Underheard

Welcome to [community profile] underheard, a rec comm for underappreciated fanfiction! Currently we are Round One for the month of August, with spotlighted fandoms of:
  • Generation Kill
  • Seventeen
  • Power Rangers (old school)
  • Yuri!!! on Ice
  • One Piece
  • Harry Potter - Draco/Harry
  • Georgette Heyer
  • Bangtan Boys
  • Harry Potter - Scorpius/Albus
Watch our comm for updates!

October 2019

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lannamichaels: Brachos 2a, caption: "There's a debate about that" (daf yomi)
[personal profile] lannamichaels


Avoda Zara was great! A lot of good stuff, a lot of really practical things.

There was some stuff in this masechta and this perek that I could have excerpted but didn't (I really probably should go back to the earlier perek that had the Jew and the goy sitting and drinking wine together and the goy being careful not to touch the wine because The Overwhelming Concern About Wine Libations When You Least Expect It but the Jew was like "no, it's cool, it's mevushal"), but just a general overall sense of living as a minority in an environment where you're working side by side, having work partnerships, living in the same buildings and in the same courtyards, etc, and the ensuing entanglements and how to navigate those in the real world. But also, wow. What on earth was going on with all those wine libations. Prevention of intermarriage, I understand, but no, even though that is an excuse, it's not the excuse for everything, a lot of the fear really does seem to be that ovdei avoda zara have an irresistible urge to do a wine libation every time they touch wine.

Next up: two weeks of What Happens When The Court Makes A Mistake, and then we're DONE WITH DAMAGES. :(

The rest of my Avoda Zara notes behind cut:

Read more... )

scripsi: (Default)
[personal profile] scripsi
 

Books I read late July and August.

 

New books

At School With The Stanhopes by Gwendoline Courtney. If you follow my journal, you will sooner or later hear me talk about Stepmother by the same author. It’s one of my constant comfort reads, and has been since I was 10. But not until I was an adult did I realize that Courtney wrote a number of books in the 1940s and 50s, all geared towards teenage girls. Most of them have been out of print for decades, and being in Sweden has made it a bit of a hassle to buy them used. But now girls Gone by seems to republishing them, and I read II earlier this year. At School With The Stanhopes is about 16 year old Rosalind, whose guardian dies, forcing her to move in with her much older brother, whom she hardly knows. Neither of them are pleased with it, but I lifes becomes much less gloomy when her favorite teacher opens a school just down the lane. Especially as Miss Stanhope has a bevy of friendly younger sisters. It’s mostly a school story, but also about Rosalind and her brother building a relationship, and I enjoyed it enormously. I do wish I had been able to read this book in my early teens, though, because I can tell I would have loved it even more had I read it back then. 

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography of the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon. Sweden is pretty bad at noting women in history, and this is the first biography of a very interesting woman. Katarina Jagellonica, to use her Swedish name, was a Polish princess who rather surprisingly married Johan Vasa, the younger brother of the Swedish king at a time when the Vasa dynasty was seen as an upstart royal family. She was highly educated and educated, and it’s clear after reading this book that she had a lasting impact in how late 16th century Sweden was shaped. 

The Art of French Pastry by Jacqut Pfeiffer. I read a lot of cookbooks, but mostly just bits here and there, so never mention them in these posts. But this book was really interesting as it isn’t just recipes, but a thorough explanation of why a recipe looks the way it does, and also how it’s supposed to behave throughout. 

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold. The latest installment in the Penric and Desdemona series. It’s a series of fantasy novellas about a young man who accidently gets infested by a demon, something which makes him a sorcerer. As he doesn’t know how one is supposed to behave during those circumstances, he names the demon Desdemona, and they embark on a much more equal relationship. Bujold is one of my favourite authors, and the Penric and Desdemona novellas are bite-sized pieces of delight that together form a bigger whole. With that said this was probably one of the more lightweight installments in the series. 

 

Re-reads 

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flagg. The first book has been a comfort read of mine since the early 90s, and I like the movie too. A couple of years ago it got a sequel. If Fried Green Tomatoes paints the past in very nostalgic shades, The Wonder Boy  feels like a fanfic, if one can say that an author can write that to their own work. Everyone is happy at the end of it, and if the bad guy in the first novel was a genuinely awful person, the villains in the latter are reduced to a man with murderous intent towards a cat, and an awful mother-in-law. But sometimes one is in the mood for a book where everything will be just fine. And then some. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have always thought of this as a gothic novel for children. I mean, an orphaned heroine moving into an isolated mansion where she hears strange cries in the night, and there is a garden no one has been in for 10 years, and no one knows how to get into. I still remember how thrilled I was when I first read it as a kid. And I still love the description of the secret garden.

(no subject)

Aug. 31st, 2025 09:48 pm
tropicsbear: (Mobile Legends: Hilda)
[personal profile] tropicsbear

I lost interest in the Saiyuki WIP I was poking at earlier this month and moved on to a different one last night. I only managed to get 163 words on the page, but considering how much writing has felt like pulling teeth lately, I'll take that as a win.

I feel like I haven't had enough time for everything I want/need to do these past couple of weeks. The family did another fun run last week (separate entry to follow) and there've been a bunch of get-togethers with cousins from both sides of the family. Combined with that work project I picked up for extra cash, I often find myself not really wanting to do much aside from play Magic Chess: Go Go during the remaining free time I have.

But there's light at the end of the tunnel! I'm aiming to wrap up that work project by next week and we haven't been invited to any new family events for September. Hopefully I'll have enough time again to work on hobby stuff like writing or cross stitch. (I still think finishing my current cross stitch project by the end of the year is doable, but I really need to pick up the pace.)

