(no subject)

Sep. 28th, 2025 08:25 am
skygiants: janeway in a white tuxedo (white tux)
[personal profile] skygiants
VOYAGER CATCH UP. I said I wanted to post about the first half of S6 before we were actually done with s6 and have not .... quite achieved that, technically, but TODAY we start the seventh and final season so I feel like if I post today it more or less counts, spiritually, emotionally, etc.

Voyager Season 6, episodes 1-13 )

Overall early S6 not a high point in our Voyager experience, with some exceptions; it feels like we're on a little bit of a downward arc after the highs of S4/S5, but we will see what the future holds!
mxcatmoon: DW: Martha Jones (DW: Martha)
[personal profile] mxcatmoon
Written for the prompts, 161 Taciturn and 164 Periphery, at [community profile] vocab_drabbles 
Title: A Nightingale Sang on Whickber Street
Fandom: Doctor Who/Good Omens
Author: Cat Moon
Rating: PG
Words: 999
Characters: Crowley, Martha Jones
Summary: Martha Jones walks into a bar and meets… Anthony Crowley. There might have been magic in the air.
Notes: I never participated in the 'Into a Bar' challenge, but I always wanted to write one. I've also had a yen to write me some Marth Jones. Mission accomplished.

A Nightingale Sang on Whickber Street... )

Daily Happiness

Sep. 27th, 2025 09:07 pm
torachan: charlotte from bad machinery saying "oh the mysteries of the moth farm" (oh the mysteries of the moth farm)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It was nice and overcast again today. Still very muggy, though. (It even rained a little overnight again.)

2. I beat Donkey Kong Bananza tonight. It's definitely a fun game. Looks like there's a ton of post-game stuff to do, and then there's a (paid, boo) DLC as well. I also want to play Final Fantasy Tactics, which is out at the end of the month, but I'll probably hold off on that and keep playing Donkey Kong for a bit first.

3. The lady at the farmers market had passionfruit bars again. They were soooooo good last week, I was really hoping she'd make them again. And the almond stand was back, so I was able to get my orange almond butter.

4. Jasper's posing for his mall photo.

2025 Disneyland Trip #64 (9/27/25)

Sep. 27th, 2025 06:39 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Since it's been cooler and overcast, we did a late morning/midday trip, which meant the park was at its most crowded, but honestly it wasn't too bad. And the weather was very nice (though still muggy).

Read more... )

fics I have written

Sep. 27th, 2025 06:07 pm
snickfic: Oasis: Liam and Noel Gallagher, text "Some Might Say" (Oasis)
[personal profile] snickfic
First: for my belly kink exchange that I ran in August, I ended up writing:
scenes in a stilltent, Dune (movies), Paul/Duncan, 1200 words, mpreg. This did not have nearly as much belly kink as I intended, but Duncan turned out to have so many feelings about the whole thing that it was a struggle to get to the kink. The recip seemed to really like it though. <3

And then, today I finished posting that WIP I've been nattering about for ages! \o/

postcards from, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 15k!!! of vignettes from first contact to the first gig of tour. Title is a riff on the video summaries like this one they've been doing at the end of their run at each venue. (They're less annoying on Instagram. IDK why they feel the need to do that stacked vertical thing everywhere else. ;__;)

I've never written anything quite like this before. There is obviously a general emotional arc from "not spoken in 12 years" to "going on stage together," but most of the scenes are intended to stand alone. There are very few callbacks between scenes. I also specifically set out to write only the vignettes I wanted to write, partly to avoid just getting totally overwhelmed, but for example that means that at no point during this fic do we seem them really hash stuff out or have big conversations. Presumably they had some, but those happen off screen.

I also mostly avoided writing denouments to scenes; they mostly end in the middle, or unresolved. Partly I was trying to write the opposite of one big scene where the characters work all their shit out in one long conversation, which I am sometimes prone to. And I think writers in general or prone to? It's convenient to take care of the whole conflict at once. Whereas here I kind of wanted to give these snapshots along the way, showing that repairing a relationship is a long process over time, often in the small moments. (But also I was lazy/intimidated about writing all the connective tissue, and if I'd tried that I wouldn't have been able to finish a fic, so.)

