US politics commentary
Oct. 21st, 2025 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
china_shopThis talks positively about the value of the protests. I'm putting it behind a cut for those with politics DNWs.
( From Heather Cox Richardson... )
( From Heather Cox Richardson... )
china_shop
Write Every Day: Day 21
Oct. 21st, 2025 06:26 pmchina_shop“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks… and it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'”
– Maya Angelou
My day 20: Applied some edits to a fic. Then went into town in a howling gale to have lunch with a friend. Now the sun is out, the sky is blue, the birds are singing like, "What? What gale? We don't know what you're talking about."
The tally
Day 16:
badly_knitted, brithistorian, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 17:
badly_knitted, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 18:
badly_knitted, brithistorian, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 19:
badly_knitted, callmesandyk, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadoraDay 20:
badly_knitted, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, sanguinity, shippen_stand, sylvanwitch, trobadoraWhen you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
AWS outage
Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 amalierak posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceDW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
Write Every Day: Day 20
Oct. 20th, 2025 06:24 pmchina_shop“The only question you need to be able to answer about your story is: Why today? Why this day out of your character’s life rather than all the other days? And the answer, it’s always Because this is the day that’s breaking the rhythm, the day that’s an aberrance, the day everything can change, if the character can just walk that tightrope to the last page.”
– Stephen Graham Jones
My day 19: Finished a flashfic (added about 800 words, edited the whole thing, posted). Read through another fic on my kindle and made notes of things to fix (still to apply). Worked on my Yuletide letter.
The tally
Day 16:
badly_knitted, brithistorian, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 17:
badly_knitted, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 18:
badly_knitted, brithistorian, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 19:
badly_knitted, callmesandyk, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadoraWhen you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.
but that's not the case
Oct. 19th, 2025 08:30 pmmusesfoolI made some chicken thighs in the slow cooker today with hoisin sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and some tomato paste. The chicken shredded nicely, but mostly what I tasted was salt - it was low sodium soy sauce too, so I'm not sure why. Maybe the balsamic? But that was only 2 tsps. Kind of a disappointment, though now at least I have some room in my freezer for other things. *hands*
Finished my reread of The Dream Thieves and now it's onto Blue Lily, Lily Blue. Still enjoying myself. I guess at some point I'll read something new to me again, but not just yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In other news, man, the Giants looked good for 3 whole quarters before completely unravelling and losing. the fact that they led for so long, and even came back to retake the lead once they fell behind, and still lost just makes it worse. At least the Rangers finally won last night.
*
Finished my reread of The Dream Thieves and now it's onto Blue Lily, Lily Blue. Still enjoying myself. I guess at some point I'll read something new to me again, but not just yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In other news, man, the Giants looked good for 3 whole quarters before completely unravelling and losing. the fact that they led for so long, and even came back to retake the lead once they fell behind, and still lost just makes it worse. At least the Rangers finally won last night.
*
Dear Yulewriter
Oct. 19th, 2025 04:23 pmkassDear Yulewriter,
Thank you so much for writing me a story. Write something that makes you happy, and it will make me happy.
In general I am a big fan of chosen family, happy endings, people being good at things, people helping each other be better together than they were apart, theology of all kinds, wit and banter, and kindness. I'm happy with anything (any situation, any rating) that feels right to you given the characters at hand. I'm open to AUs or to going deeper into the worldbuilding of any of these canons.
Please, no betrayal or unquenchable grief or people being awful to each other or despair. There's enough of that in RL (especially these last few years.) On Yuletide morning I want something that makes me smile. Thank you kindly.
Most of this note is my standard Dear Yulewriter letter -- these are the things I've been saying year after year, and I've been doing Yuletide since... 2003 I think? but this year I am really struck by the extent to which I want to see these characters get to experience joy. Maybe because the world has been difficult, in a variety of ways, for the last several years in a row? Anyway: this is just to say, thank you for figuring out how to bring these characters some sweetness.
In closing: yay Yuletide! Yay you! Thank you so much!
There's nothing below the cut that wasn't also in my Yuletide sign-up, but I include my requests here for anyone who's curious or maybe wants to write an extra treat.
Kass
( The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn; the Toby Daye series by Seanan McGuire; Murderbot / tv show. )
Thank you so much for writing me a story. Write something that makes you happy, and it will make me happy.
In general I am a big fan of chosen family, happy endings, people being good at things, people helping each other be better together than they were apart, theology of all kinds, wit and banter, and kindness. I'm happy with anything (any situation, any rating) that feels right to you given the characters at hand. I'm open to AUs or to going deeper into the worldbuilding of any of these canons.
