lettered | Reading

Current Mood: thoughtful

It's been several weeks since I played any D&D at all, and I've missed it a lot.

My Wednesday game has been on break the last two weeks because of people having plans for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, which wasn't particularly unexpected once we realized both of those holidays fell on Wednesdays this year. We're supposed to be back this week, though, so hopefully nothing happens to push it back. 🤞🏻

... although that reminds me that I still haven't recorded the summary video of the last game. Oops. I should get that done during my lunch break so that I can get it uploaded.

My Friday game has been on hiatus since mid-October because A. the DM desperately needed a mental health break and B. a number of people were going to be unavailable in November and/or December. Right now, the plan is that we're going to start back next week. One player may still be unavailable for a while because of work reasons, but we've got a plan for where her character will be for a bit.

And then there's my Sunday game, which went on hiatus at the end of November. It's a bit more up in the air at the moment when it will start back. One of the players is in the middle of planning his wedding and another is currently in Ireland until the end of February, as they're visiting their boyfriend (and presumably soon-to-be-fiancé if things work out well) to see if living together more long-term works out. She also plans on moving to Ireland if things do work out, so making sure it's somewhere they could see themself living long-term is important too.

We took all of December off just because everyone's schedules were super busy, but as far as I'm aware the plan is that we might have some mini sessions here and there in January and February. We're doing a time skip in the game, so there's lots of opportunities for one or two characters to have some side adventures. Plus we can shift times and even days around a bit for those, depending on people's availability.

The plan is that we'll be back to playing regularly in March once the currently-in-Ireland player is back in the United States, but we'll see if that changes at all.

scintilla10

For this year, I'm going to try participating in a few things to help nurture and maintain habits related to writing and creative practice. We'll see how they feel!

cultivativity | Welcome & FAQ post

This is a space for cultivating creativity.

This is not set up as a challenge, as that implies competition or accountability to produce something (which are fun activities, and for which there are several other communities available). Rather, this community is organized as a series of modules designed to help build a practice to nurture our creative selves. Do the things you want, ignore the ones that don't.

getyourwordsout | Pledges & Requirements for 2026 Participation
I've never signed up to GYWO before! I decided to try a Habit Pledge. I chose The Excursionist level, which is writing for 180 days over the year (approx 15 days/month). This feels ambitious but not impossible to me, and I think working towards building a habit of regular writing will be more fruitful for me than monitoring my wordcounts.

I'm also going to try doing Fannish 50 again! "Make fifty posts about topics related to fandom. You may set any theme(s) you wish, or pick random topics for each post." The info & sign-up post for 2026 is here.

hannah

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Innocent - Our Lady Peace

Challenge #3: Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favorite character, anything at all.

Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Dear Fandom,

You've changed. That isn't a bad thing. I'd go so far as to call it a good thing.

I remember when we met - properly, that is. Not the shy glances, not the vague hellos, the genuine, meaningful introduction. When I announced myself. I'd better remember it; I did it several times. You had to, in those early days. Everywhere we met, even if I already knew someone there, I had to introduce myself all over again. There was some fun to be had in that.

I remember when it was just us, you and me. At least, it felt like that. When I didn't dare speak your name and hid behind euphemisms and vague half-truths. When the party was small enough you could fit it onto one dance floor. When I think back on it, the excitement of being private and secretive, of having something all to myself, was a powerful feeling.

You're not my secret anymore. You've come roaring out into the world, with everyone aware of you and many people taking you seriously. There's power in that, too. I know I've known you longer than most people out there. It's still not something I want to explain. I don't think I should have to, and even with so many people knowing about you, I'd rather keep things quiet. They know you their way. I know you mine. The way I know you isn't just the way I remember you; it's the way I'm constantly getting to know you. There's things I can say about how you used to be - the phrases, the trends, the arguments of the day, the sudden new shiny thing appearing out of nowhere - and most of those things are pointless, because there's always going to be arguments and trends, with some of those arriving new and some simply wearing new clothes and I love that I've gotten to know you well enough to recognize which is which. To parse where the impulse comes from. To perceive the motivations. What's happening now would've happened back then and it'll happen in the future.

