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The Importance of History

Feb. 25th, 2026 11:57 am
lb_lee: A clay sculpture of a heart, with a black interior containing little red, brown, white, green, and blue figures. (plural)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Rogan: we grabbed Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder Harry Hay from the library because Hay said some things that caught my eye in the 1987 anthology Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning in his piece “A Separate People Whose Time Has Come”:

Read more... )

Pluralstories Hits 300!

Feb. 24th, 2026 11:07 am
lb_lee: Sneak smiling (sneak)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Sneak: we have 301 entries on [community profile] pluralstories now! I’m really happy and proud of that! I feel like it’s becoming a nice mix of us finding older books, readers submitting the new stuff we don’t hear about and some really neat surprises! It’s especially the “weird” submissions I feel most excited about!

When I started the project three and a half years ago, I didn’t know how it would go. I’m very pleased with it!

... I also want to make a user poll to see how people use the catalog, but that’ll have to wait until we’re less sick.

Oh Come ON!

Feb. 23rd, 2026 01:21 pm
lb_lee: A hand wearing a leather fingerless glove, giving the finger to the camera. (ffffff)
[personal profile] lb_lee
We’re sick again. :( Third time since Day of the Dead. This is getting really old, guys.

Zine Fair

Feb. 23rd, 2026 12:41 am
who_is_page: A creature with a wolf skull for a face with curved black ram horns and auburn fur and ears. (Alot)
[personal profile] who_is_page
Vended at a zine fair this weekend and somehow no one noticed I had not slept in 2 days or that I skipped dinner-breakfast-lunch into it to get everything done. Got that golden retriever charisma in me babyyyyy

Also we were legit the only people with long-form fiction stuff? If you can even call 1000~ word microfiction "long form," but other people at the fair were. That made me sad when I finally got to scope things out. There was one fiction/nonfiction anthology I found at a table and that was it, nobody else was really doing it. :( A lot of tables barely had any zines or had mostly really professional stuff that wouldn't really count as a typical punk zine and I was like... I think some of the vendors are treating this like an art fair instead which is a lil strange.... The person we were next to had a publishing company that sold all the way up to the Midwest, which was REALLY cool, but iirc none of it was their own work; it was the work of artists in the publishing house. I wasn't sure the artists were necessarily even local to our state? Which ain't a bad thing, but I feel like I went into it expecting a lot more nearby artists at my skill level of "creating everything by hand at home" than there actually were. It was intimidating and made me feel kind of out of place and outclassed! But I've never let that stop me. 

We did get to see some familiar faces that made our day, and I watched an older middle schooler buy and read my horror story Unfair about a mirror demon right at the table and yell in delight at everything that happened, which felt AMAZING. I think I gotta write more horror with kids in mind (so basically, just regular horror with less cursing :P), cuz that was so fun. Someone compared that same story to House of Leaves for the way I did the mirror script, which was swag as fuck. A LOT of people were totally overjoyed and screamed when they picked that zine up from our table and realized what I'd done with formatting, and it was one of the top sellers. Think we did like 10 copies? 15? And everyone wanted to trade for it or Territorial. 

Territorial was, predictably, the best seller. Everyone loves cave diving horror, and everyone loves Florida horror. One person was REALLY excited about the lighthouse horror story I'm working on set at a FL lighthouse, I wish I had finished it in time for the fair. Moon Flower barely sold at all, which sucked, but people were enthusiastic to trade for it when they heard my pitch. I think I didn't go hard enough on the cover, because it's genuinely one of the best-edited pieces and is a ton of fun. Daily Dragonsbane did good, but not as good as last time; I think it held at around 9-ish copies sold. RUN DOG RUN did surprising numbers considering it's a therian story that's partially in Esperanto, while Dragon On The Court didn't sell even once iirc, despite it being a short comedy story entirely in English. They both sold for $1 so it wasn't even the price point: it's just my weakest seller. Aw well. You live and you learn. 

Sometimes people would stand there and just read through an entire zine and I'd internally be like. Hey man. C'mon now. It's literally only 8 or 16 pages long and a few bucks. Please pay me if you're gonna read the whole entire thing. But I've been told that's normal for the event... Alas. Seeing everyone's reactions in real time was still a lot of fun, and people gushing over my work was really genuinely wonderful, even if they didn't buy anything. I'm just happy people like what I make! I got a surprising number of questions about my process and my writing programs that I didn't expect, but it was really lovely to share resources. 

