Babylon 5 WIP is finally complete!

Jun. 6th, 2026 08:21 pm
sholio: (B5-station)
[personal profile] sholio
I finished that Season 5 AU WIP! Finally!

The Living and the Damned (23K, Londo/G'Kar, mature-rated)
Fixit (of sorts) going AU in 5x18.

Some thoughts on writing WIPs under the cut (not spoilery for this fic in particular, more like general musings).

Under here )

I don't know - what do you all think? Do you post WIPs? Do you read WIPs? It's been a long time since I've been in a fandom that had a lot of WIPs, prior to getting into Murderbot last year, which is almost like old-school ffn/LJ fandom with its very high number of WIPs. Including a lot of unfinished ones! And that's part of what got me back into posting some of my longer fic in WIP form, because there is a certain excitement and energy to it that I miss. Plus, in non-fandom spaces, I've enjoyed serialized media for a very long time (comics, webcomics, TV shows, etc). But it is obviously not without its down side, and I don't think I was prepared for how much trouble I was going to have finishing things when they're being written WIP-style.
musesfool: key lime pie (pie = love)
[personal profile] musesfool
Yesterday after I logged off work, I made a ricotta cheesecake, and since I know my springform pans are leaky (they are old and need to be replaced), I just used a deep dish pie plate, and it was fine. I also added about 2/3 cup of mini chocolate chips that the recipe did not call for, but which seemed necessary, though it is also a delicious cake without them (the cinnamon/orange/vanilla flavor is actually super Christmassy to me? but the heart wants what it wants, even if it's June rather than December). Also the vanilla bean paste gives it those little speckles which means it's even more delicious than usual! *g* Anyway, if you need a cheesecake but don't have a springform pan or a stand mixer, and don't want to deal with a water bath, this is the way to go.

Then today, I tried to make baked mozzarella sticks instead of fried - mainly because cleaning up after frying is a lot and also the smell lingers - but I didn't realize you are supposed to freeze them for TWO HOURS so I got a late start and didn't eat until almost 6:30. They were okay but not as wonderfully crisp as they get when fried, even though I used panko. Also, despite what some of these recipes say, you really should season every layer - the flour, the egg, and the breadcrumbs. I am just saying.

My plan for tomorrow is to make bacon so there's that for lunch for the week, along with some chicken pesto meatballs - we'll see how they are. I am apparently on a ground chicken kick, because I have a bunch of recipes I want to try, and as long as it keeps being on sale, I'm good to go!

In other news, the Knicks are up 2-0 on the Spurs and only TWO GAMES away from winning a chip! They've won 13 in a row in these playoffs! What even is happening??? MSG is going to be nuts on Monday. But remember, you absolutely do not have to hand it to James Dolan. #go new york go new york go

*

Daily Check In.

Jun. 6th, 2026 06:03 pm
adafrog: (Default)
[personal profile] adafrog posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Saturday to midnight on Sunday (8pm Eastern Time).


Poll #34695 Daily poll
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 22

How are you doing?

I am okay
14 (63.6%)

I am not okay, but don't need help right now
8 (36.4%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans are you living with?

I am living single
8 (36.4%)

One other person
9 (40.9%)

More than one other person
5 (22.7%)




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
aurumcalendula: Jing Yi, Leng Yue, Chu Chu, and Xiao Jinyu from 'The Imperial Coroner' (Imperial Coroner sedoretu)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula posting in [community profile] vidding
Title: The Analyst
Fandom: 御赐小仵 |The Imperial Coroner (2021)
Music: The Analyst by Delta Goodrem
Summary: 'she's always the analyst'
Notes: Premiered at [community profile] vidukon_cardiff 2026.
Warnings: flickering lights, mild gore, violence

AO3 | bsky | DW | tumblr | YouTube
umadoshi: (books and teacup (sallymn))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Reading: On the fiction front, over the last couple of weeks I read:

--Remember You Will Die (Eden Robins), which is SF told entirely through news and obits and correspondence and does some very neat things. It didn't give me any particular feelings, but I enjoyed it.

--The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty), which is pretty much a delight from start to finish.

