Network

Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood.

I am up super early after another late night. There were still fuckers playing with fireworks last ngiht, and the dog was flipping out. We're going to have to take him to the vet and get his shots, and get some better anti anxiety meds, because the Prozac isn't doing shit.

He's been just a ball of stress the last four or five days, between the beeping and now the fireworks. Just Jebus on a pogo stick, it's sucked. I was in tears listening to him cry last night and scratch the door.

Aside from that, it was an okay day. We had a nice lunch. Were not able to get the cat's ashes. Apparently the director's son is in the hospital, and things are backed up. It would have been super helpful to to know that before I wasted the gas to go down there, but it's okay. I 100% understand that life gets in the way.

Jess had a game last night, here Strixhaven game which sounded fun. Though, there was some mumbling about "here comes the consequences of my own actions," which always sounds delightful.

Today, we have a game in the morning, run by

coyotegestalt and then we're restarting a former game, with me dming. This is another one of my homebrew worlds, which I'm nervous about, but also excited.

I'm almost done with the game, simply need to make one more character and I will be ready to go. I'm nervous, because this is all homebrew, so I'm very much hoping that they like it. The other server really enjoyed it, so the pressure is on to make this as engaging.

On that note, I'm going to go put on some clothes and consider breakfast. Everyone have an amazing Sunday!

Happiness is Accomplishment

Posted by Jenny

https://arghink.com/2025/07/happiness-is-accomplishment/

https://arghink.com/?p=32057

After weeks of not being able to get into the book we’re writing, I went off on a tangent and wrote two scenes we hadn’t planned on. Then I sent them to Bob and braced myself, but he wrote back, “These are really good.” I’m still on a high from that.

What made you happy this week?

https://arghink.com/2025/07/happiness-is-accomplishment/

https://arghink.com/?p=32057

Current Mood: hopeful

This is probably utterly hubristic of me

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

Current Mood: relaxed

Three Day Weekends Woot Woot

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Entry tags:

Artificial Intelligence: not as big a threat as Natural Stupidity

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Entry tags:

June reading

Last Night in Montreal - Emily St John Mandel
Midwinter Nightingale- Joan Aiken
The Witch of Clatteringshaws - Joan Aiken
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem - Nam Le
Red Sword - Bora Chung, transl. Anton Hur
A Magical Girl Retires - Park Seolyeon, transl. Anton Hur
The Spear Cuts Through Water - Simon Jimenez
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures 2, 3 and 4 - CRC Payne, Starbite
Batman: Nightwalker - Marie Lu
Nightwing 1: Leaping into the Light - Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo

( books and comics )

Entry tags:

games,
tv

TV report

My eyes are bothering me lately; anything close-focus is hard. Really challenging as most of my hobbies involve close focus. I have a lot of pain in my mouth and face so concentrating is also difficult.

TV seems to be the way to go but I feel like I've run out of shows.

Enjoying: Murderbot. Also loved The Pitt, and the Old Guard 2. Task Master and DropOut (Game changer, etc), continue to delight.

Other things I've watched:

Mr Robot. Gave up after one season. It's grim and humorless. I liked some of the actors a lot but the aesthetic was so gray on gray, and a high preference for very thin bodies and baggy eyes, like heroin-addict chic. For a thriller it's weirdly slow.

The storied life of AJ Fikry: A cromulent romance / drama on Netflix. Cute if not particularly memorable. It's about people who love reading and live on an island only accessible by ferry. Has multiple characters of color.

I watched 2 episodes of "Nobody Wants This", a rom-com with Kristen Bell. Her character falls in love with a rabbi. The characters felt really thinly drawn and so I did not care about them. There was just no there there, as they say.

The Last Breath: a drama about a survival story involving deep-sea construction workers (based on a true story). I liked this pretty well but think it would have worked better with some documentary-style explanations of what was happening.

Clean Slate: on Amazon Prime, a sitcom about a trans woman reconnecting with her father. I dropped this because I could not see what was happening! There seemed to be a gray film over everything! I might try it again later as it had some good humor and characters.

I tried season three of the Bear but it was unpleasant.

I played Dragon Age: Inquisition through twice, which was very restful for my brain actually. I think it would be a good idea to invest further in video games, which help me pass the time when I'm ill. I don't know much about gaming systems. I'd love to play Dragon Age Veilguard and some other newer games but how to decide on what kind of system to get? They are expensive. I got the Xbox 360 used and have absolutely loved having it.

