The thing about time moving is that there's a fic that I started writing in 2009 and never got very far into (because 2009), which was a highlander future fic, and the years in the future fic are 2015, 2016, and 2017. And I likely moved it into scrivener already after 2017.

This post brought to you by "oh damn what fic am I gonna post for October, neither of the two fics I am working on are possibly going to be done soon".

I will definitely take suggestions. Possibly I can craft a drabble around the "they play this on the radio???" wtf that I had last week when I heard the Mountain Goats played on the radio for the first time that I can ever recall. They play the Mountain Goats on the radio???? (indie station)

So, trying to find a way to make things more manageable I have set up my first community here on Dreamwidth:

Our Modern Times

This is so current events (politics, wars, scandals etc.) that I would have covered back on Pillowfort in a separate community to avoid causing anxiety or triggers for folks that are have issues can avoid such in my own personal journal.

As usual, I have a Liberal, LGBTQIA+ positive and anti-Republican anti-Fascist anti-genocide tendency on what I cover, post and discuss. I welcome others with like interests that want to join the community (it's set to open at present) but you can also choose to not join if its likely to cause you anxiety, distress or you just want to ignore these things right now.

Current Location: Cambridge

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If you followed Bookworms on Pillowfort, you may want to check out

booknook and the slightly less active

books communities here on Dreamwidth!

If you're looking for other communities to join, here are some that I follow that get at least occasional posts:

addme_fandom (for introducing yourself)

tv_talk

fanmix_monthly

fandomcalendar

3weeks4dreamwidth

creative_cooks

dunmeshi

fandom_on_dw

fffriday

halfamoon

hobbitfilmfic

indie_games

kenobi_gen_exchange

marchmetamatterschallenge

movie_buffs

silwritersguild

silmkinkmeme

thecluster

the_scent_of_lilacs

tolkienshortfanworks

vampiremedia

gaming

That said, I wouldn't feel shy about posting in a seemingly dead community--you might be surprise who wakes up to chit-chat.

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Recipe at https://www.tastinghistory.com/recipes

Current Location: Cambridge

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Watch on YouTube

Current Location: Cambridge
Current Music: Techno Melodic DJ Set

ok, I have trimmed out more than 500 tags from my posting tags here today, which should make things more searchable and usable.

And as you have probably seen, I've started some crossposting todays community posts from pillowfort that I normally post in. I will try to keep these from overwhelming folks until I can find functional and active communities here on Dreamwidth.

The bad news is this may take a long time. There are a lot of dead or nearly dead communities here. If its been more than a month since anyone has posted in a community, chances are even gaining access may be a problem as the moderator may have long ago left and there is no system to take over a dead community that I know of.

This was always one of the problems with Dreamwidth.

Current Location: Cambridge

The accusation came after Prime Minister Carney visited his home province and urged Albertans to vote to “stay in Canada,” an act which the US government is calling “a deliberate attack on U.S. interests.”

I should clarify that the Beaverton is a parody site.

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Current Location: Cambridge

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Current Location: Cambridge

Watch on YouTube

Current Location: Cambridge

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Current Music: Riders - Murder by Death

Title: The Fifth Child
Author: Doris Lessing
Published: Vintage, 2010 (1988)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 581,135
Text Number: 2199
Read Because: thus begins a long and futile search for vintage spooky books for spooky season (hard mode: actually set in autumn); ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review:
A family growing untenably large in an unaffordably large house is sundered when the fifth child is born strange: a powerful, violent, and antisocial little boy. His parents believe he's literally a Neanderthal throwback, and this is where the book is weakest: this pseudo-speculative element rises to clutter the resolution, out of step with the rest of the text and gesturing towards some social theme that fails to land. But, on the large, I was quietly impressed by this unpleasant little book. It don't land in nearly as many dated pitfalls as I expected, remaining intentionally and uncomfortably about disability and neurodivergence, competing access needs, and family discord. It's better than a cheap thriller about a demon child, and less fun on account, but maintains a claustrophobic, psychological focus. Compelling! but only intermittently satisfying.

Current Music: I'm Afraid of You - Vast

I am working in the background to fix up my Dreamwidth records and presentation to make it easier for it's updated use and expansion as friends from Pillowfort arrive on this site.

This includes going thru my many many Tags and trimming the list down to a more reliable master set for searching and referencing. Over the years I developed a HUGE number of 'orphan tags' where the entry that was using them was deleted, or where there was only a single use of a tag ever applied to a post. Clearing these out is taking a while but will make for a neater, and more navigable presentation.

I will then look into setting myself up with some standardizations on how I present information better. For anyone else dealing with Dreamwidth for the first time or revising their own material here - remember that you can either use the Rich Text System or the HTML system for making posts. I've always used the HTML since that is where I started here with but there is a Rich Text Editor for those who don't know HTML code and don't want to mess with it.

I'm to also look into using my Google Storage as a point to pull graphics from so I can be a bit more visually interesting than I am now. I had reduced my visual graphics use on the site years ago when I had to close out my own website that I ran for decades due to rising costs of a professionally hosted site.

Current Location: Cambridge
Current Music: Slow Jazz

1) Wow, a day ago my feed update didn't pass 50 entries (which is what I have my page lengths set to). Today I had 4 pages to go through and it's barely afternoon.

