting, but if the participants are actually going to get anything out of the event, the interpreters have to have more or less professional-level skills even if they’re not getting paid even professional-level peanuts.)

Translation work can give you a lot of access to other people’s family privacy. I felt very bad for the little girl whose documents passed through my hands the other day, to the tune of her baby immunization record, second- and third-grade report cards (it’s always a little surreal to translate report-card comments like “She paid attention in class very well this year, but needs to work on forgetting fewer things”), and her parents’ divorce and custody agreement. Then there was another little girl of similar age, transferring from a prestigious private elementary school in Kyoto to a similar one in Tokyo, maybe a professor’s child subject to the whims of university employment. Also a family register in which the date of marriage preceded the first son’s date of birth by only six months, making me wonder as always where it actually fell on the range from 100% shotgun to “well, we’re getting married soon, why wait.”
One of the other issues with this kind of work is that young children in particular tend to have far-out names, and the clients usually don’t advise you how to pronounce them. Japanese is (I think) unique this way, in that a) the writing system is mostly not phonetic and b) while there are standard character readings, most characters have multiple standard readings plus you can basically decide to pronounce them any way that comes into your head, which is the way a lot of parents name their children, presumably without considering that the kids will have to spend their whole lives explaining how their names are pronounced and spelled (speaking from personal experience, albeit through a different process). So all you can do with names is take a wild guess. Place names are just as bad, since they are often distorted by long history into weird forms; I had hundreds of addresses to transl(iter)ate lately and had to look up almost every single one, just to be sure. I think the worst offender this time around was a place called 福谷, which could be Fukuya or Fukutani or Fukudani just in normal terms; in context it turned out to be Ukigai, God help me. Places like this constitute regional shibboleths of sorts; a couple more I’ve come across personally include 酒々井 and 柴島, where you just have to know how to read them or you’ll never guess.

Photos: Lots of seasonal fruits and leaves. Persimmons usually look much nicer than they taste, but we recently received bounty from my father-in-law’s kumquat bush and the fragrance is wonderful. Also the railway at sunset, and Kuro-chan the elder who noticed me passing by and stopped me with an imperious meow, in order to make use of me as a heating device usefully equipped with a mofu-mofu function (not a good picture, but my other hand was occupied).

Be safe and well.

I put my chicken in the oven and fried up the chicken skins and - listen, I gotta say, of all the food items I've tried because I read about them, fried chicken skins are fucking amazing. I don't mind saying that they are, hands down, the most brilliant thing Jews have contributed to the world, and I do hope my various Jewish friends take that in the spirit it's intended, because omg. I don't care if I find out later that you guys invented the wheel, this is better. I am very thankful.

Anyway, we've got chicken, creamed spinach, possibly creamed corn, maybe beets of some sort, maybe couscous, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows, contributed by a guest), stuffing, cornbread, cranberry sauce, and pies. I'm debating making some soup as well, buuuuuuut I think we may have enough food and not enough bowls. Oh, and there's green beans. Oh, and brussels sprouts and a salad.

(Maybe I should've made baked beans? I wonder if I have time to make baked beans. Oh, but the chicken is in the oven. Hm. Can you make not-baked baked beans? Is that a thing?)

Major spoilers!

Mors looks a lot like Vita and I think they have the same VA, and there was that tale of the Gods coming down and their souls. Is the God of Calamity's soul in Mors?

I played the whole Mors section in one go and my brain is fried nowww. Did Avar really tell Fulvis the location?? He had to know what kind of person Fulvis was and so he wouldn't let him live. And the whole thing with Daphne ughh. I hate the Legion but some of them have parts that I can empathize with.

Vergilius has pretty eyes.

WTF was that Hive Mind entry in the sewers?! Eyes blank and pale as moonlight... Edit: Was that Subject 36 or 47?



[...] past battles we were never at the front — we lost more often than we won, He must have longed for a chance to prove himself... So I signed up too — just to help him chase that dream of being a true Knight: As long as we stick together, it doesn't matter where we go."

You reach the final page.

"O silent gods — if, as Milton believed, Your gaze is truly upon us... then I beg You: grant me one last mercy."
"Let my soul be reunited with theirs,"
'"Then I will forgive You — Your indifference, Your cruelty: I will forgive every trial You set before us, every lie You wove."
"My wings no longer need the radiance of the full moon, I ask only for a soft wind, to bear me home — to where they wait."

Did this Mystic Maze story have to be that sad? Holy moly. Edit: they're all that sad 🙃 Dead group of friends who doesn't know they're dead yet and keeps trying endlessly... I wonder if Milton is a reference to Paradise Lost?

