pine island projects

3weeks4dreamwidth: plans

2026-04-11T21:49:40Z

Posted by: matsushima

3weeks4dreamwidth is celebrating Dreamwidth's anniversary!
Come join in for fun, memes, activities, and more ♥
Share your ideas for this year's 3weeks4dreamwidth!

I'm thinking…

friending meme at 3weeks4dreamwidth
"adopt a prompt" at fandomocweekly
??? at allkindsofdolls (I want to get activity up there but I don't know what to do.)
mini mix meme at fanmix_monthly
"What do you love about Dreamwidth?" discussion at thankfulthursday

I just love Dreamwidth so much. ♥

comments

doll/photography: Ichīro at Tokyo DisneySea Fantasy Springs

2026-04-08T09:42:01Z

Posted by: matsushima

About a month ago, I asked about cameras on my main journal. I ended up not buying a camera because 1) that costs money and 2) it occurred to me that it could be difficult (or impossible) to use most cameras, even a mirrorless camera, one-handed, holding my doll in my other hand.

Still, I am interested in improving my photos and I have a Lightroom subscription through work so I've been trying to learn more about post-processing. I use the blur feature a lot to force/fake depth of field and I recently figured out masking, which I use to lighten my dolls' under-exposed eyes.
Today, I decided to try one of the Lightroom presets that I saved on Pinterest with one of the photos I took on my DisneySea day with Mom.I'm not 100% happy with it but I learned how to use the Color Mix feature in Lightroom Mobile.

I've been posting more on my doll Tumblr, pineisland-dolls, so here is the edited photo, along with the original and the Lightroom preset that I used.

comments

doll: Kohaku's new look

2026-04-03T09:36:12Z

Posted by: matsushima

Like I said when I posted the first picture of her with her new wig (before her new eyes arrived),

Kohaku had pink hair and mauve eyes because that's how she was styled in the listing… but the other day, I thought, I'd always wanted a doll with red hair and green eyes like Anne of Green Gables. since I don't "shell" existing characters, there was no reason not to give it a try for Kohaku.

she looks like she cut her own bangs but it's cute! maybe she's the kind of girl who cuts her own bangs. I like letting my dolls' characters evolve through playing with them like this. (I wrote a whole 7,000 word paper about it.)

A draft of that paper is available to read for free online but I will probably not update that document any more so that when I (someday, hopefully) start submitting it, it's still "previously unpublished."

…oh, and: I finally figured out masking in Lightroom Mobile and now I'm unstoppable.

comments

annotation: All Consuming: Why We Eat What We Eat Now

2026-03-31T08:14:34Z

Posted by: matsushima

I started writing this last week and then found it in my drafts.
I'm reading a book! I'm reading a book for the first time since (*checks notes*) January, not counting books I've read to/with my students. (I've been lazy about keeping up my reading log and I should, at some point, go back and add in at least some of the books I've read at/for work.)
I'm reading All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now by Ruby Tandoh, a Great British Bake Off finalist.
I want to be clear that I'm saying this with great affection and I'm 50% of the way through the book and not DNF'ing: Tandoh is not a good writer:

Gregorian history pivots at Anno Domini. British food history, according to British food writers, started in June 1950, or 0 AED, the year that Elizabeth David published A Book of Mediterranean Food.

This is not only not funny, it's incorrect: if Tandoh is drawing a parallel to BC/AD (not even BCE/CE? really??), it should be 1 AED. There was no 0 AD. The book is riddled with these failed attempts at funniness.

Tandoh also has the XKCD expert problem: "experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field." That said, I may be unusually inexpert re: food in particular, because I don't really like eating. (I've said before on main that this isn't a diet thing or an eating disorder thing, just that, if I could take three pills a day and feel satiated and get all of my calories and nutrients and minerals… I would, and I'd save eating for a social event.)

That's where I left off… Here's the rest:
I finished this book but I kept waiting for it to get good? I picked it up based on the title; I didn't recognize Tandoh's name, although I probably watched her season of Great British Bake Off. (I binged the entire series to date in 2020-2021 but it was 2020-2021, you know?) I didn't feel like Tandoh really answered the question implied by the (sub)title of her book. Instead, it's a poorly organized collection of facts that never come together. Unlike good baking, it is not more than the sum of its ingredients. As a big fan of microhistories, I'd go so far as to say that this one has a soggy bottom.

comments

annotation: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

2026-03-31T08:06:07Z

Posted by: matsushima

I don't remember when I read On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant but I remember the feeling that Graeber was onto something. (I'm not familiar with his other work but I've heard it's good, even better.)