--The Book of Love (Kelly Link) unfolds in all kinds of interesting ways and had a lot of...emotional momentum?...for me, although I didn't come away with deep feelings about or attachment to any of the characters.

--The Everlasting (Alix E. Harrow), which I finished a few days ago and have seen several people discussing since (probably because it's up for a Hugo). I liked it more than some of you did, but didn't love it.

I haven't started another novel(la) since. After talking to Kas (who's most of the way through the series-so-far) last weekend, I went ahead and put the second Dungeon Crawler Carl on hold, and somehow my brain seems to think that's what I'm going to read next, which is awkward given that I don't expect it to arrive in the super near future.

On the nonfiction front, I read a bit more of Braiding Sweetgrass, flipped through some gardening books, and started rereading Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace in hard copy (I read it in ebook almost exactly a year ago). I really like the feel and the spirit of this, and it's packed full of information that flows in a way that makes it hard for me to actually retain a lot of said information. I picked up the hard copy from Book Outlet in hopes that having a physical book would give me better odds of actually being able to usefully refer to bit of it.

Watching: Some more of both Justice in the Dark and Witch Hat Atelier.

Growing: Yesterday we acquired and planted five tomato seedlings (and a few other seedlings that still need planting). More on that in another post later, hopefully.

I have made a tactical mistake

Jun. 6th, 2026 04:20 pm
rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
Recced Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire to a couple of people lately, picked up my copy again to refresh my memory of something, and now it has its teeth in me and won't let go until I reread the whole thing and I've already had to go to YouTube and listen to the Cry Cry Cry cover of "Cold Missouri Waters."

And then I found an amazing quote from the songwriter, James Keelaghan, which is one of the best descriptions of the book I've read:

https://nathans-roncast.castos.com/episodes/how-james-keelaghan-wrote-cold-missouri-waters-part-1

And so just the story itself is compelling. But for Norman Maclean's writing of it, like, I don't know if you know the book, but Norman McLean was sort of, the fire was an area of specialty for him, for, you know, it was one of his little private obsessions. And he always meant to write a book about it. And he started to write the book, but he died before it was finished. And the book was then sort of completed by his editors and also by his son.

So you not only get the story of the fire and incredible amount of detail about how the smoke jumpers fit into the National Forest Service, how they were created as a unit, but also stuff about the mathematics of how fire spreads in various circumstances. But you also get this sense of MacLean being a writer who is running out of time to tell the story that he really wants to tell because he knows he's dying. He's in a great deal of pain, I think, when he's writing the book. And all that comes through this, this impatient, irascible old man, this voice actually comes through in the book. And then I felt like, yeah, you know, I really need to write a song about this.


Anyway Dodge just ordered them to drop the heavy tools so I have to get back to the book now.

Me-and-media update

Jun. 6th, 2026 04:56 pm
china_shop: An orange cartoon dog waving, with a blue-green abstract background. (Bingo!)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll reviews
In the Space poll, 44.7% went with Douglas Adams ("that's just peanuts to space"), and the other options were pretty evenly split. Books came second to hugs, 57.4% to 70.2%.

In the Legacy media poll, 82.8% of respondents have a lot of DVDs and access to a DVD or Blu-ray player. Far fewer have cassetts or VHS tapes, and there's only one other person who has Super8/MiniDVD/etc tapes. *high fives* "At this point, it's just a lot of old stuff, help!" garnered 31%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
A little more Cetaganda (Bujold, narrated by Grover Gardner), and that's all. I haven't even started the little Chinese grammar book I bought for 99 cents. *hides* (It's not that I don't want to; my attention span is currently not conducive to sitting down and doing one thing.)

Kdramas/Cdramas
I finished To My Beloved Thief, which had a slightly draggy ending, but was otherwise a delight. Historical magic realism ftw! It made me want to rewatch the old Hong sisters' version of the Hong Gil-dong story, too (unfortunately, not available in streaming).

