lirazel | Network

We went to the Boston anti-ICE demonstration today, one of many throughout the United States. Cattitude and I got there slightly after the nominal starting time, and managed about an hour before the cold got to me. Yes, it was above freezing and not windy, but standing still on a large open plaza is chillier than moving around. Adrian came to the demo with some of her comrades from Havurat Shalom, and arrived before we did. The crowd was large enough that we didn't try to find her until we were all preparing to leave.

It was a good-sized crowd, but the acoustics and sound system were abysmal; I could only make out a few scraps of what the speakers were saying.

I wore a winter coat, wool socks, and light-weight long underwear, which was too warm while we were on the trolley.

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the Comfort food poll, 55.6% of respondents said their preferred comfort food is chocolate, and 46.7% said savoury carbs. In ticky-boxes, 'juicy intricate poetry words' and 'pushing on through' came second equal (40% each) to hugs (80%). Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
I listened to half an m/m romance audiobook that I selected for one of its readers (Will Watt), but the overuse of "fucking" as an intensifier (and in particular, the repeated phrase, "he was so fucking hot") kept making me roll my eyes. It might be a faithful reproduction of the inner monologue of a first-year uni student, but I don't read romances for verisimilitude. So I switched to The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, read by Carrie Hope Fletcher and Kwaku Fortune, seen mentioned on my flist. I'm halfway through and enjoying it immensely.

A little more Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in hardcopy. Nothing in ebook.

Kdramas
Andrew and I have nearly finished The Guest. I want to ship the OT3, but I don't really care about the priest. (Sorry, priest guy! Alas, you are not my type.) Still, it is a great (gory/horror-y) show, and I've conveniently forgotten some of the developments. We just have one episode to go.

A bit more of While You Were Sleeping, a few episodes of Cashero (I'm not sure I'm in the mood for established relationship, but otoh, Junho! ♥), and a marathon-running BL called Mr. Heart, which was sweet but extremely slight.

Where is the next Love Scout/Family by Choice/whatever??

Other TV
Finished Stranger Things, which got so complex that I lazily stopped following the logic and just watched it as a collection of scenes. But I enjoyed those well enough. So glad they got their victory lap.

Three episodes of Heated Rivalry.

Minor spoilers; tl;dr not my thing.

Wow, I'd heard it was fanficcy, but I wasn't prepared for the total absence of anything resembling an external plot. Like, not even a figleaf. Not even a hockey arc. How??

Anyway, my prediction that it's probably not for me has proven correct. Like, I can tell that the show is made of crack (in the addictive sense), but I'm not into super-buff dudes, and I didn't like the 'fucking but feeling kind of miserable about it' vibe I was getting from Hollander. He deserves better.

But I kept going for episode 3, and I'm really glad I did. There was the ~~coffee~~ smoothie shop not-AU and ♥Kip♥ and his friends and family. And Scott, who fell for Kip in 2.3 seconds like a parched man stumbling into an oasis and, okay, is messed up, but at least self-aware and ~able to communicate~ and ~say nice things~! They were such a breath of fresh air! All the "smoothies" for both of them!

So that (predictably) is me. And I'm actually kind of relieved, because while the show is compelling and well-acted, it's not what I want in a fandom, and anyway, I'm hardly even managing to keep up with my quiet corner of Guardian fandom atm.

I may watch the last three episodes at some point, idk. Wishing those of you who're into it all the very best with your new addiction!!

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Cross Party Lines, Letters from an American, more of Our Opinions Are Correct (Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz's podcast) including the Murderbot episode, Tech Won't Save Us, the starts of a few other things.

Writing/making things
I've been practising drawing, and picking up art supplies in bits and pieces. The moldable eraser is magic.

Have a couple of sketches.

Pencil sketch/outline on a grid of Zhao Yunlan sprawling on an invisible barstool.

(Imperfect, but I think it's identifiable, which is not nothing. I darkened the linework a little in Paint.NET.)

For my future reference, this all started because I wanted to draw Bingo from Bluey!, which led me down a Youtube Art Videos For Kids rabbit hole. Then I bought new colour pencils and was noodling around with them, and people said nice things about some of my doodles... :-)

Art Youtube For Adults is also really lovely, btw -- full of super-talented people being encouraging and helpful.

