azdak

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/20/feliz-navidad/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71927

Night riders from ICE and the Border Patrol are targeting immigrant churches and will kidnap worshipers during the holidays if we don't stop them from doing so.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/20/feliz-navidad/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71927

Used my game/drama/etc boardgame. Last challenge here.

I did 5/6! The one was because I realized how complicated it was going to be and decided to do the anime first (Idolm@ster SideM). I look forward to more of all of them! This will be my first time using Backloggd/VNDB with this challenge.

Avatar:

A3!/Entertainment Industry
Skill: Move 2 extra tiles once (trap tile if Even roll)

Roll #1:

A 5, prompt: romance element. It's more erotic but there are romance elements in NU: Carnival. I'll probably open my game and read what I've unlocked from there.

Roll #2:

A 3, prompt: supernatural element: Tokyo Debunker.

Roll #3:

An 11, prompt: Superhero. Hmm I'll do Ride Kamens. ACK I just learned it announced EoS, but it seems they're at least doing an offline version for the stories...

Roll #4:

An 8, prompt: mood. I'll do more Food Fantasy.

Roll #5:

A 3, prompt: favorite genre. I kinda did that with the last roll but whatever, more Mahoyaku it is.

Roll #6:

An 11 and the end. Let's do Paradox Live as the reward.

Links:
Mahoyaku
ParaLive
Food Fantasy

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/19/smart-people-saying-smart-things-11-19-25/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71861

Please listen to Tressie McMillan Cottom, E.B. White, Mark Silk, Becky Garrison, Bhaskar Sunkara, and Abby Vesoulis.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/19/smart-people-saying-smart-things-11-19-25/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71861

People at /r/englishlearning need to stop saying "Song lyrics/poems don't have to be grammatical! Don't try to learn English through songs/poems! People just do whatever, ungrammatically, to fit the rhythm/mood/rhyme scheme!"

This may be true, I guess, but funnily enough it's never true when people say it. At least half the time, the quoted text isn't even archaic or nonstandard!

That said, I do like reading (most of the) comments in that subreddit. There's always something! ( Cut for appropriateness )

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( Read more... )

Rec time! Did you read/watch/listen to something you really liked and would love other people to know about, too? Don't have the time or energy to make a full promo post, or think such a small thing doesn't merit a separate entry?

Here's your chance to share with the class! Just drop a comment with a link and maybe a couple of words in description. No need to overthink things, it can be as simple as Loved this! or OMG, look at that!. (You don't need to keep it short, though, write as much as you want.)

Check out the previous entries, too!

The yoga studio where I teach hasn’t been paying me on time (AAM: 4th one down):

I’ve been teaching yoga for about four years now and was hired for my first job at this small group training facility. I teach once a week and often sub for one of the two other instructors. I previously got paid monthly. I have a full-time job and this is my side gig. So, it’s money I use for things like gifts, or save up for vacations.
Over the last two years, my monthly payment stretched to being paid every two months. This past year, it’s stretched out to being paid every four or five months. I’ve asked the owners several times to leave a check for me for next week. I’ve also asked if there is an easier way for them to pay me, such as Venmo or direct deposit.
I’m at the point now where I’m owed for over 21 classes ($40 per class). Enrollment in the small training groups seems to have dropped as I’m seeing new members less. People do join for the yoga-only package to come to the yoga classes. What’s the best way to ask to be paid and let them know I can’t/shouldn’t have to wait longer than two months for payment? I’m at the point now where I want to say that I won’t teach until I get paid, but that isn’t really my vibe.

Alison responds: ( saying that you won’t teach until you get paid should be your vibe )

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/18/the-kingdom-of-heaven-is-within/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71867

Free your mind and your ass will follow.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/18/the-kingdom-of-heaven-is-within/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71867

Title: Moonlight
Author: Tarlan (tarlanx)
Fandom: The Untamed (TV)
Pairing/Characters: Lan Wanji/Wei Wuxian
Rating/Category: PG SLASH
Word Count: 300
Summary: Wei Wuxian goes to find Lan Zhan (Lan Wanji) after transferring the evil spell off Jin Ling and onto himself.

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73043931

ICONS: Zhou Zishu (Word of Honor) icons:

  

Till the End of the Moon, Gank Your Heart, Instead of Tipsy Why Not Get Drunk | Flavour It's Yours

  
 

Crossposting from dmbj_tombraiders:

Stay tuned everyone, we are in the process of finishing up the two 2026 calendars. Posting will run on AO3 between December 1 and December 12. On the 12th I‘ll post a download link to the calendar PDF files for download on AO3, Tumblr and here in the community. That way you can print them or use them as digital calendars.

There is going to be one calendar focusing on our favourite gentlemen and one for our favourite ladies from across DMBJ canon!

Today my work outfit was goth Jessica Fletcher.

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/17/well-think-of-something-funny-when-we-write-your-epitaph/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71873

Any kind of heaven every body doesn't get in
Wont seem like a heaven to me

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/11/17/well-think-of-something-funny-when-we-write-your-epitaph/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=71873

"It's set in a time when things were hard for black people in America" - a line which so flabbergasted me that I don't think I ever figured out what to say.

But this one may have topped it!

"The story is about a black girl, somewhere between 8 and 16 years old, from a black family."

...I'm dying to ask why they think they need to specify that this girl is the same race as everybody else in her family, when that's usually how this works. There's no indication in the rest of the post that we might have reason to think she's not.

Prologue

The God of Beginnings created "souls": "Giving rise to smallest insects to the running rapids and the magnanimous mountains, these souls fused with the living and the inanimate."