Also finished Absolute Value of Romance, which
spoilernavigated between the ending I didn't want (teacher/student romance), and the ending I craved (teacher is gay) to find a slightly unsatisfying middle ground. I don't know if Ga Woo-Su was actually oblivious to Ui-Ju's love confession or just ignoring it to avoid the awkwardness of rejecting her outright, but an unnecessary childhood connection and significant "first snow" moment kind of point to them getting together in the future, when a) that would still be completely inappropriate and jeopardise his teaching career, AND b) Ga Woo-Su has previously shown no sign of interest in her at all (imo). He and Yoon Dong-Ju are obviously boyfriends or pining for each other! Why on earth else would he have reacted so weirdly to being the second lead in Ui-Ju's webnovel? (Which, btw, was wildly inappropriate.) Someone please write me slash for this!! (Note to self: tag this post for Yuletide.)


So now, in solo-watching, I've started episode 1 of Hong Gil Dong on my phone (ie, on my exercise machine), and gone back to The Spirealm (fantasy horror Cdrama) when I'm in front of the TV.

We're still watching Miraculous Brothers (contemporary thriller, time travel) with a friend at a rate of two episodes per week. The central character is a hot mess with no moral compass but somehow likeable enough that I'm engaged, and the mystery built around a cold case is pretty cool. I'd put it in the same category as Glitch and Sisyphus. Hopefully it will delve into the scifi/supernatural aspects more at some point.

Pru came over for some Love Scout, and even with our erratic viewing schedule, it's completely swoony and great. I think once we're done I'm going to zoom through it again by myself.

Andrew and I watched two episodes of The Story of Pearl Girl (Netflix Cdrama), but the acting is too melodramatic for him, and I want some humour in my shows, so I think we're calling it.

Other TV
We're halfway through the first season of Italian drama Blocco 181, which I heard about on [community profile] polyamships. It contains a trope I find super stressful
to wit:leading characters steal drugs from drug dealers, argh,
but the three leads are all really charming. Warning for violence and a ton of drug use.

Finished season 1 of Scottish sitcom Dinosaur, about an autistic woman and her newly engaged sister. It's not laugh-out-loud, but I really like it and am looking forward to season 2.

A bit more Night Train with Wyatt Cenac on Youtube. Vaguely looking around for a new show, preferably English-language.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Cross Party Lines, and approximately a billion newbie lessons of ChinesePod. (I feel like I'm fiddling while Rome burns, but oh well.)

Writing/making things
This fic is never going to end. I don't even know why I'm writing it anymore. Maybe when we get to [community profile] fan_flashworks' amnesty round I'll get some momentum back? /o\

Life/health/mental state things
Messing around with storage and sorting out stuff. Biking a lot. Battling brain weasels at night. I'm in my mid-fifties, and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. My arms are hanging in there, just.

Language Learning
I've been posting Chinese practice sentences, vocab, and occasional observations to [community profile] china_shops_kjnl; feel free to follow. * The fact that I can parrot phrases from the podcast into Google Translate and it mostly comes out with the right characters/meaning still feels like magic. * I'm not learning enough characters. (I don't really know how to learn them except through Duolingo? Possibly ChinesePod's character course?) * I have little previous exposure to gamificiation, ergo no immunity, so Duolingo had eaten a big chunk of my life -- and would be gobbling more if my arms were up for it. (Stylus has arrived; shorter than I expected, but a vast improvement over fingers. I might get another, full-size one.) But I think the podcasts are better for listening and pronunciation anyway.

Goals
1. Sort out my stuff. Throw some of it away. (Do I want to start in on my books/DVDs? /o\)
2. Learn enough Chinese characters that I can read a graded reader.
3. Get started on the project of replacing my ancient gas oven with an induction hob/electric one.