Either way. It really was a total blast. I got a T-shirt and some incredible zines about eels and cicadas, among other goodies. Wahoo! I crashed really hard right after the fair so I'm going to eat some leftover wedding cake and go back to bed now. <3 I have work later today

The Fine Art of Bibliography

Feb. 22nd, 2026 08:02 pm
lb_lee: A colored pencil drawing of Raige's freckled hand holding a hot pink paperback entitled the Princess and Her Monster (book)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Rogan: I have apparently become the kind of person who not only reads bibliographies of my own free will, but has done so enough to develop taste and critical feelings about them.

Please imagine me swirling fancy wine in a goblet as you read this. )

Comic: Barred from Pokemon Forever

Feb. 21st, 2026 09:21 pm
lb_lee: Biff kissing M.D. on the cheek. (mori&dudema)
[personal profile] lb_lee
This is the winner of the comics/art poll this month! Please enjoy this goofiness... and for added bonus, I'll add the sketch as well!

This was a silly 2016 cooldown sketch from back when I did livestreams. (I have been saying for years that I'd like to start doing them again, but sorry y'all, our art program just doesn't work on Linux. We haven't been able to do digital art on this comp reliably since we got it in Thanksgiving.)

The Devil’s Instrument

Feb. 21st, 2026 11:54 am
lb_lee: The Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, doubled over laughing. (bwa-hah-ha)
[personal profile] lb_lee
(Alternate title: the Devil Went Down to Georgia... and Regretted It)

While talking with our roommates about the fiddle as the Devil’s Instrument, we got to thinking about the comparative Satanism of other instruments, ranked by how well you could make a Devil dueling song out of it.

The fiddle, yes. The banjo, of course. The harmonica would also be a good contender.

But then we got silly. The tuba would just end like that Spike Jones record where they try to play Flight of the Bumblebee on the trombone. The Devil’s Tympani? The Devil’s Theremin??? (Well, the theremin would likely work out fine.) Warring bassoons? (As a former school bassoonist, we are of course obligated to declare that bassoons can totally war, it’ll just look undignified as the thumbs fly.)

But then we knew. The Devil’s Horn. The instrument that regardless of playing ability instantly sends all listeners to hell:

THE VUVUZELA.

All other contenders go home.

Amish Wizard

Feb. 20th, 2026 04:22 pm
lb_lee: The Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, doubled over laughing. (bwa-hah-ha)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Some smartphone door-to-door salesmen were going around my neighborhood a few days ago, but they made the terrible mistake of getting me at the door, and I easily banished them with the words, "I don't have a smartphone."

Later that day, as I was hauling my laundry for washing, I encountered the salesman again, along with their colleague, both of whom looked to be young, in their early twenties. The one who hadn't encountered me complimented my "necklace," which I said, "Oh, it's a compass!"

"What, really? Can I see?"

"Yup!"

I opened the compass, dazzling both young sellers. They very well may have never seen a compass before in real life.

"Can you really use that?"

"Yup! I use it with maps so I don't get lost!"

"Like, on paper? YOU CAN READ A PAPER MAP???"

At which point the one who'd encountered me said, "They don't have a smartphone either!"

"REALLY?!"

With a flourish, I whipped out my dumbphone and flipped it open. The two salespeople watched as though I had done a magic trick, utterly enchanted, staring at me like I was some kind of Amish wizard. I should've bowed.

So now we and the salespeople are on good terms. ...they probably won't try to sell to us again.

Peter Ibbetson, 1891 vs. 1935

Feb. 19th, 2026 03:29 pm
lb_lee: A colored pencil drawing of Raige's freckled hand holding a hot pink paperback entitled the Princess and Her Monster (book)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Rogan: I’ve gotten obsessed with a 130-year-old novel and its 90-year-old movie, and much like Dracula 2020, I’m gonna make it all y’all’s problem now!

I hope y’all like Gary Cooper and great-grandma-aged SPOILERS! )

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