Monthly dS Art Digest (August 2025)

Sep. 2nd, 2025 08:52 pm
mortmere: (Default)
[personal profile] mortmere posting in [community profile] ds_noticeboard
Where did that August go...? Anyway, so much new art compared to July's one (1) work!

 
ARTIST: gjdraws
 
Fraser + other Paul Gross sketches
 
Snapshot of a (different) kiss (RayK & Dief)
 
Additional RayK sketches:
 
take him by the hand, make him understand (F/V, Ms Fraser)
 
 

ARTIST: otpin-arts
 
Never anything good on the TV (F/V)
 
 
 
ARTIST: thirdchildart 
 
Fraser portrait
ride_4ever: made for me by love_jackianto (It Looks Canon To Me)
[personal profile] ride_4ever posting in [community profile] ds_noticeboard
Title: Hotter Otter
Author: [personal profile] ride_4ever
Fandom and Pairing: due South; Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 200 words (double drabble)
Summary: Negotiations during sex: RayK wants something that Fraser isn't quick to give but eventually relents.
No Archive Warnings Apply

Fic on AO3.
verushka70: The old Microsoft Word Clippy paperclip icon to protest corporate enshittification of the Internet (Default)
[personal profile] verushka70 posting in [community profile] ds_noticeboard
I ficced for Bring Back The Porn 2025 - another installment in my Fraser/Kowalski Vampire AU.

Title: More Than This
Author: verushka70
Fandom (Pairing): due South (Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski)
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 654
Summary: Fraser can't stop himself, tonight. The more of Ray he gets, the more he wants.
Content/Warnings: Alternate Universe - Vampires, Blood Drinking
Beta: Unbeta-ed.

More Than This on AO3.

Yay, Bring Back The Porn!

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Flowers

Aug. 31st, 2025 12:48 pm
scriggle: (Default)
[personal profile] scriggle
A pot of Chrysanthemums for autumn:



Zinnia )
jesse_the_k: SAGA's Prince Robot IV sitting on toilet (mundane future)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

Free Toilet – Haunted. Slightly Used. You’ve Been Warned.

Posted 7-Aug-2025 from the north side of Madison

In a dark room, a standard toilet seems to glow white

click for pic )

Do you have guts of steel, a strong back, and a questionable sense of judgment? Then boy, do I have the throne for you.

As Paul Harvey intoned, the rest of the story…

I’m giving away a toilet. Not just any toilet. A porcelain enigma, a mystical butt-bucket, a vessel forged in the deepest depths of a cursed Home Depot clearance aisle.

It flushes with the fury of Poseidon’s trident and occasionally emits sounds that suggest it’s trying to communicate in Morse code. It once screamed. Not like the pipes—like a person.

The backstory? This toilet was installed in my guest bathroom, affectionately known as “The Chamber of Screams.” Three guests used it. Two of them have since moved to Canada without explanation, and the third refuses to make eye contact with me at barbecues.

What you need to know:

Flushes. Sometimes violently.

Bowl glows faintly during thunderstorms.

Came with a bidet. Now it just hisses and sprays randomly like a venomous snake.

Every full moon, the tank fills with glitter. Unclear why.

One Yelp review from a plumber simply said “no.”

I just want it out of my house. You must pick it up yourself and sign a waiver that I am not responsible if it follows you home.

NO SCAMMERS. NO WITCHES. NO EXORCISTS (already tried). Serious inquiries only.

If you’re brave enough to sit upon the throne and live to tell the tale, contact me ASAP.

archived version

Dear self (and partial to-do list)

Aug. 30th, 2025 09:41 am
china_shop: Guo Changcheng writing in his notebook (Guardian - rookie taking notes)
[personal profile] china_shop
Dear self,
You are not allowed to post any more discussion posts or similar until you've answered the majority of outstanding comments. (Great to see your corner of Dreamwidth being so active, though! Wheee! <3)
Love, me

Partial to-do list:
  1. [community profile] guardian_wishlist signup
  2. outstanding comments on the Guardian readalong, [community profile] fan_writers discussion and intro posts, and Guardian drama polls
  3. a fill for this round of [community profile] fan_flashworks
  4. behind-the-scenes FFW stuff & mod post draft
  5. write to MP and mayoral candidate; submit on All The Things
  6. finish my DNW-kink WIP ASAP
  7. finish my other WIP after that, and prepare for my annual Wishlist writing frenzy *fingers crossed, knock on wood*
  8. close a bunch of tabs, seriously
  9. rest my arms.
jesse_the_k: Scrabble triple-value badge reading "triple nerd score" (word nerd)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

