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Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/12/16/how-to-build-your-own-talk-to-jesus-a-i-at-home/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72251

Our electric bills are soaring thanks to "A.I." data centers, but it's worth it for a tech break-through that is almost, but not quite, as useful as an origami fortune teller.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/12/16/how-to-build-your-own-talk-to-jesus-a-i-at-home/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72251

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Booktuber: Gavin Reads It All & Gavin Reads All the Manga - Most of his videos are really long so if you like putting stuff on in the background it's a a great choice. He's a fun guy who reads different genres (he has a lot of fantasy books though)! He does a lot of sprints and challenges which are fun. Also, his cats are glued to his side a lot which is adorbs.

Talk To Me In Korean - Korean language learning and culture videos.

Honkai Star Rail Gifs - Owner makes HSR gifs and puts them in a sorted Google Drive.

why we’re all escaping to fantasy & the middle ages again - I learned some things! Especially about Renfaires!

Why Audiobooks Feel Different From Reading - Interesting scientific fact about how we take in books vs audio in here and how voices, font etc influence what we get from it.

Boys Love: Thailand's BL Revolution - I don't know how to feel about some of the things said here but it was interesting to hear the Thai perspective, especially from the producers.

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Watch on YouTube

@ Spotify

Words I speak still have no meaning
I'm not strong enough to tell you goodbye… no!
Last night, good night
Last night, good night
If my voice breaks and fades away
This melody won't go astray🎵
Lollia - Last Night Good Night (English Cover)

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Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m dreading having to have a talk with my husband, “Winston,” and our 30-year-old son, “Nick.” Nick moved in with us a year ago. The move was necessary to get him out of a dangerous relationship, and Winston agreed beforehand, although he implied he expected it to be a temporary situation. Now my husband has built up resentment against Nick over the last year because he hasn’t taken steps to move out. But I understand why Nick hasn’t moved out: We live in a resort area, where rent is atrociously high and places to rent are scarce.

Nick works about 60 hours a week at a decent-paying job, so he isn’t home much. He contributes to household expenses, brings home food from work, helps take care of pets, and if asked, will generally help out with other things. Could he do more? Of course, he could, but he’s not trashing the house, taking drugs, playing loud music at all hours, or being rude and disrespectful.

Here’s the things Winston resents: He and Nick’s dog hate each other, and the dog barks at Winn when he passes Nick’s room. The dog is old and grouchy, and was abused by Nick’s former roommate. Nick works late and comes home around midnight, which disturbs Winston’s sleep. Nick is forgetful (ADHD) and often needs reminders to complete tasks, but Winston thinks he should only have to say something once.

This all leads to Winston being resentful and snippy, which makes Nick defensive, and then we have a big blow-up where both say hurtful things. These blow-ups have led to Nick trying to leave in the middle of the night after being in an accident (on crutches, no car, and no phone, near freezing outside). I’ve had to physically step between them and tell Winn to back off and shut up to keep it from getting physical.

My husband now deals with all of this by not making any requests directly to Nick (he asks me to tell him), and venting to me, which makes me feel like I’m constantly caught in the middle (suggesting he talk directly to Nick would lead to more blow ups). But, I understand Winston’s frustration. This is not what we planned for retirement! However, there’s no way I could be content knowing my son was living in subpar housing or with dangerous, untrustworthy people like he was before he moved in with us.

I need to get these two to get along. Nick needs to step up a bit more, and Winston needs to be more patient and understanding—before I go crazy or he blows up again and Nick ends up walking out and living in his car. Where do I go from here?

—In the Middle and on Eggshells

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Rose made Phebe promise that she would bring her stocking into the 'Bower' as she called her pretty room, on Christmas morning, because that first delicious rummage loses half its charm if two little night-caps at least do not meet over the treasures, and two happy voices Oh and Ah together.

So when Rose opened her eyes that day they fell upon faithful Phebe, rolled up in a shawl, sitting on the rug before a blazing fire, with her untouched stocking laid beside her.