I've written a treat for

fandomtrees, but I need to make some edits, and I have no attention span. Chances of my finishing it are about 90%, and chances of any further treats are more like 30% at this stage. Maybe one day I'll be able to make art gifts...

Life/health/mental state things
My arms are gradually improving, but I'm anxious about them. Andrew's having an operation this Thursday; I'll need to be able to bike and drive and cook and so on, and I'm still sore half the time. So I've started swimming again. (I stopped partly because I was avoiding public spaces where I couldn't mask, and partly because my long post-lockdown hair stays damp all day. But the outdoor pool is open for the summer, so I'm going for it.)

I just bought a small $2 desk at a junk shop so that I have a workspace to retreat to downstairs while Andrew's recuperating on the couch in the living room. I'll see how that goes.

I have a hand-me-down mini air fryer from my parents which I still haven't taken out for a spin. Quick/easy meal suggestions very welcome, especially if they're things I can throw together late at night, post hospital visits. (NB: I don't do onions or brassicas.)

Good things
Andrew, swimming, drawing, Kdramas, Guardian, Zhao Yunlaaaan, modern medicine. Cat:

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

Poll #34068 Om

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

View Respondents

Do you meditate?

View Answers

yes, regularly
3 (8.8%)

yes, from time to time
8 (23.5%)

I used to
5 (14.7%)

I used to occasionally
3 (8.8%)

what you mean by 'meditate'?
3 (8.8%)

no
16 (47.1%)

other
2 (5.9%)

ticky-box of being squeamish about fingernail clippings
2 (5.9%)

ticky-box full of hockey show squee
4 (11.8%)

ticky-box full of feeling kind of zonky
16 (47.1%)

ticky-box full of skipping across treetops and dancing through the clouds
18 (52.9%)

ticky-box full of hugs
27 (79.4%)

dialecticdreamer

Breaking Bread and Breaking an Impasse
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 2, complete
Word count (story only): 1204
[Monday, May 11, 2020, late afternoon]]

:: The Teagues’ preparation for a dinner guest is interrupted. Part of the Edison’s Mirror universe. ::

Aidan smiled at the driver as he hefted the large plastic tote full of onions. He balanced the folded jacket that the younger man had given Aidan on his head, then put the bin atop the jacket. “Thank you for the ride, Persia.”

“Just bring a sample of those pickled onions that you were talking about. I’ve never had them.” She waved, then rolled backward down the driveway.

Aidan walked easily to the garage door, but had to set the bin down to let himself in.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: awake

oldtoadwoman

Snowflake Challenge: A close up shot of an owl ornament hanging amidst pine boughs..

Snowflake Challenge, #3: A Love Letter to Fandom
( Dear Fandom, We need to talk (this got much longer and weirder than intended) )

Current Mood: weird

hannah

One of my favorite things about the local library's used book sales is that every so often, a "for your consideration" awards screener pops up in the DVD section. It speaks to the neighborhood having someone who gets them to begin with, and it's fun to grab a copy of something like The Queen's Gambit because it's there. So I did, and now I don't have to mess around with any piggybacking on my mom's account or other sites to watch it.

It's too bad FYC discs are something of a thing of the past - it's the only physical release some of these movies and TV shows ever get. I know the idea of owning the media's foreign to the companies because a physical sale is a single purchase and means you can't keep stringing someone along with a long-term lease. It doesn't mean I can't dislike how a company deciding to remove something makes piracy, or morally dubious used DVD sales, the only way to watch it.

Current Mood: ditzy
Current Music: nothing now

yhlee

(selling prints via the local game store)

stylized digital illustration: a fantasy lady, peacock-themed

Digital painting in Procreate, at 11"x17" print.

narnialover7 posting in

iconthat

https://i.postimg.cc/dt3VnnJ4/pass_it_on_11.png

Dalton Kincaid (Buffalo Bills Football Player)
Next Picture:

china_shop posting in

fan_flashworks

Our new challenge is:

SOCK

As always, you can interpret the prompt literally or figuratively, in whatever way works for you.

