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Monday [Fandom] Madness! The Fall 2025 TV Viewing Edition

I have had trouble keeping up with my summer shows, so it was difficult to get myself to pay any attention to fall programing. The only good thing is that there is only one new show I'm interested in giving a try (and that's only because it's in the 9-1-1 'verse), and there's only a total of four shows on my fall viewing schedule.

( Table back here )

What shows are you looking forward to coming back and/or what new shows are you checking out?

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The Day in Spikedluv (Sunday, Sept 21)

I hit Stewart’s on the way home from mom’s, did two loads of laundry (both washed, dried AND folded (or hung up, as the case may be)), hand-washed dishes and ran a load in the dishwasher, went on a couple of walks with Pip and the dogs, baked chicken for the dogs' meals and also cut up chicken for the dog’s meals, scooped kitty litter, and showered.

I finished Key Lime Sky, read some fanfic, and watched an HGTV program.

Temps started out at 37.8(F) (though it must’ve been colder than that because Pip saw some frost on his first walk of the morning) and reached 75.0. I wore leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt given how cold it was in the morning, and I roasted on our walks in the afternoon.

Mom Update:

Mom was a little more tired today. ( more back here )

Hell hath no fury like a Disney Adult scorned.

https://thebibliosphere.tumblr.com/post/795374215792656384

j0ltc0la:

socialistexan:
Hell hath no fury like a Disney Adult scorned.
I know Starcruiser super fans who are boycotting Disney over this. STARCRUISER FANS. Do you know that crowd? Disney REALLY fucked up.

https://thebibliosphere.tumblr.com/post/795374215792656384

BINGO: Blackout (Round 28)

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Sparkly Lego® Twilight

Posted by SB Sarah

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/09/sparkly-lego-twilight/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=151724

A | BN | K | AB

Y’all, Twilight is upon us. Born the same year as this here website, Twilight is celebrating it’s 20th anniversary October 7. (Note: I still have SBTB 20th Anniversary stickers, if you’d like one! They’re free!)

The celebrations will be in various quarters: The movie is back in theaters for a limited engagement, after teasing the re-release on Instagram. A limited number of theaters will be screening the five Twilight movies, one film per night for five nights, starting on October 29. The screenings also include a bonus roundtable with some of the folks involved, including Stephenie Meyer.

I think this is genius, honestly. In time for Halloween, and for a much-needed dose of nostalgic dopamine. Also, the first movie is tree porn.

I know other outlets are planning anniversary coverage, but one unexpected source of Twilight delight: Lego®!

I was taking a tour through the catalog, and thinking “Wow, there are a lot of new sets I’m digging.”

NB: some links include affiliate codes that send a portion of your purchase back to us at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your consideration.

Y’all know about my love of How to Train Your Dragon, right? There’s a Toothless:

A Lego Icons figure of Toothless wearing his mechanical tail and saddle harness. There's a lego articulated fish at his feet and he's breathing out a little cloud of clear air in lego form Lego Icons: Toothless – $70

I feel there is a strong chance I’m going to want this for my very own.

And there’s a Gameboy, which members of my household will covet:

A lego gameboy model made of grey, black and pink pieces, with tiles that look like game play screens and little cartridges for games like Zelda and SuperMario Lego Gameboy: $60.

Please note: there isn’t actual game play on this model. There are tiles that look like gameplay screens – I had to scroll and double check because I was confused how a functional Lego Gameboy was $60 – it’s not functional. BUT IT IS VERY COOL.

And then I got to the back pages of the catalog.

EVERYONE is going to want this.

THE CULLEN HOUSE IS A LEGO SET!

A model of the Cullen house from the movie, with a red pickup truck, a wolf, ,and three levels of a modern house with minifigs of Edward, Bella, Cullen and his wife, Bella's Dad, Jacob, and one of the sisters whose name I never remember. Twilight: The Cullen House – $220

“It’s a house, Sarah,” you might be thinking. “Lego® has plenty of those! There’s even an Italian Riviera scene where I could stage a recreation diorama of the BezoChez Merger and toss protest ducks and Bezos on a surfboard into the water!”

No, wait, that’s what I would do with the Italian Riviera set.

But yes, it is a house. BUT IT IS SO MUCH MORE.