"Merry Christmas!" cried the little mistress, smiling gayly.

"Merry Christmas!" answered the little maid, so heartily that it did one good to hear her.

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Dear Prudence,

My sister and I are identical twins, but we grew up terrorizing each other. I was the girly girl, while she was on her way to a PhD in preschool. I had a learning disorder, and my sister would constantly correct people and say she wasn’t the ”stupid” one—I was.

My sister started the college track in ninth grade while I went to a middling school. Our parents did their best to treat us equally and celebrate our accomplishments, but you really can’t compare taking a beauty school test to getting a master’s at 21. I will admit I gave as good as I could get. If my sister were the smart one, I was the pretty one, which was stupid, as we were identical twins. I want to say we settled down and grew up to be close, but that would be a lie.

When I got married and was obsessed with all the details, our cousin jokingly called me a bridezilla, and my sister cut her off. She told her this was my big day, and it wasn’t like I accomplished anything else worth noting. This wasn’t the first or last time my sister said stuff like this. I have been married for 15 years and have two beautiful children. We used IVF and have a few embryos still left frozen.

My husband and I were debating whether to have a third child when my sister bulldozed in. She was ready to be a mom, had everything planned out, saved, and sorted, except her eggs weren’t viable. So the completely obvious solution was to give her our embryos!

We refused, and my sister threw a fit. I was apparently stealing her only chance to be a mother, and worse, my parents are on her side. They think that giving her the embryos costs us “nothing,” and we already have children, so I was denying my sister out of pure spite. I don’t know how I would feel if my sister bothered to ask rather than make a demand, but it was a demand and one that isn’t happening. My problem is that I am very afraid it might permanently poison my relationship with my parents. We were supposed to travel to their place for Christmas, but after all this, I am afraid to. Help!

—Twin Trouble

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Dear Care and Feeding,

When she was 8, we adopted “Alina.” She was the daughter of a close friend, and lost both her parents in an extra painful way. Understandably, she was in a lot of pain the first few years and needed extra parental support. But she worked hard in therapy, and we supported her, and at 15, she’s doing well. The problem is more with our other kids, her siblings. They love each other, but they are all convinced she needs extra care and protection all the time, when actually she’s ready to grow. She’s been pushing back at it, but I think it’s time for us to step in as parents. She says she needs room to mess up and have her own social life, and I think that’s fair.

A classmate asks Alina to the fall dance, and she accepts? Her 14-year-old brother steps in and tells him it will be a double date with him and his girlfriend. Alina dies of embarrassment. Our teens are going to swim at the public pool? Without Alina, they just go together. With Alina, her 16-year-old sister announces they must have an adult. This type of stuff seems to have ramped up since she started high school, and I don’t know how to dial it down. I’m glad her siblings love and support her, but they shouldn’t be taking on this extra role, and she’s also asked them to stop so she can learn on her own. We absolutely do not want to set up a weird dynamic between our kids, but it feels like it’s already started. I love that they look out for each other, but it needs to be appropriate. My husband and I had multiple conversations with the kids about this, but it only stops them from doing concrete examples we mention, not the overall behavior.

—Give Her Space

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Good wishes and hugs as wanted to people on my f-list (and others too!) who are having a hard time right now; a lot of people seem to be sick and stressed, even aside from the usual global issues.

More adventures with Kuro-chan the cat, no photo this time: I went past the park gates one evening to find Kuro-chan curled up on the wall outside, so naturally I stopped to say hello. Me: aw, your fur is so cold, 小冷猫猫, let me pick you up-- Kuro-chan: [hiss, growl, snap] Me: okay okay, I get it! Kuro-chan: [looks around, stretches, jumps off the wall to suri-suri around my ankles] Mrrowr? Me: …okay, if you say so? Kuro-chan [contentedly settles into my arms to relax langorously throughout the very short trip across the street to their putative actual home, while being stroked and crooned at in whatever language came into my head]. Cats.

