Happy New Year!

Jan. 3rd, 2026 08:58 am
oracne: turtle (Default)
[personal profile] oracne
While the church for my choir's New Year's Eve performance was not absolutely jammed, it was pretty full, including the balconies, and judging from comments from friends as I exited through the sanctuary, it was an excellent and meaningful performance. Jean, who used to sing with us, said she had cried through the entire part three. Whoa. It was also special because for one of our regular soprano soloists, Jess, it was her fiftieth performance as a soloist.

Rebecca and Jess are founders of Variant 6, my favorite local small vocal ensemble. Rebecca is on the left, Jess on the right, in gold:


"Laudamus Te" from last year's NYE Bach B Minor Mass.


After the performance, I was too wiped out for dinner; luckily, a bus came pretty quickly. I got home, ate dinner, removed my eye makeup, and crawled into bed. Surprisingly, after my afternoon coffee, I managed to get to sleep fairly soon. I don't recall hearing many fireworks (apparently, someone saved their illegal firecrackers for the night of New Year's Day...a lot of them).

New Year's Day, I had decided our menu was nachos and another small trifle. The nachos had cheese, pre-cooked chicken seasoned with adobo and mild salsa, and spinach. The trifle was in a glass loaf pan: more cinnamon graham crackers for a base, a layer of spiced peaches (from a jar), a thick layer of whipped cream, pumpkin snaps, blueberries, and a drizzle of the sugar syrup from the peaches. It all turned out great!

January 2, I hung out with [personal profile] drinkingcocoa and family.

Today is laundry and more Flight Rising. I have to go back to the dayjob on Monday, so I might do some cooking today or tomorrow as well.

Cold night

Jan. 3rd, 2026 10:03 pm
katriona_s: (mikebo)
[personal profile] katriona_s
Yesterday and the day before yesterday (1 and 2 Jan) it's been fine, though yesterday evening there came rain then sleet, the temperature dropped. This morning it's again sunny but the air was cold, and in the evening again the temperature was low... When I feel cold I tend to feel lonely or helpless. I fold my rabbit in my arms, her soft fur and warmth comfort me much...
tinny: Something Else holding up its colorful drawing - "be different" (Default)
[personal profile] tinny
Here's my last icon drop for 2025! All challenge icons I've made in November and December and haven't posted to my journal yet. For [profile] bestof_icon purposes, these icons were all made in 2025.

Teasers:


64 icons, mostly Wu Lei dramas, but also Guardian, Heated Rivalry, Love on the Turquoise Land, and some movies )

Concrit and comments very welcome! Take and use as many icons as you like, credit is appreciated. If you want to know whose textures and brushes I use, take a look at my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

i wake up dreaming

Jan. 3rd, 2026 12:27 pm
usuallyhats: close up of Jo Grant from Doctor Who; text reads "I don't know what I've been worrying about." (jo is cheerful (and sarcastic))
[personal profile] usuallyhats
Slightly belated happy new year one and all! I have decided to try and get back into posting and commenting on Dreamwidth this year, let's see if that bears any fruit beyond this post.

I am not making any big new year's resolutions this year, because there's some work stuff going on that is likely to eat a lot of my energy and I don't want to set myself up for failure on top of that, but I am considering a bingo card of things I'd like to do this year. I think I probably need 24 things to make a decent card, and I'm up to seventeen eighteen (thought of another one as I was posting this), so I'm getting there!

(Work stuff: my university merged with another university about eighteen months ago, the library is currently being restructured and is about to lose some helpdesk staff, so my helpdesk duties are increasing, plus we're losing working from home AND we haven't actually done any of the massive amounts of work it'll actually take to merge our systems yet, so in conclusion: bad.)

Other life stuff: I am in the queue for ADHD and autism assessments! ADHD I hadn't really considered as a possibility until fairly recently, but the more I look into it, the more it fits, and my GP suggested it might be at least part of the reason I've spent my adult life just getting more and more exhausted. And I've been pretty sure I'm autistic for a long time without feeling a need to get formally diagnosed, but I'm hoping if I do I can parlay it into getting to keep some working from home as a reasonable adjustment.

Media round up! Here's some non-book media I've been into this year (books I feel like I've covered):

- I'm really out of the habit of watching films, but I loved both Wicked: For Good and Wake Up Dead Man recently. The nuance in Wake Up Dead Man's portrayal of belief and non-belief, and the things it was willing to make space for in service of that, was particularly excellent.