It’s a Lego Ideas build, which means it was designed by a fan, LobsterThermidore, and uploaded for community voting. (Definitely read the descriptions – they’re hilarious).

This proposed build reached 10k votes, which means Lego folks took a look and said, “YES. THAT IS THE ONE.”

And I mean, honestly, that is the only right answer.

I am not exaggerating when I said the more I looked at it, the harder I chortled in complete delight.

Y’all.

First, this part is very important: the Minifigures:

EDWARD CULLEN WITH SPARKLE EFFECT?!

SPARKLE EFFECT??!!

And look, I even took my glasses off and looked close-close-close up, and in the images, I cannot discern any sparkle. Grumpypants, yes. Sparkle, not so much.

Minifig Sparkle Effect Edward and Bella at a lego piano. He looks grumpy but not sparkly.

Sparkle Effect Edward is grumpy and playing the piano with Regular Degular Bella.

Minifig sparkle effect Edward and regular degular Bella look at his record collection I think

Sparkle Effect Edward is grumpy watching Regular Degular Bella looking through his record collection.

Sparkle Effect Edward is grumpy in the kitchen with his Minifig Family — look at the size of that SPOON Cullen has in his “hand.” Is Sparkle Effect Edward about to get smacked? It was Rosalie who broke the bowl.

Even upon close examination of the image files, I can spot no sparkle.

Maybe this is a thing you can only appreciate when you own it? This Reddit user posted an album and…is that the sparkle effect? It looks more like a dermatology appointment is needed asap.

Setting aside Sparkle Effect Edward’s Alleged Sparkle Effect, I did notice three other things.

First, get a load of the hair on the Jacob minifig! I think it’s the same hair piece as Regular Degular Bella, but in black:

Second: you can build Jacob as a somewhat-articulated wolf:

The wolf looks bigger than Bella’s Dad’s truck. Pity he can’t ride in the back.

But finally, the part that sent me right off the edge of the chair I was sitting on:

THEY ARE IN A TREE.

IN A TREE!

Sparkle Effect Edward and Regular Degular Bella IN A GD TREEEEEEEE.

I don’t know why this cracked me up so much but I had to clean my glasses I was cry-laughing so hard. Even now I’m laughing.

Forget the house, the truck, the wolf, the Sparkle Effect Edward.

THEY ARE IN THE TREE.

Honestly, LobsterThermidor, if you thought of this, I offer you major applause.

Some of LT’s original ideas were stellar, and I don’t know if they’re part of the official set, like the “custom printed 1×1 tiles representing each book cover as wall art in the living room (or…dying room?)”

A cross section of the original design proposal showing an open fireplace and 1x1 wall art of lego-versions of the book covers. Including minifig arms holding an apple.

LOOK at that. Little Lego Minifigure arms holding an apple?!

And folks on Reddit noticed other “Easter eggs” hidden in the released design – references to deleted scenes, and odd items that were requests from Meyer, for example.

I just love everything about this, really. Every time I look at it, it makes me laugh. I even pulled the pages out of the catalog to save – spontaneous snort-laughter is in limited supply.

Are you going to climb a tree – I mean, buy this Lego set?

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/09/sparkly-lego-twilight/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=151724

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: King - Florence and the Machine

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Moodboard: John Dies at the End Tribute

On AO3 | Done for the prompt "shopping mall" for the

fandom_empire Bingo Challenge

I started listening to Jason K. Pargin's TikToks on some other platforms since I myself never made a TikTok account or downloaded the app. I started to vibe with his perspective. He's a generation older than me, but he speaks to a lot of the weird alienation that has accelerated in the past decade or two. He does a lot of good work to try and help men, especially young men, stop being so disaffected. I think he tries to get them to engage with art in a meaningful way, even if it's silly pop art.