@etymologynerd on TikTok[youtube.com profile] etymology_nerd on YouTube (note underscore)

My first fandom is language. Let me enthuse about the Etymology Nerd Adam Aleksic. He's a short-form video presenter, essayist, and recently-published author. He started on Reddit, but attained fame on TikTok, and his YouTube is 90% shorts (but not every TikTok has made it to YouTube). It's important that his videos are accurately captioned, cause he speaks faster than an auctioneer on meth. No video description and his hand-held camera means flashing and shaking images. The videos reward multiple views.

six links to short videos, accurately captioned without video description )

Three Essays to Read

If you prefer prose, his Substack newsletter offers RSS at https://etymology.substack.com/feed or luck into one of his maybe-monthly essays here via [syndicated profile] etymologynerd_feed (DW feeds only go back two weeks).

Want more? My first internet #lingcomm crush interviewed Aleksic on Lingthusiasm podcast 105—both audio and transcript there, with insights into best practices in vertical video and why it feels different than old-style horizontals.

Any linguistic communicators making you happy?

Chicken Jockey from Minnesota

Aug. 28th, 2025 10:19 am
isis: (craptastic squid by scarah)
[personal profile] isis
Perhaps you're having the worst day in a week of worst days. Here's your remedy:



(she is ten years old! I adore her! The world adores her!)

Me-and-media update

Aug. 28th, 2025 03:32 pm
china_shop: An orange cartoon dog waving, with a blue-green abstract background. (Bingo!)
[personal profile] china_shop
Pandemic life
Colds and so forth. )

Previous poll review
In the Plaguefic poll, 46% of respondents were okay reading about Covid and related subjects, 52% didn't mind mentions, and 28% like it when characters mask sometimes, while 22% said there are aspects of the pandemic they avoid, and 22% prefer their reading matter to avoid the subject entirely.

In ticky-boxes, hugs won with 74%, followed by wallabies at a disco with 48%, and battery acid and protest signs with 36%. Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
Audio: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, read by Candida Gubbins. This continues to be fascinating and put present times into dryly alarming perspective, in a "thus has it ever been" kind of way. Most of the names and all the dates are in one ear and out the other, but Palmer spins an excellent yarn and kindly gives key figures nicknames (Battle Pope!). I'm up to Lucrezia Borgia, ie, about halfway.

Library book: A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall. I'm about halfway through this, too. Everything I know about Regency is from non-contemporaneous novels (Heyer), but still. These characters are clearly modern LARPers, but the central conflict is good.

Kdramas/Cdramas
I'm restricting my Nothing But Love rewatch to the exercise machine, to make it last.

Other TV
We finished Bookish. I came around to it in the end; the flashback to Book's long-lost love was heartrending. Looking forward to season 2.

Nothing else. It turns out I don't watch much TV on my own.

Guardian/Fandom
I posted a poll to [community profile] fan_writers about whether sharing is part of your creative process, and there's some great discussion there.

Upcoming in Guardian fandom: [community profile] guardian_wishlist sign-ups open tomorrow. And the Slo-mo Drama Rewatch starts on [community profile] sid_guardian next week. \o/

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses. Letters from an American. More Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones (which aside from being really fun, highlighted this line from Archer's Goon: Mum always said that you could tell what people were like by their houses. So naturally now I keep thinking about Guardian through that lens and wondering what everyone's living spaces look like). I tried a local politics podcast (RNZ, equivalent of NPR), but apparently our political commentary has been reduced to economics, blah.

Online life
  • I need to stop making discussion posts when my arms aren't great.
  • I've found the frame-by-frame key in VLC, and nothing will stop my screencapping now, mwahaha!
  • Randomly alternating my comments between Casual HTML and Markdown. What could go wrong?


Writing/making things
My DNW-kinkfic continues, as I turn 1625 words of zero draft into Draft 1.0. Ot1h, it's very freeing to know almost no one will read this; otoh, the zero drafting comes with that feeling people talk about with outlining, where the impetus starts to leak out of the balloon... I'm going to finish it anyway, and I need to hurry up so I can make stuff for Wishlist.

Life/health/mental state things
For most of my adult life, I needed 8 to 9 hours of sleep a night to function well and be healthy. A couple of years ago, I read an article about how people over fifty shouldn't get more than 8 hours, and actually 7 is better. (Cannot remember the reasoning.) My expectations and sleep needs immediately dropped to 7ish hours per night, for lo, I am profoundly susceptible to the power of suggestion. Except that this week while Andrew's been sick, I've been getting 8 hours, and I feel good actually. So much more energy. tl;dr: I am ridiculous.