- [personal profile] tellitslant is visiting and has been showing [personal profile] alwaystheocean and me Pluribus, what an excellent show (we're six episodes in). In an age of AI I love that it's so clear that Carol's messy, genuine, individual rage and grief is wildly preferable to the plurbs' anodyne samey niceness, but I'm also appreciating how the show is resisting easy messages? Very good all round, so glad that season two is already being written.

- I have also fallen head first into Shetland, particularly the Ruth and Tosh seasons, but I also really enjoyed the Jimmy seasons too. I love its commitment to every character being a rounded and coherent individual, it's so satisfying.

- After really not loving Campaign Three of Critical Role, I'm very pleased to be incredibly into Campaign Four - it has the feel of a big chunky complicated fantasy novel and I am having an excellent time.

- I've also got into Dimension 20 this year and am having an excellent time meandering through their back catalogue.

- I was sure there was other TV I'd been into this year, but having looked through my TV app, apparently it has all just been the above plus Taskmaster and Game Changer? I'm also still very very slowly rewatching Classic Who in order and having a lovely time. It's in colour now!

(no subject)

Jan. 3rd, 2026 06:17 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
What the hell did I just see on the news.

spare game codes

Jan. 3rd, 2026 10:11 am
wychwood: G'Kar is lost in translation (B5 - G'Kar translation)
[personal profile] wychwood
I have a bunch of game codes going spare for anyone who wants them! We don't have to be mutuals or anything, and feel free to pass them along to other friends etc. Please take them! Some of these games are great, but I can't play two copies.
list of games )
selenak: (Seven by Cheesygirl)
[personal profile] selenak
Eleven / Kathryn Janeway: Why? She's his type. Unlike many another version of the Doctor, he's good at endearing himself to competent authoritative women. Depending on when in their respective timelines this meeting occurs, he might also impress her by bringing his very own nurse (Rory) along, which given that Voyager is desperate enough for nurses to let their own Doctor draft Tom Paris will definitely be a plus.


Five / Benjamin Sisko: Why? Mutual bonding over argumentative companions and cricket vs baseball. Five would be charmed by the Ben and Jake father/son relationship (and depending on whether this is before or after Adric dies also melancholic), and wouldn't ruffle Sisko's feathers the way some other Doctors might.


Nine / Jean-Luc Picard: Why? Picard would respect Nine's chip on the shoulder and not wanting to talk about any personal issues (and vice versa). (Though Deanna Troi, sensing Nine's emotional state, wilil try to corner him, but that's another issue.) Depending on the situation they're in when they meet, there might be some prickliness at first, but I think generally they'd find it easy to ally against the menace of the day and maybe share clipped yet meaningful conversation over some tea and/or bond over Dickens once that's done before Nine takes off again.


Fifteen/ Michael Burnham : Why? Much of her personal arc is going from repressing it all stoicism to openly emotional behavior, accepting your past grief and guilt and continuing to do better (and helping others) in the present - that's what he's practically the embodiment of for the Doctor! They would work well as allies, and there would definitely be dancing at some point. Also, she'd make him promise to visit Zora now and then as he travels through time.


Three / Saru (who was a Starfleet Captain, too): Why? Three can come across as incredibly high handed on first impressions, but Saru is a masterful diplomat, would spot Three is actually knowledgable and competent beneath the bluster and would lintrigue him as a Kelpian so any initial problems would be quickly moved aside in favour of teaming up. 'They would also bond over Buddhism.


Thirteen/ James T. Kirk: Why? No, not because he'd hit on her. (TOS Kirk, not AOS Kirk, i.e. he's not his pop cultural stereotype.) She'd consider him fun to have an adventure with, he'd be curious and charmed and very amused once she inadvertendly outs Scotty's inflated time estimations, whereas with male versions of the Doctor he might feel initially one-upped.


Twelve/ Christopher Pike: Why? Even if it's early Twelve at his prickliest, Pike's general relaxedness and experienced diplomacy would help smoothing things over. Conversely, Twelve could empathize with the whole "knowing your eventual awful fate" part without insisting on talking about it the way some other Doctors might. I predict at least one meal cooked by Pike while Twelve plays guitar before the Doctor leaves again.