What are you enjoying watching or playing?

Current Music: Alluded to in the title.

Entry tags:

DC Universe, Sandman: We could be heroes, just for one night, by Leigh Woosey.

Fandom: DC Universe; Sandman
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Morpheus, Alan Scott, Tomar-Re, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, OCs by the billions (including Reader?)
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 297
Content Notes: Nothing icky happens, but the story references Neil Gaiman’s Endless mythos;(1) dream transcript.
Creator Links: (Website): https://leighwoosey.co.uk/; (Instagram)

leighwoosey; (LiveJournal)

woogledesigns; (Twitter)

Leighwoosey

Theme: Working Together, Action/Adventure, Gen, Just Plain Fun, Non-AO3 Fics

Summary: One for Sandman fans: I had a dream of Morpheus, who saw an invasion of earth that would go through the dreaming to reach target. Morpheus, who foresaw the plan even as it was being dreamt up by the aliens, was obligated to mount a defense. He recruited two sleeping Green Lanterns, one of Alan Scott of Earth and one Tomar-Re.

Author’s Notes: People are always telling me to keep a dream diary, this is a concession.

Reccer's Notes: Raw dream content notoriously tends to be some-assembly-required narrative material, but in a 29 August 2010 LiveJournal post(2), Woosey described this downright jackpot he received from Dreamland: a cool premise complete with plot, grand spectacle, a firm grounding in the canon lore (note the smooth incorporation of the various Elseworlds Batman scenarios), implicit invitation to the audience (what would you have been doing during the Big Event?) and a clear if haunting resolution. The title is my own

metaquotes header.

Fanwork Links: We could be heroes, just for one night, by Leigh Woosey.

(1) Note that some commenters envisioned Morpheus from The Matrix.

(2) The entry has since been deleted; archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170821194033/https://woogledesigns.livejournal.com/69811.html

Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. We had such a nice time at Disneyland this morning. Too sunny but otherwise lovely weather and so few crowds!

2. We stopped at the farmers market on the way home and got some stuff from our usual vendors (the fruit leather guy definitely knows me now) but there was also a new vendor, a vegan Jewish deli that had all sorts of interesting stuff. Carla got a jar of some sort of pickle relish and I got some pastries including a stone fruit "cheese" danish (idk what the cheese was but everything was vegan so it wasn't actually dairy) that was super good and a pistachio cardamom apricot hamantaschen, which I haven't tried yet but that flavor combo is a favorite so I have high hopes.

3. I love that feeling on the middle day of a three day weekend when you realize that you don't have work tomorrow. That keeps happening throughout the day and it's a pleasant surprise every time. Definitely looking forward to one more day of rest.

4. Jasper's definitely got the relaxing down.

Small successes and mixed-up veggies

I'm very much in winter mode here as although some days are sunny, it's cold, and a lot of days are very wet. So not going outside much and not doing gardening, which I don't feel great about. I seem a bit beset by inertia in terms of things physical, possibly a mid-winter slump, but I'm doing indoors things just fine - well, the things I like doing, anyway. Not cleaning or organising! I do tidy up once a week before Fionna comes to vacuum, and occasionally the dishes get washed, but that's about it.

I've started another longer podfic - this one for the due South Big Bang. Am also continuing to add lots of new podfics to the Audiofic Archive (we got inundated by >600 short ones from a recent Voiceteam challenge). And I finished a personal project with the Audiofic Archive of adding streaming links to all the SGA podfics there so they can be enjoyed easily with no need to download zip files. That's 138 pages of SGA podfics! - and increasing each week, as we make more. Next fandom to complete is due South.

In the process I stumbled on Lim's old Fanvid page on Wayback, and the vid downloads still worked. Lim made avant garde vids with lots of altered graphics. Some are on AO3 but a lot of the SGA ones aren't. The Wayback page is here (with additional info and credits), and I downloaded the SGA ones and converted them to mp4 format here. CW for flashing, fast cuts, loud music in some of them. One, Mission Report, (lyrics) is a multimedia podvid where Lim created the lyrics, music, and vid, and sang it for the SGA flashfic comm.