That's part of what I love about you that I've only recently fallen in love with. I couldn't have loved it back when we met. I didn't know you well enough.

I miss the thrill that came from knowing you, just from knowing you. But people meeting you for the first time are feeling that same thrill themselves. I've learned enough to know that. I've learned enough to love that people are always falling in love.

Best,
Hannah

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

sixbeforelunch

Current Mood: melancholy

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

Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

I originally wasn't going to do this one because it got me thinking about Phoebe and I was sad, but then I decided I wanted to talk a little about Phoebe and let myself be sad.

( CN: Pet death )

princessofgeeks

Current Mood: enthralled

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princessofgeeks

Current Mood: enthralled

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amalthia

( The Untamed )
( DCU )
( Star Wars )
( The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System )
( Heaven Official's Blessing )

nomelon

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snickfic

Clearing out the last of my movies watched last year.

We Bury the Dead (2026). After an American experimental weapons accident kills every human and animal on Madascar, an American woman (Daisy Ridley) comes to help identify bodies and search for her husband who was on a work retreat there. Also sometimes the dead don't stay dead.

As someone who is pretty over zombie movies, I liked this one quite a bit. First of all, it's Australian, and boy can you feel it. This is not your Hollywood zombie blockbuster or even your Danny Boyle zombie blockbuster. For starters, we spend relatively little time running from or fighting zombies. In fact, these are the most ambiguously threatening zombies I can remember seeing in a long long time, and I liked how much that complicated the story. It's also beautifully shot with great atmosphere and a score that really adds to the mood of the whole thing. And I really appreciated how our understanding of the central couple's married relationship gets more complicated as the film goes on.

That said, ( spoilers )

This movie feels like it invites comparison to 28 Years Later, if only by accident, given the timing. I know 28 Years Later has a lot of fans, and I didn't hate it, but overall I liked this a lot better for the indie feel, the focus on a female character, and honestly because I liked the cinematography better.

Anyway, it's out in theaters now. If it sounds fun, I recommend it!

--

Red Rooms (2023). A French-Canadian film about two female true crime fans following the trial of a man accused of raping and murdering underage teen girls. This movie is beautifully made, and with really visible care and precision. The director knew what he wanted to make, and he went for it. The result is moody and fucked up without ever feeling exploitative (to me); this is very much about the groupies, not about the man on trial, and we never seen the horrifying footage at the center of the trial.

It's also shippy as hell. Our main gal Kelly-Anne is a wealthy model and computer hacker who professes herself to be "not bad with numbers," who's obsessed with the trial for reasons that are to some extent left to the viewer, while Clementine is a less well-heeled diehard apologist for the man at the center of the trial and is convinced he's innocent. Somehow out of these two, it's Clementine who feels like the more well-adjusted person; it's questionable whether Kelly-Anne has any friends at all, and yet maybe Clementine becomes one. As a friend of mine described it, "Clementine’s more open neediness draws out a reciprocal vulnerability from Kelly-Anne."

High rec from me. If any of this sounds appealing to you, definitely check it out.

princessofgeeks

Current Mood: amused

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firethesound

A little late, but it's been pretty bonkers around here recently. We're all trying our best.

So, I started writing again this past year! Life has been really A Lot for quite a while, but I found my footing enough to start making some words and it's been pretty great. I set my goal for the year at 50k and more than got that. I also got 4 fics finished and posted, which feels pretty amazing.

( 2025 Wordcounts )

My goal for 2026 is basically to keep this energy going. You can see where I sort of wound down again after being remarkably consistent for a few months. I actually did some writing in December, but I didn't track any of it, so just counted it as zero and plan to start fresh. I've signed up for GYWO for their Modest wordcount pledge (150k) which feels doable, if I keep it up.