Please, no betrayal or unquenchable grief or people being awful to each other or despair. There's enough of that in RL (especially these last few years.) On Yuletide morning I want something that makes me smile. Thank you kindly.
Most of this note is my standard Dear Yulewriter letter -- these are the things I've been saying year after year, and I've been doing Yuletide since... 2003 I think? but this year I am really struck by the extent to which I want to see these characters get to experience joy. Maybe because the world has been difficult, in a variety of ways, for the last several years in a row? Anyway: this is just to say, thank you for figuring out how to bring these characters some sweetness.
In closing: yay Yuletide! Yay you! Thank you so much!
There's nothing below the cut that wasn't also in my Yuletide sign-up, but I include my requests here for anyone who's curious or maybe wants to write an extra treat.
Kass
( The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn; the Toby Daye series by Seanan McGuire; Murderbot / tv show. )
Write Every Day: Day 19
Oct. 19th, 2025 08:08 pmchina_shop"Sometimes [when we] talk about creativity, it can have this kind of feel that it's just nice...it's warm or it's something pleasant. It's not. It's vital. It's the way we heal each other.
In singing our song, in telling our story, in inviting you to say, "Hey, listen to me, and I'll listen to you," we're starting a dialogue. And when you do that, this healing happens, and we come out of our corners, and we start to witness each other's common humanity....
If you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, if you want to help your friends, you have to express yourself. And to express yourself, you have to know yourself. It's actually super easy. You just have to follow your love. There is no path. There's no path till you walk it." – Ethan Hawke, TED talk: 'Give yourself permission to be creative'
My day 19: Not much this morning. I started to plan my Yuletide sign-up, and I wrote an alibi sentence. This afternoon we went out for a late lunch (have to grab the opportunity when the sun comes out), took a bit of a walk along a stream, and saw Grace: a prayer for peace, a film about an Aotearoa / New Zealand artist (which is why this post is a bit late). Tomorrow I need to finish my flashfic.
The tally
Day 16:
badly_knitted, brithistorian, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 17:
badly_knitted, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeDay 18:
badly_knitted, brithistorian, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilmeWhen you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.
How I choose radial menu items for Tuxborn on a Steam Deck
Oct. 18th, 2025 04:27 pmannathepiperThis is a followup guide to this one that I wrote a while back: HOWTO: Set up a radial menu on a Steam Deck game. Tuxborn players expressed some interest in the details of my decisions on how to set my radials, so I’m going to write those out for this post here.
The primary audience for this post is Tuxborn players on Steam Decks. But a lot of this can apply to any Skyrim players on Steam Decks, especially if you’re running a load order similar to Tuxborn’s, and if that load order happens to include the BFCO-related mods we have.
Read more on Anna Plays Skyrim.
Write Every Day: Day 18
Oct. 18th, 2025 05:51 pmchina_shop"I used to wonder if it wouldn't be better just to haul off and quit hoping. Just protect my own inner brain, my own mind and heart, by drawing it up into a hard knot, and not having any more hopes or dreams at all. Pull in my feelings, and call back all of my sentiments... and, yet … the pleasures, and the displeasures, the good times and the bad, are really all there is to me.
[They] are the yeast that always starts working in your mind again... and then, all at once, no matter what has happened to you, you are building a brand new world again, based and built on the mistakes, the wreck, the hard luck and trouble of the old one."
– Woody Guthrie, in A Race Of Singers by Bryan K Garman
My day 18: My routine falls apart at the weekend (which is fine). I wrote a short meta post for
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sid_guardian and left a meta comment on it. That'll do. Having a quiet night tonight, too.The tally
Day 16:
badly_knitted, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadoraDay 17:
badly_knitted, china_shop, cmk418, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadoraWhen you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.
visions i vandalize
Oct. 17th, 2025 05:55 pmmusesfoolrunpunkrun mentioned that there is now a graphic novel of The Raven Boys, which ignited in me a fierce urge to reread the series, so I've started that, and I still love it (♥BLUE♥! ♥RONAN♥! #the same impossible stuff), but I also kind of wish now that I didn't read the Dreamer trilogy (or that Stiefvater had written it differently), since it kind of recontextualizes (and potentially retcons) some stuff that I don't think really needed it.*
Round 180 Theme Poll
Oct. 17th, 2025 09:50 amrunpunkrun posting in fancakePoll #33735 round 180 theme poll
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 92
Pick the next theme of fancake:
Mystery & Suspense
41 (44.6%)
Protest & Revolt
28 (30.4%)
Whump
23 (25.0%)
due South: Build a Rocket, Boys! by feroxargentea
Oct. 18th, 2025 01:33 ammific posting in fancakeFandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Ray Vecchio, Harding Welsh, Renfield Turnbull, Sam Franklin
Rating: Mature
Length: 26,765
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: feroxargentea on AO3
Themes: Uncommon settings, Friendship, First time, Action/adventure, Complete AU, In Space
Summary: Androids are going missing on the giant spaceship Chicago! A Mountie and a space cop team up to investigate why, and to find their friend before it’s too late.
