baihe_media | Member Posts

Dead Horses by Freya JN is now available for purchase physically and digitally! It was one of my favorite reads of 2025. In Twitter/meme terms, it was absolute cinema. Highly highly highly recommend it if you like messy catgirls, intentional worldbuilding, and storytelling that trusts its readers. CW: some violence and horror.

DEAD HORSES - a feline lesboviolence fantasy western about getting what you deserve

🐛Available now on physical + digital 🐛

Etsy

itch.io

[image or embed]
— Freya JN (goblinstunts) January 6, 2026 at 3:30 AM

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Life:

I've been doing Yoga with Uliana's 30-day yoga challenge. It's only 10 mins a day with a focus on gentle movement and mobility. As I still have lingering cough/cold symptoms this is the ideal level of exercise for me even though the inversions make me miserable. (•ᴗ•،،)

I've been trying to use the start of the new year as an impetus to fix my sleeping schedule for the sake of my physical health. It is: not going well. I'm still having trouble falling asleep (probably anxiety) and feeling attacked by how there is too little time in the day to do ANYTHING (...probably also anxiety). BUT I've been better at thinking about going to bed at 10PM.

Bird updates: the (narra?) tree across the street is going through its balding phase, and I've been seeing the little egret—which stopped hanging out on this tree in 2025 and appears to be favoring low areas, presumably near water sources—perch on its bare branches. So that's pretty exciting.

shadaras

The thing about Martha Wells' Queen Demon is that I really adored Witch King and then was mad about the fact that it wasn't a stand-alone book because I didn't feel a need for more in that universe.

Queen Demon is a perfectly serviceable book. I generally like Martha Wells' writing and her casts of characters. However. One of the things that I did not mind in Witch King but do mind in Queen Demon is the dual timelines. I suppose they weren't precisely directly connected in Witch King either, but there it had the effect of explaining who Kai was and providing all the backstory to the world. In Queen Demon, it's like...

I can see echoes but it's not direct. It ended up feeling like I was intercutting between two novellas with a shared world/cast, rather than one book that built its thematic/narrative push along a split timeline.

And yeah that probably wasn't helped by how I read it (in three sittings, more or less, each a couple weeks apart), but...

The main feeling I had about this novel was that every chapter seemed designed to end on a cliffhanger, which is perfectly reasonable design/structure for a novel, but also way more annoying when you know that you're not going to be immediately following up on that bit of time when you begin the next chapter.

This then leads into my biggest "I didn't like this" about the book, which is that it ends in much the same way as any of its chapters end, just on a bigger scale. Which, like, yeah, that's normal for a book in a series, I guess? But it's not how I'm used to Martha Wells books in series ending! She is usually pretty good about wrapping things up instead of ending on "here is a dramatic change in status quo that we are not even providing characters time to have an emotion about before cutting from".

...which then leads to the biggest question I have about bk3, which is:

So if the naming schema so far has been "magic-user + royalty title", does that mean the next book will be named for the Immortal Blessed or the Hierarchs?

( spoiler-tastic specific ??? about the ending )

(yes I will read bk3 when it comes out but I still think that I liked Witch King as a standalone more than Witch King as a series.)

shipperslist

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profiterole_reads

The first episode of the BL anime Isekai Office Worker: The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter was fun. A Japanese accountant ends up in a magical world.

I've read the first five tomes of the manga and it got boring after a while, so we'll see if I watch the entire season or if I drop it when the focus moves away from the relationship.

It's available on Crunchyroll.

forestofglory

2025 wasn’t my best year for writing, I was sleep deprived and not very inspired. But I did manage to write a few longer things so I thought I’d do a quick round up.

I wrote three things for

ladybusiness :
Adventures with Crossdressing Sword Girls
Domestic Labor and Community Building Rec List
Chill Chinese Reality Shows Rec List

I posted one short translation from Classical Chinese:
Magu

And I wrote an annotated bibliography for a friend:
Liao Biblography

duckprintspress

Every month, creators with Duck Prints Press come together to hold a literary convention-style panel on a topic chosen by our Patrons or selected by the panelists themselves. Our January panel? This Saturday, January 11 at 10 a.m. Eastern (converter) we’re having a get-together with five authors – Sebastian Marie, Puck Malamud, Alex Bauer, Tris Lawrence, and Lucy K. R. – about being a neurodiverse creator!