In "first world problem" news, a grocery mix-up. My online delivery packer needs help with alliums! Ordered a bunch of spring (green) onions:
alt

And got a giant leek. Size matters! (in terms of making salads, anyway)

alt

Finally, I saw this amazing poem on tumblr, apparently written by nine-for-a-kiss as a teenager. It's very Dark-is-Rising-ish.

Entry tags:

disney

2025 Disneyland Trip #48 (7/5/25)

We were expecting it to be crowded today because of the holiday weekend but it was actually one of the least crowded days we've ever experienced at the parks.

( Read more... )

New Cover: “Everyday”

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/05/new-cover-everyday/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56350

Watch on YouTube

It’s a short and sweet oldy but a goody this time out, from Buddy Holly. Why this one? Why not? It’s been covered by just about everyone, from James Taylor to Erasure, and I really like the song, and I had free time this weekend, so here we are. If you like it, fabulous, if you don’t, well, it’s two minutes long, it’ll be over quickly enough.

And for those of you who have somehow never heard the original, here you go:

Watch on YouTube

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/05/new-cover-everyday/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56350

June 2025 Newsletter, Volume 201

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/31888

Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works'

I. SPOTLIGHT ON FICTIONALLEY IMPORT

Open Doors has nearly finished importing FictionAlley, a Harry Potter archive. With approximately 29,000 works imported so far, it is Open Doors' largest import yet. You can check out all imported works at the FictionAlley collection. Unclaimed works are currently locked to logged-in AO3 users only, but per Open Doors' agreement with the FictionAlley archivist, they will be unlocked 30 days after the import is fully completed.

All FictionAlley creators should have received one or more emails with links to claim, orphan, delete their works, or prevent the import of any additional works of theirs in the future. If you were a creator and did not receive this email, please contact Open Doors for assistance. You can also contact Open Doors if you would like to prevent future imports of your Harry Potter works specifically.

Open Doors has two other Harry Potter archives currently in their queue: HarryPotterFanFiction.com and MuggleNet Fan Fiction. If your email address has changed since you were a member of either archive, or you would like Open Doors not to import your works, please contact Open Doors. Please refer to the import announcements for a full list of how Open Doors can assist you with either import.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) coordinated with Board and Volunteers & Recruiting to formally decommission the Quality Assurance & Testing (QA&T) subcommittee—thank you to everyone who has served on QA&T over the years. Quality assurance and testing of AO3's code will continue under the oversight of AD&T's new QA Supervisor role. AD&T's latest releases have focused on various bug fixes, code clean-up, and monitoring improvements: check out the release notes. Also, Systems has installed some new Elasticsearch servers and repurposed the old ones as application servers! \o/

Open Doors announced the import of Absolution – The Inugrrrl Memorial, an InuYasha fanfiction memorial archive.

In May, Support received 3,177 tickets, while Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 3,763 tickets—a nearly 40% increase which is likely due to PAC's recent TOS spotlight series. PAC worked with Legal and Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee to review over 1,700 comments across seven posts, with more than 400 comments receiving a reply. PAC will also be recruiting soon, so look out for the upcoming recruitment post!

In June, Tag Wrangling neared completion of phase two of three of their committee-wide guideline discussions on fandom metatags. They also launched a new procedure which streamlines creation of new "No Fandom" canonical tags, which are canonical tags not specific to any particular fandom. The committee plans to post announcements periodically detailing new tags, including one in a few weeks.

In May, Tag Wrangling handled over 610,000 tags, or over 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore's Annual Bingo was a huge success! \o/ 25 participants completed at least one bingo, and 16 got a total blackout. Thanks to everyone who took part!

In July, Fanlore is running a themed month—Fandom in Color—which celebrates characters of color, the contributions of fans of color, and more! Check out their social media (Bluesky and Tumblr) for page spotlights throughout the month.

Communications is now overseeing the OTW's Convention Outreach division, which was previously run by Development & Membership. If you have inquiries regarding OTW's convention presence, Communications can be reached through their contact form on the OTW website.

TWC is finalizing their upcoming general issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, volume 46, which will be published on September 15. They are still accepting submissions for their Latin American Fandoms special issue until January 1, 2026.

IV. THE 2025 ELECTION AND GOVERNANCE

Elections announced the 2025 Election candidates; this year's election is contested, with three candidates running for two open seats in this year's election. Their platforms are available on the Elections website. Communications has been coordinating public posts, while Translation is working on translating candidates' platforms.