( Fic Goals for 2026 )

All in all, this is estimating about 230k of writing (or 150k without including the work left to do on necromancer!joe, which is why I don't anticipate getting to it this year) which means if I focus and am consistent, it should be doable. A challenge, but a manageable one. If I get this done, and I acknowledge that it's a big IF, my posting schedule would ideally be: horrorguard in February, food truck au chapters posting weekly through March-April-May, ghost!Joe posting in June, the next three installments of Redamancy in July-August, and then werewolf!Nicky chapters posting weekly in September-October-November.

So anyhow, we'll see what happens. I'm also resurrecting my old method of "write every single day, even if it's just half a sentence" and so far that's going well. Most days the past week just have a handful of words (the lowest was 6 lol) and that's totally fine, no pressure to keep going if I'm not feeling it that day, but a couple of times once I got the doc open and my hands on the keyboard, the words kept on coming.

So, that's that, and here we go!

jjhunter

No one really believes Donald Trump is going to last. At the rate he's been declining, it would be a minor medical miracle if he survives to the end of his current term.

( Read more... )

tl;dr Who wants to live subject to immoral leaders and exploitive self-sabotaging systems? We are capable of better, and we do have collective powers to choose better and deny support to worse. Let's exercise those powers while we still can avert most of worst.

watersword

I'm not dead; I've taken today & tomorrow off work and would not be surprised if I call in sick Thursday & Friday as well; I'm in less pain than I was, but I'm still pretty uncomfortable; mostly stopped coughing but my head is full of goo, which may honestly be worse. I felt marginally better yesterday, and thank goodness I took advantage of it to change my bedlinens and run the robovac, because today the prospect of taking the dirty linens down to the basement to wash them is making me quail. (ETA: 1/3 accomplished.) Naptime now.

princessofgeeks

Current Mood: enthralled

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anghraine

Current Location: Washington

J and I recently re-watched "The Return of the Archons" (after concluding it was the peak Christmas episode for various silly reasons), and there's this small and wonderfully in-character scene when the away party has found sanctuary with a local ally during the Red Hour. They're able to hide in this private room with some bunks, allowing for all but one of the entire party to sleep in the meanwhile. We don't actually see the decision get made. We just cut to the crew members all in the beds and Kirk having taken off his coat to wrap himself in a blanket, protectively keeping watch over his resting crew members. We just get a few quiet moments of this interspliced with the insanity of the Red Hour outside, which he observes with quiet disgust between pacing quietly around the little room, adding some folded clothes to cushion McCoy's head, making sure the young ones are sleeping in their bunks, and checking on Spock (who is lying on his back and either meditating or simply awake the whole time, not needing the sleep but—given how easy the nonverbal communication between them is in this episode—likely aware that trying to convince Kirk to take the bed is not, let's say, a logical use of his time).

It's very cute, honestly, and the episode is so beautifully made that it has an incredibly warm, pleasant quality on a purely visual level. It's the kind of thing that I think gets the kind of kneejerk "oh he's such a father to his men" despite TOS Kirk's very consistent aversion from anything smacking of fatherhood (very obviously for gender role reasons, not reactionary nuclear-family-meets-gender-essentialism retcons from 20 years later reasons). But I definitely ended up thinking "I can't believe I've seen multiple posts straining to frame Janeway as some kind of maternal figure as captain when she doesn't have a parental bone in her body—she's not Team Mom she's Team Captain—and meanwhile Kirk has 100x more fretful mama energy as captain to the point that his long-suffering maternal authority becomes the actual premise of an actual later episode."

In conclusion:

captain, are we there yettttttttt

silveradept

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Infinite Rivals - The 13th Struggle (Xigbar)

snowflake_challenge has posted prompt #3, asking us to talk about the things we love about the communities that we are part of, or about the properties we form our communities around.