After a long time, war between souls and humans broke out, upsetting the God, which created negative/evil energy, so they sealed themself away along with the ability so summon living and inanimate souls. It didn't contain the energy however and Fallen Angels were born.

The Magic Academy was finally able to awaken new souls from food and balance was restored.

Main Story

Gloriville

Rice and Ingredients: Rice is "Master Attendant" aka MC's new Food Soul. MC is started a new restaurant. Wanting to be useful, Rice goes out looking for ingredients, gets lost and runs into Ichi, who happens to want to be a cooking attendant. The MC finds them and they all are lost lol but a hooded stranger helps them.

Sudden Hostility: The stranger wants Rice as Payment and sends Boston Lobster after them when they refuse.

Introductory Present: In return for letting him stay at the restaurant, Ichi decides to make dishes for them. Ichi is a pure-hearted boy with a strong sense of justice.

Assessment: MC's restaurant is being turned into a guild branch along with others to make it easier for guild members to complete missions and take down Fallen Angels. Ichi has to complete a trial set by Olivia to become MC's cooking attendant.

Chance Meeting: Ichi encounters a standoffish blond man in the forest who may not be a human. (Hmmm could this "person" really be a... could that race from the legends, still have survivors?)

Light Kingdom

Tiramisu: Ichi passes the official test. Olivia wants to remodel. She sends MC out with the Food Soul Tiramisu to get building materials.

Cooperate and Get Through the Area: Thanks to Sky City, Light Kingdom is protected from Fallen Angel and the citizens live in harmony with nature.

MC and Tiramisu talk about how Food Souls work and how Olivia taught them to think and do for themselves. Their 'subjective thinking' can be different than their contractor 'to the point that it might contradict the contract'.

Follow: MC tries to talk to Rice about subjective thinking but she's confused. She's just barely learned to talk more clearly. They set off to save Food Souls who were accompanying the person delivering building materials and were attacked.

Clear the Way: They think it was the hooded stranger and investigate the area.

Doubts and Suspicious: We see Food Spirits can die. Boston Lobster to the stranger: With this act, you've reached the point of no return; your hands are stained with the blood of the pure. There is no turning back now. You must complete this journey to gain your freedom.

The stranger says that Food Soul bodies are needed for him to survive. He tells the group that Fallen Angels were originally Food Souls. Boston Lobster turns on the stranger and kills him before injecting the dying Food Soul with a syringe, and it becomes a Fallen Angel.

Rice is upset at the truth and starts to spill something: All this time... I..

From what I remember, Rice was one of the Food Souls in the war long past, so she may thinking of all the Fallen Angels they killed. She has amnesia so she doesn't remember much.

Ichi sees that the stuff in the syringe was made by 'Nevras Academy'. They study magical tools and made the crystals that are used for summoning Food Souls.

It's nice to be back in this world especially without having to worry about battling. I'd like to get this again for my next challenge to continue. I'm not sure how I'll do the event and other stories.

Basic summary: In a Gaslamp-lit world where hags and ogres lurk in thick pine forests, three magical queens form an uneasy alliance to protect their lands from invasion…and love turns their world upside down.

My thoughts: I believe I heard about this from someone on here (here maybe), otherwise I wouldn't have picked it up on my own, so thanks! I'm really starting to think I need to sit down and find more stories like this for listening at work, they really help uplift my mood. So far I've read:

Nettle & Bone
Legends & Lattes
The Secret Society of Irregular Witches
Wooing the Witch Queen

These all have some level of darkness or angst but nothing too dark for me. I do plan on reading this author's Scales & Sensibility. I'm think about cozy mystery and cozy horror (like 'How to Survive Camping'. Anyway---

Saskia's parents were murdered by her uncle but she later rose up and took back the throne. Now she lives with ogres, goblins and her bats and crows spending her days doing experiments to protect her kingdom. She is a bit impulsive with her feelings.

Felix was married off to his childhood friend but her father enslaved him and used his name to enact crusades. Felix eventually escapes, heading to Saskia's kingdom to seek asylum.

However, in her haste to get back to her work and used to dealing with tiresome dark wizards, she assumes he's the dark wizard she was looking to hire to fix up her library which has long been in disarray since her uncle messed it up.

Felix's kind and gentle nature quickly wins over one of Saskia's familiar crows, Oscar, which is just the start of Saskia's heart softening towards him.

This has themes of found family, suffering and healing from abuse, being true to oneself, simp!male lead POV and a more dominant female lead.

I'm not a fan of lust first stories but it wasn't too extreme here. They're attracted sexually first but nothing happens until later when they've already caught feelings.

I was a little ehh about the narration at times but overall liked it.

I won't be reading the sequels because I couldn't stand Lorelei which is the focus of the second book and I'm not that interested in seeing an Alana romance though I'm curious who could win her heart.

My favorite aspect was definitely Felix simping over Saskia and being happy to let her take the reigns. And his relationship with the crow Oscar, that was lovely! Oh, forgot to mention, Saskia is bisexual! I loved the housekeeper and Saskia's sort of 'second in command', I kinda wished there had been more of them/their backstory but it wasn't bad what we got at all. The Winter celebration with all the gift-giving was so lovely. Oh, here's another review I thought was great.

CWs:

-Saskia has moments of grief where she remembers her parents murder (she heard it happen)
-Both Saskia and Felix were abused as children and young adults, it doesn't go into too much detail but their trauma is brought up at times
-Felix's wife had a terminal illness and died, it doesn't come up too much
-Lorelei comes across as a sex pest to me though she doesn't outright lay her hands on Felix I don't think (I kinda blocked those parts out in annoyance), but in the preview for the next book she kidnaps someone and makes him her 'boy toy' though I hear he becomes willing