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Anna Kovatcheva’s She Made Herself a Monster and the Ambiguous Fantastic
Mar. 25th, 2026 06:30 pmtordotcom_feedAnna Kovatcheva’s She Made Herself a Monster and the Ambiguous Fantastic
Anna Kovatcheva’s new gothic novel features a vampire hunter, but… is it really a vampire story?
Published on March 25, 2026
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Christina Orlando</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/book-review-she-made-herself-a-monster-by-anna-kovatcheva/">https://reactormag.com/book-review-she-made-herself-a-monster-by-anna-kovatcheva/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=843263">https://reactormag.com/?p=843263</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Anna Kovatcheva’s <i>She Made Herself a Monster</i> and the Ambiguous Fantastic</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Anna Kovatcheva’s new gothic novel features a vampire hunter, but… is it really a vampire story?</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/tobias-carroll/" title="Posts by Tobias Carroll" class="author url fn" rel="author">Tobias Carroll</a></p>
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Published on March 25, 2026
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<p>Here’s a question: Does a novel need to actually have fantastical elements to be considered a fantasy novel? This question has been on my mind since reading Molly Templeton’s <a href="https://reactormag.com/unfortunately-i-am-wrestling-with-genre-again/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recent column</a> on genre boundaries, but it’s also been coursing through my brain since I finished Anna Kovatcheva’s novel <em>She Made Herself a Monster</em>. The publisher’s <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/she-made-herself-a-monster-anna-kovatcheva?variant=43837250666530" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">description</a> of the novel is coy about just how supernatural the book actually gets; the phrases “feminist fable” and “Gothic gem” come up, though the publisher pointedly does not categorize it as fantasy or horror.</p>
<p>There’s a good reason for that. <em>She Made Herself a Monster</em> begins with a woman named Yana, who is traveling from village to village in eastern Europe acting as a vampire slayer. We’re a long way from Buffy Summers or Abraham Van Helsing here, though: Yana’s method involves hammering a brick into the neck of a corpse, then presenting the townspeople with a spike and instructing them to bury the body outside of the town’s borders. The language Kovatcheva uses for this sequence is visceral; she captures both the violence of Yana’s actions and the fear and awe of the people gathered around to watch this ritual.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Yana lowers the mallet to the ground and holds the railroad spike out to the mayor. Its sharp end is gummy with flesh gouged from the roof of the dead man’s mouth.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>What she does not show, pointedly, is a member of the undead fighting for its uncanny life, desperate for survival, to endure one more day with the promise of more bloody feasts in its future. That’s because Yana’s act is precisely that: a show put on for the benefit of the locals, and a way to secure her own livelihood. As Kovatcheva writes, “The simple fact is: they want to believe her.”</p>
<p>That said, calling <em>She Made Herself a Monster</em> a work of historical fiction or crime fiction doesn’t fit nearly as well as shelving it closer to the fantasy or horror sections of some metaphorical or literal shelf. Why? Because at its core, it’s still concerned with themes prevalent in both of those genres, including memory, ritual, and fear.</p>
<p>While Yana is the character on whom this novel opens, she isn’t the central character. That distinction belongs to Anka, a young woman who is under the guardianship of a man known to everyone as the Captain. In a novel where every other significant character is referred to by their first name, that is the first signal that something is different about this man, but Kovatcheva leaves the specifics vague. Is it just that he holds more power than anyone else in the book? Or is that he has become something different, a person who’s opted to conceal his humanity behind a title and the authority it conveys?</p>
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<p><em>She Made Herself a Monster</em> is set at a time in the past when science and superstition are at an uneasy impasse. Anka’s cousin Kiril, another major figure here, is introduced having a conversation about science and astronomy with his friend Hasan, all the while looking on the ways that his horizons have expanded since leaving his hometown. That one of the first things Kiril does upon arriving back home is to defend a widow accused of witchcraft—something he accurately perceives as utterly wrongheaded—establishes the tensions on the ground here, and also helps explain why Kiril sought to move elsewhere.</p>