2) Thanks to Killer300 on Pillowfort I came across this article about the decline in dinner parties but what I found interesting on its own was this table of activities that people largely don't engage in as much.

Thing is, a lot of these activities seem very different to me. I fail to see how reading a book is a social activity (participating in a book club different story). Also, why is going out to breakfast even a thing? (Might be interesting to know how many people have breakfast at all in 2026 compared to 1995). ( Read more... )

3) I've been asked various times over the years about creating the Kudos footer below (which I copied from someone else, now forgotten years later). I just posted about it in

newcomers.

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Pre-op appointment today went fine. The surgeon I've got continues to be very cheerful and smiley, despite also being very German. I continue to surprise myself by not feeling very anxious about this.

There's nothing like a private clinic to give you a measure of reassurance that you're in good hands, and they're handing me back to D who is lovely, and then we'll go home to V who does so much support, and who now is being supported by angelofthenorth while we're away, and so on and so forth.

I am at the center of this network of care, and I'm well aware of my role in it. Soon that will be to not get impatient to do too much. For now, it's to pack the things I need for an overnight stay and try to get some sleep.

I have done this before, as one of the support people, and I've had this central role when I broke my ankle. This feels straightforward to me.

Having been so stressed about earlier stages of this process that I literally wouldn't have persisted without help from D and others, having always had a lot of medical trauma and triggers, I can't say why I've been so calm ever since I got the surgery date, a couple of months ago. I assumed I was just dissociating, my brain trying to protect me from this, but my counselor said I didn't sound like it when I speculated thusly. I said then is it possible that I've just used up all my intense emotion on this in the first, oh, two years of trying to get this far, and I just don't have any left? It was a joke and not a real question, I know that's not how emotions work, but also I don't have any other theories.

I am not in need of any, though. My lack of perseverative anxiety on this topic might be an anomaly but it's a welcome one!

By the time I was asked if I had questions, I had very few (I thought of a few later, of course, but nothing too consequential). I did end up asking one that D had asked me, which can be boiled down to

how many nipples will I have this time tomorrow?

(I have three! And while it's a normal part of the procedure to reduce the size of the nipples, D asked me a little while ago if this meant I'd still have the situation I have now which is one normal nipple and on the other side two squished together, like the mitosis diagram where the cells are first starting to separate, or just one. "If it's important to your personality," the surgeon laughed, "you can have all three." I was kinda taken aback at this, I've never thought about it! I've never had a different number of nipples; they've always been like this!)

And in other TMI news:

The surgeon suggested I trim my chest hair.

Not shave, he was very clear. Just trim short. Shaving would sting a lot when they have to cover my skin with disinfectant because, he explained, shaving causes lots of micro-abrasions on the skin. But he didn't have to tell me that; I already know from the chili sauce! Anyway, I was very grateful for D's help in the shaving: we got a cheap beard trimmer and he did it this evening. Such a weird thing, to be sitting next to our dining table with my shirt off... He is so conscientious! I liked watching his face while he did it. "I've never shaved boobs before!" he said. It made me really miss Bat, who out of all the people we know is the one who'd probably most delight in hearing about D shaving my boobs. The poem I wrote for him doesn't really have a name but when I read it local pride's trans open mic last year, I called it "the hairy boob poem." I do not like this stubble-y chest hair, though! I had a shower right afterwards, just because that was next on my list, and I hoped it'd calm down the itchiness but no.

I won't get another shower for a week now, and I'm really going to miss them!

Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth Links
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badly_knitted (G | Donna Noble, Tenth Doctor)

Communities & Challenges

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Losing even a few species could have bigger consequences than we thought

Biodiversity loss may cost more than expected, since most of nature's benefits kept rising with more species across 423 published studies.

Normal people have tiny imaginations. I look at a massively complex system losing parts at 100-1000 times the usual rate, including small common generalists and whole genera, and I think, "Oh, we're in a mass extinction, that's bad." To me, these are not difficult observations; they are established traits of a mass extinction. I put that together with "Diversity is strength" as a general rule. The less diversity, the less ability a species or ecosystem has to adapt to new threats. Most people just don't think this way. The premises are readily available in basic books. I gather that people read the books, pass the test in class, and forget all about it.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

Today is sunny and mild.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/20/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/20/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I saw two squirrels running around the trees over the house yard.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

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For the sixth time in three years, I am in China. This trip is to attend the 2006 International Friendship Cities Conference in Xi'an, where I'm presenting (special thanks to Nitul D. for some awesome research), then to Yulin, a coal-mining town that's hosting a Green Development conference with another presentation. After that, the plan is to travel through Inner Mongolia to Orodos City and Hohhot City, including visits to energy enterprises, agri-tech businesses, and the Dalad photovoltaic power project. I am hoping that at this point I can make a detour from the planned itinerary and make a side trip to the ruins of Xanadu, for aesthetic reasons, "a stately pleasure-dome decree", not that there's much left of the place. "All your cities lie in dust". After that, the plan is to visit Beijing for a couple of days, then Chengdu for a similar period and then back to Melbourne. As usual for any trip to the vast, diverse, and fascinating country, a very full itinerary.

