labellementeuse

Previous poll review
In the Stoic hurt/comfort poll, 44.2% of respondents prefer the stoic character stoically/reluctantly/awkwardly providing comfort, vs 41.9% who prefer them receiving comfort (pretty sure that's within the margin of error, though); and 27.9% said it depends. Three people (including me) checked "I'm not into hurt/comfort." <3

In ticky-boxes, appreciating being able to breathe through your nose came second to hugs, 62.8% to 79.1%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
I finished The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley, read by Sid Sagar, a m/m clockpunk fantasy novel set in ancient Thebes. I especially enjoyed the Theban POV, and I grew increasingly more engaged as it progressed. Might read it again sometime in text.

Still making my way through Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell. I'm up to the advice for third drafts.

Andrew and I finished Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold, read by Grover Gardner, while polishing off a jigsaw, and have started The Vor Game, in which Miles is instructed to learn to respect authority, and immediately sets out to manipulate everyone around him.

Kdramas
The same four as last week: Phantom Lawyer, You're Beautiful (ahhhh!), Love Scout, and Lovely Runner. The latter involves the female lead time-travelling 15 years into her past self, and she seems weirdly unaware of the age gap between her and the school-age male lead. Maybe this isn't a romance? (Writing this made me consider an alternate version where her contemporary self just sends her diary or something to the past instead, so her teen self would be armed with all the knowledge but still age-appropriate.)

Other TV
Finished Paper Girls (argh, permanent cliffhanger ending!) and Connections (BBC). Still watching The Pitt, Rooster, and Scrubs. Zoomed through all of Big Mistakes, a Netflix romp starring Dan Levy, which ended with a set-up for season 2.

Fringe (which is losing the plot, wow) and Bluey with my sister.

And we saw Hoppers at the cinema, and had a great time with it. Aww! Such an optimistic view of the world.

Audio entertainment
Dreaming Against the Machine (new podcast by Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever), episode 1: "Futurists, with Reo Eveleth". The podcast is about "envisioning a realistic and hopeful future", and this episode was really great. I found it via the Better Offline episode "More, Everything, Forever with Adam Becker".

(Aside: something about DAtM made me think that podcasts are the blogs of today: thoughtful people making their ideas and conversations public, very voicey and intimate in a way. And presumably just as hard to break into (in the English-language sphere) if you're not a confident user of the English language...)

Writing/making things
Getting back into the swing of writers' hour now it's moved to 8am for the winter -- which is timely, because I have a 520 Day assignment fic to write. (I was aiming for short, but it's already over ~~1500w~~ 2300w, with at least two scenes to go. Which is what happens when you mostly read novels, I guess.)

Life/health/mental state things
We've had a few days of gorgeous weather (and next week is looking dire), which has meant a lot of biking. Plus I have builders working on reputtying some of my windows, which is disruptive and dusty, so I've been out a lot; yesterday I worked on my 520 fic at our newly re-opened central public library. All of which is to say that my arms are pretty mad at me. Bluetooth keyboards are great, but so is my home ergonomic setup. And I can only handle so much biking atm.

The window work is in a race against the weather, and weather forecasting has got less accurate since some @#$#*ing incompetent shitheads @#(*ed up the US Weather Service. So who knows if my house will be weatherproof next week? No one!

I'm not as cranky as this sounds. Just a bit stressed, and my house is covered in a fine layer of dust. Guess I'm looking at a thorough ~~spring~~ autumn clean once this is all done.

Had a flu jab on Wednesday.

Link dump
Get your Letter to the Editor published. Every. Time. | AO3 admin post about Spambot Comments on AO3 (different types, and what to do about them) | Remarkable survival after hawk trapped in car grille | Mom cat shows her kittens the German shepherd is safe (Youtube, via

starandrea).

Good things
Lovely weather. Mobile technology and ebikes. Writing!! Friendly builders. Andrew and Halle and friends and Dreamwidth.

Poll #34482 Fanfic vs Profic

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

View Respondents

Do you have different prose standards for reading profic vs fanfic?

View Answers

no, I'm pretty relaxed about prose quality if other aspects of the story capture me
2 (25.0%)

yes, I'm more picky about fanfic
0 (0.0%)

yes, I'm more picky about profic...
4 (50.0%)

... with the exception of certain genres
1 (12.5%)

no, I'm picky across the board
3 (37.5%)

other
0 (0.0%)

ticky-box of to read makes our speaking English good
6 (75.0%)

ticky-box full of podcasts
2 (25.0%)

ticky-box of how many rivers must an otter swim down before you can call it an otter
7 (87.5%)

ticky-box full of 42
4 (50.0%)

ticky-box full of hugs
4 (50.0%)

paradisedinermod posting in

paradisediner

Please feel free to justify your answer or provide supporting examples in the comments.

Poll #34480 What is the ideal group size?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

View Respondents

What is the ideal number of members for a group?

View Answers

1 - a soloist is all you need
1 (7.7%)

2 - a pair is perfect
1 (7.7%)

3 - a structurally sound triumvirate
0 (0.0%)

4 - a classic. also they can double date
2 (15.4%)

5 - they can do some nice dance formations
6 (46.2%)

6 - comfortably fits in 2 cars
3 (23.1%)

7 - they can do some fancy dance formations
7 (53.8%)

8 - they can double date twice over
3 (23.1%)

9 - they can also play as a baseball team
4 (30.8%)

10 - no need to hire back up dancers ever
0 (0.0%)

11 - they can also play as a football/soccer team
0 (0.0%)

12 - one for every month of the year!
1 (7.7%)

13 - one for every month AND a spare
1 (7.7%)

over 13 members - the sky is the limit
0 (0.0%)

morbane posting in

jukebox_fest

Nominations are open! The 2026 tag set for nominations is here.