<p>Eventually, Kovatcheva reveals another reason why the Captain is known as the Captain, as opposed to his given name: It’s a way of leaving an earlier version of himself behind. Unfortunately, that earlier version of himself was a more fallible man, one with the capacity to err in tragic ways—but also one capable of levels of compassion that this version of himself has sloughed off.</p>
<p>The Captain, it seems, loved Anka’s late mother; he also has designs on taking Anka as his wife when she is of age. The emphasis there is very much on “taking her”; Anka is understandably horrified by the idea of her surrogate father becoming her husband. Alternately, the Captain’s degree of self-justification—“When we marry, we will complete the grand plan—do you see now? Do you see it?”—takes things into the realm of moral horror, if not its supernatural counterpart.</p>
<p>The arrival of Yana in the village provides Anka with a glimpse of how different her life could be and of how she might be able to use the locals’ superstitions (including a wariness around Anka due to the circumstances of her birth) as a way of making an escape from a terrible situation. <em>She Made Herself a Monster</em> is a slow-building work; Kovatcheva lets the narrative emerge slowly, rooting the plot and story in the connections between the characters and the events that took place before the start of the novel. Myths, legends, and superstitions are not the only old stories that have a bearing on these characters’ lives; their family histories also play a part.</p>
<p>One of the questions Kovatcheva is pursuing here has to do with the connections between rituals and narratives. Can someone be a vampire hunter if they go through all of the motions of banishing a supernatural creature, even if there is no creature to be banished, provided the locals are satisfied with their work? At its core, this is a story about the power of stories, encompassing everything from Yana’s livelihood to the Captain’s troubling search for redemption, and about how stories can transform lives and communities. Anka’s quest to create her own story here may not involve slaying monsters, but it’s just as formidable a challenge.[end-mark]</p>
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<p class="has-sm-font-size"><em><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/she-made-herself-a-monster-anna-kovatcheva" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">She Made Herself a Monster</a></em> is published by Mariner Books.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/book-review-she-made-herself-a-monster-by-anna-kovatcheva/">Anna Kovatcheva’s <i>She Made Herself a Monster</i> and the Ambiguous Fantastic</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/book-review-she-made-herself-a-monster-by-anna-kovatcheva/">https://reactormag.com/book-review-she-made-herself-a-monster-by-anna-kovatcheva/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=843263">https://reactormag.com/?p=843263</a></p>
Alex Garland’s Civil War Captures What Journalists Do, Like It or Not
Mar. 25th, 2026 06:00 pmtordotcom_feedAlex Garland’s Civil War Captures What Journalists Do, Like It or Not
Reporting the facts, and challenging the narrative those in power want to convey.
Published on March 25, 2026
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/alex-garlands-civil-war-captures-what-journalists-do-like-it-or-not/">https://reactormag.com/alex-garlands-civil-war-captures-what-journalists-do-like-it-or-not/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=843633">https://reactormag.com/?p=843633</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Alex Garland’s <i>Civil War</i> Captures What Journalists Do, Like It or Not</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Reporting the facts, and challenging the narrative those in power want to convey.</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/dan-persons/" title="Posts by Dan Persons" class="author url fn" rel="author">Dan Persons</a></p>
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Published on March 25, 2026
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<p>I started writing this piece on Alex Garland’s <em>Civil War</em> (2024) knowing it’d be a stretch. <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/the-sf-path-to-higher-consciousness/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The SF Path to Higher Consciousness</a> is supposed to be about how genre film helps us look at ourselves and how we relate to our world and the universe. <em>Civil War </em>isn’t really about introspection, even though it presents a daunting set of moral challenges. Maybe it’s more that <em>I</em> wanted to use it to look into where <em>I</em> came from, what I seek from myself and my craft. After all, while my route to journalism wasn’t a straight line, the passion for it was always there, even from childhood. Times being what they are, I thought maybe the things I discovered about myself while looking into the film would somehow be beneficial to others. (Maybe you?)</p>