I was thinking about what my family always called “household words” meaning phrases either from books/movies/etc. or heard in real life which we started using on a regular basis. Five cents, please (courtesy of Lucy van Pelt the psychiatrist, also allowing me to link my favorite Peanuts strip of all time here); long time no interface, I have no idea where this one came from or if anyone else says it, but I use it with online friends often; that’s life on a crocodile isle (from T.S. Eliot, sometimes used in full with “You see this egg? You see this egg?” too, I say it to myself when frying eggs); Study now, dance later. Plato AD 61, a graffito my mom saw once, which we use as shorthand for “get down to it”; after the opera—my dad ran a semi-professional opera company in his spare time, and was always exceptionally busy with rehearsals in the last few weeks before a performance, so that any normal household duties would be postponed until “after the opera,” a time sooner but not much more definite than the twelfth of never. What do you guys have of this kind?

I posted my Yuletide fic, considerably later than I’d planned but well before the deadline; it could still use (and will hopefully get) a brisk edit, but I think it hangs together. Big relief! Knock wood I will manage to write a couple of short treats before the 25th, we’ll see.

Jiang Dunhao song of the post: a couple of new ones from a music program, 好盆与 and 小孩与我, not all that exciting musically but fun to watch and listen to, the former in particular has a couple of really lovely vocal moments.

It’s the season when vending machines in Japan offer hot drinks of all kinds; many varieties of coffee and tea, to begin with. I’m not much of a coffee drinker except when very sleep-deprived, so I favor 焙じ茶 or roasted green tea (I also like to make it from teabags at home and soak dried fruit in it as a late-night snack). Corn tea is also much rarer but delicious (I was wondering if cornsilk tea, known in both Korean and Japanese as “corn beard tea,” is correspondingly 玉米胡茬茶 in Chinese…). I love hot chocolate, but vending machine cocoa is usually repulsive, basically hot brown water full of sugar and chemicals. Other standards include corn soup (with corn kernels in), お汁粉 hot sweet red-bean porridge, and Hot Lemon (just what it sounds like, hot flat lemon soda with honey, stickily sweet but very satisfying on a cold day). The less standard offerings are getting weirder and weirder every year, this year I took some notes: miso soup with clams, yukkejang soup with rice, sundubu soup with tofu, extra-fancy corn soup scented with truffles (at an extra-fancy price), Starbucks caramel macchiatos, and “milkshakes,” which as far as I can tell are hot sweet slightly thickened milk with caramel?

The download problem never ends! cobalt.tools was so great and now it’s not; it doesn’t do YouTube any more, which is YouTube’s fault, of course (and I’m still not sure of a decent YouTube downloader, none of them seem actually safe?) and now cobalt.tools won’t recognize bilibili URLs any more either, although it says it should work. And you can’t ask for support help with error messages without signing up to a github account, and… (Yes, it’s a free service! I would be happy to pay them some money and get some support in the normal way!) oh dear.

Rereading Melissa Scott’s Dreaming Metal, the second volume of her Dreamships SF duology (the eponymous first volume is also very good). I really love these, they are far and away my favorites of anything Melissa Scott has written. They are about, among other things, AI but not in the way we think of AI right now (although the first volume bears a little more resemblance). The worldbuilding is wonderful—everything is in there, technology and language and clothes and entertainment and politics and ethnic groups and class issues and public transit and food and jobs and religion and family structures and God knows what else, but it’s not infodumpy, you just get to live in the world for three hundred pages or so and see it all there. Spoilery thoughts on the central conceit of the book: where it’s also amazing is the ideas about what kind of music an AI musician might want to make, how it would be derived and what it would sound like, and the way human musicians might react to it and work with it—in a way that’s both plausible and sounds like something exciting that I actually want to hear.