For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it … [A]part from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. … [For example] in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers … for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It's as if they are being told ‘but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?’

I read the book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory when it came out and recently picked it up again after If Books Could Kill did an episode about it. It was their worst - and I'm not just saying that because I like this book but because they clearly didn't understand it; towards the beginning, the hosts kinda scoff at the idea of an anthropology professor, a Marxist* scholar, as though that was a bullshit job, when, by the book's definition, it's very much not! Academics don't have meaningless jobs, make-work designed to keep us chained to our desks 40+ hours a week and too exhausted to rebel against, or even reform, our busted socioeconomic system.
*Graeber wasn't a Marxist, either; he was an anarchist.

As you may know, I am currently job hunting. Rereading Bullshit Jobs has been helping me articulate what the hell happened, here. I know it sounds strange, because "librarian" is definitely not a bullshit job. There might be evil librarians whose work has a negative impact on society (a law librarian for the Federalist Society, e.g.) but it's not a bullshit job.

Rereading Bullshit Jobs, I realized that I have a bullshit job even though "school librarian" is real work. I kinda already knew that. The library is stocked with literally hundreds of books that the students aren't allowed to touch. (No, I wasn't consulted about this decision.) We have a $50 clothbound hardback edition of Naked Lunch but I've been fighting a losing battle for two years to get a few more Babysitters Club comics. (I work at a K-12 school but the elementary:secondary ratio is ~75:25.) This isn't a real school. This is a bullshit school.

From Bullshit Jobs:

[W]hile few offices are entirely free of cruelty and psychological warfare… they [are] particularly prevalent in offices where everyone knew, but did not wish to admit, that they weren't really doing much of anything. … [T]he lack of any feeling of common purpose, any reason to believe one's collective actions in any way make life better for those outside the [school]… will tend to magnify all of the minor indignities, distempers, resentments, and cruelties of office life since, ultimately, office politics is all that's really going on. (emphasis added)

Without saying anything potentially libelous*: Yeah, that makes sense based on my experience at this school. We all(?) know this is a bullshit school, not a real school, but you can't say that or you'll get fired. (Ask me how I know.) The fact that this is all bullshit is maybe especially difficult for educators who take education seriously because we didn't know were signing a contract for a bullshit job. We thought we were going to be doing a real job because teaching is a real job. Instead, we're paid $$$ to pretend to teach.
*Truth is not an absolute defense against defamation claims in Japan! You can be sued for telling the truth here, like if I told you ██ ██████ ████ █████ ███ ███████████ ████████ ███ ███ ██ ███████ ██████████ ██ ███████████████ ██ ███████ ███ ██ ███████████ ██ █████████ ████████ ████ ███ ████.

There's also something to be said about the bullshittification of real jobs, like the time tracking paperwork Graeber writes about being required to fill out. There is an increasing amount of bullshit in K-12 education and it's only getting worse… but this isn't even that!

comments

doll: photos of me taking photos of my dolls

2026-03-28T12:15:19Z

Posted by: matsushima

My mom was here (in Tokyo) last week and we both always take a lot of photos of each other taking photos, so here are some pictures I took of my dolls and pictures of me taking those pictures:

comments

community: thefridayfive Friday, 20 March 2026

2026-03-19T21:55:50Z

Posted by: matsushima

1. What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?
I signed up for LiveJournal (meepalicious) in 2003 because it was the cool thing to do. I'd had other blogs on Blogspot and Diary-X but they didn't have a comment feature back then. LJ had a sort of prestige among chronically online tweens and teens because you either needed to buy a paid account or get an invite code to sign up. I got mine from a friend of a friend.

I registered for Dreamwidth in 2009 as meepalicious but I didn't start using it as my main social media until 2020ish? It was mostly a back-up archive of my LiveJournal. I posted fic, etc., to perfectworry but meepalicious was my home online.

2. How many DW or LJ communities do you subscribe to?
According to my profile page, I'm a member of 115 communities and subscribed to 112. Most of them aren't very active, tho.

Do you have a favorite community or one you check out often to see what's new?
I check my flist, rather than going to specific communities. (Sorry to the three communities I apparently joined but didn't subscribe to… I'm never going to see those posts.)