Description: As an umbrella term for a wide range of ways a brain can work, the word “neurodiverse” has become one way of grouping people with conditions ranging from autism and ADHD, to dyslexia and dysgraphia, to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. For creators, having these conditions can have advantages – such as changing how we see and interact with the world, helping us to unique points of view and frameworks, and supporting our work process – and they can also have disadvantages – such as interfering with ability to focus, causing mood swings that can make creativity tough, and making developing and maintaining creative habits difficult. In this panel, we’ll talk about our own neurodivergence, the ways we find our neurodivergence strengthens us as creators, the challenges that our neurodivergence introduces and how we’ve navigated those challenges, and the value we’ve found in forming communities with other neurodiverse people, touching on the extent to which we find the “neurotypical” and “neurodiverse” frameworks useful and relevant.

If you’re already a Patron, I hope you’ll join us! And if you’re not, become one today at the $7/month level or higher and get access to this panel, recordings of our past panels, and lots of other awesome benefits!

duckprintspress

1. What are you currently reading?

Baker Thief by Claudie Arseneault: it's not bad but it's also not really grabbing me, so I'm going really slow. I accepted yesterday that I won't manage to finish it before my current loan expires, so I put a hold on it again so I can continue. I'm about 20% in.
Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi vol. 7 by Ryoko Kui: see below, lol
盗墓笔记 vol. 2 by 南派三叔: since I finished 我和我对家, this is my new Chinese novel read (as picked by the survey I posted on Tumblr!). I'm taking a bit of a different approach with this one, annotating, underlining words I look up, writing definitions and/or pronunciations. Even if I weren't doing that, I definitely feel like I'm understanding this better; the sentences are more structured and the language more standard/less slang. It's written more formally, which matches better with what I've learned through studying. However, the pages are also a LOT longer and more dense with text, so it's sloooooow. It takes about 20 minutes for me to read a single page. Also, I had thought this would correlate to English vol. 2 of Daomu Biji, but it doesn't, it correlates to English vol. 3 which is. A pity. Because that's my least favorite of the DMBJ books I've read. But oh well, what can ya do

2. What have you recently finished reading?

Failed Princess by Ajiichi: modern yuri. Incredibly annoying characters, I'm not gonna continue this one. I'm usually pretty good at differentiating between "the author thinks this" vs "the characters think this" but this truly reads like the author has some unconsidered views on how important appearance is for a girl. Like, it's either the author doesn't get it, which is uncomfortable, or the character is like that, which is unpleasant, and either way I'm done.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 4 and 5 by Fuse and Taiki Kawakami
Kase-san and Morning Glories (Kase-san and... vol. 1) and Kase-san and Yamada vol. 2 (Kase-san and... vol. 7) by Hiromi Takashima: modern yuri. both of these were better than the first I read in this series (which was vol. 6 of the overall series), I'll keep with it for now.
Yona of the Dawn vol. 20 by Mizuho Kusanagi
Sakamoto Days vol. 17 by Yuto Suzuki
Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi vol. 1 - 6 by Ryoko Kui: this is a reread. I used holiday money I was gifted in the form of Amazon giftcards to buy the full series box set and I've done nothing but reread it ever since, lmao. Bonus, my daughter immediately started watching the anime, lmao. She's such an adorable weeb. (she is 7 years old)

3. What will you read next?

Novels: poor The City We Became, getting bumped again lmao... I picked up my spo of Lout of Count's Family vol. 6 by Yu Ryeo-Han, so that.

Physical Graphic Novels/Manga: I have none from the library, but with the box set of DunMesh at hand, you can safely assume I'll be finishing my reread of that before I do anything else.

Libby Graphic Novels/Manga: none of my loans are due in the next week so it's a bit of a crap shoot, but the ones due soonest are A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow vol. 3 by Makoto Hagino and Fragtime: The Complete Manga Collection by Sato, so. Probably at least those.

headstone

🎧 music

📚 books

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

🎥 movies

Son of the White Mare (1981)

📺 shows

Mobile Suit Gundam [rewatch]
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam [rewatch]
Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team

🎲 games

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

🎙️ podcasts

Friends at the Table: Twilight Mirage
Zen Studies Podcast

aurumcalendula

I'm sad the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted to dissolve, but it helped a little to read that they ultimately chose to do so to make sure it could not be used against public media:

“When the Administration and Congress rescinded federal funding, our Board faced a profound responsibility: CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.”