2025's OTW Board Election will take place on August 15-18. OTW Members who plan to nominate a proxy should contact Elections by August 6. Specific dates for Q&A and Candidate Chats will be made available on the 2025 Election Timeline page.

Development & Membership has been checking membership for Board candidates and donors who want to vote in this year's election, while Finance has begun preparing for the 2024 audit.

Board uploaded minutes from the April 2025 Board public meeting to the OTW website. They also approved two new Finance Bookkeepers, held check-in meetings with Legal and the Paid Staff Transition Lead, and continued to work with the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup. The Board Assistants Team's work also continues on several projects, including the Procurement Policy and Board Discord Server Guidelines revamp.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for two committees—Tag Wrangling and Support—and two subcommittees—News Post Moderation and Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution—this month.

From May 19 to June 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 147 new requests and completed 139, leaving them with 53 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of June 22, 2025, the OTW has 944 volunteers. \o/

New Committee Chairs/Leads: 2 Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Heads
New AD&T Volunteers: 1 QA Supervisor
New Communications Volunteers: 2 Convention Specialists and 3 TikTok Moderators
New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Mossie, Vihi, and 1 other News Post Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: 90PercentHuman, Hobgirl, Sparrow, and 1 other Policy & Admin Volunteer
New Finance Volunteers: Scott and 1 other Bookkeeper
New Open Doors Volunteers: Bette, devinwolfi, Kelpie, korry, November_Clouds, Pat Zarzecka, scattered_coreopsis, Starlings and 6 other Import Assistants
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Goal Supervisor; megidola and 1 other Volunteer
New Support Volunteers: 2 Chair Assistants
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Adri Jaimes, Lia404, ttom1323, and 5 other Translators
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Felipe and friki (Translators)

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Nary (Support) and 2 QA&T Leads
Departing AD&T QA&T Volunteers: runt and 1 other QA&T Testing Volunteer
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Leja, Evolcahra, and 1 other Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Lead
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Convention Specialist
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Import Assistants and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Sandra 002 (Volunteer)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: ladydragona (Supervisor); Daniailís, MFY11EP, Barbara Thomas, and 3 other Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Mirjam, DaisyJane, DanielUL, and 6 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/31888

Entry tags:

comm: sunshine challenge/revival

Sunshine Revival Challenge #2

sunshine_revival's next challenge is:

Tunnel of Love
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.
Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like.

This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. As an aro-ace person growing up in a time before we really had labels for those things (and, frankly, even now when some people still just don't get it), I've had a lot of experiences of being told that the way I loved people was wrong or not good enough. I'm... well, I was about to say I'm lucky to have people in my life now who don't see my love as lesser because it isn't romantic and never will be, and that is true, but also I have worked damn hard to accept myself as I am and to put energy into relationships with people who get me. So it's part luck, part skill. :P

I recently got a formal diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum. (I promise this relates.) This was something I had suspected for a long time, but having it confirmed has led me to take stock of a lot of past experiences and shine a different light on them. I've always had intense "special interests," but early on in life I learned to downplay them because of other people's disapproval. I think I am a much more... passionate person than others might suspect? I've only been able to let it show a little in fannish spaces where it's more accepted to fall in love with a fandom, or become infatuated with a character, or be swept off your feet by a storyline. Those aren't metaphors, it's really what it feels like, and I feel that way about a lot of things!

When I was a kid one of my special interests was ancient Egypt. I remember flipping through history books and feeling a physical level of joy and contentment as I pored over photos of pyramids and papyri, because I just loved loved loved what I was seeing so much. When the prompt asks about what gets my heart pumping, I think of things like that. But I learned to hide that part of myself because people didn't get it. I want to work on changing this. I know that kind of love is still there and I can still tap into it, and I want a future for myself where I'm proud that it's a part of me. That feels far away right now, but there was also a time when being proud of being aro-ace also felt very far away, so I think there's cause for hope.

Current Mood: full

Entry tags:

✨glimmers and good things - day 2 ✨

three tiny joys, glimmers, or moments of soft comfort from today

💇‍♀️ Got my ( hair dyed magenta! ) Bright, bold, and very me — it’s always a bit of a transformation, and it felt good to see that vivid colour in the mirror again.