Some communities I especially enjoy: thankfulthursday, getyourwordsout, agonyaunt, snowflake_challenge, threeforthememories, bookclub_dw…

How did you pick your user name?
Matsushima (松島) is my surname. It's not my legal surname; it's the last name I use for publishing poetry and short stories but it's not (only) a pseudonym. I picked it because it was the address of the apartment I shared with Anna, which is the place I've lived the longest other than my childhood home. (pineisland is a translation of 松島.)

If you could change your user name, would you?
I changed it! I got some points during 3weeks4dreamwidth and used the rename token to change my username from "pinksoda." I had originally registered this as a fic journal like perfectworry and somewhere along the way it became my everyday account…

comments

fanmix: The Dark Tower: A Song for Our Fathers

2026-03-08T11:43:53Z

Posted by: matsushima

Title: A Song for Our Fathers
Fandom: The Dark Tower
Characters: The Ka-Tet of 19 (Roland Deschain of Gilead, Jake Chambers of New York, Eddie Dean of New York, Susannah Dean of New York, and Oy of Mid World)
Notes: This is an update of a fanmix I first shared in 2011 and of course this has 19 tracks.
Notes #2: This is a rare fanmix from me with cover art because I made the cover art in 2011 back when I bothered.

Link: 🔗

( but I knew it from the get-go this bullet was cursed ♫ )

comments

26 things in 2026: candy quest: Haribo Happy-versary

2026-03-03T21:39:49Z

Posted by: matsushima

This might be "cheating" a bit because I think Haribo had these blueberry gummies last year, but… oh, well. This is supposed to be fun.

Not much to say about these but I like them. It's a bag filled with only blue (blueberry, sadly, not blue raspberry) Haribo gummies. They're not bears, but stars and party hats. I like anything blue flavored and gummy candy is my favorite kind of sweet.

Even tho Haribo is a German company, these are Japan limited edition. Haribo is really famous here, like brand name recognizable, in a way that it's not in the U.S. When my students see me eating them, they'll say "Haribo!" not "gummy bears!" or "candies!" which I think is interesting.

comments

challenge: 365 photos: February 18th & February 20th

2026-02-20T08:17:48Z

Posted by: matsushima

I know I said I wouldn't crosspost every photo from my 365 project but I wanted to share these, from the 18th and 20th. I'm already noticing a change in how I take photos, looking out for everyday things to document.

I think I expected this and that's why I wanted to do this project again now. I don't know where I'll be living or what I'll be doing this time next year and I want to hold onto this while I have it.

comments

fanmix: FMA:B: Our Hell is a Good Life

2026-02-17T09:55:17Z

Posted by: matsushima

Title: Our Hell is a Good Life
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Character: Riza Hawkeye (x Roy Mustang)
Prompt: fanmix_monthly Challenge #2: Relationships
Notes: This is my one (1) cis het ship.

Link: 🔗

( I'm burning like a bridge for your body ♫ )

comments

challenge: 365 photos: February 17th

2026-02-17T08:52:47Z

Posted by: matsushima

I am doing a photo-a-day project!
I've completed it twice before. Neither is available in full online, but ~70% of my photos from when I was 17 are online. (I got bored of coding the pages around photo 257. I should get back to it someday… and re-upload the photos from when I was 25…)
I've tried it a few times since then but didn't finish. I do it about once per decade but I'm running out of my 30s so now seemed like a good time to try again.
I won't crosspost every photo here but I will post them in my Flickr album for the project, 365日.
… oh, and I promise it won't all be doll photos (but it will probably be a lot of doll photos).

comments

community: allbingo Valentines Bingo Fest

2026-02-01T09:48:45Z

Posted by: matsushima

family vacations	mature romantic gestures	sharing housework
dancing	baby/ kidfic	first kiss
interracial/ interspecies love	nonsexual touch	falling asleep

I used a mix of prompts from this year's romantic and platonic lists and last year's established relationships list.

comments

26 things in 2026: candy quest: Hi-Chew Fantasy Mix + Twist Balloon Gummy

2026-01-30T06:17:48Z

Posted by: matsushima

I am behind on candy quest updates.
January 8Do new flavors of candies I've tried before "count" for candy quest? Why not? This is supposed to be fun.
Hi-Chew is a pretty famous Japanese candy brand. You can get them in the States now, too. If you've never had one, they remind me a little of Starburst.
This is the "Fantasy Mix," advertised as "🇺🇸 popular flavors in America!" I bought it for the blue raspberry flavor (my favorite), but the colorful sherbet and blue Hawaii flavors weren't bad, either. I'd definitely buy these again.
★★★★☆