Reccer's Notes:
As I mentioned earlier, there are very few due South fics set in space - and this is an excellent one! The familiar due South characters and settings are translated into space, with their base being on the Spaceship Chicago, and Vecchio in trouble over at spacehub Vegas. There's action, adventure, banter, romance, plot and drama as Fraser and Ray work to solve the case and rescue Vecchio. A cracking read!
Fanwork Links: Build a Rocket, Boys!
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Ray Vecchio, Harding Welsh, Renfield Turnbull, Sam Franklin
Rating: Mature
Length: 26,765
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: feroxargentea on AO3
Themes: Uncommon settings, Friendship, First time, Action/adventure, Complete AU, In Space
Summary: Androids are going missing on the giant spaceship Chicago! A Mountie and a space cop team up to investigate why, and to find their friend before it’s too late.
Reccer's Notes:
As I mentioned earlier, there are very few due South fics set in space - and this is an excellent one! The familiar due South characters and settings are translated into space, with their base being on the Spaceship Chicago, and Vecchio in trouble over at spacehub Vegas. There's action, adventure, banter, romance, plot and drama as Fraser and Ray work to solve the case and rescue Vecchio. A cracking read!
Fanwork Links: Build a Rocket, Boys!
Osgiliath by Matěj Čadil (SFW)
Oct. 18th, 2025 12:12 ammific posting in fanart_recsFandom: Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Osgiliath
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: traditional art (watercolour)
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: Matěj Čadil's own website, Matěj Čadil on DA
Why this piece is awesome: An intricate watercolour with delicate colours and lots of great detail - I love worldbuilding and this recreates Gondor's old capital, which was in ruins by LotR times. I love the contrast between this beautiful, spacious city on the river Anduin, compared to Minas Tirith which was very much a fortress (as it needed to be).
Link: Osgiliath the pic on a Tolkien wiki.
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Osgiliath
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: traditional art (watercolour)
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: Matěj Čadil's own website, Matěj Čadil on DA
Why this piece is awesome: An intricate watercolour with delicate colours and lots of great detail - I love worldbuilding and this recreates Gondor's old capital, which was in ruins by LotR times. I love the contrast between this beautiful, spacious city on the river Anduin, compared to Minas Tirith which was very much a fortress (as it needed to be).
Link: Osgiliath the pic on a Tolkien wiki.
Write Every Day: Day 17
Oct. 17th, 2025 04:49 pmchina_shop"Because in the age of likes and follows, we have confused the reward of creating with the reward of being praised for creating, and why wouldn’t we? Our culture has never celebrated aspiring. Our culture celebrates markers of success. You meet a writer at a party. Oh, have you ever been published? When we could ask: what are the stories that inspire you? What is the story you most want to tell? We have to rewire the way we talk about art, the way we think about artists. The job of the artist is not to skip to the good part. The job of the artist is to make art when no one gives a damn, when no one likes or follows, when we are not being comforted by compliments and praise."
– Leigh Bardugo, via TedX
My day 17: I added 617 words to my flashfic. The story is supposed to be a little missing scene about time travel. Perhaps inevitably, given one of the characters is a deposed king, politics has reared its head, so it's still going. Oops! Not to worry, I still have plenty of time to finish it.
I also slightly tweaked a gift fic. I was thinking about the question of how to portray emotional beats/responses, showing without telling. In tandem with that, I started wondering if my POV characters have been tending too cerebral lately. Do you prefer characters to think through the implications of things or just to gut-reaction? (Does it depend on the character?) How do you express emotional beats? Are your descriptions primarily physiological (pulse, breath, etc) or something else? Do you have a technique for conveying feelings as they arise, or is this just something you do instinctively?
As well as writing, I went with Andrew (partner) to our favourite outdoor cafe (which is being forced to close down in a few months, oh no!) and sat in the blustery northwesterly, then did grocery shopping. This evening our friend is coming over for the last two episodes of Kdrama Low Life, and I'm making enchiladas.
The tally
Day 16:
china_shop, badly_knitted, trobadora, sylvanwitchWhen you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.