Chapter 3: I KNEW one of those monsters was Blues, too much foreshadowing. :| Man this game has such dark stories. Does this happen to all Laurelled Charon?? Are they made as weapons of war or another purpose? ...Now I understand why Lynn made Rhythm leave even though the "monster" who got hurt was still alive. She knew about the experiments and was probably ordered to retrieve it. This story made me cry so much. At least they died as humans and not as lab experiments in captivity...

I bawled my eyes out by the end. The last part with Phantasio with the singing was beautiful but DEVISTATINGGG. It's a miracle I got through the fight while crying and trying to listen to the music. And I just realized Blues and Phantasio won't get the proper Charon burial rights like Psyche got. 😭 

This one was recently reposted but unfortunately I can't find the post. ( Read more... )

This month is almost over, so, let's hear it. *g* How did it go with your fannish creativity?

Did you manage to make a thing?

Created fanart or made vids? Wrote fic or meta? How about picspams, link collections, character mood boards, themed playlists, promo posts, or whatever else you create for fannish enjoyment?

Here's the place to share it with us! Leave a link in the comments, or elaborate on it as much as you want.

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/26/men-behaving-badly-11-26-25/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71954

May every day be another wonderful secret.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/26/men-behaving-badly-11-26-25/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71954

Using my movies boardgame.

I completed 6/7 movies from my last challenge. I DNF'ed the one. I rated them all pretty good, with two of them over 4 stars!

Avatar:

Romance (Imagine Me & You)
Skill: beat the trap tile once (roll a prompt)

Roll #1

I better get the trap tile since I finally got that skill! First roll is an 8, right past it though. Generate a random movie from my list. #64 which is a thriller/horror movie called Dagon!

Roll #2

A 7, prompt: comedy element. Welcome Week: A College Horror Anthology.

Roll #3

A 4, prompt: highest rated on PTW. Se7en, a mystery/thriller from '95 that I watched part of already before.

Roll #4

A 6 and the PTW tile again. #23 which is 1999's Sleepy Hollow,

Roll #5

A 7, prompt: weapon on the cover. So many options. Let's go with She Came from the Woods.

Roll #6

An 8 and the end. I didn't even get to use my skill... Reward, uhh. Oh, Black Phone 2! 

Lots of horror/thriller. Horror is somehow (usually) easier for me to watch when I'm tired so this is fine.

Using my TV Show PTW boardgame.

I completed 4/4 from my last challenge, I was a little slow because I find it hard to watch things when I'm tired, but I did them all so 👍.

Avatar: The Owl House/Animation (re-roll dice once)

Roll #1

A 5, prompt: shortest on list. Ninjago season 6, I should be able to finish it if I'm in the mood.

Roll #2

A 10, prompt: longest titled which is Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, it looks like new episodes have came out since I last watched.

Roll #3

A 4, prompt: featuring a group of friends. Maybe it's because it's my avatar for this challenge but my mind immediately jumped to The Owl House,

Roll #4

An 8, cover featuring mostly blue. I guess She-ra?

Roll #5

A 6, generate from PTW list tile. I've been putting it off but I'll go for Lost in Space (season 3).

Roll #6

A 10 and the end. Didn't get a chance to use my skill;; Reward: Helluva Boss. I think as soon as I catch up on that I'll start on Hazbin Hotel when I get a chance.

Where to watch:
Ninjago
Helluva Boss

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/25/smart-people-saying-smart-things-11-25-25/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71945

Featuring Michael Woolf, Pema Levy and Ari Berman, Spencer Ackerman, Stuart Hall, Tatiana Schlossberg, and Bill McKibben.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/25/smart-people-saying-smart-things-11-25-25/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71945

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/24/ice-vs-churches-contd/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71981

Does DHS have an "official plan" to "raid churches"? Maybe. But considering what its already doing, that hardly matters.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/24/ice-vs-churches-contd/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71981

Created to fulfil a challenge in seasons_of_fandom Round 1.

Drabbles

Fandom: Word of Honor (TV)
Characters: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

Wen Kexing awoke with a start, shaking off the nightmare and looking down at the man asleep beside him. Zishu was restless, murmuring as if caught in his own nightmare. Concerned by the pallor of his skin and the sweat beading on his forehead, it seemed only natural to grasp the twitching fingers. Zishu sat up with a gasp, blood on his lips and his breathing was ragged, his Qi pulsing weakly. Kexing moved behind and forced his own Qi into the sick man, shoving down the crushing fear that Zishu was running out of time for both of them.

Fandom: The Yin-Yang Master Dream of Eternity
Characters: Qingming/Boya

Qingming raised his cup of wine and watched as Boya stalked away with a disgruntled expression that would have been amusing on anyone else, but for some inexplicable reason he wanted Boya to like him. He hid his melancholy thoughts and smiled at the lesser demons he had invited to sip wine with him, noticing one of them watching him intently.

"He did not like seeing you in our company."

Qingming's smile waned. "He has no love for demons."