January 13I probably wouldn't've bought these Twist Balloon Gummies if I wasn't doing my candy quest; Japanese gummy candies of this kind are usually softer/squishier than I prefer. They were OK. You can see that I opened them before I remembered to take a photo. I got them from the convenience store near work while I was on break because I needed something sweet before I bit somebody's head off.
★★★☆☆

I still have a few more candies to post but here's two I've tried so far this month.

comments

community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #13, #14, & #15

2026-01-29T21:52:17Z

Posted by: matsushima

I know every post on snowflake_challenge says Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed. but I still wanted to catch up so I'm done by the end of January!

TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

I gave a shoutout to many of my favorite Dreamwidth communities in Challenge #12 but I should also add agonyaunt.

I'm trying to get more into Discord, so shoutout to the Saiyuki Fans server and Disabled Academics Collective. Both servers are big enough to be active and small enough to not feel totally overwhelming.

(Writing this made me really nostalgic for 旧Twitter. It was a hellsite but it was our hellsite. Now it's a Nazi bar. I'm on Bluesky but it's not the same.)

[C]reate a promo and/or rec list for someone new to a fandom.

Do you want to get (back) into designing your own websites, off social media and away from the algorithm? It's fun! I like showing off my doll collection and paracosm without ads and without the (implied) pressure to do it with the vague hope of going viral. (Even with likes/shares turned off on Instagram(/Tumblr), it's part of how the platform(/s) is(/are) designed so there's no escaping it entirely.)

Check out this huge list of resources for the personal web to get started and pop over to smallweb for technical/emotional support.

How did the fandom Snowflake Challenge go?

… pretty good, I guess? I think this is my first time ever participating and definitely my first time finishing, i.e., completing all of the prompts. (I didn't post anything for Challenge #11 because I was too lazy to go back and find the links for the handful of wishes I granted.) I had fun filling the prompts even tho I'm not super active in fandom and I'm already looking forward to sunshine_revival this summer~

comments

doll: you can't enjoy your hobbies if ICE murders you

2026-01-26T21:43:17Z

Posted by: matsushima

From pineisland-dolls [🔗]:This is a doll account. I am a grown-ass adult who spends a considerable chunk of my free time and discretionary income on expensive versions of children's toys. I'm aware that this is very silly.

… but I'm also a second generation immigrant to the U.S. (my grandmother was born in Ireland) and an immigrant to Japan and a Jew in progress who believes "Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world" (Sanhedrin 37a). …and, you know, a person who cares about people.

You can't enjoy your hobbies if ICE murders you for saying "I'm not mad at you" or helping someone they're beating up in broad daylight. Renee Good and Alex Pretti will never enjoy their hobbies again. Liam Ramos is a pre-K student. He can't play with his toys in a concentration camp - sorry "family detention center."

…and those are just the names in the news. How many other neighbors disappeared off the streets? How many migrants died in the crossing that U.S. Border Patrol intentionally makes more dangerous and deadly? How many more will we lose?

…so, yes, this is a hobby account. It's also a political account because you can't enjoy your hobbies if ICE shoots you in the streets, kidnaps you out of your workplace/school/home, or uses you as bait to arrest and deport your family members.

I doubt anyone following me has a problem with what I'm saying here but, if you do: block me, forget my number, and go fuck yourself in hell.

NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF 🖕🏻

That was specifically about my dollblr/dollstagram accounts but you could say the same thing for pineisland. Sure, it's a hobby/fandom account but you can't enjoy your hobbies/fandoms if ICE murders you.

comments

community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #12

2026-01-23T22:48:43Z

Posted by: matsushima

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

I'm not super active in fandom but I am super active on Dreamwidth, so this is an ode to everybody here.

Thank you to the snowflake_challenge crew for posting the prompts and for the community for your responses. Thank you to the getyourwordsout volunteers who post inspiring prompts and host community discussions and keep track of everybody's progress and birthdays and everything. Thank you to nanila at awesomeers, who posts check-ins every day.

