jack

Snowflake Challenge: A warmly light quaint street of shops at night with heavy snow falling.

Challenge #5: In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

-

fandomtrees reveals got pushed to Jan 17 because there are still some trees (16 as of this posting) that don’t have the minimum amount of gifts (at least 2) necessary for reveals. So, any fills for the needy trees listed here (real-time updates at the Google spreadsheet). Most of the fandoms I don’t know anything about (but hopefully some of you do!), but of the ones I do, there’s a request for the Raven Cycle, Discworld, and some Original Work requests, and a niche rec request.

- My tree does have the minimum number of gifts, so is not holding up the fest opening, but does list all kinds of things I want (fandoms: Chronicles of Amber, Discworld, Dragaera, Rivers of London, Taskmaster, Terra Ignota, Vorkosigan Saga, and critter art).

( More specific requests for Dragaera, Taskmaster, Elis&John fandoms and crossovers/fusions )

- I included this in last year’s Snowflake wishlist and it worked really well, so doing it again: I'm planning on Doing the Hugo Awards (and hopefully Worldcon) this year, and have just recently come to the realization that if I'm going to nominate some short fiction, I should actually, like, read some that was published in 2025. So, looking for recs for "Hugo-worthy" SFF short stories and novelettes published in 2025 that are ideally accessible online. Authors who tend to semi-reliably work for me in short form are Sarah Pinsker, Kelly Link, and Naomi Kritzer, to give some sense of what I like. And also happy for any recs for published-in-2025 novellas, Related Works, and dramatic presentation short form things (<90 min) that are standalone (i.e. not episodes of a serial show, but either a short(ish) film or part of an anthology show but standalone), and Astounding-eligible authors to check out.

Challenge #6: Top 10 Challenge. The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.

After some consideration, I’m going to do my Top 10 Dragons :) I’m currently reading a book with dragons (To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which I’m enjoying a lot), whose dragons are, so far, somewhat different than I’d been expecting, and that’s been making me think about various other fictional dragons I’ve known and loved and the universes they come from, so I figured I’d make a list of my favorites.

They can be dragons that can assume human form, or even spend most of their time in said human form, but they can’t be just humans who are for some reason called Dragons (i.e. no Sarkan from Uprooted or the Dragaeran Dragonlords). Moreover, I tried to keep it to one dragon per canon. So here we go!

( Top 10 dragons )

What about YOUR favorite dragons? Introduce me / sway me over to any I might've missed, or squee with me about my favorites :)

*

I think I was actually low-key avoiding the Taskmaster New Year Treat because I subconsciously resented it for being 2 episodes when I wanted CoC to be 2 episodes, lol. But I have watched it now, and it was fun!

Part 1 – Ooh, I knew one of the contestants (Rose) was deaf, but it was still jarring to see her interpreter sitting there next to Alex. Alex’s banter (OBE/oboe) and the several layers of bad joke was pretty fun. ( More, with spoilers )

My midpoint impressions are that I do enjoy Susie, but in exactly the same way I enjoyed her on Catsdown, so the “revelations” are Sam and Rose, who are both extremely adorable cuties whose cheeks I want to pinch. I’m very meh on the others – Jill’s doing well, but is a bit deadpan for me, and also I’m not a fan of how she brings up football all the time – like, I don’t feel like I’ve learned anything about her outside of her football career (in stark contrast to David James, who mentioned some footballers or travels associated with playing football, but talked about things like painting and just came across as a delightful massive weirdo – IDK, goalkeepers are different, I guess, was the consensus at the time). Apparently even the cat costume, which I did find cute, is a football reference, to her local football team, which someone on Reddit said she said in the studio taping. And Big Zuu is just kind of there… It sounds like he’s a charming person to work with, from all the podcasts, but as a viewer I have not been charmed.

Anyway, I don’t mind spending another episode with these guys!

Part 2 – Greg made me laugh out loud with his Alex intro: ( More, with spoilers )

And of course there was also the Series 21 cast reveal. ( Spoilers? )

I still have some Taskmaster stuff to catch up on – Acaster’s ultimate episode, the next installment of Taskmastermind, and some outtakes. But meanwhile ( WILTY has returned and is being a lot of fun )

hannah

Some months ago, in an attempt to clear some congestion, I started adding ghost pepper flakes to my morning eggs. A few weeks ago, in an attempt to punch up the spice, I started adding a crushed up chile de árbol or two. Now I'm finding the issue with a meal's heat isn't the spiciness, but the temperature when it's served right from the stove.