Unfortunately, I can't think of any version of the Doctor who'd get along really well with Captain Archer because Archer would, depending on the point of his timeline, suspect the Doctor of being a tool of the Vulcan High Command, the Admiralty or the Xindi, while the Doctor, any of them, might like Porthos but would find Archer incredibly annoying, and that's before they find out about certain episodes involving slavery or torture.


Therefore, you get a bonus pairing:

Seven/ Gabriel Lorca (no, not the one we never met, I do mean the season 1 of Discovery guy) : Why? Mutual mindgames! Who manipulates whom best? Who sets a trap for whom while pretending to be their harmless facade? Who figures out the truth about the the other guy first? Might there be conversations with increasingly disturbing subtext about mentoring young women with a chip on their shoulder and tremendous guilt and anger issues? One thing is sure: it would be incredibly entertaining.


The other days
tinny: POI - The machine watching John Reese (poi_machine pov john reese)
[personal profile] tinny
Mount TBR 2025 Book #07 Rivers of London #07
Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovich
Rivers of London #07


Peter uncovers clues that the Faceless Man Martin Chorley is executing the final stages of a long-term plan rooted in London's two thousand bloody years of history.

thoughts - slightly spoilery

* I still like Peter's POV, although in some scenes he's still a little bit too naive considering all the things he's seen.

* What I liked a lot is that he doesn't always react ideally in tense/dangerous situations. I found that very realistic.

* I'm not quite sure what to think about the psychological stuff, the colleague who needed counseling after working with Peter, etc. I guess it's a good thing to be mentioned seven installments into a series, but Peter is still being very cavalier about it.

* I really liked how he went back to talk to the river, by making a sacrifice to the Mother, which he (not quite but mostly) knew how to do, which makes sense because he really knows a lot about the rivers by now. She accepted it because she knows and likes him and knows it was given in the right spirit. He still gets important parts wrong and almost suffocates in the process, angering the sewer authority friend he persuaded to let him go into the sewers alone, against regulations. All of this was just hilarious.

* I very much liked all the conflicts he had with Leslie in this book. Her motives are discussed, and they very uncomfortably reminded me of typical reactionary views. Which is kind of a pity, because Peter is often wrong with his quick judgements, and it would have been fitting to have him be wrong about Leslie, but I don't think he was.

* I also very much liked the fairy he found in his cell, and that she's related to Molly. That was so heartwarming and cute!

* There wasn't all that much about his immediate family (neither his parents nor Beverly), but what there was was cute, too. And some of it thought-provoking, because he apparently had never thought about the fact that Beverly is very very old and he is not, and what consequences that will have on a relationship. The Old Man and his wife were setting an interesting example there (and an option for the god to make his lover somewhat immortal).

* I'm not sure what happened with Mr. Punch in the end, and why it even worked. So I guess the main plotline of the book somewhat escaped me. Oops.



4 stars - very quick read as usual, and some things I really liked and hadn't expected



Because I forgot to take this draft with me on vacation, I'm posting it after the reviews for books 8 and 9, so this is the last post for my 2025 Mount TBR challenge. I failed it by three books. /o\ I blame work for this, and I hope that will be less stressful in 2026.

I was trying to catch up at the end, and got to "almost two" - if those had been the last two, I would have made an effort to finish them both. As it was, even that would not have helped, so I wasn't motivated to do that. Those will be the first books of 2026, then, since I've already started both of them.

1 - 5 stars - Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky The Final Architecture #1 [DW link]
2 - 2 stars - Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier Miss Merkel #2 [DW link]
3 - 4 stars - Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire Toby Daye #10 [DW link]
4 - 1 star - Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin [DW link]
5 - 5 stars - Murderbot Diaries 1-4 by Martha Wells [DW link]
6 - 4 stars - Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur/We Have Been Harmonized by Kai Strittmatter [DW link]
7 - 4 stars - Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovich Rivers of London #07 [DW link]
8 - 3 stars - Der Markisenmann by Jan Weiler [DW link]
9 - 3 stars - The Village Teacher by Liu Cixin [Graphic Novel by Zhang Xiaoyu] [DW link]

Yellow; Thad | Crazy Handsome Rich

Jan. 3rd, 2026 10:52 am
wickedgame: always & forever (Legend of the Seeker)
[personal profile] wickedgame posting in [community profile] lgbtrainbow

https://i.imgur.com/GkMGfjs.png

silveradept: Domo-kun, wearing glass and a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, sitting at a table. (Domokun Anchor)
[personal profile] silveradept
Let's begin with a very important warning: if there's still content you want to archive on LiveJournal, yours or others, do it now. There are changes being implemented that move continually in the direction of severing parts of LJ from each other, and quite possibly nuking or jettisoning the English-language side of it entirely. The importer may not work quite as swiftly as it usually does due to an influx of import requests, but get yourself into the queue, or use some other archiving tool, post-haste, if there's still anything there that you want to capture and preserve.