Cat
Sometimes during morning on-the-bed strokes, Halle crawls between two layers of blanket, and I never know if she's calling time on the stroking, or if this is some hide-and-seek cat game I'm supposed to know the rules of.

Food
I cook mostly vegetarian when it's just me. I really want a burger.

Good things
Immune systems. Fresh fruit. Several days of sunshine. Guardian. Dreamwidth activity generally. Cat. Andrew. LWS Writers' Hour. This cover of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" (Youtube).

Poll #33544 Cluedo
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45


Your murder weapon of choice

View Answers

asp
10 (22.2%)

cyanide
6 (13.3%)

bulldozer
5 (11.1%)

heartbreak
7 (15.6%)

industrial freezer
2 (4.4%)

fright
1 (2.2%)

cassowary
24 (53.3%)

extremely elegant clothing
15 (33.3%)

other
3 (6.7%)

ticky-box full of musical frogs jamming away on their bongos
19 (42.2%)

ticky-box full of neglected-houseplant guilt
13 (28.9%)

ticky-box full of throwing coins into the wishing abyss
19 (42.2%)

ticky-box full of cartoon dogs going to the movies
15 (33.3%)

ticky-box of what would a Gamma/Delta/Epsilon AU look like? radioactive river permittivity?
10 (22.2%)

ticky-box full of vertical stripes
14 (31.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
34 (75.6%)

due South Haiku

Aug. 27th, 2025 07:10 pm
ride_4ever: (RayK - on the inside I'm a poet)
[personal profile] ride_4ever posting in [community profile] ds_noticeboard
Assorted due South haiku that I wrote in April for International Haiku Day (April 17) and National Poetry Month. Some -- as noted in my AO3 AN -- are derived from prompts of the dSC6D snipppets comm on DW.

Title: Two due South Double-Stanza Haiku in Honor of April's International Haiku Day and April's
National Poetry Month
Author: [personal profile] ride_4ever
Fandom: due South
Category: Gen, F/M
Relationship: Benton Fraser/Victoria Metcalf
Characters: Benton Fraser, Victoria Metcalf, Ray Vecchio
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 63 words
Fic on AO3.

Title: Five due South Haiku in Honor of April's International Haiku Day and April's National Poetry
Month
Author: [personal profile] ride_4ever
Fandom: due South
Category: Gen
Characters: Implied characters: Benton Fraser, Diefenbaker, both Rays, Robert "Bob" Fraser, Jack
Huey, Tom Dewey
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 78 words
Fic on AO3.

Title: Three due South Haiku in Honor of April's International Haiku Day and April's National Poetry
Month
Author: [personal profile] ride_4ever
Fandom: due South
Category: Gen
Characters: Benton Fraser, both Rays mentioned or implied
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 42 words
Fic on AO3.

Due South fic Rec

Aug. 27th, 2025 03:17 pm
mific: (DS blue)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] ds_noticeboard

Another Fraser/Ray/Ray rec over here!

Frederick the Literate

Aug. 26th, 2025 12:36 pm
scriggle: (Default)
[personal profile] scriggle
One of my cross-stitch ufos is finally done.

I present to you Frederick the Literate:


I just need to iron it and take it to be framed.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Me-and-media update

Aug. 23rd, 2025 10:15 am
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the Obsessions poll, 9.8% of respondents have one current active fandom, 31.4% have a couple, 25.5% have a handful, and 15.7% have none at the moment. The most common response was "it's complicated" with 37.3%. Seven point eight percent have blorbos but no fandom.

In ticky-boxes, goth butterflies and punk moths came second to hugs, 56.9% to 76.5%. Dream parkour came third with 47.1%. Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
Audio: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, read by Candida Gubbins -- I'm a third of the way through this delightful thirty-hour tour of the Renaissance. No idea how much is lodging in my brain (versus in-one-ear-and-out-the-other-ing), but I'm getting bits here and there. Like, for example, the Renaissance framing of "grace" as heavenly political capital. And theology as it relates to Hamlet. The general tone is very fun. In progress.

Audio: Stone and Sky (Rivers of London) by Ben Aaronovich, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Shvorne Marks. Having settled Peter into married life, Aaronovich is porting all the relationship stuff over to Abigail. I guess that makes sense. (The case isn't coming together for me, but that might be because I keep falling asleep while we're listening.) In progress.

Library book: A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall. Just a few chapters. Historical romance, and I'm pretty sure all the characters are speaking/behaving anachronistically, but I'm looking forward to the reveal.
Spoiler. The lady in the title is trans and was best friends with the duke before she went MIA at war and transitioned; he thinks she died, and he's now grieving his friend.
In progress.