I've now realized I don't have much of a context for what constitutes spiciness anymore. I can tell when there's some heat, I can tell when there's a fair amount of heat, and I'm going to have to keep looking for ways to get the kinds of lovely warm, playful sensations from good restaurants into my own kitchen. But not until I work through more of this bottle of ghost pepper flakes, because I've only got so much room in my apartment - which I suppose is all the more reason to try the Calabrian chili oil I bought on impulse a little while ago.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: nothing now

troisoiseaux

Read The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) by Ursula K. Le Guin, because I've been trying to catch up on my neglected sci-fi classics; it was a fascinating read. This book is famously interesting for the way it plays with gender, being set in an "ambisexual" world (essentially, everyone can, theoretically, physically both bear and beget children) narrated mostly by a character from Earth(?) who grapples with this societal genderlessness by referring to everyone as a "man" and using he/him pronouns— which I found threw me off more than, say, the universal she/her in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series?— but I was just really struck overall by the way that Le Guin uses language to fling the reader headfirst into this alien world: she uses made-up words for recognizable concepts, and recognizable English words as signifiers for world-specific/made-up concepts, and you've just sort of got to puzzle it out as you go. I was also surprised to discover that the one plot point I'd known about going in - ( ... ) - actually takes up less of the novel, and occurs later in it, than I had expected.

( Read more... )

Current Music: Virile - Suzane

tcampbell1000 posting in

scans_daily

Irwin Teasdale’s showcase issue begins with him hidden from the Leaguers and the army, rigging a catapult as evening begins. ( ‘‘The fools will be helpless to stop my zompires once I release the payload of…HOSTESS FRUIT PIES!’’ )

delphi

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grrlpup

More vegetables, more library books, more square dancing — and the weirdly mild weather continues.

pink rhododendron blossoms and their greenery

in January!

The avgolemono turned out delicious. Whole wheat orzo is slightly chewier than regular, but very suitable for the soup. A note for next time: the tempering of the egg and lemon with the hot broth worked fine, but the egg itself needs to be very well beaten first– a few scraps of unmixed egg white became apparent when they cooked. I might try it with leek broth, as we have leek tops more often than chicken bones to make broth with… maybe with a little less lemon because there’s less fat to mellow it out?

Yesterday I attended two, count ’em two, social events. Evening was the Black and White Ball edition of our club’s monthly square dance. I was more like “stagehand” in all black and not-at-all-dressy, but that’s what I got. This is the one month when I make a concerted effort to follow the theme– unlike the several rainbow months, it really stands out if I don’t.

And before that, in the afternoon I caught the bus to a New Year’s party for Oregon Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. I joined SCBWI before retiring (in the final burst of spending down my professional development funds) but this was my first in-person event. Kidlit people are so nice, you guys! Everybody was happy to talk and there were library-themed table decorations and name tags and plenty of snacks. I ducked out early to catch the bus home again, but life seemed brighter after going than it had before. Is this how extroverts feel? Now I’m thinking I’ll go to the one-day conference in May, in Hillsboro.

A routine is finally settling in with my own work. I’m more viscerally aware that it’s up to me to decide on and generate that work, and no one else particularly cares. It’s both freeing and unnerving.

Thursday I’m signed up for a bird walk down at the rhododendron gardens by the college. I’m a lackadaisical birder at best, but it’s a nice chance to see the gardens for free– I haven’t been there in years and will be curious to see if anything’s blooming early.

This post originates at everyday though not every day. Comments welcome here or there.

flareonfury posting in

fandom_icons

Multiple ships for Round 4 of

ships20in20.

Preview

sooo many ships, so little time....

Fandoms & Ships:
Charmed (Abigael/Mel #6 & AC#2), Heartstopper (Charlie/Nick #7, AC#3 & #4), High Potential (Adam/Morgan catgeory), Grimm (Nick/Adalind #4 & AC#1), MCU (Carol/Yon AC#5), Nancy Drew (Nancy/Ace #1 & #3, Nancy/Ace/Bes #9), Siren (Ben/Ryn #10), Singin' in the Rain (Don/Cosmo/Kathy #2 & #7), X-Men Evolution (Scott/Rogue #4)

kaffy_r

Now and Forever?

I certainly hope not. And yet, when I got up this morning and started to clean the kitchen, I found mouse droppings. Yay. We figure we have to pull out the stove's lower drawer to access the floor and the wall behind it, since we're pretty sure the mice are getting into our place from the outside somewhere in that area.

I'd bet Bob that we'll find no baseboards behind the stove, but it's too obviously a bad bet. We're going to keep an eye on the kitchen counters near the stove for a day or so to see how bold the little buggers are. If it's little to no action, then we'll wait. But if we spot their leavings, then it's time to do the inspection. Which, of course, I'm not looking forward to, especially since we can't really use the foam barrier spray near the stove. Oven heat could end up releasing toxic or potentially toxic fumes, and so we're going to have to buy a whole lot more steel wool. It's going to be a mess.