Even on my return at the end of the month, November is already looking like an increasingly full agenda of impending Chinese functions. Firstly, the Australia Zhejiang United Association has invited me to their Melbourne Cup carnival, and, as much as I dislike the cup itself, cocktail attire for the Year of the Horse seems appropriate. In a far more sombre and reflective mode, the Chinese Masonic Society is hosting a remembrance event for the 160th year of Dr Sun Yat Sen, a very influential figure in my own thinking, and, as a very surprising and great honour, has asked me to give a speech at that event. Finally, on November 21st, the Australia China Friendship Society is hosting a dinner at the "rather good" Bright Palace with John Lander as the guest speaker. John Lander is the former deputy ambassador for Australia to China and will be speaking on "An independent Australian foreign policy towards China".

For the time being, I will offer a travelogue over the next two weeks of some pretty spectacular places. As always, I strongly encourage people, especially Australians, to take a trip to China if time and resources allow. The fares are generally inexpensive, package deals are very generous, and as a favourite country, we have visa-free entry. Now is the best time in decades to visit, so don't put it off. For this trip, I took an overnight flight from Melbourne to Chengdu, then a connecting flight from Chengdu to Xi'an; it was about as comfortable as 12 hours in the air can be, and very easy to navigate the bureaucracy. Now I'm safely ensconced in the Xi'an International Convention Centre in a hotel room that's larger than most apartments and with an absolutely stunning view over the lake and parkland. I rather think I'm going to enjoy this conference.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Xi'an, China
Current Music: Kate Bush, Hounds of Love

bashi-bazouk (bash-ee-buh-ZOOK) - n., an irregular mounted auxiliary trooper in the Ottoman army; a turbulent, ill-disciplined person.

From Turkish başι-bozuk, irregular soldier, lit. broken-head i.e. leaderless. Of course, I know the term from Captain Haddock:

duck-billed platypus! jellied-eel! bashi-bazouk! anthropophagus! cercopithecus! psychopath!

duck-billed platypus! jellied-eel! bashi-bazouk! anthropophagus! cercopithecus! psychopath!

(No blue barnacles were blistered in the making of this post.)

---L.

High-level stats for week of 2026-10-06 - 2026-10-12

Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 12366 (-633 from last week)

Works I classified F/F: 6597 (-292 from last week) (3283 new, 3314 continued)

0.61% of all 1085151 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:

Once Upon a Time returns to the chart after seven weeks away, and Stranger Things is back as well. They replace Bridgerton and Coronation Street.
The Amazing Digital Circus celebrates 30 consecutive weeks on the chart.
The Sapphic Period Sex Flash 2026 exchange revealed with 13 F/F works.

( Full top-20 table and description of methodology after the jump )

We were lucky to see this as, unusually for a cathollc country, it is very rarely open.

We were in Tours at the same time as the Journées de patrimoine- the patrimony days- these happen all over Europe at this time of year and it means that you get into buildings not usually open to the public so we took advantage.

Again the windows got smashed during WW2 so the glass is modern:

( See more: )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ere

A castaway on an alien world discovers the local culture has changed dramatically in the thirty years since humans last visited Toka.

Heroes Are Made by Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson

1. New White House press secretary to be just a pair of pants on fire: (tags:USA politics satire funny )
2. An overview of how robots are trained: (tags:robots ai )
3. GLP-1 weight loss drug may slow biological aging: (tags:aging )

Main reactions to the current work ::waves hands:: everything:

1. argh

2. yikes

Main reminders to myself as I head to the office:

1. Try not to assume malice when incompetence is an option. (addendum: incompetence is always an option)

2. "I care about this, but I'm not carrying this." (paraphrased from a guided meditation)

All of these can really be combined into one daily mantra, which turns out to also be funny:

PUT THAT DOWN!

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I like my outfit today!

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I'm particularly proud of how I matched my bangles and necklace with my outfit.

💐

Asked by

commodityfetishx: have you ever had or made bugambilia (i'm sorry i have no idea how to spell this in english, spanish, or any other language & the internet is making me more confused) tea? i recall u mentioning bugambilia grows there. if u haven't, would u consider trying it?

I think the Indian spelling is bougainvillea, and I haven't had its tea (didn't know it was made into tea either!) It has no fragrance, but I looked it up and its tea is supposed to have neurological benefits, so I would definitely try it.

commodityfetishx: how much do you pay attention to your astrology?

I've looked at my natal astrological chart for self-understanding, and it does contextualise things for me. For instance, I've been told that I'm "blunt" or "intense" in speech, but I think I'm honest and believe honesty and empathy go hand in hand. My mercury, which rules communication, is in Scorpio. Also beauty and art are very important to me, so it's no surprise I'm a Libra sun. I don't use astrology predictively because I've got tarot for that.

commodityfetishx: what has been the favorite place you've lived? region, city, house, room, however you choose to answer. what does your ideal domicile look & feel like?

I liked living in Manipal. There was a good amount of nature, both greenery and beaches, as well as all the urban amenities you'd need, since it's a university town. It's a very walkable town; you can walk anywhere within it if you don't mind the sun (if you do, there are autorickshaws you can ride for cheap). The only struggle there is food; my flatmates and I survived on root veggies, eggs and rice while we were there. I'd like to live in a place like Manipal where everything is walkable, but I'd like there to be a great variety of healthy food available, and I'd like my friends to live nearby.

Current Mood: mellow

[Reminder: don't be talking about your health online except under a pseudonym.]