"Perhaps most demons but not all. That was jealousy not anger."

"Jealous? Of me?"

The demon laughed. "No. Jealous of me."

Graphics

Phone Wallpaper - 1080x1920
Fandom: Guardian/L'Oreal Time Engraver
Characters: Zhao Yunlan/Shen Wei|Time Engraver



Bookmark - 300x800
Fandom: The Yin-Yang Master Dream of Eternity
Characters: Boya

 

Postcard
Fandom: Word of Honor (TV)
Characters: Zhou Zishu to Ye Baiyi (with added remarks from Wen Kexing)

 

Chapter 5.1:



It would be a lie to say I wasn’t flustered by this. But whether it was from seeing his bare chest or from Shylock’s natural sex appeal, I wasn’t sure.

*waggles eyebrows*

Chapter 5.2:

Nero on wizards: “Maybe they just want a bit of the things we take for granted, like…appreciation and compassion. Stuff like that.”

Lol I don't know if he was being sarcastic in this convo but he was spot on.

Ughhh Riquet and that slimy priest. I really hope we see Riquet change.

Chapter 5.3:

Poor Chloe having to deal with Rustica and his search for this 'bride'...

Chapter 5.4:

Rustica: “I’ll enjoy anywhere I go as long as you’re with me, Chloe.”

Then stop causing him problems. 😭

Wait, Rustica said the moon chose them, but it's the Great Calamity, right? Why is it choosing people to fight against it??

Chapter 5.5-5.6:

I like the Southern Country people!

The chosen South wizards realizing that means the four wizards sent last time were killed. :'(

Ughh nothing better happen to these guys. >.< And the North wizards better not pick on them, either!!

Chapter 6.1:

Akira: (I can’t even imagine what it’s like. They’ve just been living their lives normally but now they’re suddenly expected to save the world.)

Exactly, and there's a high chance of dying.

The 'I've just changing' scene makes me think of fem!Akira. It's almost like they're going back and forth on how they depict them.

Chapter 6.2:

Man you know you fucked up if you piss off Heathcliff. 

Shylock: “It doesn’t matter what we do, Heathcliff. No matter what we sacrifice, no matter how much we smile and try to play nice—”

Shylock: “—We will forever be their enemies, simply by virtue of possessing a power foreign to them. Stronger than them.”

😭😭😭

Chapter 6.3:

Okay maybe Heathcliff is just a hot-head in certain situations.

Apparently Bradley is the leader of 'the deadliest bandit gang in the world'.

I think the cover image was taken from some other source, maybe another webnovel, and made into a cover for Jubo but I couldn't find the true original source.

Chapter 1: Wang Cheng grew up in a temple, it was just him and his master until he passed away, leaving the old and worn down temple and deed to Wang Cheng.

Chapter 2: Wang Cheng was given up at age seven by his parents because they had a daughter and couldn't afford three kids. Wang Cheng never got to eat his fill as a growing teenager because he lived with the monks, so his mom tries to make up for it when he visits. His parents want him to move back in with them now instead of living alone in the old temple.

Chapter 3: developers took fancy of Shiquan County and wanted to build a large tourist resort here. Several villages have received the news, and Wang' Village was also included.

Wang Cheng doesn't want to sell the temple, he'd rather rebuild it.

How will turning the area into a tourist trap spot effect the villagers...?

Chapter 4-5: Family dynamics explanations and explorations.

Wang Cheng agreed to move back home so he heads off to get his things.

Chapter 6: Wang Cheng is a really good cook.

The real estate company shows up.

Chapter 7: Wang Cheng will only sell the mountain if the temple isn't demolished. Of course the real estate boss isn't happy about it.

Apparently Wang Cheng is really attractive even bald.

Chapter 8: Wang Cheng is so attractive even his sister blushes at him lol

Seems the family are supportive of Wang Cheng's decision?

I think they're moving to Guan Village, the mom's original village?

Chapter 9: The thing about the hands was interesting, I want to know more.

Chapter 10: I think Chu Yifeng, the real estate boss, is the LI?

Chapter 11: It is pretty interesting reading about the family dynamics.

Can't believe Wang Cheng negotiated 12 months work down to 3.

Chapter 12-13: Aunt Zhang is infuriating. 😡 Good luck finding a worker as good as Wang Ziyu!

Chapter 14 Finally moving away! Cute family interaction there at the end.

Chapter 15-16: Unfortunately two uncles they don't get along with also moved to Guan.

Chapter 17: First day of work, reading a bunch of docs, didn't see Boss Chu.

The editing could use some work but it's readable and mostly understandable. Seems like this will be a day-to-day story with a slow burn.

CW: A woman gets slapped and called a slut (in Wang Cheng's mind) after she hurls insults and abuse at Wang Ziyu.