A significant amount of material has entered the public domain in the United States on 1 January 02026, put it to good use! And for the more detailed deep dive, your friends at Duke University have you covered for the more detailed examination of what we're getting into the public domain.

Here's a fact for you: that the most consistent and largest donor of money for toys to a children's hospital in Oregon have been strippers, and this year, they broke their own record.

We managed to close the hole in the ozone layer, thanks to dedicated and international cooperation. It may not stay closed for long, because this world is what it is, but we at least managed to get it done.

Let go of the idea that gender is a single point, a destination, an immutable truth, and support those who question and who are on the journey to finding what they want from gender in that moment. Acknowledging that gender is mutable, and that for some, it is constantly in mutation, can help those who are questioning or on a discovery journey not feel like they have to be absolutely sure and correct and that once they set upon the journey, they are not allowed to deviate from it.

A promising prevention method against HIV would require a twice-yearly shot and widespread availability to be effective. The fact that we have, in two generations, gotten much closer to giving the finger to HIV than we thought possible is a grand testament to science. (And a condemnation of those chucklefucks who continue to try and impede distribution of such and aid to places where HIV prevention would be most effective.) And, beyond that, we keep finding people who have managed to clear the HIV virus entirely, so it's possible that not only will we be able to prevent new infections, we may be getting very close to giving the finger to HIV infections already present. Scouring the world of that virus will be a great triumph.

For those of us in the mindset of the new year, consider this: the things you have said, unintentionally, may be the things that others are carrying with them for years. As has been said, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. If you have people that trust you, even if you don't want to ask what it is you said that they've been carrying and that you didn't mean, the reassurance and the understanding that such things are mist and should be treated as such, and that you are sorry for the hurt you caused, will be good for them. If we shadows have offended, we are sorry, please let it be mended.

The Archive of Our Own posted an administrative post about the progress they feel they've made about making the Archive less welcoming to racism. I don't know how to parse this update, since it doesn't seem like a lot of concrete things were done on their end?

Rob Reiner, actor and director, died at 78 years of age, with his wife, in what is being investigated as a homicide. (And also, the administrator made a social media post disparaging the man in his death and fluffing his own ego while he did it, but that's only mentioned because if you look for things about the death, you'll probably find the post.)

Old coins, new targets, animals, nudity, techbros who can't help themselves, and more inside )

Last for tonight, it turns out that humans are generally nicer, warmer, and more friendly than our media accounts would have us believe.

A story of a man who did not get to say thanks to an idol, but who did manage to convince a group of carolers to sing his most holiday-appropriate song at him, and then get blown away when they found out that he could, in fact, sing.

And, perhaps most importantly in these times where we think about the turning of the wheel of the year, sometimes the best good news that you can give to others is "yet here you stand." (And no, the rate of people choosing to complete suicide isn't higher in the winter months, so there are more people out there who are also choosing "yet here you stand" along with you.

(Materials via [personal profile] adrian_turtle, [personal profile] azurelunatic, [personal profile] boxofdelights, [personal profile] cmcmck, [personal profile] conuly, [personal profile] cosmolinguist, [personal profile] elf, [personal profile] finch, [personal profile] firecat, [personal profile] jadelennox, [personal profile] jenett, [personal profile] jjhunter, [personal profile] kaberett, [personal profile] lilysea, [personal profile] oursin, [personal profile] rydra_wong, [personal profile] snowynight, [personal profile] sonia, [personal profile] the_future_modernes, [personal profile] thewayne, [personal profile] umadoshi, [personal profile] vass, the [community profile] meta_warehouse community, [community profile] little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
selenak: (Porthos by Chatona)
[personal profile] selenak
Attention, anyone who has watched the most recent French two part filmed version of The Three Musketeers (part 1: "D'Artagnan", part 2, "Milady") - do you regard it as worth watching? As it's now available via German public broadcast (in their streaming archive, that is), I started to watch D'Artagnan, and while because it's a French version we finally get the correct pronounciation of everyone's names, the first half an hour or so which I watched before breaking it off exposed me to a whole new set of WTFs in addition to some old ones. Basically, my reactions were these:

