Friday, April 17th, 2026 04:35 pm
This week's prompt features no euphemisms whatsoever, and is by Zhang Wencheng, with translation by Howard S. Levy:

A Poem About Writing Brushes and Inkstones

Press down on the hairs,
Letting the writing brush
Point wherever it pleases;
To get the desired color,
You must rub and stir.
Grinding is so hard to achieve,
Because too much water is used.

You have until midnight your time on Friday, April 24, to answer this prompt. Please post your fills of the prompt as separate entries to the community (i.e. not replies to this entry), tagged with the prompt tag. You may post multiple standalone drabbles per entry in addition to drabble sequences and series.

As a reminder, this community has no official presence elsewhere. You are encouraged to share the prompt on social media, if you so desire. It may take me a bit to create the AO3 collection, so please be patient.

Also, I'm going to go ahead and drop a link to the prompt suggestions post here. New suggestions are always, always welcome.
Friday, April 17th, 2026 03:07 pm
Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #5
Circleville, OH · Fri, 17 Apr 2026. 9am

We checked in last night to a Holiday Inn Express hotel in Circleville, OH. You've never heard of Circleville? Neither had I until I searched for hotels near Hocking Hills State Park, where we're going hiking later today.

This hotel is about 45 minutes away from the park. It's hardly the closest. There are only, like, 100 hotels that are closer. So why stay here? A few reasons:

  • One, cost. Plenty of hotels/lodges closer to the park are pretty spendy. To us it's kind of "8 hours and a shower" so we're not looking to spend a lot.

  • Two, reliable standards. Mom-n-pop lodges are a crapshoot. There might be a fireplace and beautiful exposed wood beams in the room, but the bedspread could be all dusty and the shower the size of a telephone booth with hot water that's lukewarm at best. While our travel style is low-impact we prefer having a reliable level of basic creature comforts like a modern, maintained building, good beds, wifi that works, and onsite 24 hour management who can help if anything goes wrong.

  • Three, points. We've got a lot of points with certain hotel chains, IHG being one of them. We're always on the lookout for opportunities to spend them. Good opportunities to spend them— meaning, a good redemption rate. We found that here even though it's not the closest hotel.


We're here for four nights, which gets me a bonus on using points thanks to one of the IHG credit cards I own. After four nights here we'll drive to another part of the state— and stay in another IHG hotel, also on points. So all of our lodging this trip is paid for with points. It's nice not to have to lay out the cash.

Friday, April 17th, 2026 06:00 pm
A collage-like image of Benedict sitting cross-legged over a pink background of a Chinese city, with a pride-flag colored halo. Text reads “Benedict Cumberbatch is a Gay Erotic God in China”.ALT

“Why is the Chinese Internet obsessed with writing gay Sherlock Holmes fanfiction?” is what Liz Carter was wondering as they wrote the article titled “Benedict Cumberbatch Is a Gay Erotic God in China”.

The article was published in November 2013 on ForeignPolicy.com and pondered on the love the Chinese fans have for the Sherlock series and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Cumberbatch is cited as the reason a new wave of Chinese viewers have turned to British television, according to the news site Caijing, calling it “the Sherlock effect”.

On the Internet forum devoted to the star, called Baidu Curly Fu Bar, he is viewed in part as an erotic god. The nickname “Curly Fu” is used to describe Cumberbatch, because of his curly hair and ‘Fu’ being a shortened transliteration of ‘Holmes’.

He is often depicted in slash fiction featuring his version of Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman’s Watson.

Head on over to Fanlore to learn more about the article and the Chinese view on Cumberbatch.

——

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Friday, April 17th, 2026 03:57 pm
Used my anime TBR boardgame.

I watched 5/6 for my last challenge.

Avatar:


Laois 
Skill:
 Do one extra roll if you have 5+ anime on your list


Roll #1:

An 8 and the generate from PTW tile. Beginning to dread this tile for the anime challenge cause I have to go through and remove/research so many;; Anyway, #179 which is Heartcatch Precure!. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any of this one before.

Roll #2:

A 5 aand now the generate from CR tile. #55 which is Hetalia World Stars.

Roll #3:

A 2, prompt: otaku. I'm gonna do something weird for me and choose the genre I don't like (harem) with 2.5-jigen no Ririsa.

Roll #4:

A 7, prompt: short anime - Bikkurimen.

Roll #5:

An 11 and the PTW tile again *cry* this board is not going how I planned at ALL. #155 is Gundam Build Fighters.

Roll #6:

A 12. Reward is Akatsuki no Yona.

~Anime PTW List~


[Magical Girl] Heartcatch Precure!
[Historical/Comedy] Hetalia World★Stars
[Otaku Culture] 2.5-jigen no Ririsa
[Card Came] Bikkurimen
[Mecha/Game] Gundam Build Fighters
[Adventure/Fantasy] Akatsuki no Yona
Friday, April 17th, 2026 03:19 pm


SHAWN HATOSY AS JACK ABBOT IN THE PITT SEASON 1 AND 2


1,284 CAPS, PART 1 (462), PART 2 (399), AND PART 3 (423)


I want more Abbot. Moreeeeee.