Reading another book of essays by a Taiwan-born writer who lives in Japan and writes in Japanese; unlike Li Kotomi|李琴峰, who grew up in Taiwan, taught herself Japanese, and came to Japan as an adult, 温又柔 came to Japan with her parents at age three and has lived here ever since (she’s Wen Yourou in the Chinese reading and On Yuju in Japanese; her romanized name on the copyright page splits the difference and uses “Wen Yuju.” I’ll settle for the latter for convenience. She also comments on how much her real name sounds like a pen name). I’ve only read one of her novels, 祝宴, which is about a middle-aged Taiwanese businessman, resident in Japan for many years, and his family—he’s 外省人 and his wife is 本省人, their younger daughter is marrying a Japanese man and their older daughter has a girlfriend. Very little actually happens but it was affecting and hopeful without veering into melodrama or Japan Sentimental. I found a lot to resonate with in her essays (reminded also that for me, with no original connections to Japan or Taiwan or anywhere else in Asia at all, studying/writing in Japanese or Chinese can be a much less fraught matter for good or ill). Like me Wen Yuju was fascinated by Lee Yangji’s short story Yuhee—she’s the editor of a Lee Yangji collection, which she says drew her some criticism from Korean-Japanese readers who argued that a Taiwanese-Japanese woman shouldn’t be doing it, another complex issue.
In some ways she covers a lot of familiar ground—growing up as a first- or 1.5-generation immigrant, more comfortable with the new country’s language than her parents’, sometimes accepted and sometimes dealing with microaggressions and blank majority ignorance, struggling with identity and complicated relationships with her parents’ country and family, and so on. It occurs to me that though there are so many anglophone novels, both YA and adult, now that go into this—just from a quick look through my shelves right now, Elizabeth Acevedo, Bernadine Evaristo, Tanuja Desai Hidier, Jean Little, Melina Marchetta, Naomi Shihab Nye, Chaim Potok, Nina Mingya Powles, Isabel Quintero, Joyce Lee Wong, Lois Ann Yamanaka, and that’s just a tiny sample—and still so, so few in Japanese, so that Wen Yuju and just a few others are reinventing the wheel because they have to. It’s not like the “monoethnic Japan” myth was ever true, I wonder when this will change.

Photos: Seasonal leaves, flowers, and skies; Koron-chan, who doesn’t seem to feel the cold and maybe I wouldn’t either if I were that nicely rounded; a bakery with an interesting tagline; kumquat jam made by Y from the produce of his father’s kumquat bush, which was as delicious as it was beautiful, although the photo isn’t very good. I’ll take a better one next time.

Be safe and well.

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Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/12/15/the-end-of-20th-century-white-evangelicalism/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72257

"I continue to be struck, as a social scientist, that it has become virtually impossible to write a survey question about immigration policy that is too harsh for white evangelicals to support."

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/12/15/the-end-of-20th-century-white-evangelicalism/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=72257

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Today's temperatures: Started below 20, "feels like" in the single digits. But not to worry, within a week we should be in the 50s!

And they just said that, with no commentary, like it's not absolutely bizarre to go from 19F - 56F within a single week in December.

And it's not just the high temperatures that are bizarre, the low ones are too. I can't speak to the decades before 1990, I guess, but NYC weather used to be temperate - we got more snow, but that's because the winter temperatures were in the snow range - close to the freezing point, not so warm it melted, not so cold that it just didn't happen.

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Used my manga TBR boardgame.

I finished 6/6 on my last board, though I only read a little of most of them because soon after I finished picking for the challenge I realized I didn't have the energy to read full volumes of everything like usual. Still lacking energy a lot but BL/short things are much easier at times like this. I didn't have much trouble reading 1 chapter, it feels pathetic but hey, some days are gonna be like that and you do what you can do. I did enjoy what I read!

Avatar:

Ciel
Skill: cover two manga with one prompt

Roll #1:

A 2. *blink blink* Prompt: covering featuring mostly blue. I think I need to take the 'mostly' out of this prompt... After much scrolling and checking I have picked Boku no Koe! I don't know if I've read any of this one before, I know I read a few of Nitta's other works.