(no subject)

Aug. 27th, 2025 04:58 pm
harpers_child: melaka fray reading from "Tales of the Slayers". (Default)
[personal profile] harpers_child
1. I was gone for three weeks. Turns out internet near national parks is spotty as fuck. I got home and immediately caught covid. That was another week and half out of commission. Then there was a rush to finish prep for my mom's surprise party which was another like week with limited internet.

I am declaring amnesty on catching up on my f-list. There is just no way I'm going back two months to catch up.

2. Pleas enjoy this song where Hozier sings in Cajun French.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NNHXHvMh9I

3. I was following a lot of MCR content on instagram after the seattle show and the algorithum showed me a bunch of Yungblud clips and then he sang Changes at the Ozzy goodbye show and the algorithum really liked that. I finally got around to listening to his music. If you liked the British rock sound in the early 2000s, you will probably enjoy it.
tropicsbear: An iPod and earbuds greet one another with "Hey buds" and "'Sup player" (Music)
[personal profile] tropicsbear

KPop Demon Hunters (8/10)

(I watched this more than a month ago but only got around to writing about it now 🫠)

Went into this not really expecting much—I wanted to watch something that I could enjoy without using too much brainpower—and ended up becoming more invested than expected. Which isn't as much as some corners of the internet, but I didn't expect that I'd end up yeeting the soundtrack into my Spotify liked albums and having it play at least once every other day.

The title sums up the premise pretty nicely; there's a K-pop group called Huntr/x (made up of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey) and they're also demon hunters. They're actually the latest in a long line of hunters and omg that opening montage? Where they showed all the different trios over the generations??? I want the lore! I want the lore so bad.

Thinking about it, I actually kind of want a prequel more than a sequel. What is the hunter selection process? What's hunter training like? Do you get scouted on your singing talent first and then trained in hunting, or is it vice versa? I have questions!!

Cut for length and spoilers. )

Beinoni by Mari Lowe (2025)

Aug. 24th, 2025 09:45 pm
lannamichaels: "גם זה יעבור" (this too shall pass) (hebrew - gam ze)
[personal profile] lannamichaels


Summary: Ezra Safran, age 12, is supposed to fight the manifestation of evil in the world when he turns 13. Unfortunately, evil is manifesting in the world and it's not even his bar mitzvah yet. And is fighting the manifestation of evil and vanquishing it really the right thing to do? A mid-grade book.

Read more... )

Reading Frenzy Reboot Part Whatever

Aug. 24th, 2025 06:32 pm
lightbird: http://coelasquid.deviantart.com/ (Default)
[personal profile] lightbird
A lot of reading I did this summer was for class, but I also managed to read a bunch of other stuff.

I read Shakespeare's 3 Roman plays, as mentioned in the last Reading Frenzy Post, this year's choices for Shakespeare Summer: Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. The first two were re-reads for me; the last was a first-time read. I'd seen Antony and Cleopatra performed, but had not actually read it, so this was a first-time read for me on that. The choice of these plays for this summer were spot on, and the specific timing of Coriolanus for Pride Month was *chef's kiss*.

News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media by Juan González and Joseph Torres: this was the recommended book for the Race, Media, and International Affairs 101 class that I talked about briefly here, and select chapters were used in the class. I highly recommend this book (and the class has been excellent, too -- it goes through the end of August). The ebook is nearly 500 pages and thoroughly researched. It's a great and informative read and provides a solid primer of the background of media and its development in the U.S., how it was influential in pushing colonialism, shaped attitudes toward race and perpetuated stereotypes, often fomented violence; as well as exploring the history and information that was suppressed, and events that were all but erased. And it gives homage to the legacies, sometimes limited, of foreign-language press in the U.S., including Spanish-language papers, Chinese-language papers, etc., as well as non-white journalists and writers, many who are not remembered.

Dracula My Love by Syrie James: Dracula told from Mina Harker's point of view. I was not as thrilled with this as I expected to be. The beginning was interesting, but as it went on it felt too long -- though it's possible that it felt that way to me because I already knew the twists and turns of the plot. It wasn't a terrible read, but I just came away from the book feeling meh about it.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: This book was so good. Told from the point of view of Henry Lee, a Chinese-American who grew up in Seattle's Chinatown during World War II, the book opens in 1986 at the Panama Hotel, once a part of Seattle's Japantown and now re-opened under new ownership after being boarded up for decades. The new owner of the hotel has discovered a basement full of belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II and left their belongings that they couldn't take for safekeeping. Henry is part of the crowd that witnesses the owner announcing what she found and displaying one of the items she found. The novel then moves back and forth between 1942, detailing the bonding and blooming friendship forged between Henry and Keiko Okabe, a Japanese schoolmate whose family is eventually evacuated to an internment camp, and 1986 and the Panama Hotel, where Henry gets permission to explore the basement and search for Keiko's family's belongings. It's a beautiful story, beautifully written, and really worth reading.

this is getting long so putting the rest under a cut )

Internet ghosts

Aug. 22nd, 2025 09:10 pm
tropicsbear: Chibi Agatsuma Zenitsu from Kimetsu no Yaiba serving food and drink (KnY: Zenitsu cafe art)
[personal profile] tropicsbear

I got a bunch of notifications the other week from FF.net, which surprised me. (I put in a deletion request last year but I can still log into my account so the request obviously hasn't been processed.)

There was an overly effusive yet somehow generic comment from an account that also subscribed to me and the fic, added me and the fic as favorites, and sent me a PM that I think is about soliciting commissions. As if everything didn't already scream "spam," I took a peek at the user profile and saw that they'd just signed up for FF.net on 5 August.

I really should get back to moving fics off of FF.net and into AO3.

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