I am going on vacation for the next week, but I'm planning on doing some more Pitt faces when I get back!

More pics )
Friday, April 17th, 2026 03:03 pm
Watched up to ep. 14 of Cardfight Vanguard!!

Watched ep. 4-5 of Akatsuki no Yona.

Watched ep. 15 of Slayers.

Watched ep. 3 of HameFura X.

Watched Kaitou Queen wa Circus ga Osuki and had a good time with it! 8/10 stars. Will be watching the sequel.

 Put Ninja vs Gokudou on hold until it's over/I get spoilers on how it ends (manga is ongoing).

Friday, April 17th, 2026 09:57 pm
Title: Resting Place
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters/Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Word count: 100 (Ellipsus)
Setting/Spoilers: Set post-series.
Summary: Buffy and Spike hear about some plans to rebuild Sunnydale. They are not thrilled.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction created for fun and no profit has been made. All rights belong to the respective owners.

Prompt: #123 - Ghost [Amnesty Week]

Crossposted: [community profile] drabble_zone, My journal


READ: Resting Place )
 
Thursday, April 16th, 2026 04:29 pm
But I don't know if I'll actually follow through. You see, for the past week and a bit, no matter what tarot or oracle deck I pull a card from, they all have the same essential message: REST, GODDAMMIT. You know, that thing I'm terrible at, even tho' I encourage other people to do it. 

---

I wish the Stroppy One was more interested in wandering through thrift stores and antique malls. I always explain to him that it's not about buying things, it's about window shopping and finding really weird things. But no, he's not interested. Drat. (Tho' I do need to look into taking the occasional Tuesday or Tuesday early evening off, because that's the day of "senior discount" at the local Discovery Shop and Value Village, and hell yes I want to take advantage of that.   
Friday, April 17th, 2026 03:39 pm

Posted by milesent

Our culture, society, friends, family, advertising… all conspired to teach me as a young child that to be thin was imperative. Indeed, it was more important to be thin than to be healthy. Even as a (literally) starving child, I was concerned about the circumference of my waist. (I was so glad that my hips and ribs were wider than my waist… oh little waif, that was unhealthy at age 9!)

It didn’t help that I got stretch marks from the rapid weight gain when our Dad got custody of us and we got to eat regularly. 12 years old, in many ways one of the cruelest ages, and I had stretch marks. I was convinced I was huge (and therefore ugly.) Our dad didn’t help; he called us the Butt Sisters and otherwise teased us about being fat. (In truth, were were quite thin.)

I marveled when I went to college, gained 30 pounds and somehow felt thinner. What I really felt was attractive… people reacted to me like I was attractive and acted like I was worth having around. It was an entirely new experience for me! I fit into a size 8 dress; I was thin! Though very conscious of the fact that I had gained 30 pounds. (They promised me only 15 pounds of gain for a Freshman!)

I don’t remember the first time I tried to diet, or swore to work out regularly to get rid of the gut. I was young though, in my teens or earlier and likely very thin. I never succeeded. Diets were too hard to keep track of and I’ve explored already the many reasons I found exercise hard to commit to.

It’s hard to go against that early programming. You can never be too thin. When my sister was absolutely emaciated after complications from a surgery and very unhealthy, looking like she just stumbled out of a concentration camp… she received so many compliments on how thin she was. This was NOT on purpose! It was NOT a good thing!

I try. I repeat to myself that the most important thing is to be healthy and healthy is not a number on the scale.

However, I was NOT happy with my weight last fall. It was creeping up to my all time high. My sister recommended a calorie tracking app, FatSecret. (She particularly likes it because it also works for weight gain or maintaining, unlike most apps that are purely loss centered.) After many years deriding those who counted calories… I started counting calories. *sigh*

Well… it has worked. I am down 10 pounds from November; about two pounds a month, a nice, sustainable weight loss speed. And I did it though counting calories and exercising more. Who knew? (We all did, dammit.)

What I learned counting calories:

  • I had taken to snacking more than I thought
  • Candy adds a lot of calories, but doesn’t fill you up (In other news, water is wet.)
  • Just being mindful of how much I was eating curbed my habits
  • 1800 calories a day (instead of 2000) wasn’t really a hardship; and I probably hit that number a lot without knowing previously.
  • I already knew that the quality of the calories matters rather than just the number of them.
  • Wow, exercise really doesn’t burn much calories. (There’s an exercise tracker in the program too… put in a 30 minute walk and it was only worth like 150 calories.)
  • I am definitely getting better at guessing if something is a cup or a half cup. (Also, I always assumed I was eating more than the recommended serving size of breakfast cereal… but nope. That bowl is really one cup, who knew?)

I do worry that my body is going to get used to a 1800 daily calorie intake, making me gain weight if I go back to 2000, but we’ll see. It’s early days yet. I do think that yoga class, the “workstation wellness” class at work and fencing are helping a lot. This is certainly the most regularly I’ve exercised in my life! (Still not as much as they recommend… but hey, it’s a lot for me!)

And while I am happy to be healthier… I am also reminding myself that the number on the scale is just a number. Not as important as the number on that blood test for cholesterol, eh?