*wanders away, grumbling*

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: nothing, at the moment

dhampyresa

I was so disappointed by this book.

Part of this is on me: I had somehow gotten it in my head this was modern day and was looking forward to seeing how "hivemind took over the entire medical profession undetected" aspect of the premise would play out. The setting is not modern day, it's set some indeterminate amount of time (over 500 years) after some sort of apocalypse (fair, and an interesting setting itself) and people are aware to varying degrees aware that there is Something Wrong TM with the Institute.

The main part of the disappointment is that the book keeps bringing up concepts and then... Not Doing Anything with them. Spoilers from here on out. Our PoV character loses access to the hivemind fairly early on. Helen's miscarriages and/or the twins having supernatural powers never goes anywhere. The baron seems aware that he is hosting pseudomycota and even might be working with it? Let's never speak of this again! The idea that "If you’re born in Verdira, you die in Verdira" is brought up and we get told what happens is someone born there tries to leave, but that goes nowhere. /End spoilers

It is so disappointing and frustrating. It all just goes fucking nowhere!

Also I found the written accent annoying.

I did enjoy the hivemind parts, I guess.

tjs_whatnot posting in

snowflake_challenge

Introduction Post* Meet the Mods Post Challenge #1 * Challenge #2* Challenge #3* Challenge #4* Challenge #5 *

Sorry for the delay! It's been... a day. But no matter! Hopefully you had some time to catch up, to talk with new friends... or to nap. 😍

Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

( Fandom Snowflake Challenge #6 ) And please do check out the comments for all the awesome participants of the challenge and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.

ludy

Today I attempted to make (bake? I’m not sure if that’s the right verb) a cake in the pressure cooker. I’m intrigued by the concept but unsure what to expect the results to be like. How much will the texture be different to oven baking? Will it be more like a steamed sponge pudding? Will I like it?

I’m still really not sure because the cake failed for non-pressure-cooker reasons. I used a new-to-me-brand of almond extract and it is obviously considerably stronger than the brand the recipe-book writer uses. A teaspoon was way too much and I now have pretty much the cake-shaped version of those room scenting wax-chips rather than something you’d want to eat…

(It was at least a sweet almond extract rather than anything too cyanide-y)

Current Mood: d’oh!

maju

On weekends I tend to do nothing much while the family life swirls around me; the girls come and go to sit with me in my basement (and use my phone), and I go upstairs for a while here and there. Today I used my rebounder for about 45 minutes; the girls were down here with me for some of that time looking at videos on my phone. After lunch all the girls went to Violet's Scout group meeting (taken by their father) to play kickball, so my daughter and I had some quiet time at home while they were gone. After they came back the older two went to a neighbour's to spend time with the two daughters who are about their age, while Aria watched Bluey, which I half watched while reading. Around 5 pm Aria went to her Scout meeting with her mother.

Now Violet and Eden are down here in the basement with me again, having a rollerskating party accompanied by Taylor Swift playing on my computer. If they haven't got bored and left before 7 pm, I will send them upstairs at that time as we have an agreement that 7 pm is the cutoff time for being down here with me. (After I wrote that their father came down to tell me he has to run to the store, and since my daughter and Aria aren't back yet I won't be able to send the girls upstairs if at 7 if neither of their parents is back yet.)

All three girls have had a habit of running across the room and flinging themselves onto my bed. I don't like it but I've been tolerating it, until this week. Suddenly the bed starting making a sort of clanking sound sometimes when I changed position while sitting on it or lying in it. I checked the slats as well as I could without dismantling the bed and they seemed fine, but yesterday evening it made an alarmingly loud noise so I got down onto the floor to peer under the bed and saw that there is a supporting leg right in the middle and it had somehow worked loose, was bent at an angle, and wasn't really supporting anything any more. I told my son in law, who came down with some tools and tried to tighten the bolt holding it in place, but it was so bent that the screw couldn't grip. He resorted to hammering the leg as straight as he could get it and tightening the bolt as much as he could and the bed is no longer making that clanking noise, but I don't entirely trust the leg to keep supporting the middle of the bed.

After I'd put the bed and bedding back together I had the idea to search online (on Amazon of course) for replacement supporting legs for beds and discovered that there are many types available. I found some that should work as extra support if we place one on each side of the existing damaged one, so I ordered a pair and they should be here tomorrow. I've been on beds before when they've collapsed and I don't really want to repeat the experience.

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: accomplished

squidgestatus

For those who have been using FenRecs.com - Squidge.org's fanworks recommendation site where you can rec your favorite fandoms, stories, pairings and such - thank you! We've been going strong and sharing recommendations, which is what's needed in the fandom community.