Each work created for this challenge should be posted as a new entry to the comm. Posting starts now and continues up until the challenge ends at 4pm Pacific Time on Tuesday, 20th January. No sign-up required.

Mods will tag your work with fandom and challenge. When you've posted entries to three consecutive challenges, you will earn a name tag, and we'll go back and tag all your previous entries with your name.

All kinds of fanworks in all fandoms are welcome. Please have a look at our guidelines before you play. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact a mod. And if you have any suggestions for future challenges, you can leave them in the comments of this post.

You can view stats for

fan_flashworks entries and search and filter them via the Community Report and Creator Report. See our FAQ post for more details.

Also, keep an eye out for the next

ffw_social post, which will go up in the next couple of days. If you haven't joined the

ffw_social comm, it's never too late to come and check it out. (Posts are locked, which means you have to join to see them.)

china_shop posting in

fan_flashworks

The Sand challenge is now closed. Here are the entries:

Stranger Things: Fanfic: Sand by

wearing_tearing
Original: icons: sand by

lilly_c
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Fanfic: In a Grain of Sand by

alexcat
due South: Fanfiction: Sandy Boots by

lucy_roman
Sherlock Holmes (ACD): Fanfic: Beneath the Sand by

smallhobbit
Terraria: Quatrain: A Prize to be Won by

infinitum_noctem
FAKE: Fanfic: Wishful Thinking by

badly_knitted
no fandom: icons: Sand by

highlander_ii
Multifandom (TV): Icons: Life’s a Beach (9 icons) by

veronyxk84
S.W.A.T.: Fan Fiction: Looking Forward To Most by

darkjediqueen
US Politics: poetry: the sand in the gears by

teaotter
Torchwood: Fanfic: Newsworthy by

m_findlow
Heated Rivalry: Fanfic: Sweaty, Salty, Sandy by

seeyouontheice
子非鱼 (Zi Fei Yu): Fanfic: the same soul (make the ocean wider) by

bluedreaming

Also, congratulations to those who earned badges and name tags this round:

teaotter earned The Unstoppable (SILVER) (36 challenge streak).

\o/ \o/ \o/

Thank you to everyone who participated! You're now free to post your entries to your journal or wherever else you'd like. If you're archiving on AO3, you can add your work to our fan_flashworks collection there.

The Community Report and Creator Report will be updated shortly with the entries from this round. See our FAQ for more details.

Next challenge coming right up.

kalloway

Alas I did not post on either Weds or yesterday. ^^;;

Archiving is behind between being off-schedule, dead tired, the sprained ankle, and taking a chunk out of my right index finger while working on a car. But I did do a bit earlier and will keep gnawing at it. I even wrote a ficlet for

100fandoms and may try for a goal of finishing up that project this year. (As said every year.)

Finished up the HG Lfrith Pre-Production kit; it's nice looking but the backpack is a grenade and I suspect it'll go on a shelf never to be touched again or I'll bag-n-tag the backpack and let it be free. Unsure. Next is RG Justice who'll complete a ragtag order from November that I joked was actually a D&D party. (RG Justice, HG Calibarn, 30MF Priest, SD Dynames, 30MM Horse)

One of my other projects is a bingo card of lists. Most of these, I should have printed out already and just need to find them. The rest, ??? Things like

season_of_kink cards,

31_days lists, prompts from

100words and

anythingdrabble, and

drabblesoup... A lot of these have significant presence in my plotbunny book so it'd be good to kind of get myself level with them. (And, as above,

100fandoms!)

Boxen are on the way to

tainry and

torachan, and I caught up with

purplehellebore to exchange gifts so Xmas is officially over. Whew! (I may still have one or two notes for folks on holiday_wishes, but I'll take care of that as I can.)

I'm also going to need to find the full prompt list for an old multi-chapter KH2 fic (each chapter was vaguely themed) if I ever want to try to finish it. The list/comm it was for was on LJ but I don't know if it's still there and I haven't been able to consistently access LJ in years.