Friday, April 17th, 2026 05:44 pm
On Wednesday we went back to Oswestry, because it was market day. It was a wet and gusty day, and the outdoor market had very sensibly decided not to happen, but inside the market hall there were many sparkly things to entertain us, like this little café-bar.

The bar at Oswestry market


Upstairs in the gallery was a guitar shop, where [personal profile] boybear eyed up a guitar with rainbow strings, while the rest of us watched the proprietor unpacking a box of 78s, reading the name of each while we - and another (even older, I suspect) witness - identified as many of them as we could. GirlBear won this game by singing Zambezi. We returned to the Beech Tree for lunch (the falafel were even better than the Turkish eggs I had eaten last time), and paid our respects at St Oswald's Well: I do like a tiny place of historic interest tucked in to the side of a housing estate. Then we returned to visit K. again. We had all, I think, been hesitant about whether she would welcome four visitirs at a time, but she seemed to be feeling better than she had on Sunday, and I think it was all right.

On Thursday we returned to Trevor, to take the canal boat across the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, and the sun came out and the guide was excellent, so that was fun and not at all terrifying (even when she informed us that the joints in the ironwork were sealed with Welsh flannel soaked in sugar-water and pigs blood, and that the structure was therefore held together with treacle). We headed in to Llangollen in search of lunch, and would have liked to patronise the tearooms at Plas Newydd, but they were only serving cake, so we went into the town and found a pleasant little café next door to the delightful Courtyard Books.

We have now relocated to Portmeirion: a drive through beautiful scenery, though sometimes swathed in cloud. [personal profile] boybear has been here before, and surprises me by how clearly he remembers it: it has been a constant of this holiday that we remember different fragments of childhood holidays in Wales, but on this occasion he is on his own, it is my first visit to Portmeirion. Which seemed like a good way to celebrate my birthay.
Friday, April 17th, 2026 06:14 pm
***

Help me defy the crushing forces of capitalism and complete my drabble a day for April! You've done brilliantly so far but I need 9 more prompts to make it to the 30th. 

So please, drop here your spring themed drabble prompts to keep me going! 

Any fandom (incl original), any characters/pairing as long I know the canon well enough to produce 100 words 

Thank you!

***
Tags:
Friday, April 17th, 2026 10:05 am


One day every adult on Earth gets a box that contains a string that measures out the length of their life.

This premise seems designed in a lab to create a book to be read for book clubs, where everyone gets to discuss whether or not they'd open their box and how they'd react to a long or short string. It worked, too. And it is absolutely about the premise. Unfortunately, the book is bad: flat, dull, sappy, American in the worst possible way, and emotionally manipulative.

It follows multiple characters, all American, most New Yorkers, and all middle or upper class. Some get long strings. Some get short strings. The ones with short strings agonize over their short strings. The ones with long strings who are in relationships with people with short strings agonize over that.

One of them is black, a fact mentioned exactly once in the entire book, and one has a Hispanic name. One set is an old right-wing politician and his wife. But all of them have identical-sounding narrative voices. Other than the Hispanic-named dude, who is mostly concerned about job discrimination, and the politician, who just wants to exploit the issue, everyone is worried about having a relationship and children with someone who will die young/worried that they'll get dumped and not be able to have children because they'll die young.

Ultimately, isn't everything really about baaaaaabies? Shouldn't everyone have baaaaaaabies no matter what?

The book is so bland and flat. The strings are a metaphor for discrimination, as short stringers are discriminated against. It explores some other social issues, all extremely American like health insurance discrimination and mass shootings, but only peeks outside America for brief and stereotypical moments: North Korea mandates not opening the boxes, China mandates opening them, and in Italy hardly anyone opens their box because they already know what really matters: family. BARF FOREVER.

It was obvious going in that the origin of the boxes would never be explained, but no one even seemed curious about that. Once all adults have received them, they appear on your doorstep the night you turn 22. Video of this is fuzzy. No one parks themselves on the doorstep to see if they teleport in or what. No one has a paradigm-upending crisis over this absolute proof of God/aliens/time travel/magic/etc that the boxes represent. No one comes up with inventive ways to take advantage of the situation a la Death Note. No one is concerned that this proves predestination. No one wonders why they appeared now and what the motive of whoever put them there is.

The point that life is precious regardless of length is hammered in with a thousand sledgehammers, to the point where it felt like a bad self-help book in the form of a novel. The romances are flat and sappy. In the truly vomitous climax, someone pedals around on a bicycle with the stereo playing "Que Sera Sera" and it quotes the entire song.

It's only April but this will be hard to top as the worst book I read all year.
Friday, April 17th, 2026 06:03 pm
***

Title: Melt
Author:[personal profile] kat_lair
Fandom: My Chemical Romance/Bandom
Pairing: Gerard/Mikey
Tags: Drabble, Sibling Incest, Ice-Cream
Rating: T
Word count: 100

Summary: “Are you doing that on purpose?”

Author notes: Spring defiance from under the crushing forces of capitalism = a drabble a day in April. This one for [personal profile] turps who wanted Way bros.

Melt on AO3


Melt )

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