Roll #2:

An 8, prompt: reverse harem. It's high time I read more Men of the Harem, hopefully I can remember what happened last.

Roll #3:

A 6, generate from TBR tile. #547. Oh, it's Hana wa Saku ka, I actually just put this back on the TBR too because it's been so long since I read the first 16 chapters I decided to start over;;

Roll #4:

Another 6, prompt: mythology. Ugh I don't like this prompt. Man, all of these rolls so far are kinda complicated. I picked The Correlation Between Love and Heat. Looks like some people had a problem with the lack of expressions, I'll just have to see for myself.

Roll #5:

A 3 and there it is, the trap tile;; Went back, rolled, got a 9, one before the trap tile. Prompt: amnesia. That took a while... I picked Daydream Nightmare it's possible it was axed but to be sure people agreed it had a rushed ending, but it had a wacky charm? We'll see.

Roll #6:

A 9, generate from CR list. Meeh. Lol it was 68/Men of the Harem. I don't have a rule for when this happens, I'll just generate a new number. #70 and ooo it's Mob Psycho 100. Do I remember what happened last...

Roll #7:

A 4. Holy crap this TBR is going to be long. I got the trap tile again. I haven't even gotten a chance to use my skill yet either. Went back and rolled...a 12, LMAO back to the trap tile. Okay a 6 this time. Prompt: collection of stories. Hmm I'll try 2-Week Summer Secret.

Roll #8:

A 4, prompt: witches/etc. I should read more Twisted Wonderland: Episode of Savanaclaw!

Roll #9:

A 7, prompt: read a manhwa. I finally got to use my skill with roll #4's pick. 😭

Roll #10:

A 3...so close... CR tile... I had to re-draw because it landed on a light novel that's not on NovelUpdates, or else I'd put it there. #21: Enidewi!

Roll #11

An 8 and finally the end, I'm about to pass out on my keyboard (yes I coulda stopped and continued tomorrow, I'll definitely edit/post this then). The physical BL this time is Living for Tomorrow.

Most looking forward to: TWST
Least looking forward to: 2-Week Summer Secret?

~Manga TBR List~

[BL/Drama] Boku no Koe
[Drama/Reverse Harem] Men of the Harem
[BL/Drama] The Correlation Between Love and Heat
[BL/Romance] Hana wa Saku ka
[SPN/Shoujo] Daydream Nightmare
[SPN/Action] Mob Psycho 100
[BL/Romance] 2-Week Summer Secret
[Fantasy/Isekai] Twisted Wonderland: Episode of Savanaclaw
[Fantasy/Comedy] Enidewi
[BL/Comedy] Living for Tomorrow

x1 shoujo, x1 josei, x2 shounen, x1 seinen, x5 BL

Mood::

drained

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Davy met them at Bright River with a big two-seated sleigh full of furry robes … and a bear hug for Anne. The two girls snuggled down in the back seat. The drive from the station to Green Gables had always been a very pleasant part of Anne’s weekends home. She always recalled her first drive home from Bright River with Matthew. That had been in spring and this was December, but everything along the road kept saying to her, “Do you remember?” The snow crisped under the runners; the music of the bells tinkled through the ranks of tall pointed firs, snow-laden. The White Way of Delight had little festoons of stars tangled in the trees. And on the last hill but one they saw the great gulf, white and mystical under the moon but not yet ice-bound.

[...]

They opened the parlor and distributed the gifts before breakfast because the twins, even Dora, couldn’t have eaten anything if they hadn’t. Katherine, who had not expected anything except, perhaps, a duty gift from Anne, found herself getting presents from every one. A gay, crocheted afghan from Mrs. Lynde … a sachet of orris root from Dora … a paper-knife from Davy … a basketful of tiny jars of jam and jelly from Marilla … even a little bronze chessy cat for a paper-weight from Gilbert.