I've been going through a lot with my health recently. Sort of. It's a bit weird and hard to talk about because it's not exactly that I've been in ill health. At least probably not. The waveform has yet to collapse.

I suppose it is fair to say part of what is going on – a substantial part – is about the interaction of being a disabled person and getting medical care: the way I am disabled makes it hard and extra time consuming to go places to meet people, like say going to medical facilities to meet wih medical professionals.

It can also cause exacerbations of my disability. This means a not-huge amount of medical appointments actually works out to be a huge amount of medical appointments for me because it often has a huge impact – sometimes including medically – on me. For instance, it recently took me a week to recover from the consequences of a recent medical exam, where by "exam" I mean "sitting in a chair waiting for the exam to start", and by "consequences" I mean "increased pain the following day, which then fucked up my sleep, which slowed my recovery from the aggravation of my pain, which protracted the disruption of my sleep from pain, lather, rinse, repeat; and also left me exhausted from all the sleep I was missing."

This interacts poorly with the apparent fact that it does not seem possible for me to have any contact with the medical establishment without a medical professional finding a lump or other potential sign of cancer. It has never turned out to be cancer. It just seems that I am... lumpier... than normal. But it means that when I present for medical problem X, not only do I wind up having all the subsequent medical appointments for X, I will also wind up having all the subsequent medical appointments for problem Y, which is Oh Look A Lump Maybe This Is Cancer.

When I got the CT scan of my aorta, they happened to get a look at my thyroid, and, because this was at the same hospital I presented to for the neck infection of 2022, they had a comparator. The radiologist reported that since 2022 the small lump they found on my thyroid then is less small now. So I've been dealing with the follow-up of that (doctor, labs, ultrasound, labs, more doctor).

This raises the obvious question of whether I have noticed any symptoms of thyroid malfunction, for which the answer is: sure, a little – but for decades. Doctors have been running thyroid panels on me forever, and they all come back fine. None of those symptoms have become much worse in the last three years, and one of them has gotten a bit better. The labs are finally showing something a tad off, but not actually that unusual for someone my age.

Then in July, I got a symptom that has nothing to do with my thyroid. It's one of those minor symptoms that they tell people with uteruses who have been through menopause means It's probably nothing. But... call your doctor. Unfortunately, my uterus was already being eyed with suspicion of trying to go rogue with cancer because lumps had already been found there (when my hip was imaged in 2022). I waited hopefully for a week or so for the symptom to go away on its own, and it didn't, so I called my new gynecologist (who is awesome). They weren't able to get me in to see her until mid-September which is just as well because of all the thyroid-related care I needed to show up for. Over the last few weeks the gynecologist (and the lab) ruled out a bunch of less serious problems. I have a ultrasound and a biopsy scheduled for November. This was convenient in that it gave both Mr Bostoniensis and I time to get all our seasonal vaccinations done, which will be useful given how much time it seems I'm going to be spending in medical facilities.

Also, there was a biannual teeth cleaning and a mammogram somewhere in all this.

So that's where things are. I've been dealing with an large amount of medical care which isn't to treat any of the things that have actually been problems for me, but to assess whether I have a problem I don't yet know about. It may all of it be nothing. It is to be hoped that it is nothing. But it has been so far and looks like it is going to continue to be a tiring, stressful, logistically-challenging, and physically painful nothing that hits the out-of-pocket-max on my health insurance.

It's awkward to try to talk about. I have multiple doctors concerned I might have cancer so I am going through tediously much medical care which is all about cancer. But I almost certainly don't have cancer. Just not absolutely certainly. The odds are very low that I do. I probably don't. "Ugh my schedule is all fucked up because of all the medical appointments for cancer my doctors think there is a very small chance I have."

The problem is that the odds just went from one in a hundred to one in twenty. And as we all know, that's a 1 on a 1d20. So this is basically a reasonably easy, but not sure-fire, saving throw.

So: I'm dealing with all doctors all the time, only not really, it's just that it takes very little doctor-visiting to cast a long shadow on my schedule including by causing medical complications of my pre-existing disabling conditions; and none of that medical care is to treat any of those pre-existing disabling conditions; it's not, in fact, to treat any condition at all at this point, since it's all diagnostic (e.g. imaging) or prophylactic (e.g. vaccines); it's to identify whether or not I have a medical condition that, while very bad to have, I am very unlikely to have.

(And no, nobody has done anything futher to investigate the cause of my chest pain back in June. Everybody is too preoccupied by the Oh Look A Lump Maybe It's Cancer question.)

This week, I have a telehealth appointment with my PCP to follow up on whether he thinks I need to do something about the thyroid lump and I have a scheduled flu shot at a pharmacy. In the next month (Nov), I have an ultrasound and a biopsy, the latter of which will be done in an operating room with an anaesthesiologist.

It feels slightly absurd and dramatic, but cancer is bad, so I guess this all makes sense.

Today is International Sloth Day. Here are some ways to celebrate...