<p>I got into covering genre film by writing for <em>Cinefantastique,</em> starting in the late Eighties. A long, long time ago—when dinosaurs ruled the Earth—<em>CFQ</em> was deemed one of the most influential fan magazines in the field. Its coverage of film and TV was so in-depth and clear-eyed that it was read by industry professionals. Its issue on <em>Forbidden Planet </em>was so comprehensive—to the extent that it included a piece on the rough cut of the film—that it is still considered a definitive history of that SF classic.</p>
<p>Credit long-time publisher and editor Fred Clarke for making the magazine what it was. From the get-go, he wanted to offer genre fans something beyond the superficial enthusiasm of other fan mags. <em>CFQ</em> was established in the wake of Watergate, and Clarke openly admitted that the magazine not only took its tip from the influential, French film journal <em>Cahiers du Cinéma, </em>but also from the standard championed by Woodward and Bernstein. I came to the fold late in the magazine’s history, after some of <em>Cinefantastique’s</em> most infamous efforts (including, most notoriously, an article featuring photos of the <em>Twilight Zone</em> helicopter disaster, something which Fred later expressed regret over publishing), but I was still inculcated into Fred’s philosophy that we may have been a fan magazine, but that didn’t mean we needed to treat the art with any less gravity and candor than a journalist would afford any other subject.</p>
<p>There is a caveat to this: Much as we at <em>CFQ</em> reveled in our outsider notoriety (once, during a press junket, a writer for one of the other magazines said to me, “You guys over at <em>Cinefantastique</em> take yourselves way too seriously,” to which I had to constrain myself from replying, “Yes, so what’s your point?”), there was only so far we could go with the righteous-seekers-of-truth thing. It’s called “access journalism,” a nice way of saying that both reporter and subject have to kiss each others’ asses to at least some extent if there’s going to be any story. Fred learned that lesson the hard way when Spielberg and his cohort cut the magazine off after <em>Twilight Zone</em>, and George Lucas did the same after the mag disclosed the big reveal of <em>The Empire Strikes Back</em> before the film’s opening. Relationships would be patched up later, but it would never be the same.</p>
<p>Much as I tried to deal honestly and fairly with the films I covered, there was a line I knew I could not cross. I was neither Woodward, Bernstein, Cronkite, nor Murrow. I was a writer for a fan magazine, and in terms of rep, that and $3.25 would get you a Venti at Starbucks.</p>
<p>Which is why <em>Civil War </em>hit me so profoundly. Journalists in general get a bad rap. Sometimes that’s deserved—there are some so-called “journalists” too willing to slant a story to fit their biases, and there are certain outlets, which will not be named here, whose whole business model is to repackage propaganda as legitimate news. But very often journalists get knocked because that’s <em>not</em> what they do; because they dare to convey events as honestly as they can, and challenge the narrative that those in power want to convey. They’ll still have their biases, they’ll still make mistakes, and there will be times when their zeal to get a story will lead them into morally gray areas—they’re only human, after all. But the best of them know they work to a higher purpose: Bringing the truth to people who need to know.</p>
<p><em>Civil War</em> is a controversial film. Set in the near future, when a coalition between Texas and California—called the Western Forces—have seceded from the Union and are waging war against the U.S. government, it follows photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and reporter Joel (Wagner Moura) as they endeavor to reach Washington, D.C. before the city falls, in the hopes of getting an exclusive with the embattled President (Nick Offerman). Joining them on a circuitous route that takes them from New York through Western Pennsylvania and into the Virginias are veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) a novice photographer not yet tested in the crucible of war, whom Lee reluctantly takes under her wing.</p>
<p>Alex Garland’s father worked as a cartoonist for a newspaper, and <em>Civil</em> <em>War</em> bears the markings of a person who from a young age has been deeply immersed in the culture of the newsroom. While the mise-en-scène is distinctly American—along their odyssey the reporters encounter a stand-off at a weird, Christmas-themed roadside attraction and a group of heavily armed gas station attendants who string up and torture looters back behind their garage—the action overall bears more than a few echoes of civil wars waged elsewhere around the world. Lee, Joel, and Sammy have all covered conflict overseas—their alcohol-infused interactions while holed up at a New York hotel suggest they must have had the same exchanges countless times in countless foreign lodgings. But now war has come home—while the context is different, the brutality and terror stay the same.</p>