I also wrote this so fast, at least for me. I wrote the first 10k in three weeks, mostly in August, and then wrote the remaining 5k in the four weeks since.

Also, I decided to post a vignette a day, which was fun. I've never been able to do that with a fic before, but a lot of the vignettes were very short, some in the 200-word range, so one a day felt right. I accidentally timed it so the final chapter went live this morning, a few hours before Oasis performed their first gig in a couple of weeks. A commenter congratulated me on my deliberate timing, but no, that is definitely just how things fell out. (Nerdily, my priority was to get the fic all published within one calendar month for the sake of my stats keeping.) Also, look at me, posting fic outside an exchange!!

I'm still not sure what I actually think about it as a fic, because it's so different from my norm, but I had fun writing and posting it, and that's the whole point, right? There are a lot of lines I'm really happy with. Also it's my second fic this year over 15k, which feels fantastic after last year.

Me-and-media update

Sep. 28th, 2025 11:23 am
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the Muppets poll, 40.7% of respondents chose Kermit, followed by 37.0% for Animal, and 29.6% for Gonzo. Hugs won the ticky-boxes, followed by paper tigers. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
I'm loving Black Water Sister -- the interactions between adherents of different religions are especially delightful. I'm making my way through it pretty slowly because I haven't had much listening time, but it's great!

Slowed down even more on Inventing the Renaissance. And the entirety of my non-audio reading has been the Guardian subs in Korean (skipping over some bits I don't know, but still looking up way too many words).

Kdramas (so many Kdramas)
Cut for length. )

Other TV
We've started The Newsreader (Australian, stars Anna Torv) set in a TV newsroom in 1986. It's great so far -- Torv's character has a lot of emotional range, and the other lead is also interestingly complex. (TW: depression, anxiety.)

Also, one episode of Skeleton Crew, which is just as The Goonies-ish as I've heard. We'll give it another episode and see. Prehistoric Planet, which is really good. Just lovely animation and creature work. Bluey -- how is this so consistently excellent?? We're ploughing through season 3, and then there'll be none left. Oh no!

Guardian/Fandom
I am behind on EVERYTHING! Including this post. /o\ Also, I've been going through my browser windows and randomly closing tabs, now and then, so apologies if I left you hanging in a comment exchange. Firefox was just getting too hard to navigate.

Writing/making things
The Wishlist clock is ticking. I keep bumbling around like a bee doing things that are not writing fic, and then after a while saying to myself out loud, "This is not Writing Fic!" My brain gears don't seem to be working properly, and there's this one treat I'm stuck on... gah! Trying to remind myself that deadlines are just games we play with ourselves.

Life/health/mental state things
I have new glasses! They're really great. Except for biking home after picking them up, I've been wearing them non-stop with very few issues. Good for driving, okay for biking, great for TV. The fact that I have a world map and an artwork at the top and bottom of my stairs, respectively, turns out to be very helpful for distracting me from the out-of-focus stairs themselves. My keyboard is wobbly when I look at it, and sometimes the kitchen bench ("counter" for Americans) swims when I turn my head, but that's fine. I have yet to a) get the knack of gracefully attaching my clip-on sunglasses, and b) break my habit of looking under my glasses or taking them off for close work. But I'll get there. Generally I'm super happy, no notes! (My optician was right.)

Next test: we're seeing Avatar: The Way of Water in HFR 3D next week. I'll take my old glasses as backup, just in case.

Korean
Zoom call yesterday, and omg, I fumbled so much. I seriously need to practice speaking before next time. I yearn to rattle things off without having to think about it.

Link dump
Darebee home workouts (via Tumblr) | NHS's Couch to 5k page | AO3 has added Collection Tags | this shot-for-shot remake from Phineas and Ferb of "Genghis Khan" by Miike Snow (via [personal profile] petra, I know exactly nothing about the canon, I've watched it twice, can't get over how good it is, I think I have... a platypus ship??) | Timothy Olyphant on Conan, taking it all very seriously (TW: toe bruises).

Good things
Jaffa Cakes, tv-watching friend dates, new glasses, writing, betas (♥!), Dreamwidth, a glorious wealth of Kdramas, wikipedia, fandom, Guardian, Guardian, Guardian.