Well, I have a lot of notebooks to dig through...

luminousdaze posting in

iconthat

https://iili.io/fkZb98g.png

Next picture: Moana 2
Character: Tamatoa

( A late icon for a picture from last week I forgot to post earlier...... )

oldtoadwoman

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

Snowflake Challenge, #2: Pets of Fandom

For a few delusional moments, I thought I'd handle all of these prompts with art and after one quick initial sketch decided that I don't have time or I'll still be finishing these prompts next year. (I literally have art prompts from two or three Octobers ago that I keep saying I'm going to do "some day".)

I think sometimes starting an elaborate project might be a subconscious way of avoiding the project because deep down I know I'm never actually going to do the cool idea in my head.

That said, I do have a very clear idea of what my entry on Pets of Fandom should be.

So, I loved, loved, loved the 2025 Superman movie. I don't know how it landed with the younglings who didn't grow up with Christopher Reeve's Superman as the iconic version, but all of my friends that I've talked to had that same delighted reaction to this movie. It's fully modern and never even does any overt callbacks to the 1978 movie. But it has that same idealistic spirit, leans into the corniness without ever going too far, and just made me very happy. When I first realized the superdog Krypto was going to be in it, I think I cringed just a tiny bit. A CGI superdog was obviously going to drag things down, I thought. But. Oh, it was perfect. The fact that Krypto was a badly-trained chaos vector worked on so many levels. (My sister once had a dog that she always said she was going to take to obedience class when she had time but she never did and the dog eventually treated the entire house like a chew toy. Imagine that dog with super powers.)

If you didn't see Superman and were feeling done with superhero movies after a glut of them in the theater, I urge you to make an exception for the 2025 Superman. It's just so sweet.

A key character moment is when Lois Lane responds in disbelieve that Superman is about to put himself in danger for the sake of a dog. To which, Superman replies, "Yeah, and he’s not even a very good one, but he’s out there alone. And he’s probably scared."

Current Mood: ditzy

walgesang

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: accomplished

cahn

So I'm going to talk about one of my major fandoms (that I don't usually talk about here), shiny things, because I can! (I started this post more than a month ago and it is high time to actually finish and post it.) In particular, I want to talk about diamond simulants and lab diamonds (although there's also very recently been some cool stuff about lab sapphires too). The funny thing is, I've never been a super fan of diamonds in general. I mean, I'm not going to say no to them! they are very shiny, and they have some cool dispersion (splits light into component colors, like a prism, so you get little rainbow flashes if it's cut well), and I love that they're super hard and come in octahedral crystals, but I have always been a colored stones kind of kid. But! In the last ten years there have been a ton of developments in this fandom relating to diamond simulants and lab diamonds, which I think is very neat.

First I want to define what I'm talking about.
Natural diamonds / earth-mined diamonds are diamonds that occur naturally in the Earth's crust and are mined from the ground.
Diamond simulants are not diamonds, but other substances that look enough like diamonds that they are used in jewelry that might otherwise use diamonds. I'll talk about cubic zirconia and moissanite as diamond simulants later on.
Synthetic diamonds / lab diamonds are chemically identical (*) to natural diamonds but are made in a lab.

( Apologies if you happen to love diamonds, but I find the whole natural diamond thing kind of obnoxious in several ways. )

( Brief discussion of cubic zirconia, and the rise of moissanite )

( The rise of lab diamonds )

( Lab ruby/sapphire: Some recent cool news on the lab sapphire front )

( Photos )