And, tied under the tree, curled up on a bit of warm and woolly blanket, a dear little brown-eyed puppy, with alert, silken ears and an ingratiating tail. A card tied to his neck bore the legend, “From Anne, who dares, after all, to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

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and I had to take a car, which I can not afford. At least the corner store hadn’t shut down and the cashier let me wait inside. Either he’s very friendly and chatty or he’s flirting with me, but the important thing is I still have all my toes.

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For my manga TBR list:

Read the BL Kantoku, Neko na Ore wa Dame Desu ka, rated it 7.8/10, I had fun with it!

Read chapter 260-262 of Boku no Hero Academia, it took me ages to figure out about where I stopped last. 😭 I think I'm good now for when I read more.

Read chapter 2 of Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun. Bunny fairiesss.

I (re)read chapter 1 of Witch Hat Atelier.

(Re)read the BL kissing, rating went from 7 -> 6.8.

Read chapter 182 of D.Gray-Man.

Mood::

i better not be sick

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Mood::

head hurts

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Poll #33957 Chag sameach!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

But really, how do you spell it in English?

View Answers

Hanukkah
26 (72.2%)

Chanukah
6 (16.7%)

Hanukah
1 (2.8%)

Something else
3 (8.3%)

Also, please take a poem

Edit: Also, also, two videos

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Used my anime TBR boardgame.

I finished 5/6 for my last challenge, DNF'ing one. I enjoyed them all except that one! I wasn't able to watch more than one episode of them all but I look forward to watching more!

Avatar:

Rin
Skill: Re-roll dice once

Roll #1:

An 8, generate from PTW tile, oh boy. Okay so I got one of the K Project movies but I figure I should start from the beginning just in case, so I won't be watching something new but it'll lead to new stuff eventually;;

Roll #2:

A 12! Prompt: fire on the cover. At least six options... Going with the first one, Cardfight!! Vanguard.

Roll #3:

A 10, almost thought I was going to get the trap tile. Prompt: fantasy creatures. Fairy Ranmaru.

Roll #4:

A 5, used skill and rerolled an 11 and that's the end! Good rolls this challenge. Reward: Dr. Stone!

~Anime PTW List~

[Action/Mystery] K Project
[Card Game] Cardfight!! Vanguard
[Fantasy/Action] Fairy Ranmaru
[Sci-Fi/Adventure] Dr. Stone

Mood::

hot

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"He took the Walkman out of his pocket and flipped through the songs in the cassette."

Oh, sweetie. That's... that's just not how cassette tapes work. Not even overseas. You fast forward or rewind - literally winding the tape again - and hope that your timing is amazing. I mean, with practice I guess you can get pretty good, but still.

*****************

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For my anime PTW challenge

I dropped Mawaru Penguindrum, I just could not do it. I looked up spoilers and I'm content with my decision.

Watched Dr. Stone, S4P2E6-9! ❤️️❤️️❤️️ I'm off to make a fanart compilation list now like the BnHA and WinBre ones I've done~

Watched ep. 7-8 of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.

Watched the first two episodes of Trickster [...], I'm enjoying it!

Watched episode 6 of Haikyuu!!. <3

Watched episode 9 of Delico's Nursery, good!!

Mood::

hot

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I don't quite relish the idea of going out in it, and god knows where our shovel went, but gosh, I love looking at the snow!

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azdak

How to build your own Talk To Jesus ‘A.I.’ at home

🔗 Links of interest

🔊 Daily music

(no subject)

Advent calendar 16

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(no subject)

life on a crocodile isle

The end of 20th-century white evangelicalism

Watched the weather report today.

December Manga TBR 3

Advent calendar 15

Two buses canceled in a row

December Manga Wrap-Up 2

🌈BL Manga Check-in: "kissing"

The sun's going down, so Happy Hanukkah pretty soon?

December Anime PTW

A different fic....

November Anime Wrap-Up 2

I love looking out the window at the snowfall

December