Poll #33664 Fire burn and caldron bubble
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30


Choose a potion

View Answers

sleep
12 (40.0%)

love
1 (3.3%)

immortality
6 (20.0%)

transformation
12 (40.0%)

grow-a-tail
4 (13.3%)

other
6 (20.0%)

ticky-box full of acoustic toothbrushes
6 (20.0%)

ticky-box of but now I can see all the dust and cobwebs
9 (30.0%)

ticky-box full of moose having a picnic buffet and running out of salad
11 (36.7%)

ticky-box full of a top-up prescription for writing mojo
15 (50.0%)

ticky-box full of hugs
23 (76.7%)

jesse_the_k: Head inside a box, with words "Thinking inside the box" scrawled on it. (thinking inside the box)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

Just found a great episode on 20,000 Hz, a favorite podcast of mine.

SUBTITLES ON: WHY IS MOVIE DIALOGUE SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

Answer at [community profile] access_fandom, a comm I co-mod where we talk about making sure the full fandom experience works for all of us, no matter how our bodyminds work. Like many DW comms, it hosts useful knowledge going back a while, and is always ready to be revived.

(no subject)

Sep. 27th, 2025 12:37 pm
skygiants: Kozue from Revolutionary Girl Utena, in black rose gear, holding her sword (salute)
[personal profile] skygiants
Q: So, did you expect to like Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword?

A: No. If I'm being honest, I did not pick up this book in a generous spirit: I haven't read any Grossman previously (though I watched some of The Magicians TV show) but my vague impression was that his Magicians books were kind of edgelordy, and also he annoyed me on a panel I saw him on ten years ago.

Q: Given all this, why did you decide to pick up his new seven hundred page novel?

A: I saw some promotional material that called it 'the first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium' and I wanted to fight with it.

Q: And now you've finished it! Are you ready to fight?

A: ... well ... as it turned out I actually had a good time ........

Q: Ah. I see. Did it have a good Kay?

A: NO. Kay does show up for a hot second and I did get excited about it but it's not for very long and he's always being an asshole in flashbacks. It has a really good Palomides though -- possibly the best Palomides I've yet encountered, which is honestly not a high bar but still very exciting. Also, genuinely, a good Arthur!

Q: Gay at all?

A: No, very straight Arthur. Bedivere's pining for him but it's very unrequired, alas for Bedivere. There is also a trans knight and you can tell that Lev Grossman is very proud of himself for every element of that storyline, which I thought was fine.

Q: What about the women, did you like them? Guinevere? Nimue? Morgan?

A: Well, I think Lev Grossman is trying his very best, and he really wants you to know that he's On Their Side and Understands Their Problems and Respects Their Competence and, well, I think Lev Grossman is trying his very best.

Q: Lancelot?

A: I have arguments with the Lancelot. Can we stop going down a character list though and talk about --

Q: God?

A: Okay, NOW we're talking. I don't know that I agree with Lev Grossman about God. Often I think I don't. Often while reading the book, I was like, Mr. Grossman, I think you're giving me kind of a trite answer to an interesting question. I don't actually think we need to settle this with a bunch of angels and a bunch of fairy knights having a big stupid fight around the Lance of Longinus. BUT! you're asking the question! You understand that if we're talking about Arthurian myths we have to talk about God! And we have to talk about fairy, and Adventures, and the Grail, and the legacy of Rome, and we have to talk about the way that the stories partake of these kind of layered and contradictory levels of myth and belief and historicity, and we don't have to try to bring all these into concordance with each other -- instead we can pull out the ways that they contradict, that it's interesting to highlight the contradictions. You can have post-Roman Britain, and you can have plate armor and samite dresses and the hunting of the white stag, and the old gods, and the Grail Quest -- you don't have to talk to just one strain of Arthuriana, you can talk to all of them.

Q: Really? All of them?

A: Okay, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. I think that's why I liked it -- I think he really is trying to position himself in the middle of a big conversation with Malory and Tennyson and White and Bradley and the whole recent line of Strictly Historical Arthurs, and pull them into dialogue with each other. And, to be clear, I think, often failing! Often coming to conclusions I don't agree with! Often his answer is just like 'daddy issues' or 'depression,' and I'm like 'sure, okay.' But it's still an interesting conversation, it's a conversation about the things I think are interesting in the Matter of Britain -- how and why we struggle for goodness and utopia, how and why we inevitably fail, and a new question that I like to see and which Arthurian books don't often pick up on, which is what we do after the fall occurs.