Guardian by priest. We've finished the main story, just one short story extra to go. Wow, this has been a ride!

Kdramas/Cdramas
Still rewatching Nothing But Love (AKA Nothing But You), ahhh, I love them so much.

I've also started My Girlfriend is the Man, a Kdrama about a woman with a genetic predisposition to sudden-onset sex swap, who does indeed wake up in a male body. I only just finished episode 1, so I don't know yet how well they're going to handle it, but I'm fairly sure the narrative pressure on the boyfriend is to accept that his girlfriend is still his girlfriend, whatever body she's currently wearing. No idea where they'll take it after that.

Pru and I finished Sell Your Haunted House this week. We're planning to start Love Scout next (rewatch for me), unless I can think of something good (and Korean) with murders/ghosts/cases of the week. Hmm, maybe I should give Mystic Pop-Up Bar one more try... I bounced off it before, but I know several people who loved it.

Other TV
Cut for length. )

Guardian/Fandom
It's the last weekend of the Guardian novel scheduled readalong, and then we're heading into a slo-mo rewatch of the drama (half an episode per week). If you've been Guardian-curious or thinking of revisiting the show, now's your chance. *lures*

[community profile] fan_writers is going so well. Love to see so much conversation and interaction over there! If you have thoughts on writing, please feel free to post to the comm, either directly or with a link!

Audio entertainment
Letters from an American (lots, including a great half-hour interview with Gavin Newsom). Half an episode of Sinica, Writing Excuses, a couple of episodes of You Can Learn Chinese, some Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, and a couple of episodes of A Life Indigenous.

Plugged-in life
The last few days, I've been experimenting with not spending every waking non-keyboard moment listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I was kind of hoping some silence and/or music would wake up my creative brain, and then ideas would come spilling out my fingertips. So far, it's just created an opening for brain weasels. Pbthpbthpbhtpbhpth!

Writing/making things
I spent Monday morning writing a political submission and then finished my meta post about story middles. I spent Tuesday's writers' hour writing most of this. I am working on a fic, but it's slow going. It's veered into one of my DNWs (D/s). I mean, you know how sometimes you can write your own DNWs, because you instinctively avoid the aspects that actively squick you? That part is working. It's just that neither the Shen Wei in my head nor I have any idea what we're doing, lol. Playin' it by ear. *rattles keyboard*

I threw something verrrry last minute together for the [community profile] fan_flashworks Twinkle challenge. No idea if that worked.

Life/health/mental state things
I'm okay, just a bit disconnected. The weather's been so cold I want to stay home all the time. I really hate everything our government is doing (not on the same scale as the US, but terrible in its own libertarian way), so by day I'm a mild manner fangirl, but at night I wake up periodically to scrawl angry letters to politicians and/or newspaper editors in my notebook. I should send more of these; I'm always held back by feeling like I don't know enough and need to fact check.

Food
I made two small batches of vegetable dumplings -- Moosewood's sweet potato recipe, and mushroom & coriander adapted from the Omnivore's Cookbook's chicken recipe. I had to use my dumpling press because of my arms, but that worked okay.

Recently made: enchiladas, crispy orange beef (consistency would have been better if I hadn't shoehorned a ton of vege in there too), plus experimenting with crispy tofu in various dishes. A lot of the sauces make the tofu go slimy, but it's so good when they don't.

Goals
My goal for this year is to make goals for next year.

Good things
Guardian stuff -- the readalong, Wishlist!!, the upcoming rewatch, yay! I'm hoping the latter two will combine to get me writing again. Playing with paint pens (drawing butterflies like a six year-old). Sunshine. Cat. Boy. Assimilating my little-worn 'tidy' clothes into my everyday wardrobe so I don't have to shop.

Poll #33518 Plaguefic
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51


Covid in fiction

View Answers

I'm okay reading fiction about Covid and related subjects
23 (45.1%)

I'm okay reading fiction that includes mentions of Covid
26 (51.0%)

There are aspects of the pandemic I avoid
11 (21.6%)

I like it when characters mask sometimes
14 (27.5%)

I prefer my reading matter to avoid the subject entirely
12 (23.5%)

It's better in profic / a novel
4 (7.8%)

It's better in fanfic
2 (3.9%)

other
1 (2.0%)

I don't read much atm
6 (11.8%)

ticky-box of gossimer and thistledown
17 (33.3%)

ticky-box of steel girders
12 (23.5%)

ticky-box of half a bottle of flat champagne
8 (15.7%)

ticky-box of battery acid and protest signs
18 (35.3%)

ticky-box of three wallabies at a 1970s disco
24 (47.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
37 (72.5%)

thefridayfive

Aug. 21st, 2025 06:44 pm
omens: A purple unicorn saying, "LULZ I AM A UNICORN! LOOK AT MY BUTT!" (misc - UNICORNBUTT)
[personal profile] omens
2 posts in one day?? This friday five looked fun.