Thank you to the people who share what you're grateful for at thankfulthursday every week, to the people who have posted fanmixes at fanmix_monthly so far, to the people who've shared your dolls on allkindsofdolls and your OCs at fandomocweekly. Thank you for the technical help and emotional support at smallweb.

Thank you to denise and the rest of the dw_maintenance team for keeping this corner of the internet alive and ad- and algorithm- free.

… but mostly a big thank you to all of my Dw friends. Thank you for sharing your lives with me and for taking an interest in mine.

comments

community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #10 / fanmix: T:RC: Winter Bones

2026-01-20T22:00:02Z

Posted by: matsushima

CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT.

Title: Winter Bones
Fandom: TSUBASA: RESERvoir CHRoNiCLE
Characters: Fay D Fluorite (my love)
Prompt: snowflake_challenge Challenge #10 / fanmix_monthly Challenge #1: Everything Old is New Again
Notes: Fay is and always will be my one true anime love
Notes #2: For anyone coming here from snowflake_challenge, if you made a fanmix, please feel free to x-post it to fanmix_monthly!

Link: 🔗

( why do I need anyone else when I can break the sky myself? ♫ )

comments

community: threesentenceficathon prompts & fills

2026-01-20T09:55:10Z

Posted by: matsushima

My prompts at threesentenceficathon:

My fills at threesentenceficathon:
(none yet)

comments

community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #8 & #9

2026-01-17T22:30:02Z

Posted by: matsushima

Talk about your creative process.

I saw responses to this challenge start popping up on my flist and procrastinated because my initial response was lol what creative process??? because I've been blocked (in a fallow period*) for a long time now.
*getyourwordsout community locked post

… but while I have been not writing (or not writing much), I've been doing other things and, like I said in that getyourwordsout post linked above, Sometimes you have to let the field lie fallow. I've always written in a "boom and bust" cycle: weeks, months, or years of tremendous output (two more-or-less complete MG novel drafts in the 2015-2016 school year!!) and then weeks, months, or years of pretty much nothing… but it turned out I needed those nothing times, as much as I hate them in the moment. (Honestly time: I am in a fallow period right now.) One of my most creatively successful projects (an interactive poetry chapbook) would not exist without the hours I wasted ("wasted"?) on TV Tropes.

Unlike an agricultural fallow period, these empty times aren't planned and I can't control when they'll start or stop. I could wake up with a picture book draft tomorrow morning… or in two years. I have no way of knowing. I know some things make it worse, like work stress or not taking my meds consistently, but what makes it better? What makes it bearable?

For me, it's hands-on hobbies (crochet, doll photography), low pressure creative work (small/old/indie web design), and the boring (and sometimes expensive) everyday work of maintaining my physical and mental health. (It's hard to write when your teeth hurt.)

Extending the metaphor, some plants are good for the soil. Maybe other kinds of writing will help? Try fanfiction if you usually write original, poetry if you usually write prose, nonfiction if you usually write novels.
… all of which is to say: I got nothin' but I know that being mean to myself won't make me write more so I am doing my best to be patient and kind with myself while the world (and my day job career) is (are) on fire.

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works.

Like I said ↑, I love wasting time on TV Tropes. One of those low pressure indie web projects I mentioned is a tropes page for my paracosm(/inner world/other world/soulscape/etc).

It would be incredibly time consuming for me to list out every trope that I like, but here my Top Five Favorite Tropes*:
*in no particular order
Please note that this list contains unmarked spoilers for TSUBASA: RESERvoir CHRoNiCLE, Kuroshitsuji(/Black Butler but I'm old), Saiyuki…

Twin Switch: ~~Fay~~ Yui, my love! Also: I started reading Kuroshitsuji again after a decade of not doing that when I heard that (real!)Ciel was back!!!
Eye Scream: Fay again. In my defense, Tokyo Babylon/X/1999 was incredibly formative for me and Seishiro Sakurazuka/Subaru Sumeragi was my my first toxic ship and Hakkai is my favorite Saiyuki character.
Unrealistic Gun Fights: This isn't a TV Tropes trope but I'm using it to cover Guns Akimbo, Gun Fu/Gun Kata, Unorthodox Reload and sniper/sharpshooter characters (Riza Hakweye in Fullmetal Alchemist, Jesper in Shadow and Bone, Vash in Trigun Stampede, the Ka-Tet of 19 in The Dark Tower, Meilin in Kuroshitsuji…)
True Companions/Found Family: I think every single example of my favorite media has this: The Road to El Dorado, Lilo & Stitch, The Lord of the Rings, Saiyuki, TSUBASA: RESERvoir CHRoNiCLE, The Dark Tower… I am an absolute sucker for found family/true companions.
Portal Crossroad World/Inn Between the Worlds: I am a former portal fantasy protagonist and low key/high key always looking for my way back to one of these…