As a result of my admiration for his online work, I decided to support him by reading and buying his book I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. Then, I started to read/listen his other books when I finished that one. I'm nearly finished with This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It and still kind of like it. I don't feel fervently fannish about it, but I feel a bit fannish about it, and I wanted to fight against my making-stuff paralysis while writing words seems clogged up.

some of you did not grow up reading Chicken Soup for the Soul books because you’d already read

https://notbecauseofvictories.tumblr.com/post/795340985540411392

some of you did not grow up reading Chicken Soup for the Soul books because you’d already read basically everything else in your house, and could only convince your mother and father to drive you to the library once a week. I can tell, because I did, and sometimes I read something on my webbed sites, and think it really belongs in one of those anthologies—sandwiched between a brief and humorous anecdote with a punchline you can see coming from the first syllable, and an almost menacingly heartwarming (i.e., “feel warmed or else”) account about how playing football/golf/baseball/etc. taught this man everything he knows.

https://notbecauseofvictories.tumblr.com/post/795340985540411392

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"Teach Us Something, Please." (Harry Potter) G

Title: Teach Us Something, Please.
Author:

lannamichaels
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: Merope Riddle is a disquieting little girl.

( In which Tom Riddle is a girl )

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📝 weeknotes (sept. 14-20, 2025)

Life Updates

Well, that was a longer gap than I meant to do! From my last update to now:

have left my Ann Arbor catsit
flown to California to visit parents and sat in a SoCal heatwave for a week
bought new suitcase, repacked items, swapped out clothes, etc.
flew to new catsit in undisclosed location (in the Western part of the US, anyway)
settled into new catsit for about a week, then
became vaguely ill for a week and
only now picked up laptop and felt energetic using it

I’ll do a more precise (friends-only) catsit update to introduce y’all to the new kitties, but overall I’m really enjoying this new location– though I miss the garden from Ann Arbor! I do have a balcony with a view of the river with an enormous amount of ducks here, though.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

giancarlo esposito & mylène farmer photographed by abel ferrara, 1996

https://notbecauseofvictories.tumblr.com/post/795327154092163072

pinkm4ns:

giancarlo esposito & mylène farmer photographed by abel ferrara, 1996

https://notbecauseofvictories.tumblr.com/post/795327154092163072

Untitled

Posted by China

https://www.chinamieville.net/2146-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2146-2

https://www.chinamieville.net/?p=2146

‘It was as if daylight must never suspect the night habits of people.’
— Leo Madigan, Jackarandy

The post Untitled first appeared on China Miéville.

https://www.chinamieville.net/2146-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2146-2

https://www.chinamieville.net/?p=2146

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Head on mine, it keeps me heavy

It's been a slow, sleepy weekend, and I feel as if the time has somewhat run away from me. I started Saturday at the gym (my legs still ache), and then met Matthias in town for lunch with one of our friends from our PhD years, who was in the UK for a conference and some work with manuscripts. He lives in the US south and has a tenured job at a university there, so our conversation was somewhat grim at times, but it was nice to catch up and show him our town, and eat food truck food under clear skies in the courtyard garden of our favourite cafe/bar. It's always a bit odd to reconnect with people from my postgrad days who are firmly embedded in academia — it's like a reminder of a past life, when that was my whole world, too.

The post yesterday delivered me a postcard from

peaked (amazing stationery choices, especially the stickers and washi tape), and she'd included a bunch of puzzles cut out from the newspaper, which was a nice touch! I've totally failed to complete them, but I imagine that will be for next week.

This morning, I went to the pool, and spent most of the morning slow-cooking an Indonesian curry, since Matthias and I will need to eat dinner very early in order to make it to a 7pm film at the community cinema (Sorry, Baby). The entire house smells of lemongrass, garlic and ginger, which I can't really complain about. I went into town for a quick wander and coffee, but have otherwise spent the rest of the day lounging around at home, with the athletics on in the background, dipping in and out of the internet, feeling somewhat unfocused. I did manage to complete Hannah Kaner's epic fantasy trilogy with Faithbreaker, which pretty much stuck the landing (although I felt it relied slightly too much on handwaving difficulties away by making one character ridiculously overpowerful), and I'm eyeing Tori Bovalino's adult fantasy debut, The Second Death of Locke, which Matthias received as the second book in the monthly SFF subscription programme run by our local independent bookshop. Bovalino is one of the few current writers of YA whose books I enjoy, so I'm keen to see what she's like writing for an adult readership.

The heating actually came on in the house for the first time this season. The hedgerows were bright with rosehips, rowan berries, blackberries and sloes on my walks to the gym, and the leaves on our cherry trees are yellowed and falling. I'm ready for summer to move on, and it seems that the landscape agrees with me.

