writerslounge | Member Posts

✓

kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Non-Human POV

(I checked this square off my bingo card last time, but this new release arrived with perfect timing, so I'm doubling up.)

Ew, It's Beautiful is the newest collection of cartoonist Joshua Barkman's webcomic False Knees. It contains around 120 short comics, the majority of which were new to me, separated into sections for winter, spring, summer, and fall based on their setting.

The stars of False Knees are usually birds, but there are some cats, insects, and at least a couple of beavers in the mix here. Barkman's art is legitimately beautiful, with a naturalist's specificity and a knack for combining human expressions with realistic animal features, and his writing captures the universal experience of being a small creature in an unfathomably big world. It's full of absurd humour, occasional moments of awe, and recurring bits about the creative process, self-image, and the way friends or family can be on entirely different wavelengths. The comic is where I got my current default icon from, and it almost never fails to bring me a little joy or give me something to appreciate.

( 3 Comics )

delphi

Fandom 50 #22

Day by Day by

surprisepink
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Ship: Stede Bonnet/Izzy Hands
Medium: Fic
Length: 1361 words
Rating: Teen
My Bookmark Tags: slice of life, romance, humour, happy ending, established relationship, izzy lives, future, flirtation, compatibility, service
Summary: A typical raid for Captain Bonnet and his new first mate.

Excerpt:

“I’m getting the hang of this, if I do say so myself,” says Stede, cheerily.

“And you do.”

“What’s that, Izzy?’

“Say so yourself.” The man looks entirely unimpressed, but it does take a lot to impress Izzy. Stede has accepted it by this point, and knows not to take it personally. Knows, too, that if Izzy actually wasn’t at least a little happy with him, he could leave the ship just about anywhere and find another pirate crew to join. And yet, port after port, he doesn’t.

And all Stede had ever wanted was for people to stay.

This is everything I love about the idea of Stede and Izzy together on the Revenge, with Stede captaining and Izzy serving as his first mate. The way they rile each other up is perfect, tempered to just the right heat by a better understanding of each other. Izzy's ways of trying to serve Stede while keeping his ego in check are moving, and so is Stede's growing sense of what he's doing and what it means.

The story's funny, with a comedic moment early on that made me laugh out loud, and the sexual chemistry between Stede and Izzy absolutely crackles. This one really made my day.

delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

iosonochesono

I've set up Maths tutoring with a PhD in engineering and physics and found an MD that I am going to try for the biology subjects. I may try to find a chemistry PhD for the chemistry courses but I figure that's enough for before my arm is even out of the cast. I don't even know I'll get into the programme yet but if not I'll sign up for one online - I just want this one specifically because it's awarded by QUB and I'd like to get into QUB.

I was a bit worried about starting tutoring before school starts even though I need the review - but I'm finding textbooks based off the Lecturers in The Great Courses Plus and McGraw Hill. Plus, courses offered for free by Yale. I suspect I can use those to get revised/educated on a lot of these topics before the courses start and set me up for success.

Hopefully. The reality is, as many financial experts say, you can't save your way out of poverty. I paid off my card. But after I put in my share of the mortgage and money we're saving toward fencing and GFCH, paid Lauren to walk Jake next month, insurance, etc. I barely have anything left over. If I'm honest with myself, I need to be making at least 1.5x what I'm making now, especially if I want to hire tutors. If I'd had a cushion, I'd not have built card debt to begin with.

If Patrick were working evenings and could walk/let Jake out mid-day I could cut Lauren (who I am pretty confident wants to be cut anyway) and that would give me a £240 bigger cushion monthly.

The doctor was right to recommend against working in the cast. It took me two days to write this post lol.

delphi

Fandom 50 #21

Untitled Ouizzy Vampire AU by

derekstilinski
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationship: Frenchie/Izzy Hands
Medium: Gifset
Length: 3 gifs
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: dark/horror, ambiguous ending, constructed reality, au: supernatural, infatuation, temptation, fear play, bloodplay (distantly implied)

Description:

In the first gif, Izzy steps uncertainly through the doorway of an abandoned church and stops in front of a flight of stairs. Frenchie jumps out at him theatrically onto the landing above, grinning in front of a full-length panel of stained glass. In the second, Frenchie's eyes glow and his lips part in the dark confines of a confessional. In the shadows on the other side, we glimpse Izzy's rapt and frightened eyes. In the third, Frenchie says something tensely and then flashes a persuasive fanged smile in the vestibule of the church, intercut with Izzy staring at him and swallowing hard, one hand pressed to the side of his face and neck.

This is my second rec for a constructed reality graphic from this same creator, and this one uses some absolutely brilliant editing to bring together what I'm pretty sure is Vengeance Is Mine and an episode of the TV show Bedlam (neither of which involve vampires) to create an AU where vampire!Frenchie and human!Izzy have a charged encounter in an abandoned church. The application of colour, the selection of eyelines, and the addition of other small edits all make this incredibly convincing, and the concept itself is very, very good to me.

I imagine this Izzy having some sort of protective interest in the church—a paid caretaker, a nosy neighbour, maybe a former vicar or member of the congregation who lost his faith after some tragic event. Whatever it is, he intends to roust out whoever's been squatting there, only to slide straight through "Oh no, he's hot" to "Oh fuck, that's a vampire" and into a dark and hot standoff between charmed predator and captivated prey.

Seriously, this is the gift of

derekstilinski's work. Three gifs and a fully formed universe full of potential stories pops into existence.

delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28

The Writers' Lounge

A chat, crit, workshop, and support group for writers of original fiction.

Member Posts

What I'm Reading: Ew, It's Beautiful: A False Knees Comic Collection by Joshua Barkman

REC: Day by Day by surprisepink (Our Flag Means Death, Stede Bonnet/Izzy Hands)

Six Sentence Sunday

Getting Ready for School

REC: Untitled Ouizzy Vampire AU Gifset by by emilee (Our Flag Means Death, Frenchie/Izzy Hands)

Six Sentence Sunday

Profile

About

February 2013

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Expand Cut Tags