(*) There are little things that can be different, so generally speaking lab diamonds can be distinguished from natural diamonds by a laboratory, but basically they're both made of carbon and look identical, especially if you have the same "grades" in one as another.
(**) When I refer to "carat" in the context of diamond simulants in particular, I will always be referring to "size of an ideal-cut diamond," which is about 6.5mm in diameter for a round diamond. Simulants will have different weights than a carat, of course, but generally the industry refers to a "1 ct moissanite" as something that mimics a 1 ct diamond, even though the corresponding cubic zirconia will actually be heavier than a carat and the corresponding moissanite will be lighter! Of course, "carat" when referring to colored stones just directly means the weight of that stone.
(+) www.diamondcz.co.uk came along in 2004, importing well-cut cz from China, and took well-cut cz from a relatively expensive niche market to super cheap!
(***) And even less (<~$300/ct last I looked) if you're willing to deal with Chinese companies directly -- it turns out there are whole subreddits devoted to both moissanite and lab diamonds that have instructions on this.
(****) Also emerald and garnet! Lab emerald in particular is a very big thing, very popular these days among people who buy lab gems, though emerald is not as much my thing so I don't know as much about it. Lab garnet can also be doped to get a lot of different colors, which is fun. Emeralds can't be made by the super cheap processes so they've taken a couple of decades longer to get cheap enough to be popular, but nowadays you can easily get them cheaply.

celli

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

igenlode posting in

writethisfanfic

It's the end of the week, and the day when we have the chance to show off what we have achieved recently!
Does anyone have any excerpts/fanart/songvids etc. that they want to share?

samuraiter posting in

prompt_dump

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silversea posting in

booknook

Humble Bundle's running a sale where you can pick up 65 science fiction, fantasy, and horror books by women for only $18 through January 31st.

Pretty good deal, if you ask me!

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/fierce-women-science-fiction-fantasy-horror-open-road-media-books

theladyscribe

Stumbled across this one again, and it's still so good.

Catch a Body
by Ilse Bendorf

Salinger, I’m sorry, but “Don’t ever tell
anybody anything” is a string of words
I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink
to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract
by laser from the ribcage of all of us
who ever believed it, who felt afraid
to miss someone, to be the last one
standing. “Tell everyone everything” is
not exactly right, but I do believe that if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so. We are islands all of us,
but we are also boats, our secrets flares,
pyrotechnic devices by which we signal
there’s someone in here we’re still alive!
So maybe it’s, “don’t be afraid.” We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.

torachan

We got down to the park right when they opened, so the crowds were very low. Unfortunately they recently reduced the number of restaurants that open when the park does, so we had time to kill before breakfast (even though we were both very hungry).

( Read more... )

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lirazel

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Page Summary

redbird - anti-ICE demonstration this afternoon
china_shop - Me-and-media update
dialecticdreamer - #55 Breaking Bread and Breaking an Impasse part 1 of 1, complete)
oldtoadwoman - Snowflake Challenge: #3 Dear Fandom, We need to talk
hannah - Acquisitions.
yhlee - gratuitous digital art
narnialover7 in iconthat - Pass It On 6
china_shop in fan_flashworks - Challenge 503: Sock
china_shop in fan_flashworks - Admin: Challenge closed
kalloway - A Reckoning of Swords 6-10
luminousdaze in iconthat - Icon Pass It On 6
oldtoadwoman - Snowflake Challenge: #2 What the hey, dude?
walgesang - Snowflake Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom
cahn - Simulant and synthetic diamonds (and others)
celli - aunt celli nights are the best nights
igenlode in writethisfanfic - CHECK IN: DAY 10
samuraiter in prompt_dump - 10 January 2026: Movie Night
silversea in booknook - [Sale Promotion] Humble Bundle's Fierce Women of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
theladyscribe - poem for the day
torachan - 2026 Disneyland Trip #2 (1/10/26)

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swamp ophelia

i been digging too deep, i always do

Network

anti-ICE demonstration this afternoon

Me-and-media update

#55 Breaking Bread and Breaking an Impasse part 1 of 1, complete)

Snowflake Challenge: #3 Dear Fandom, We need to talk

Acquisitions.

gratuitous digital art

Pass It On 6

Challenge 503: Sock

SOCK

Admin: Challenge closed

A Reckoning of Swords 6-10

Icon Pass It On 6

Snowflake Challenge: #2 What the hey, dude?

Snowflake Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

Simulant and synthetic diamonds (and others)

aunt celli nights are the best nights

CHECK IN: DAY 10

10 January 2026: Movie Night

[Sale Promotion] Humble Bundle's Fierce Women of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

poem for the day

2026 Disneyland Trip #2 (1/10/26)

Profile

January 2026

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