1. Have you ever stayed in a hostel? If so, where? Did you like it? If you haven't stayed in a hostel, would you?

I stayed in a hostel the summer before I turned 18. Going with a few friends to a music festival at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver. My mother was very panicked about the whole adventure :D & we had a great time. It was a nice place (Jericho Beach Hostel). I think that's the only time I've stayed in a hostel, though.

2. What is your favourite airport that you've been to? Why?

Vancouver Airport because it's just super chill and has tons of great art. No other airport has ever measured up.

3. What is the best museum you have visited on vacation?

I always enjoy the natural history museum in Ottawa, and the history museum across the river in Gatineau is pretty great, too. (Also just very cool to look at!)

4. Have you ever made friends while travelling whom you keep in touch with on a regular basis?

I don't think I've ever made friends on vacation. I tend to bring friends/family.

5. Have you ever had a conversation with a seatmate on a plane?

I don't tend to travel alone so I don't think I ever have! Maybe briefly. I think, generally, planes are too loud for conversations and I have movies to sob through.

Cherry tomato break!



In related news, my cucumbers abruptly stopped making cucumbers :( I don't know if that's normal. They made a dozen or so, I'd guess?? they were so good while they lasted though!

and in UNrelated news, I got some nice spam on dw today from [personal profile] donnapsencer who had a few ideas they wanted to tell me about my story (I don't even have my ao3 linked here anymore... What? Story?), but it made me lol. The same art/ai commission scam that's all over ao3 & ffn & discord, I'd assume. Lulzy.

late media update

Aug. 21st, 2025 01:20 pm
omens: cherries! (food - cherries)
[personal profile] omens
Not a lot to report on in the last week, since I've been hosting company, but I started the sequel to House in the Cerulean Sea (Klune), abandoned Ministry of Time (Bradley), and have been rereading my wips instead of other peoples' fics (lol). I just want to get back into them so bad!! Also a slow week for language learning, obviously.

Mostly we have been rewatching Lower Decks! Got my uncle through the first two seasons :3 S1 was pretty rough, in retrospect! (Character-wise, not plot wise, if that makes sense. Lots of cool shit going on, but who are these people?? A bit) I loved it at the time, but it sure does get so much better. (Especially Carol & Ransom.)



BC cherries from last week!! So good :D Put my uncle on a train today so I'm going to lay in the silence for a couple days before I try and be functional again. Company!! OOF

Another rec at dS virtual bar

Aug. 21st, 2025 09:12 pm
mific: (DS blue)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] ds_noticeboard
Another Fraser/Ray/Ray rec over here!

wednesday reads and things

Aug. 20th, 2025 04:11 pm
isis: (waterfall)
[personal profile] isis
What I've recently finished reading:

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett, which, it's the third book in the series, so if you like this series you will probably like this book. I particularly enjoyed the trope (which is not uncommon - it's also an element of the Invisible Library series, for example) that the Fae are governed by tales and stories, so the things that happen in their kingdoms generally follow the well-known structures of fairy tales. I also appreciated that the story wrapped around to include elements of the first book.

What I'm reading now:

My hold on Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio came in, and - I can't remember why I put a hold on this book? Did one of you recommend it? I've started it but I am not finding the style particularly engaging. I'll stick with it for a while, though.

What I've recently finished watching:

Untamed, about which I must agree with [personal profile] treewishes's assessment: "Excellent scenery and interesting characters, the plot, um." The drone shots of Yosemite are spectacular! The action taking place in meadows with cliffs in the background is beautiful! The very beginning has some really fingernail-biting rock climbing (both B and I, who used to climb, muttered at the total sketchiness of one of the placements...) and overall the scenery is just gorgeous. The characters and the way they interact, their backstories and their drama and trauma, are definitely interesting. The plot, um. I have a lot of niggling criticisms, like, there is no way an LA cop would be able to easily transfer to a park ranger job! There is no way an experienced law enforcement officer would go confront a dangerous person without backup! I am side-eyeing the idea of a hippie encampment being on park land and not cleared the hell out of there immediately they found it! I can't imagine a park far from major cities being a hub for [spoilers redacted]! But mostly it's just a ridiculously convoluted plot for the sake of ridiculous convolutions.

Apparently there will be a second season, but I have no idea what they are going to keep constant from the first - the people, the setting, ???

What I'm still playing:

I'm still playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and it's still entertaining.

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