Spoilery for this movie reactions ensue )

Also, Stranger Things ended. Now I enjoyed the show while never being a passionate fan. If you want my ST opinions: the third season was bad but otoh introduced Robin, hooray; generally speaking in terms of the horror factor the first season was best when the Upside Down was just unknowable and, well, strange, while the actual villains such as they were were humans exploiting other humans, but I liked the character development most of our heroes got through the ensueing years, plus a lot of the homages to 80s tropes were just fun, so I certainly don't regret the show continued beyond that first season. (Though the fact that shooting this show took a decade while the Watsonian time passing between seasons was much shorter made it inevitably visible both the original child actors and the adult actors playing teens in the first season looked increasingly older than their characters were supposed to be.) In terms of the overall series finale, I liked how the characters ended up and am impressed that a spoilery decision was made. ) I also was amused by Mike in the montage being shown wearing dark horn rimmed glasses while writing, because the only reason for that I can see is to make him at least vaguely resemble a young Stephen King in one last homage. Overall, for me, the series ended on a high note.

Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 1

Jan. 3rd, 2026 06:46 pm
luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hi, I'm [personal profile] luthien. I'm 50-something and Australian. I found fandom in 1998 and have been writing fic since 1999. While I've had quite a few fandoms in the past, I don't have any really active fandoms atm. But I've just done yuletide for the - counts - 12th time, so I'm still here and I'm still writing.

I've done the snowflake challenge quite a few times now. I find it's a really good way to plug myself back into fandom at what's otherwise a fairly quiet time of the year, particularly when there's no specific fandom making me engage on a regular basis. It's nice to stop and think about fandom and fannishness, to communicate, and to meet some interesting new people. It's also nice to be more active on DW. I miss the days when fandom was more conversation-driven, and snowflake tends to be a good entryway into all sorts of sometimes unexpected conversations.

Shows I've been watching over the past year include: Stranger Things (like everyone else I know), Pluribus (one of the best shows I've seen all year), the Gilded Age (which has beautiful costumes, Carrie Coon chewing up the scenery with gusto, and an absolutely fascinating look into the Black elite in 1880s New York as well as thinly disguised portrayals of the Vanderbilt family), Slow Horses (if you're not watching it, you should be), Severance (ditto) and I've yet to start on Heated Rivalry - a friend will be coming after me with a pitchfork if I don't start it very soon, though.

I like fine teas, especially Taiwan oolongs, interesting perfumes, especially Serge Lutens, and cats, of which I have three. Oh, and a very spoilt shetland sheepdog.


two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Fic - Bears the Crown

Jan. 3rd, 2026 07:42 pm
mab_browne: A favourite icon for The Sentinel (Jim and Blair)
[personal profile] mab_browne
A belt and braces posting for my TS Secret Santa fic, written for DuoIntheRain. I was hideously embarrassed and stressed by how long it took me to write this tiny bit of fic, although probably not as stressed as Ainm. But we got there and I didn't leave my lovely recipient hanging. I also had fic written for me by KateF, with a mix of Xmas celebration, Jim rising to the occasion and cases getting solved, which are all excellent things. :-)

1223 words, pure as the driven snow really, fluff and angst, first kiss, post-canon. Blair is a little stupid mixing alcohol and driving but nothing comes of it.

Solstice wreaths and epiphanies

Bears the Crown )

Book Review: A Children's Bible

Jan. 3rd, 2026 12:42 am
clavally: (Default)
[personal profile] clavally
Just finished my first book of the year.

Title: A Children's Bible
Author: Lydia Millet
Genre: Sci-fi/dystopian

PEACH RATING
Plot: 3.5
Enjoyment: 4
Artistry: 3.5
Characters: 3.5
Heart: 5

=3.9 stars...but I think I'll just round this up to 4 stars

CAWPILE RATING

Characters: 7
Atmosphere/Setting: 8
Writing Style: 7
Plot: 7
Intrigue: 9
Logic/Relationships: 8
Enjoyment: 8

=4.25 stars

What an odd book. So, someone gave a children's bible to the main character's little brother and then the whole rest of the story was like an allegory for stories in the Bible. Every once in a while I'll be sitting here thinking about the book and then another parallel to the bible in the story will hit me.

click for spoilers )
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