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Current Mood: relaxed

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Today we ran errands in Charleston, including a visit to the Charleston Food Forest and the Coles County Community Garden.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

I have not felt especially plugged in to my emotions for a while now, but I seem to be more than abstractly angry about the break-in. It could have been very much worse, but every good thing this year has felt acutely like fragments shored against ruin and the invasive loss of one we had worked for feels superfluously mean. I won't see my brother or my niece again until Thanksgiving. I am under no illusions that I can insulate myself from the state of the world, but I should be able to trust that I can leave the house without someone wrecking it. Partway through the pan-frying of steak tips tonight we remembered that we couldn't open the back door for ventilation on account of still not having one.

I meant to put some of the Craneberry left in our liquor cabinet into the cider we mulled after dinner, but it came out so well on its own—the normal fall spices plus star anise, simmered an inch down—that I just drank two mugs instead. I have not eaten enough apples this fall. I have been belatedly rabbit-holed by the article sections of Kaldor City. I managed to watch my third film all month this weekend and in the meantime of waiting for my mind to come back online, the time-shock and meta-layering made the first episode of Adam Adamant Lives! (1966–67) a hit. I am hoping the forecast nor'easter won't interfere with the Orionids.

I am still sleeping worse than usual. Sometime after I had listened to the upstairs neighbors all morning I dreamed of an image like an record sleeve, a plover-freckled profile blindfolded with windflowers like blinkless eyes. Their straight dark hood of hair looked as 1970's as the grain of the vague sunlit field behind them. It might have been a frame of film. I can think of several writer-directors working who would have done it.

spatch took a different picture of me this evening when I was delighted by some weathered ornamental cherries.

Current Music: Dry Cleaning, "Scratchcard Lanyard"

1) I am SO sad to hear that Pillowfort will be shutting down in December. It's the only site I've used extensively besides Dreamwidth (and LJ before it, though I have been gone from LJ longer than I was doing much other than crossposting). However I am not surprised. ( Read more... )

2) Speaking of site survivals and internet time -- Slate survives: "Slate’s homepage has long functioned as a “fossil of what the internet was during that time,” said Ivylise Simones, Slate’s creative director. In 1996, Slate was trying to figure out what a magazine on the internet should even look like; in 2026, it’s among the last general-interest digital-native news sites, and print magazines are dying out. “Salon is one of our only lasting contemporaries,” Frey noted."

I remember when both of these were founded, and it's good to know that despite the tough environment for text-media (print is less than half of what it was, both for newspapers and magazines) that there are success stories as well.

3) Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All. Seems one can never underestimate greed, or the assumption that big money will never be held responsible.

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In lieu of doing any holiday exchanges this year, I am bringing back an old concept I used one year.

In the comments, you may request a fic, minimum 500 words, for yourself or another person of your choice. If you wish it gifted on an archive, I will need user names for whichever platform.

Comment should have fandom (needs to be one I'm familiar with; check tags here or on AO3), characters, a basic prompt, and at least general DNWs.

If you want my original worlds, or an altogether original story, choose a universe from

sylph_and_asp or give me some details on what you want.

Remixes of my fic, or that of people with open permissions, is a possibility.

Also, if you want it released on a specific date, tell me that. All gifts will otherwise be posted on December 20th.

I will not write: death fic, rape, harm to kids, permanent animal harm, all hurt no comfort.

I probably cannot write explicit sex or violence but sometimes the muses work for those.

Comments will be screened. If you want your recipient to know you requested it for them, say so. If not, I will make a note on the fic that it was requested anon.

Please don't set me up to troll someone with a gift they will hate. I will ban anyone who does that and tell the recipient who requested it.

No new job leads today.

Still doing the care home pilgrimages.

More tomorrow, I hope.

A new pesticide does not kill bumblebees right away, but it does inflict internal damage that turns out to be much worse than immediate death

A study finds that pesticide exposure disrupts bumblebee ovaries and egg-laying without increasing deaths, raising concerns for these crucial pollinators.

Well, that's horrifying. O_O I wonder if anyone tested to see if it damages other gametes -- like say, human ones. I'm guessing probably not.

Also I wonder if effects like this could be behind the plummeting populations of formerly common small generalists such as the rusty-patched bumblebee.

Current Mood: busy

This week, the poetry of Polychrome Heroics is on sale for half price from Monday, October 19 through Sunday, October 25. This series is superhero fantasy. This series is superhero fantasy. It features themes of heroism, coming of age, diversity, identity kink, family of choice, friendship, and cultural engineering. Sale prices range from $5 to $388.50, so hopefully there will be something for everyone.

Prices on open epics are locked at the time of opening; however, if anyone wants to donate to open epics and buy poetry, spending $100 will get you the quarter-price rate on the new poems, regardless of the rate on the open epic(s) you support. There is one open epic at present, so you may open another if you wish.

We are repeating the special discount for purchases of $100 or more, in which you get poetry at 25% of its original price instead of 50%. (Note that this increases the amount of poetry you get, rather than reducing the amount of money spent; the point is to get this stuff off of my desk. Yes, I can afford it.) That size of donation also makes you a k-fan which comes with some other perks, like a year-end collection of a poetic series. If several folks want to bundle their orders to make the $100 threshold and have one person send it all, that's okay; you'll get the discount and I'll list all your names as donors, but you'll have to decide amongst you who gets the k-fan credit. If you host a pool, please close it the day before the sale closes, so you have time to collect funds and turn them in on time.

Some of the poems are in sequence of related action, so in places there are prerequisites before a poem can be published. They can be sponsored at any time, just might have to wait for publication until something else gets posted first. Those are marked accordingly. I have also made lists of poems which unlock sequels, and poems which have prerequisites.