<p><strong>[Put on your Kevlar vest—we’re venturing into spoiler territory.]</strong></p>
<p><em>Civil War</em> caught criticism for having the journalists embedding with the secessionist Western Forces and for showing the rebels vanquishing the U.S. army, as if the film was meant to be an alt-universe rewrite of our actual Civil War. But Alex Garland is British, has never evinced any zeal to see Dixie rise again, goes out of his way to point out that the politics of our world are not necessarily the politics of the film—I mean, Texas and California falling on the same side of the divide is as likely as KFC being declared heart-healthy—and notes that other Southern states have refused to join the alliance.</p>
<p>Even so, what some people have misread as the protagonists’ sympathy to the rebel forces is better interpreted, as the saying goes, as journalists going to where the story is. In this case, the U.S. forces are portrayed as more hostile to the press than the secessionists—numerous people warn Joel that even attempting to get a one-on-one with the president is tantamount to a death sentence—and while the Western Forces are more amenable to letting the reporters tag along, their atrocities—including the summary execution of prisoners of war—are only slightly less horrific than what the U.S. forces, let off their leash, are committing. Garland may be taking sides, but he is neither unfairly stacking the deck nor relitigating our real past.</p>
<p>Nor does he ennoble Lee and company. <em>Civil War</em> doesn’t turn a blind eye to the cost journalists pay to serve as witnesses to history. In the end, Lee sacrifices her life to save Jessie, and Jessie’s thanks is to snap Lee’s picture as she falls. Joel gets his one-on-one with the president: A gasped, “Don’t let them kill me,” just before the soon-to-be ex-Commander in Chief is executed. The film ends on the photo of secessionist soldiers arrayed over the slaughtered leader, smiling. Nothing is triumphal about this—if Pulitzers are bestowed on the witnesses to an overthrow, the victory will be a bitter one, indeed.</p>
<p>Journalists are not saints. But they are by and large neither enemies of the people for asking uncomfortable questions, nor targets worthy of prosecution merely for bearing witness. Alex Garland has done them a service by taking full measure of them, celebrating what drives them but also appreciating what’s lost in that drive. <em>Civil War</em> brings us uncomfortably close to a future we’re seeing played out in real time. It allows us to appreciate the value of those who make us aware of the peril, so we can better avoid it.</p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots" />
<p>For the record, war has never been “woke” nor “politically correct.” If anyone characterizes it as so, and proclaims that all stops are now off, you are justified in wondering what atrocities may follow. <em>Civil War </em>serves as both a rumination and a warning on the true nature of war<em>, </em>and Alex Garland presents it with the unromanticized clarity of a real journalist, cementing the writer/director’s reputation for being one of film’s most incisive and challenging auteurs. If, as he says, he is intending <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/alex-garland-clarifies-claims-retiring-directing-1234970430/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">to step back from directing</a> (he also says he will continue to write), it will be a profound loss.</p>
<p>But what do you think? Is <em>Civil</em> <em>War</em> prophecy or fantasy? Does it play fair with its fictional journalists and combatants? You can give your feedback in the comments section below. And keep in mind things are tense enough right now—let’s be kind and cordial with each other.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/alex-garlands-civil-war-captures-what-journalists-do-like-it-or-not/">Alex Garland’s <i>Civil War</i> Captures What Journalists Do, Like It or Not</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/alex-garlands-civil-war-captures-what-journalists-do-like-it-or-not/">https://reactormag.com/alex-garlands-civil-war-captures-what-journalists-do-like-it-or-not/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=843633">https://reactormag.com/?p=843633</a></p>
From the article (archive link here):
Mar. 25th, 2026 12:00 pmhope_for_the_planet_feedThe surprising countries pulling off stunningly fast clean energy transitions | CNN
From the article (archive link here):
Rystad has a more optimistic view, because renewables are often the cheapest option. “In countries where there isn’t any entrenched pre-existing (fossil fuel) infrastructure that’s hard to replace, we do see more of a leapfrog dynamic unfolding,” Rystad’s Havro said.