Nominations will close on 25 April 2026 (time TBA).

Please glance over the guide below before you nominate, and then come back to this post to comment. Questions are welcome.

( Nominating )

( Previously nominated songs and music videos )

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

settiai

I've finally started my rewatch of the early episodes of CR4 so that I can properly get caught up on Critical Role. Actually starting it has been the hardest part, so I'm hoping that now that I've begun I can stick to at least one episode a day and more if possible.

It's definitely easier to keep track of things in the early episodes now that I actually know who everyone is and what's going on. Having advance knowledge of just what groups everyone will be splitting up into shortly seems to be helping as well, as I have a better idea of what's really important to focus on and what's not. I'm also picking up on some smaller details that I completely missed the first time around just because I was already struggling to keep track of who was who and such.

I'm hoping that this rewatch will help it keep my attention better than it was the first time around. 🤞🏻

Current Mood: hopeful

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3233/

It's not as big a loss as it looks, because now I have leftover supplies, which will help me talk myself into doing this all over again with a new project!

https://xkcd.com/3233/

settiai

There's nothing like getting a comment on a fic of yours that's talking about how said fic is older than the person leaving said comment. 🙃

Oh, don't get me wrong. It was a very positive comment overall. But, still. Oof. I'm used to getting comments like that on some of my really early fics, but I was already out of college when I posted this one.

Current Mood: old as dirt

celli

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

minutia_r posting in

jukebox_fest

Oh hey, Jukebox is back for its 14th year!

This is a fanwork gift exchange. Creators exchange art, fic, or podfic, taking songs and music videos as the canon for inspiration. Your mods are

morbane and

minutia_r and we hope you have a great time!

Schedule (times and time zones to be added):
Nominations: April 16th-April 25th
Sign-ups: April 27th-May 9th
Assignments out by: May 12th
Assignments due: July 2nd
Works revealed:July 12th
Creators revealed: July 19th

Current phase: Nominations will open soon!

lightreads

Chain-Gang All-Stars

4/5. A near future dystopian America where the carceral system has an entertainment component under which inmates can “voluntarily” enter a reality show program where they fight to the death for a chance at freedom. This book is about a lot of people in and around that system, but centrally two women stars of it.

This is brilliant and beautiful and deeply humane while being about inhumane things. Some have complained it’s on-the-nose which, like, yes? I’m sorry, did you want subtlety in this critique? What good would that do?

Which leads me to the structure of this book. Tonally, it is a sustained scream, modulating with the kind of pain it is expressing. And then sprinkled throughout are footnotes. Some didactic, some painful, some about our current prison statistics, some about these fictional people. It is a really interesting choice. The author called it an “ethical” one which I am interpreting to mean that he is not interested in giving readers a chance to weasel out of understanding some of what this book is putting down. I think that is also a really smart way of confronting the thing that has wrecked other books like this. The problem is that it’s really hard to tell a story that is critiquing violence and suffering as entertainment without also entertaining your reader with violence and suffering. And the approach taken here is one of the best I’ve ever seen at negotiating that.

Content notes: Oh boy. Violence, murder, torture, mentions of rape and domestic violence, structural and personal racism

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3232/

Anyone who is caught counting 'three ... two ... one ... zero ... GO!' will be punished with a lifetime of eating only ISO standard food samples.

https://xkcd.com/3232/

katarik

Stayed home from church yesterday to attend the virtual memorial for Ny, which was heartbreaking in a different way than the in-person memorial was. I'm glad I was able to do both.

Today is my birthday, and next week an out of state friend (not on DW) I've never met in analog space is coming to visit. Even in death, we are in the midst of life.

Current Music: not here for high and holy things

paradisedinermod posting in

paradisediner

The regular weekly post for us to talk about any and all of our thoughts about the week's new releases.

&Team - We On Fire
TXT - Stick With You
Modyssey - Hook (debut)
Jay Chang - Higher
Plave - Born Savage
ifeye - Hazy (Daisy)
Wheein - The symphony of fxxkboys
Xdinary Heroes - Voyager
Yves

New MVs are also added to an ongoing Youtube playlist.

Last week's MVs: 6 April

Feel free to add new comments in the replies for songs/MVs we missed.

[ Rec Something Wednesday | WIP Wednesday | Monthly General Chat | Comment Fest ]

settiai

Pride's Solace, a Dragon Age exchange focusing on Solas, when live a little while ago. I ended up getting not one but two lovely gifts from it!

First up is a fleeting moment, focusing on Lucanis & Solas & Spite post-Tearstone Island in DA:V.

Then there's Garden of Statues, focusing on Solas & Tarquin with Tarquin meeting Solas sometime pre-DA:V. There's also a lovely bit with Ashur towards the end.

Current Mood: cheerful

celli

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sushiflop

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

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

settiai

Nothing makes you feel old like looking at your AO3 profile, glancing at your user ID, and suddenly remembering that it's a really fucking small number because you technically joined before they were even in open beta. By, like, a day. But still. I remember the length of the queues back then.