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The Day in Spikedluv (Saturday, Sept 20)

I hit Price Chopper and the Bakery while I was downtown and got in a walk around the park.

I did two loads of laundry (washed, dried AND folded), hand-washed dishes, went on several walks with Pip and the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and changed kitty litter (and then almost immediately had to SCOOP the kitty litter because Midnight takes a fresh pan of kitty litter as an invitation).

I read some fanfic and started Key Lime Sky.

Temps started out at 39.2(F) and reached 70.0. That was much colder than I wanted it to be in the morning, but it got really nice out.

Mom Update:

Mom had a pretty good day. ( more back here )

(no subject)

It was a day yesterday.

To start with there had been really heavy, non-stop rain from the early hours. It was also our first craft fair in our town, one we'd been trying to get a spot at for ages. Then Murphy started showing signs of having cystitis again, and not being able to pee, which of course would be an emergency if he had a blockage.

With it being Saturday, our own vet was closed, so we had to get him an appointment at the out of hours vet, which would mean an expensive bill. He's got excellent insurance, but what happens at the out of hours is we'd have to pay, and the insurance would eventually reimburse, as opposed to our vet where they bill the insurance company directly. ( cut for length tldr, Murphy is on the mend )

Friday was nearly a day, too. We've said we'll take my MiL out at least once a fortnight, so picked her up on Friday and had a drive to Barnard Castle to get eggs from the honesty stall at the farm and get delicious bread from a bakery we like. All was going well until we stopped for a coffee, and my SiL phoned saying her electric had gone off so my MiL would have to stay at our house that night.

Obviously, she would have been welcome, but none of the furniture had been moved, she had none of her meds or oxygen generator, and it just seemed to make more sense to wait for a bit to see if things could be fixed before taking her to our house.

To cut a long and frustrating story short, they managed to get the meter sorted and the electricity was back on within an hour, but not before a lot of stress from everyone.

Thursday we'd gone to see Caught Stealing. It's a bit more violent than my usual tastes, but I can say, Austin Butler is a very beautiful man.

One good thing about yesterday, Strictly was back, let the Nikita admiring begin for another year.

SBTB Bestsellers: September 6 – September 19

Posted by Amanda

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/09/sbtb-bestsellers-september-6-september-19/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=151940

The latest bestseller list is brought to you by comfortable shoes, snack breaks, and our affiliate sales data.

Rules for Ruin by Mimi Matthews Amazon | B&N | Kobo
Manic Pixie Dream Earl by Jenny Holiday Amazon | B&N | Kobo
All Superheroes Need PR by Elizabeth Stephens Amazon | B&N
Shatter Me: The Six-Novel Collection by Tehereh Mafi Amazon
The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft Amazon | B&N | Kobo
Someone to Cherish by Mary Balogh Amazon | B&N | Kobo
The Second Chance Book Club by Stephanie Butland Amazon | B&N | Kobo
Once Smitten, Twice Shy by Chloe Liese Amazon | B&N | Kobo
Along Came Amor by Alexis Daria Amazon | B&N | Kobo
Impractical Magic by Emily Grimoire Amazon | B&N | Kobo

I hope your weekend reading was magical!

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/09/sbtb-bestsellers-september-6-september-19/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=151940

Sunday Sale Digest!

Posted by Amanda

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/09/sunday-sale-digest-49/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=151691

This piece of literary mayhem is exclusive to Smart Bitches After Dark, but fret not. If you'd like to join, we'd love to have you!

Have a look at our membership options, and come join the fun!

If you want to have a little extra fun, be a little more yourself, and be part of keeping the site open for everyone in the future, we can’t wait to see you in our new subscription-based section with exclusive content and events.

Everything you’re used to seeing at the Hot Pink Palace that is Smart Bitches Trashy Books will remain free as always, because we remain committed to fostering community among brilliant readers who love romance.

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/09/sunday-sale-digest-49/

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?p=151691

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[#274] CLOSE TO THE BONE (TORCHWOOD)

Theme Prompt: #274 - Near-death experience
Title: Close to the bone
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: M. Contains suicide ideation.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Ianto is grappling with the trauma of what it really means to be a Torchwood field agent.

( Read more... )