🎾 Jannik Sinner, Ben Shelton, Grigor Dimitrov, and Mirra Andreeva all won their Wimbledon matches today — every one of them brought something joyful to watch.

🍔 Takeout burgers for dinner. We were completely wiped — two hours at the hairdresser left us sore, dysregulated, and done. The burgers weren’t fancy, but they were warm and easy and enough.

That’s me for today. If you feel like sharing your glimmers, I’d love to read them 💛
Be gentle with yourself, especially if the good things were hard to find.

Entry tags:

DaredevilExchange 2025!

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

sunshine_revival Challenge #2

Challenge #2

Tunnel of Love
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.
Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like

I'm not sure if I would categorize it as romance per se, but the one thing I love about summer in the northeast, where it's not warm year-round, is being able to go to an outdoor pool. I swim laps in an indoor pool, both in summer and the off-season, but I love being able to sit at an outdoor pool and read and relax. I joined a gym out where my mom lives several years ago, anticipating that I would need to move in with her, or at least stay with her for long periods, to help her out. The gym has both an indoor and an outdoor pool, and the outdoor pool deck is one of my favorite places in the world, and something I don't have in the city. The members are a mix of families with young kids, families with older kids, young couples without kids yet, and seniors, and it's fun to watch the kids play in the fountain in the family pool. It's surrounded by trees, and it's really just a lovely place to be when the weather is nice. It's definitely one of my top enjoyments in life.

As for the creative side of the challenge, I've never been much of a poet. So instead I'm going to share some summer-themed haikus by Bashō:

In bright summer moon,
and with softly clapping hands,
I herald the dawn.

Summer in the world
floating on little waves
of shimmering lake.

Orchid is breathing
its pungent incense into
a butterfly's wings.

Previous Days
Day 1

2,797 episodes of premium quality entertainment

I joined the New Tideland discord server, which is very big and busy and has a million channels, but I'm starting to settle in, mostly lurking or emoji reacting. It's a refreshing change from Star Wars fandom, I have to say. People are able to just...disagree and move on? Politely request that things go in different channels? Incredible. Still the occasional piss-on-the-poor whackjob out in the wild, but I think I've blocked most of them.

( spoilers )

I can't wait for the finale but also I'm distressed that there's only one episode left. This has been an emotionally load bearing 25 minutes a week for me.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Dimitrov v Ofner

Entry tags:

sunshine_revival Challenge #2 - Tunnel of Love

Challenge #2
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.

☀️ The Romance of Summer: A Love Letter to Tennis
When I saw the prompt What do you love? My first instinct was to be clever. Say something seasonal and tidy. Ice lollies. Sea air. The feeling of sunlight on your knees through the window. But the real answer is louder and messier and always true:

I love tennis.

Not just in summer. All year round. In slow January slogs and awkward 4 a.m. matches because they're in Australia. In rain delays and early exits. But in summer, on the clay at Roland Garros, on the grass at Wimbledon, it blooms. Everything gets bigger. Brighter. Louder. The highs hit higher. The heartbreaks sting sharper.

I love the weird rhythm of a tennis summer. The shift from clay to grass. The way I measure time by who’s still standing on a Friday afternoon. I love the ritual of it: cold drinks, strawberries & cream & prosecco, the particular way sunlight falls across the floor during a 5-setter I wasn’t planning to get invested in. I love the commentary, the chaos, and the wild narratives we build between matches. I love players who break my heart and players I can’t stop watching.

I love how tennis reminds me I still feel things at full volume. That I can cry over a match I knew they were going to lose. That I can believe, right until match point, that maybe this time it’ll be different.

Tennis is stupid and beautiful and exhausting and sometimes the only thing that cuts through the fog in my brain.

It doesn't always love me back. It overwhelms me. It distracts me. It makes me anxious and angry and euphoric and sleepless. But every season, every surface, I come back. I love it wildly. I love it anyway.

Every summer, I fall in love with it again. Even when I swear I won’t.

The Old Guard 2

The Old Guard 2 was awesome, but Netflix'd better greenlight a third movie right freaking now. I'm reading the comics, but that doesn't help with the cliffhanger because the plot of the movies is different.

The first film was already full of hot people, and they went and added Henry Golding and Uma Thurman to the cast. ^^

There's major m/m, as well as subtext f/f (canon f/f in the comics).