Developing countries could be poised to race past the world’s biggest economies on renewables, demonstrating a new era of clean energy, said Ember’s Wiatros-Motyka. “You cannot stop it now.”
Amazon wildfire emissions may be up to three times higher than estimated
Mar. 25th, 2026 02:20 pmphys_breaking_feedFires are a recurring phenomenon in central South America, often intensified by drought and deforestation. In 2024, wildfire activity reached its highest levels in 20 years, affecting vast areas of the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado—the world's most biodiverse tropical savanna, stretching across one-fifth of Brazil and extending into Bolivia and Paraguay.
copperbadge_feedImagine how I, Sam Starbuck [lastname], felt when the first Starbucks opened in my neighborhood when I was twelve.
BtVS: Fallen In Battle [Challenge 494: Rest]
Mar. 25th, 2026 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knitted posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
drabble_zoneTitle: Fallen In Battle
Fandom: BtVS
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Xander, Everyone.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 494: Rest.
Setting: Season 2.
Summary: Everyone gathers to say goodbye to their friend.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble. Never expected to find myself writing this. RIP, Nicholas Brendan.
Fallen In Battle
MV fic: It's Not Fine (Heart Makes Its Own Choices pt 2)
Mar. 25th, 2026 02:14 pmmxcatmoonTitle: It's Not Fine
Fandom: Miami Vice
Author: Cat Moon
Rating: PG
Words: 1137
Characters/Pairing: Rico, Trudy (Sonny/Rico implied)
Summary: Sonny is presumed dead, and everyone is grieving except for, apparently, the stranger wearing Rico's face. Is there any comfort that Trudy can offer this time, or is it too late to save either of them?
Notes: This is actually chapter two of the fic, "The Heart Makes Its Own Choices." This time, it's during the episode, Mirror Image, after the boat Sonny was on blew up.
( It's Not Fine )
Fandom: Miami Vice
Author: Cat Moon
Rating: PG
Words: 1137
Characters/Pairing: Rico, Trudy (Sonny/Rico implied)
Summary: Sonny is presumed dead, and everyone is grieving except for, apparently, the stranger wearing Rico's face. Is there any comfort that Trudy can offer this time, or is it too late to save either of them?
Notes: This is actually chapter two of the fic, "The Heart Makes Its Own Choices." This time, it's during the episode, Mirror Image, after the boat Sonny was on blew up.
( It's Not Fine )
I cried in front of my new boss and I’m mortified
Mar. 25th, 2026 05:59 pmaskamanager_feedA reader writes:
My manager, Katherine, is a C-suite level executive who joined the organization eight months ago. She was previously my skip-level manager (former boss’s boss), but due to a large RIF/company restructuring four months ago, my former manager is no longer with the organization, and another colleague and I were asked to co-lead the remaining team, reporting to Katherine. Before the restructuring, I had met her maybe twice, and at the time of my recent performance review, this was my second 1-1.
Many of the projects I worked on last year are no longer considered company priorities after this restructuring. During my performance review, Katherine admitted that she had been unaware of much of the work I had described in my previous year’s goals (most of which are no longer team/department priorities) and instead shared general observations: positive qualities in curiosity and engaging with others, well-thought of in the company, but she felt like my confidence and communication was not where she would have expected it to be at my senior individual contributor-middle manager level and asked me to reflect on why, as she wants me to develop more tenacity and grit.