Linkback perk: The following poems have verses left to reveal. Boost the signal for this half-price sale and tell me which poem you want to extend.
"A Sense of Weather Changes"
"The Loving Embrace of Night"
"Generations of Cooks Past"
"Homefree and Clear "
"One Bite at a Time"
"Mishpocha"
"Changing Your Nature"
"Besa"

About characters and storylines: The storylines feature multiple characters, so if you want poems about ONE specific character, look closely. The thumbnail descriptions here give some indication who features in each poem. The storyline pages are adding precise, complete information about which characters appear in each poem. If you need more than what's already visible, you can ask me.

About timing: If you want maximum choice, shop early. We usually send a batch of things to my father near the end of a sale, and those poems will be posted as I have time.

About pools: Yes, you can combine your funds with other prompters to get the quarter-price rate. Yes, you can combine your funds with other prompters to buy a bigger poem. Yes, you can offer to match donations by other people. However, the wordsmith is not also a math whiz! After several attempts to find a way that I can work with pools and matches, I have concluded that this is over my head. (I did figure out how to avoid generating fractional pennies, though: all initial prices are now whole dollars, which means they cut evenly into halves and quarters.) So if you want to host a pool or a match, make a post for that in your blog or other venue, then comment here with what you're doing and include a link to wherever the discussion will be. You figure out the poems, you collect the funds, and when stuff is fully funded, you send me the money and the list of what it's for. Then I'll post the goodies. Please close the pool in time to collect donations by the end of the sale, so I can start posting pool poems no later than the day after the sale.

Before placing your order, please check this sale page to see what is still unsold! I will try to update the page as things sell, and it's likely to be the case that some poems will be marked SOLD before appearing in posts. People often buy things in batches, which means that selling gets ahead of posting. Also sometimes people ask for the same thing at the same time, so that not all overlaps are preventable. If you have alternate instructions in case you request something that has just sold, please include that in your message; otherwise I'll email you back and ask what you want to do.

Poems that unlock sequels: "Over That I Have Complete Control"

Poems that have prerequisites: "Even If It Is a Little Thing"

FOR SALE
17 poems, $4,868 ÷ 2 = $2434
prices from $5 to $388.50

RUTLEDGE (4 poems, ~~was $696~~, sale price $348)

"Shag Carpet Cuddles"
Story Date: June 2015
Summary: The Vermont Shag Carpet Cats love snuggling with people.
19 lines, ~~was $10~~, sale price $5

"A Beautiful Paradox"
Story Date: Friday, June 5, 2015
Summary: Johan loses his temper
259 lines, ~~was $130~~, sale price $65

"A Determined Soul"
Story Date: Monday, June 6, 2016
Summary: Oscar gets excited when a machinist turns up as a refugee.
490 lines, ~~was $245~~, sale price $122.50

"Learning New Skills"
Story Date: Sunday, June 12, 2016
Summary: Wrenley Immen teaches her new neighbor about gardening.
311 lines, ~~was $311~~, sale price $155.50
Double price for research.

SHIV (7 poems, ~~was $2853~~, sale price $1426.50)

"An Essential Part of Life"
Story Date: Monday, March 30, 2015
Summary: A street fight leaves Shiv in need of medical care. Fortunately, he knows a guy at Freeman Family Hospital.
597 lines, ~~was $299~~, sale price $149.50

"Strong, Sustaining Institutions and Alliances"
Story Date: Monday, October 19, 2015
Summary: Loudmouth asks Shiv for a favor.
777 lines, ~~was $777~~, sale price $388.50
Double-price for research.

"All That Matters Is What You Do"
Story Date: Friday, June 3, 2016
Summary: When Shiv gets a panicky SplatChat message from Persia, he does what he can to help.
476 lines, ~~was $238~~, sale price $119

"A Thousand Rows Ahead"
Story Date: Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Summary: Shiv discovers the Certificate Library on campus.
183 lines, ~~was $92~~, sale price $46

"Energy, Immediacy, and a Sense of Place"
Story Date: Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Summary: Shiv and some classmates make a field trip to a farm for Nebraska en Plein Air.
889 lines, ~~was $445~~, sale price $222.50

"Over That I Have Complete Control"
Story Date: Sunday, November 6, 2016
Summary: After violent storms sweep over Omaha, Shiv and friends attend a workshop about working with your different certifications in an emergency.
594 lines, ~~was $594~~, sale price $297
Double-price for research.

"Even If It Is a Little Thing"
Story Date: Sunday, November 6, 2016
Summary: After the certs workshop, Shiv and friends move on to one about handling splinters and blisters.
$408 lines, ~~was $408~~, sale price $204
Double price for research.
Available for posting after "Over That I Have Complete Control" has been sponsored and published.