Q: Speaking of the matter of Britain, isn't Lev Grossman very American?

A: Extremely. And this is a very American Arthuriana. It wants to know what happens when the age of wonders is ending -- when life has been good for a while, within a charmed circle, and now things are falling apart; but the charmed circle itself was built on layers of colonial occupation and a foundational atrocity, and maybe that did poison it from the beginning. So, you know. But I don't think any of this is irrelevant to the UK either --

Q: Well, you also are very American and maybe not best qualified to talk about that, so let's get back to characters. What did you think of Collum?

A: Oh, the well-meaning rural young man with a mysterious backstory who wants to be a knight and unfortunately rolls up five minutes after the fall of the Round Table, just in time to accompany the few remaining knights on a doomed quest to figure out whether Arthur is still alive somewhere or if not who should be king after him, in the actual main plot of the book?

Q: Yeah, him. You know, the book's actual protagonist.

A: Eh, I thought he was fine.
schneefink: Babylon 5 (Bab5)
[personal profile] schneefink
I want to make a longer Murderbot rec post eventually (shout-out to [personal profile] sholio who did that already, part 1 & part 2), but I'm very busy right now and already procrastinating way too much - the bug game is very good okay so this is a short one.

The Art of (Flame) War by [archiveofourown.org profile] sholio
0,7k, TV-verse, gen MB & Gurathin, post-canon
Summary: A dispute on the Sanctuary Moon future chat boards.
Why I like it: Aww. MB has many feelings about Sanctuary Moon! So now does Gurathin, but he is less happy about it, but it does have upsides.

Down with the Ship by [archiveofourown.org profile] ramshackle_fey
5.5k, book-verse, gen
Summary: Sometimes people are Just Wrong about your favorite media serial on the feed. And sometimes, if you're very lucky, you've got human friends and a giant asshole research transport to back you up in a fight.
Why I like it: This story did such a good job portraying terrible fandom discourse about aspec characters that it made me wince to read at times. It is good to have friends to back you up! I enjoyed Ratthi especially. And ART is scary.

RADIOACTIVE by Murderbot (vid) by [archiveofourown.org profile] pollyrepeat
vid, TV-verse, Sanctuary Moon
Summary:A vid or fanvid is a video edit, often set to music, produced by fans, known as "vidders."
Why I like it: Yess Muderbot would make a great fanvidder, excellent.

Yuletide 2025 Nominations Closed

Sep. 27th, 2025 01:28 pm
[syndicated profile] yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

There's a new post up on the Yuletide Admin comm regarding Yuletide 2025 Nominations Closed. Please note that there may have been a delay between that post and this crosspost.

You can go through to DW to check the details:

Dreamwidth Post

If you have follow-up questions, they can be asked in the DW comment section using a DW login, OpenID with another login, or a signed anonymous comment.

Yuletide 2025 Nominations Closed

Sep. 27th, 2025 07:05 am
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Thank you for your nominations! Nominations are now closed. We have 6078 fandom nominations to sort through: that means that at least 1216 people nominated, but probably more. This is lower than our highest ever number of nominations received previously - 6257 - but higher than last year's 5950 nominations.

So, what happens next?
First there's a pause. We review the information we have already and get our ducks in a row. Then, when we begin to approve your nominations, it won't be in any obvious order. The approvals interface shows us fandoms at random, rather than according to who nominated them or when the nomination was submitted.

Help us get through approvals faster - please keep an eye on this community for questions about nominations we find confusing. In turn, if you are confused by how we've approved your nomination, you can ask us about it. If you submitted evidence close to the end of nominations, we may also have follow-up comments for you; however, we won't be accepting any evidence for new canons now that nominations are closed.

While we approve fandoms, you can:


Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth


Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

"Don't get vored"

Sep. 27th, 2025 01:36 pm
rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
For fans of body horror and/or excellent boss design, please enjoy the Gaping Dragon:



Look, I just love its whole vagina dentata/Venus fly trap/ribcage/entire-body-as-maw/spine-snapping-backbends thing, okay? And it’s a fun fight, despite its absurd number of hitpoints and ability to kill you if it bumps you with a leg while it’s charging.