After some self-reflection, I scheduled a follow-up meeting and shared that I thrive in collaborative interactive team environments and that her observations may be tied to the previous siloed structure of our team (one thing she was unhappy about how the team had been previously structured) and how I had ended up essentially working alone for the majority of the past year, despite my efforts to find entry points into more collaborative work through my previous manager. To my utter surprise, after I finished sharing, I suddenly started crying! I think it was a combination of feeling under a lot of pressure to perform well given the company’s current shaky financials, the stress of all these recent changes, imposter syndrome, and acknowledging some of the frustration I had had over the last year.
Katherine was nice about it and said from what she knows about my previous manager, she can understand how these circumstances arose but wants me to develop skills to not acquiesce so easily in the future. I am looking for a therapist to help me learn to manage some of these stressors in my life, but I am mortified at the unprofessional-ness of crying (and concerned that Katherine, who has not seen me operate at my best so far, will think I cannot handle this role).
What, if anything, do I say when I speak with her again and how do I recover from this?
You are almost certainly not the first person to cry in Katherine’s office.
More people cry at work and in front of their managers than I think non-managers realize. Work is stressful and the stakes can be high and, in my experience, people who are conscientious are more likely to cry at work at some point. I used to keep a box of tissues prominently on my desk, and it’s not because I’m a jerk who makes people cry. Work just gets to people sometimes.
In this specific situation, it’s tougher because she was specifically talking about wanting you to develop more tenacity and grit, and so of course crying feels like the last thing you wanted to do in that moment. And that’s compounded by the fact you haven’t had much contact with her before now, so the two of you don’t yet have a strong relationship to put this all in context. But she’s also well aware that this has been a rough year in your company and for you — there have been layoffs and massive changes to priorities and your job has changed and you’ve been stuck working on your own and the company is still on shaky ground. Of course you’re stressed out. Of course the stakes feel high. If Katherine has even a small amount of emotional intelligence, she gets it.
The best thing you can do to feel you’ve put this behind you is to say something to her the next time you talk like, “I apologize for appearing emotional in our last meeting. I wasn’t expecting that to happen — just a weird physiological reaction! I really do value your feedback, and I appreciate you giving it to me.”
Say it in a matter-of-fact, breezy tone. The idea is to reassure her that you are not a delicate flower who will react strongly whenever given feedback, and to sort of reset the vibe between you since the last conversation.
From there, don’t dwell on it. Move forward in the relationship as if it didn’t happen and trust that she will too. As you get more experience working together, that more direct experience will be a far bigger contributor to her sense of what you’re like to work with and should pretty quickly eclipse this early conversation entirely.
The post I cried in front of my new boss and I’m mortified appeared first on Ask a Manager.
Our Youngest Child Has Cut Ties With Our Family. Help!
Mar. 25th, 2026 02:04 pmmagid posting in agonyauntFrom today’s NY Times, in the weekly Social Q’s column.
Our youngest, who is 37 and uses they/them pronouns, has a long history of psychological problems. They sent a text informing us that they no longer want to interact with family members, and that if we want to meet with them, they require an advocate to be present. This child lives in our second home. They don’t pay rent, but they have a job that covers food and health insurance costs. We’re not sure what caused the break. They had a very bad interaction with our son, and we asked them to work it out themselves. But our son wants nothing to do with his sibling, and my husband wants to stop communicating with them, too. He says they are toxic. I am heartbroken. What should I do?
MOTHER
( Read more... )
Our youngest, who is 37 and uses they/them pronouns, has a long history of psychological problems. They sent a text informing us that they no longer want to interact with family members, and that if we want to meet with them, they require an advocate to be present. This child lives in our second home. They don’t pay rent, but they have a job that covers food and health insurance costs. We’re not sure what caused the break. They had a very bad interaction with our son, and we asked them to work it out themselves. But our son wants nothing to do with his sibling, and my husband wants to stop communicating with them, too. He says they are toxic. I am heartbroken. What should I do?