OTHER POLYCHROME POEMS (6 poems, ~~was $1319~~, sale price $659.50)

"The Four Marks of True Repentance"
Story Date: Monday, August 13, 2013
Summary: Three former child soldiers move to America.
953 lines, ~~was $477~~, sale price $238.50

"When Everyone Around You Has Theirs Bowed"
Story Date: Sunday, April 6, 2014
Summary: Therapy for men's genital injury tends to focus on loss, but Marvis Willing knows the proud history of eunuchs.
304 lines, ~~was $152~~, sale price $76

"Far Stronger Links"
Story Date: Friday, September 4, 2015
Summary: A coworker's loss inspires support at work.
515 lines, ~~was $258~~, sale price $129

"Formidable Tasks of Adaptation"
Story Date: Sunday, March 20, 2016
Summary: Denim has had enough of her parents' shit.
359 lines, ~~was $180~~, sale price $90

"The Basis of Social Life"
Story Date: Friday, July 15, 2016
Summary: Josué enjoys sharing a meal with lots of people.
248 lines, ~~was $124~~, sale price $62

"Upholding It, Wherever Found"
Story Date: Thursday, November 3, 2016
Summary: Gail Somerville works for Interpol, but feels increasingly uncomfortable with it.
256 lines, ~~was $128~~, sale price $64

Current Mood: busy

The Gytrash: World’s Scariest Cow

Welcome! Today on the blog we’re walking down a lonely country road, looking for a cow whose appearance foretells death. Which is about as weird as anything we do around here.

So say you’re a ways down that country road. It’s late, and the sun’s going down. Your home’s not too far away, but you’re surrounded by trees, so it’s hard to see too far ahead. Then a little distance off, you spy a cow. Of course, cows are common enough in the country. It probably just wandered away from its field. So you decide to be a good neighbor and return it. But the closer you get to the cow, the more something feels…off. As if the cow is friendly, but maybe you don’t want it to be.

Then the cow heads off the road, wandering into the trees, and you have a decision to make: do you follow it, or not?

So what the heck is a Gytrash? Well, that depends on its whims, presumably. It’s alternatively called a Guytrash or Guytresh, where “trash” comes from “thurse,” meaning “goblin” in Middle English. So it’s some sort of spirit or creature that dwells in Northern England and appears as various large domestic mammals: a horse, mule, cow, or dog. But the point is, it’s not a horse, mule, cow or dog. It’s a supernatural shapeshifter. Sometimes that’s kind of obvious, because the animal will be black with glowing red eyes, something it has in common with hell hounds.

And if you thought that was creepy, the Gytrash also occasionally appears in human form…sometimes as a shrunken figure without a head. So what’s it doing there on that lonely road?

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

What if you’d like to convince someone else to follow the Gytrash? Say your character’s got an enemy in their village, somebody who drives them nuts on a daily basis. So they start to wonder whether death-by-Gytrash could be considered murder. How would they set somebody up to follow the creepy horse into the woods? Maybe they could tell them a valuable horse ran away to some lonely stretch of forest, offer a reward, and hope for the best. Or maybe your character could try to cast a spell to summon a Gytrash to their enemy’s daily walking path. If it worked, it might just be the perfect crime.

Image credit

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

Previous poll review
In the Patterns poll, 77.3% of respondants opted for solid colours. Florals and "other" tied (20.5%), followed by checks (13.6%), stripes (11.4%) and spots (6.8%).

In ticky-boxes, the baby dragon character 飞 ("to fly") won 52.3% of the vote, second only to hugs with 72.7%.

Reading
Finished Ancillary Mercy. I love it so much.

Then I got four hours into Alexis Hall's For Real (age-gap m/m BDSM), read by Shane East and Kishore Walker, before deciding it wasn't for me. I've liked some (but not all) of Hall's other books, so it seemed worth a shot, and I think it's an interesting take. No regrets.

Now I'm three hours into Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell, read by Rebecca Lowman, and it's like -- cosy romance? The main character is in the middle of a sad-but-amicable divorce and has started dating a cute guy she's had a crush on since college, who seems to adore her. The only point of friction so far is her self-directed fatphobia. I keep waiting for a shoe to drop, or even a slipper. Like, will the ex will want to take the dog? But so far nothing. ~~I'm on the fence about giving up.~~ Okay, I'm going to try a random paranormal romance instead, for the sake of one of the audiobook readers, Will Watt. Will report back.

More graded reading. I've nearly exhausted the elementary stories that appeal to me in DuChinese, which means it's probably time to venture into Intermediate (meep!), where there's a series based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Watching
(It makes less sense to separate out Cdramas/Kdramas from other TV now that Andrew and I are watching more Asian dramas together. Feel free to say if you'd rather I keep them separate, though.)

We abandoned Live Up To Your Youth after episode 30 (out of 32), and then I skimmed the final episodes to make sure we hadn't missed anything. (We hadn't.) It's been interesting thinking about why it lost us:

rambling

It started out being about young people moving to Beijing in the 1990s to make it in the arts (a screenwriter, a singer, an actor, an artist, a saxophonist, and a movie extra), but all of them kept getting diverted by the need to make rent, and by the end, they'd all given up on (or, probably more precisely, changed) their dreams and become entrepreneurs or (in one case) a scam artist or (in another) a tour guide in Paris. So from our POV, it felt like the message was the opposite of the title. But the Chinese title is actually more like "Seasons Change", and maybe if we'd gone in with that expectation, we'd have enjoyed the developments more? Idk.

There must have been struggling people in Beijing at that time who were ultimately successful in their artistic careers -- so why were we following this particular group? Was the message of the show that young artistic types will eventually become productive members of society too? Because if so, that feels like a bait-and-switch.