Our host provider for FenRecs.com is shutting down in less than a month. As such, we will be taking down the site and importing it into a new host. It will probably take a couple of days so please if you do use the site, know that we are going to be down starting Friday January 16th, 2026, and will be down for a short period of time. We need time to move the domain name and all of the data from one provider to another.

So get your recs in now, and know that starting this coming Friday, we'll be down until service is restored. Questions? Let us know.

bubblesbrnaid

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nanila

Do you have a favourite cause that you support?
I support multiple causes through charitable donations, but one of the most important to me is the Abortion Support Network, which does exactly what it says on the tin: It helps people in the UK and Europe to get abortions, particularly those who live in areas with restrictive laws.
If so, how do you support it?
I give them as much money per month as I can. When they have fundraising drives, I donate more. When they ask for comments they can use in their promotional materials, I provide as much detail as I can.
Have you been an active member of an organization (attending meetings, volunteering, etc)?
Yes. I was a school governor for a while, and I’ve also volunteered for Parkrun, as well as other charitable organisations.
Have you ever led any group?
No, I’ve never had the capacity with either full-time work or academic study to lead a volunteer group.
If so, how was your experience with it?
See above. I’m sure I’d find it very fulfilling, but it’ll have to wait until I retire (or go part-time).

cosmicjellyfish

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Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: some ambient drone

diffrentcolours

As per my previous post, the audit went OK and we re-scoped down to two days onsite. There may be a few followup questions on Monday but we're basically done with it. I managed to make it to the office for 8:45 ahead of a 9am start!

The main complication was Storm Goretti, which hit the West Midlands and South-West on Thursday and Friday. I walked back from the office in a torrential downpour after work on Thursday, having been loaned a golf umbrella. The rain racing down the hilly streets and pavements soaked my feet, but it was still preferable to getting a taxi in the stationary central Bristol traffic.

I did think about trying to meet up with any of my Bristol friends but I was exhausted even after a shorter day at work, not least due to the early start. It was also distinctly not sitting outside weather. I crashed out for a couple of hours and decided to eat at the hotel rather than venture further afield. I did manage a brief mooch until my digestive system wanted to have a go at me for the disruption.

We finished early on Friday as well, and my boss and I shared a taxi to Bristol Temple Meads. All the direct services to Manchester were cancelled (as were many others across the country) but I managed to get home via changes in Birmingham and Stafford. I got a seat on each leg of the journey, and at least the stops meant I got brief breaks from masking. The one disruption that significantly impacted me was a vehicle driving into a bridge in Levenshulme, which stopped all trains between Stockport and Manchester Piccadilly - so I jumped out at Stockport and got a taxi home from there. I was very glad to be home, and earlier than planned!

We've so far had one problem identified by the audit - we should have done a risk assessment on our Bristol office, because laptops are stored there overnight. I'd been told that it was only used for meeting space and nothing was stored there, so it's a fair cop. I'll get that sorted tomorrow.

I'm feeling pretty good about the audit - our ISMS is lacking in a lot of ways, not least some overdue document reviews, and I'm glad we didn't get wrapped over the knuckles about that. My boss is happy with me, which is always nice.

buttonsbeadslace

Now that 2025 is over, all the things I knitted this past year:
- Armwarmers. I don't think I posted pictures of these anywhere?
- Ziprelaxagon socks
- Citrus slice #2
- Citrus slice #3
- Yarn swap purse
( Read more... )

immortalje posting in

dailyicons

closed

Today's prompt is: duel

• You have 2 days time to submit an icon for this prompt (in other words, until prompt 2727 gets posted)!
• Prompt 2723 have been closed.
• If you have any questions regarding the prompt, feel free to ask in a comment.
• To submit an icon you simply reply to this post with the following information:
Icon:
Claim: (only necessary if it's a specific claim)
Status: (e.g. #1/10 - number of icon completed/table size)

Pre-formatted

Network

Snowflake (days 5-6) and Taskmaster NYT

Scoville.

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

Fifty Feet of Grey: JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #32, …EUROPE #8 (JLI 43)

Six Sentence Sunday

Now-ish

ships20in20 > Various Fandoms & Ships

Dept. of Mice

Leech, by Hiron Ennes

Fandom Snowflake Challenge #6

CakeFail

(no subject)

Success!

FenRecs.com - Transition of Service

Bubbles Reviews: "Thunderbolts"

The Friday Five on a Sunday

⭐ sticky: media eaten in 2026

De-Bris

New Year Knitting Update

Prompt 2725: Duel

closed

Today's prompt is: duel