I'm glad I have a PBS Passport membership that supports my local station and I'm thinking about upping my monthly donation amount.

shipperslist

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wolffyluna

Hello, person who is assigned to me or considering making a treat! No matter what you make, I'm probably going to really like it, but I know it's much easier to come up with an idea if you've got some guidance.

Length of prompts is not related to how much I like any character or group, and more related to how much I can ramble about them off the top of my head. Also, feel free to do whatever you want. If for example, I mention wanting fluff for a character, but you have an angsty idea you really want to do, go for it!

My ao3 account and my tumblr are both wolffyluna, if you want to have a look at them to get ideas.

Notes for Pinch Hitters

Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel that takes about 6 hours to play through all the routes.

Sha Po Lang is a novel, that in print takes up five volumes, to give a sense of the size of it.

Vampires SMP is a multi creator youtube series, and you would only need to see one creator’s POV to have enough information to write fic. Each series is around eight episodes of 40-120 minutes long.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a computer rpg that takes about 80 hours to play.

Contents

Likes:

General Likes
Art Likes
Smut Likes
DNWs

Fandoms:

Baldur’s Gate 3
Heaven Will Be Mine
Original Works
Sha Po Lang - priest
Vampires SMP

( Likes and DNWS )

( Baldur’s Gate 3 )

( Heaven Will Be Mine )

( Original Works )

( Sha Po Lang - priest )

( Vampires SMP )

shadaras

Over the last ~week,

hafnia and I went "sooooo what if we ran a multifandom remix event" and now it is up and ready for signups! We're hoping it'll be a fun time, and we'd love to have you join us. <3

Remix Through the Seasons is a quarterly, trope-based multifandom event hosted on ao3.

Participants will write one new story (between 1-5k) and then be assigned another story written for the event to remix. These stories can be in any fandom (including Original Work). Matching will be based on the stories' tropes (and creator DNWs) rather than pairings/fandoms. Remixing works from one fandom into another is allowed (even expected).

Schedule:
Signups open: Now!
Signups close: January 24
Assignments sent: January 31
Original works revealed: January 31
Remix works due: March 14
Remix works reveals: March 21
All author reveals: March 28
All due dates etc are at 11:59pm GMT on the listed date

DW Comm:

seasonalremix
Ao3 Collection

(getting everything finalised involved spending a couple hours on a discord call editing the gdoc full of rules and only occasionally getting distracted talking about other things, which tbh is pretty good for how many moving parts there can be for stuff like this and how easy it can be to get sidetracked talking to your bestie. we think the rules are clear! ask questions [preferably on the comm] if they aren't! <3)

duckprintspress

A photograph showing a tablet on top of piles of books. The book cover on the tablet is Scholarly Pursuits, showing a dragon in a candle-lit room full of books, three bats in the background and a mouse atop a pile of books engaged in conversation with the dragon. One of the piles of books is also topped with the Scholarly Pursuits cover. Text reads: Now available! Scholarly Pursuits: A Queer Anthology of Cozy Academia Stories.

Our most recent anthology, Scholarly Pursuits: A Queer Anthology of Cozy Academia Stories, is now available for general sales. Miss the Kickstarter and want to get a copy? Hearing about it now for the first time? You can buy Scholarly Pursuits from the Duck Prints Press webstore, request it from your library, order it at your local bookstore, or purchase it from one of the many retailers who sell our books!

Blurb:

Duck Prints Press presents 22 delightfully fluffy, happy, odd, snug, and cozy stories about queer characters pursuing academic excellence! From field research shenanigans to cooking adventures, from space station education departments to eldritch libraries, creators brought their vivid imaginings to life in these charming fantasy and science fiction stories. Settle into your favorite research carrel or prepare to read on the sly under your desk as you join us for “Scholarly Pursuits: A Queer Anthology of Cozy Academia Stories.”