MOTHER
( Read more... )
A captive chimp's instrumental performances hint at the evolution of vocal externalization
Mar. 25th, 2026 02:00 pmphys_breaking_feedIn February 2023, a resident at Kyoto University's Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior—EHUB—treated researchers to a spontaneous musical performance. Ayumu, a 26-year-old male chimpanzee, removed floorboards from a walkway and used them to drum while he let out complex and structured sounds similar to vocal expressions. It was something the researchers had never seen him do before.
phys_breaking_feedAnalysis of two decades of student data at a large U.S. university suggests that grade inflation exists in graduate education. Researcher Vivien Lee and colleagues at the University of Minnesota, U.S., present these findings in the journal PLOS One.
Cactus catalog could help plant's prickly problem
Mar. 25th, 2026 01:40 pmphys_breaking_feedWith almost a third of cacti species threatened with extinction, a new open-access database of cactus ecology and evolution could help scientists and conservationists save species from the brink.
BTS: and life goes on 🌸 by pebble (SFW)
Mar. 25th, 2026 01:34 pmglitteryv posting in fanart_recsFandom: BTS and BT21
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, Jungkook, Koya, RJ, Shooky, Mang, Chimmy, Tata, Cooky, and SUGA's real life kitty, Tang!
Content Notes/Warnings: None
Medium: Digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: N/A
Artist Website/Gallery:![[twitter.com profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
thisisskeets (pebble) | ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
jellyfishcakes
Why this piece is awesome: It's a really soft fanart that connects to so many things: BTS doing a comeback, them and their BT21 creations, and the mention of spring (their new album dropping on the official first day of spring). Oh, and the gentle nod to "Spring Day", a v. significant song in their discography.
I liked that this art is set at a moment when the dawn is right around the corner too. It's got a lovely style as well.
Link: and life goes on 🌸
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, Jungkook, Koya, RJ, Shooky, Mang, Chimmy, Tata, Cooky, and SUGA's real life kitty, Tang!
Content Notes/Warnings: None
Medium: Digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: N/A
Artist Website/Gallery:
jellyfishcakesWhy this piece is awesome: It's a really soft fanart that connects to so many things: BTS doing a comeback, them and their BT21 creations, and the mention of spring (their new album dropping on the official first day of spring). Oh, and the gentle nod to "Spring Day", a v. significant song in their discography.
I liked that this art is set at a moment when the dawn is right around the corner too. It's got a lovely style as well.
Link: and life goes on 🌸
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy to end after season 2
Mar. 25th, 2026 01:38 pmjo posting in tv_talkStarfleet Academy got renewed for a 2nd season before the first season had even aired, but it's future beyond that was up in the air. However, it was announced this week that season 2 will be the last season.
Story from Reactor Magazine
Story from Reactor Magazine
The Completely Arbitrary Sunset Exchange
Mar. 26th, 2026 06:31 amisabrella posting in girlgay
The Completely Arbitrary Sunset Exchange is a femslash+ exchange that I and my best friend are hosting because we think Sunset is cool! This is a low-pressure, medium-inclusive event with a low barrier to entry.
Sunset is "a website established in 2025 dedicated to hosting F/F, NB/F and NB/NB fanworks. It holds pro-freedom of fiction, queer and trans inclusive, anti-bigotry and generally compassionate ideals. For an invitation, you can comment here, on our Dreamwidth or Tumblr, or sign up on Sunset itself.
Schedule:
Nominations: April 6 - 11 2026 (New York time; countdown)
Sign ups: April 14 - 19 2026 (New York time; countdown)
Assignments out by: April 26 2026
Deadline: May 24 2026 (New York time; countdown)
Reveals (works & creators): May 31 2026
Dreamwidth | Tumblr | Sunset collection | Tag set
Scalable flow chemistry speeds deuteration of fatty acids with tunable isotope selectivity
Mar. 25th, 2026 01:20 pmphys_breaking_feedThe National Deuteration Facility has developed a capability to use a flow chemistry process to increase efficiency, increase production capacity and reduce decomposition in the synthesis of deuterated molecules.