I really enjoyed this prompt because I've been thinking a lot about what tropes I like lately. I've always written very quiet stories; my two complete(-ish) middle grade manuscripts are historical fiction friendship stories about kids who aren't famous or fabulously wealthy and don't have superpowers. Lately, tho, I crave adventure and excitement in my writing and I have no idea how to do that, so I've been analyzing my favorite Big Damn Stories to figure out which tropes I like best and how to use them in my writing.

comments

community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #7

2026-01-14T08:37:29Z

Posted by: matsushima

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

I'm good with kids.
I mean what I say and I say what I mean… but|and I try not to say it in a mean way.
I might act like a whiny baby about it (whatever it is) and I'll put it off until the last possible moment… but I will get through it/get it done and I (probably) won't completely lose my shit along the way.

This challenge was hard 😩

comments

community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #6

2026-01-12T08:22:55Z

Posted by: matsushima

Top 10 Challenge.

Here are my Top 10+ Nonfiction Books if You Want to Get into Nonfiction*:
*in no particular order

Holy Sh＊t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May
The Hours Have Lost Their Clock: The Politics of Nostalgia by Grafton Tanner
The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller
Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan
The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Flemming
Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe
Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride by Peter Zheutlin
Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin
Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto

… OK, I got excited and put in more than 10. I really love nonfiction! I got into it in 2015-2016 or so and, since 2020, it's been pretty much all I'm able to read consistently (save occasional forays into contemporary romance and domestic thriller, other genres I rarely read before the pandemic started). Even if you think of yourself as primarily a reader of fiction, there's something in here for you, as these are narrative nonfiction; I'd say The Family Romanov Most Dangerous are the most "novelistic" as reading experiences.

Next On My Nonfiction Reading List:

All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now by Ruby Tanoh
Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell

comments

fanfic: The Hunger Games: 59th Annual Hunger Games Tribute List

2026-01-10T23:09:27Z

Posted by: matsushima

Title: 59th Annual Hunger Games Tribute List
Characters: OC - Paisley Webster, et al.
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Word Count: 103
Warnings: I guess it's implied that 23 of the kids on this list die but none of it happens in this fic/list
Notes: This isn't a fic. It's a list of names of the tributes because it annoys me that, in Katniss's Games, we never find out the names of most of the other tributes.

( 59th Annual Hunger Games Tribute List )

Notes 2: Maybe my plan for 2026 can be to write at least a short fic about each of them…

comments

fanfic: The Hunger Games: Through the Smoke

2026-01-10T08:51:56Z

Posted by: matsushima

Title: Through the Smoke
Character: OC - Paisley Webster; OC - Tessla Lovelace (mentioned); OC - Fairlane Porter
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Word Count: 434
Prompt: fandomocweekly "Slump"
Warnings: Canon-typical violence; Character death
Notes: Tessla (District 3) is named after Tesla from Trigun, not, like, the electric car company run by a world class douchebag (or the inventor born in 1865); Fairlane (District 6) is named after the classic car

( Whether I die in the next five minutes, or hours, or days, or if I live for another 50 years, I will miss this girl slumped over in the smoke for the rest of my life. )

comments

community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #5

2026-01-10T00:59:18Z

Posted by: matsushima

Create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

Things That Are Free

Icons My doll photos are all on Flickr and I would love icons of any/all of them because I post about them a lot

Community participation Come join us at thankfulthursday (weekly gratitude community), fandomocweekly (writing prompts focused on original characters in fandom stories), fanmix_monthly (mixtapes, fannish or otherwise, with optional monthly challenges) and/or allkindsofdolls (exactly what it sounds like)

Things That Cost (Me) Money

Dolls (Old BJD) I couldn't afford these dolls when they were available to buy and now they're almost impossible to find. I'm not asking for one for free (but I also wouldn't say "no"!) but if you have one for sale, please send me a message!
- CP/Luts Delf Elf Shiwoo
- CP/Delf Shiwoo
- CP/Luts Delf Soony
- Dream of Doll Tender Zen

Thank you!! ♥

comments