Buy your copy, as an e-book or print book, today!

We also have limited quantities of leftover merchandise from the crowdfunding campaign!

If there was any merch you wanted, there’s no time like the present to make sure you get it before supplies run out.

Bird Skull Enamel Clip Bookmark (top row, left)
Candlelit Library Lined Journal (top row, center left)
Subtle Pride Cozy Academia Pencil Case (top row, center right)
Goth Scholar Dux Die-Cut Sticker (center row, center right)
Dux Prints Circle Tote Bag (bottom row, left; final bag look a little different than the mock-up – the prints are black with white lines instead of white with black lines!)
Cover Art Postcard Print (bottom row, center left)
Library Book Due Sticky Notes (bottom row, center right)
Scholarly Pursuits Bookmark (right)
Tiny Bats Die-Cut Sticker (not pictured – they’re the lil bats hanging from the counter on the cover!)

This, and lots of other awesome anthologies, books, stories, and bookish and queer merch are available on the Duck Prints Press website!

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aurumcalendula

Harmony Secret, episode 3:

( Read more... )

kalloway

Once upon a time, I started making a spreadsheet of plotbunnies. This was a terrible idea because it turns out that I really need plotbunny lists to be tangible. I need to be able to hold my plotbunnies and run my fingers over them and flip pages. This is not a dig at anybody who likes spreadsheets. My brain just likes things analog. So in 2023, I transferred the spreadsheet back into a notebook, awkwardly.

Since I have transcribed the proper 2020 plotbunny notebook into the new 2026 plotbunny notebook, I need to figure out what to do with the 2023 book. It is not complete but definitely has both duplicates and stuff not listed elsewhere. Hunting duplicates is possibly too time-consuming, but we'll see. I may just ignore it for the most part, or just pick a page at a time and go slowly?

Digging through my journal to find a bit more info on the spreadsheet mostly got me entries about getting rid of the spreadsheet, and those entries also were full of general malaise about posting to AO3. So I suppose it was no actual surprise that when, a few months later, the deep malice, bigotry, and incompetence of the OTW exploded, it was easy to just walk away.

No archiving today. Too tired from post-break work + getting back on schedule. Might not get back around to things until Thurs/Fri but that's fine.

(My 'favorite' attempt at organizing some plotbunnies/prompts was back in... 2016 or so? Definitely when I was in school and very busy. Anyway, I was lovingly notes and whatnot into a composition book, and decorating them, and then suddenly realized that no, I'd not written a lick of any of them. But I'd certainly scrapbooked them nicely.

No regrets, looking back! That was the creativity I had at the moment.)

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superborb

It was soooo helpful to be able to look back at notes from last time, so here are my NYE party notes for 2025! Now that I have recovered a bit from the sleep deprivation of being in a noisy house with a toddler...

( Read more... )

Overall, I thought the food was pretty successful! Even though I was very sleep deprived, having the schedule did keep everything on task. I guess the real concerns for next time are trying to time hot food better (not really sure if that's possible with this style of food), and maybe I should consider more complicated dishes? I think it would've been easy to do a red braised pork, since that reheats well. I always want to have lots of little snacks before because that was My Job for ages, but it might be too much and detract from the meal...

aurumcalendula

Harmony Secret, episodes 1 and 2:

( some thoughts/reactions )

mekare

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Member Posts

"Dead Horses" by Freya JN

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Reading Wednesday 2026, #1

Isekai Office Worker: The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter

2025 in Review: Writing!

Patreon Panel This Sunday: On Being a Neurodiverse Creator

If you’re already a Patron, I hope you’ll join us! And if you’re not, become one today at the $7/month level or higher and get access to this panel, recordings of our past panels, and lots of other awesome benefits!

WWW Wednesday

2026 - media

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Fandom year of 2025

Candy Hearts 2026

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Now Available: Our Anthology “Scholarly Pursuits”

Buy your copy, as an e-book or print book, today!

This, and lots of other awesome anthologies, books, stories, and bookish and queer merch are available on the Duck Prints Press website!

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou, book 10

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A Reckoning of Swords 5

my 2025 in books

NYE 2025

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Snowflake #3: love letter

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December 2025

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