We raced through the available episodes of Slow Horses, and then realised the season finale hasn't been released yet, argh. It's fun and gripping, and this season's divergence from the books means we have no idea what's going to happen. LOL at River running around in a suit, like James Bond.

A tiny bit more of Ted Lasso, mentioned here only because we were talking about why it wasn't working for us,

grumbling

and concluded that part of the problem is the show banging on about how no one's interested in women's football, while showing us zero women's football. Apparently that "no one" extends to the showrunners and their perception of the audience too. We have no idea where the team is in the league, none of the players have football-performance-related issues or storylines, and the coaches aren't grappling with any coach things either. I don't personally care about sport, but I think sitcoms work best when they stay aware of their premises.

A couple of eps of Shrinking, which shines in comparison. Some of the characters are cartoons, but they're living, breathing cartoons with hearts, and mostly not re-treading old ground. Plus them often being the inevitable authors of their own problems is thematically appropriate in a show about therapists.

Some more Detective L, very fun. It's so obvious that the female lead has a lot of brothers (this is canon, I think?) and is used to holding her own. I love her!

About ten episodes of Never Too Late, the age-gap friendship (f & f) and second-time-around romance (m/f) Cdrama I'm currently solo-watching, which I'm enjoying tremendously. The female lead is uncompromising even when it costs her dearly (she comes across as maybe on the spectrum?), and the show loves her for it, I think. She's grumpy a lot at this stage, for good reasons, but when she does relax and smile, she's completely adorable.

And we just watched a British miniseries, Mr Bates vs. The Post Office, starring Toby Jones and an all-round great cast -- enraging and heartbreaking, omg. The narrative had some minor structural issues due to being a true story, but it was otherwise excellent. Highly rec.

Audio entertainment
There are a few things in my listening history that aren't ChinesePod, but I mostly just started them and then got distracted.

Online life
*waves to you all*

Writing/making things
I've been poking away at a Guardian fic off-and-on for the last week or so, currently 1400 words. Idk, man.

I've also stopped checking in regularly at Write Every Day, but I'm signed up to host the first half of November (stay tuned!), so hopefully that will shift things. If nothing else, I'll be posting little daily life updates.

House
( Not safe for Laireshi )

The toilet hunt continues. My new unsavoury-adjacent hobby is getting people to send me photos of their toilets (or other possible toilets they encounter).

Language Learning
( Cut for length. )

Food
More banana muffins. Next up, scones!

Goals
Organise some more of my house. Relatedly, return my Korean teacher's books that I borrowed mumblemumble years ago. Find an online Chinese tutor. Make cheese scones.

Good things
Last week was pretty social. The weekend was quiet and mostly not. Today is sunny. The cat is adorable and so well-behaved. Hiding from election news/coverage (all elections). Asian dramas. Baking. Still enjoying my tablet. Dreamwidth and all of you. Offline friends. The boy. ♥

Poll #35219 Candles

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

Candles / scents generally

View Answers

lavendar or rose or whatever
5 (11.4%)

sandlewood or leather or whatever
11 (25.0%)

some kind of citrus
10 (22.7%)

cinnamon or other spice
13 (29.5%)

other
10 (22.7%)

no candles
22 (50.0%)

other other
7 (15.9%)

ticky-box of this sad little character 哭 means to cry
11 (25.0%)

ticky-box full of Like Potion No. 9
5 (11.4%)

ticky-box full of staying up too late and waking too early
25 (56.8%)

ticky-box full of 哭 me a river
14 (31.8%)

ticky-box of a leopard wearing multi-coloured claw-polish
20 (45.5%)

ticky-box full of cartwheels and backflips
16 (36.4%)

ticky-box full of hugs
35 (79.5%)

Title: 'It's Just a Kiss Away'
Fandom: Original Fiction
Author:

but_can_i_be_trusted
Rating: G
Word Count: 167
Characters/Pairings: Original
Notes: Crossposted to

lyricaltitles
Summary: Something in his eyes shifted.

( It's Just a Kiss Away )

It's last day will Be December 4th.

This is painful news. It's been my prime posting place in the past few years, since so few of my old G+ friends stayed here on Dreamwidth after making accounts when G+ shut down... I have zero liking for the various Commercial sites like Bluesky, Blogger, Reddit, etc.

That leave my account here, my account on Glasswings Diaspora (which is going to eventually be phased out Since the Diaspora Network is slowly collapsing after the shutting down of the Devs site a year or so ago) and pretty much nothing else.

I'll try to link up here with some of the Pillowfort folks that come here... see if it works any better than how it went years ago when G+ shut down.

Current Location: Cambridge

Soooo Pillowfort is shutting down.
https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/8413273

I'm sad but I've been kinda waiting for this to happen. I paid for my services on the platform but I couldn't seem to get large scale adoption despite what it offered. It was great for community interaction but individual that wasn't fandom was just dry and that was it's real downfall, I think. Just sad to see another long-format platform that accepts adult content, go down.

Current Mood: disappointed

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

A Strong Case of Self Sabotage

Watch on YouTube

Current Location: Cambridge

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Arethinn

Mythsong

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Welcome! Today on the blog we’re walking down a lonely country road, looking for a cow whose appearance foretells death. Which is about as weird as anything we do around here.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

Expand Cut Tags

Style Credit