For anyone curious about how the process of figuring out a Dark Souls boss fight can go, some samples:

https://youtu.be/nnZP6WkKRpg?si=M3abOUFachMgs6cP&t=1143
https://youtu.be/u2U5mlfI6zM?si=Scx5xCM_Z7lB4bbX&t=5560 (after getting Capra on the second try, Mapocolops enters the Montage Of Despair zone)

Important context for some of what’s happening: Dark Souls has no animation cancelling, so if you press the “light attack” button twice, your character will swing twice, and if you press the “heal” button they will start the (slow) flask-drinking animation, even if you’ve subsequently realized this was a terrible idea and are now frantically pressing the buttons to dodge and screaming at your character to move. This is part of what requires you to be more deliberate and tactical; you can’t button-mash your way through even if you can mash buttons quickly.

(Also, both Reggie and Mapo started off summoning an NPC for assistance, but the trouble with it in this fight is that the NPC AI is not very bright and tends to stand in front of the dragon and get eaten early, leaving the player dealing with a boss that still has the extra HP to make up for the summons.)

Conversely, after having a horrendous time with Capra, Symbalily reads the fight near-perfectly on her first try: https://youtu.be/ByTGX1NRFs0?si=VBbn5DLh0hK-Gqp5&t=3183

(Team Halberd for the win; that two-handed R2 is so good.)

A walk in the fire zone

Sep. 26th, 2025 10:47 pm
sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)
[personal profile] sholio
This was actually around a week and a half ago - a week ago last Tuesday, Sept. 16 or so - but I've been deep in the word mines and I'm just now writing it up. (Click to embiggen photos.)

We enjoy doing walks in the fall when the weather is nice, and we decided to walk out and explore something interesting. I don't remember if I wrote about it at the time, but we had a little wildfire scare at the end of June, when a lightning-sparked wildfire started a few miles from our house. It got an all-hands-on-deck suppression approach (because it's so close to town and adjacent to several subdivisions), and was extinguished after burning about 15 acres or so. We watched the water tankers dropping loads on the blaze from our house.

This fall, we decided to try to walk out and find the location and have a look at it. We tried it once and failed, but after looking at satellite maps we decided that we were headed in the right direction, just turned back too soon. It involves walking down an old road cut - utility access road? who knows - that mostly looked like this:

one-lane dirt road with fallen gold leaves

But occasionally more like this.

dirt road with huge puddle reflecting trees

And we found the fire zone! Once we were there, it was unmistakable. The rest of these pictures are under a cut because some might find them distressing, although I mostly found it eerie and fascinating; it was nothing like any place I've ever been before. (All burned trees, no vehicles or structures.)

Photos under the cut )

Daily Happiness

Sep. 26th, 2025 10:16 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I got tickets to see MCR next October (2026) at the Hollywood Bowl! I didn't realize they were going to be coming back to LA so soon, but [personal profile] gorgeousnerd mentioned it on bluesky the other day so I checked it out and there are three shows here, which went on sale at noon today. I was in the waiting room about fifteen minutes before and then in the queue itself for another ten to fifteen minutes or so. It was surprisingly painless. The last two times I bought tickets for them was much more of a struggle. This time both Carla and I are going, so that will be fun.

2. It was so nice and overcast today (actually rained a bit overnight, but not much) that I took a walk at lunchtime and there was no sun blazing down on me at all, and I was able to do a mile walk without getting sweaty or warm.

3. I interrupted Tuxie mid-groom.

Nominations Closing Soon

Sep. 27th, 2025 01:28 am
[syndicated profile] yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

There's a new post up on the Yuletide Admin comm regarding Nominations Closing Soon. Please note that there may have been a delay between that post and this crosspost.

You can go through to DW to check the details:

Dreamwidth Post

If you have follow-up questions, they can be asked in the DW comment section using a DW login, OpenID with another login, or a signed anonymous comment.

Nominations Closing Soon

Sep. 26th, 2025 07:48 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
We need your fandom & character nominations by 1pm UTC 27 September. That’s 12 hours away!

See countdown!

If your fandom requires evidence, please also submit it by that time.

Please check previous posts in this community for guidance on what can be nominated.




Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth


Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

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