Challenge #3:

Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

( It's often the people. )

The best thing I like about fandom is that it grows and evolves and produces new stories and new interpretations of stories, and new tropes and new ways of telling stories and smashing them together. The next best thing about fandom is how many people there are in it who are there to have a good time and to make community with others. Yes, there are always going to be people who feel like they have to defend their territory against all comers, or who loudly proclaim that their way is the only way and all others must yield, but most fans that I've encountered seem to be less concerned with purity, fortresses, or defense and are instead more concerned with community, mutual aid, sharing, and trying to encourage people who are in the fandom to stay in it or to getr even deeper into it. Maybe I just have good people around me and I've avoided the people who want to drag me into wars, but even if that's the case, the last thing I love about fandom (for this entry, anyway) is that it tends toward self-correction, and with time and maturity, most fen who stay, grow in ways that make their works better and their communities better.

sixbeforelunch

"Conspiracy" is a weird episode. I don't know why I got the urge to rewatch it, much less icon the heck out of it, but here we are.

( Onward for 36 icons featuring beardless Riker and Enterprise glamor shots )

flamingsword

Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Once upon a time, one of the friends who was teaching me How To Person told me that my problem wasn't so much that people didn't like me, it was more that I didn't like people. I was constantly on the defensive and went into social situations expecting to get so little value out of the exchange that I was unconsciously treating people like their existence was a chore. He kinda had a point. It was not a great way to make friends when everyone around me felt judged.

I was still getting over that but starting to get used to trying to like people when I found fandom back in 2003-2004, and found my way over to

copperbadge's comment section. It was the sudden manic insistence of my nervous system that I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR - just an overwhelming tide of positive feelings that I couldn't even process them all. I was still hella awkward as a human, but managed to make some neurodivergent friends anyway, some of whom I still talk to more than two decades later. And that insistence by my nervous system that These Are My People the feelings of I Belong Here and These People Are Like Me was so antithetical to every way that I had ever felt about groups of people that it wound up changing core parts of my personality, my identity.

I am me, because of y'all. You did this to me and I honestly couldn't be fucking happier about it.

dyingfire and

maeritrae and

elucreh - thank you so much for welcoming me aboard.

And all of fandom: thank you for existing.

settiai

Current Mood: thoughtful

I was able to grab a 12 day cheese advent calendar from Aldi for pretty cheap because I got it in mid-December so it was on sale by that point. They presumably thought it was too late to properly use it, but in my mind a 12 day advent calendar works great for starting it on December 25 vs. a 24/25 day advent calendar which starts at the beginning of the month and goes through Christmas.

So, hey, I ended up getting to have two advent calendars after all! I picked up with this one the day after I finished my Adagio tea one.

( Cheeses under the cut. )

flamingsword

Free sewing pattern for a chest binder, for those of y'all who may need such.

The Barometric Pressure Effects on Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) and Dysautonomia

Scientists find hidden antibiotic 100x stronger against deadly superbugs

Autistic joy? Is a thing. But also autistic joylessness through constant overwhelm is ALSO a thing. Apparently lots of autists don't experience joy in the same ways or to the same extents as others? I gets moments of joy, but they last maybe 15 seconds worth of slightly more intense happiness? Which according to some folks I know is not what joy is for them, or at least not ALL of what it is.

Sick Woman Theory - PDF of a short philosophical and political treatise about who gets seen enough to count as "political".

Washingtonians during a flood emergency Sound ON.

( Read more... )

forget your Unified Theory of Everything

It's Howdy Doody all the way down!

On the D&D front...

Setting, nurturing, and maintaining writing habits in 2026

Stand up on your own.

snowflake day 2: pets

Heated Rivalry: two things.

Episode 2 HR...Vegas men's room

Favorite Stories of 2025

Recs

Movies: We Bury the Dead, Red Rooms

Heated Rivalry merch

Another New Year

The Emperor Has No Wits

ugh

foreshadowing in Heated Rivalry TV series

(no subject)

Snowflake Challenge 02026 #3: Love

yet more tng icons

Snowflake 3

Advent Calendar: Cheese

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