Good things
Making sentences in a new language is really satisfying, and I love noticing grammar patterns and looking them up to see how they work. Podcasts generally. TV-watching-with friends. Walk in the bird sanctuary in the not-quite-rain. Good biking weather forecast for this week. Guardian and the Dreamwidth corner of Guardian fandom. *loves*

Poll #34692 Reading speed
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45


I estimate my fiction reading speed as

View Answers

faster than average
24 (53.3%)

average
10 (22.2%)

slower than average
3 (6.7%)

it would be faster if my so-called attention span didn't keep dropping out
10 (22.2%)

depends on the language (I read fluently in more than one language)
5 (11.1%)

other
1 (2.2%)

ticky-box of 我喜欢在家里休息 (I like to rest at home)
14 (31.1%)

ticky-box full of ever more elaborate breakfasts
13 (28.9%)

ticky-box of a raindrop sliding down a glossy green leaf
20 (44.4%)

ticky-box full of stripes waiting for a cat
18 (40.0%)

ticky-box full of hugs
30 (66.7%)

settiai: (Kes -- settiai (TriaElf9))
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

retro technology

Jun. 5th, 2026 06:00 pm
cupcake_goth: (Vampire Governess)
[personal profile] cupcake_goth
I'm seriously thinking of looking for a CD portable stereo. Yes, a boombox. I want to listen to some of the CDs I own, and I don't want to have to fight with iTunes/Apple Music to put music on my iPod. There are enough weird, incomprehensible steps to get new music I own onto my iPod, to the point that I'm going to need to set aside a day to see what I can manage.

So! Yeah, I'll add a boombox to my mental list of items I always look for at thrift stores.

---

Retro fashion technology: I've been getting into clip-on earrings. Mostly because I want to wear BIG earrings, and some experimenting has led me to the fact that BIG earrings are more comfortable as clips than as pierced.

Did you know that interesting clip-on earrings aren't easily found at thrift stores anymore? Just add that to the pile of reasons why thrift flippers/resellers vaguely annoy me. That, and Goodwill keeping their good merchandise for their auction sites. Grrrr.

 

Daily Check In.

Jun. 5th, 2026 06:51 pm
adafrog: (Default)
[personal profile] adafrog posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Friday to midnight on Saturday (8pm Eastern Time).


Poll #34691 Daily poll
This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 20

How are you doing?

I am okay
14 (70.0%)

I am not okay, but don't need help right now
6 (30.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans are you living with?

I am living single
8 (40.0%)

One other person
8 (40.0%)

More than one other person
4 (20.0%)




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

Scrivener themes!

Jun. 5th, 2026 06:55 pm
sineala: Mac laptop whose Apple logo has no bite (Young Wizards reference); text reads "my other Mac is a manual" (Young Wizards: My Other Mac)
[personal profile] sineala
While I have the brain energy, I figured I would repost a useful resource for my fellow writers using Scrivener, namely that someone on the r/scrivener subreddit has made dozens of free Scrivener themes for both Mac and Windows versions of Scrivener, if you would like to change up the color scheme of Scrivener a bit. (There's also a guide to Scrivener's Compile system there, if you need one.)

As a Mac user, this is exciting, because the Mac and Windows themes for Scrivener are not cross-compatible and I am pretty sure that every other Scrivener theme I have ever seen available for download is for the Windows version. But these come in Mac versions too! Now I can finally have a selection of pretty colors to choose from!

(This is also doubly exciting because the person who was making them was taking suggestions as they were posting them in packs to the subreddit and I asked if they could please make a version of the Cobalt2 IDE theme and they made a Cobalt2 IDE theme! For me! It's pretty great. I understand that not everyone wants Scrivener to look like their favorite VSCode or JetBrains theme, but I love this theme a lot, so.)
casemod: (pic#16512715)
[personal profile] casemod posting in [community profile] yuletide
Event: Casefic Exchange is a fanwork exchange focusing on investigations. These can be solving murders, retrieving stolen items, finding missing people, missions, and mysteries. As long as it has an investigation as its core theme, it fits with the exchange. We are an AO3 exchange; you must have an account and be 18+ to participate.

Minimum requirements: We allow 3 mediums: a minimum of 3,000 words for fanfiction, a minimum of 10 panels for a comic, or a recording of a completed fic of 3,000 words minimum with "casefic" as one of its tags. Works must include a fandom, character/ship and be of a medium that the recipient has requested.

Event link: [community profile] caseficexchange.
Pinch hit link: Current pinch hits.
Due date: Friday 26 June at 11:59pm EDT.

Available post-deadline pinch hits:



Thank you for considering!

June 2026

S M T W T F S
 123 456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 7th, 2026 01:18 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios