+ snowflake_challenge is a month long happening starting Jan 1st. Blog, tidy up your journal, meet new people. Always a good time, especially if you're looking to get back into the swing of things.

+ goals_on_dw is a great place to find various challenges to carry with you into the New Year (colls' Fannish 50 is a really fun one!)

+ comicsfanfiction has a great post up: Looking for Other Communities to Post to?

+ There's a Heated Rivalry community now: gamechangerhr.

+ Guesss who managed one. whole. icon post. it's a meee.

01-04 stranger things
05-08 good trouble
09-15 wheel of time
16-16 babylon 5
17-25 comics
26-28 pluribus
29-41 interview with the vampire




H E R E.

( Year In Fandom meme )

I had an epic, long, convoluted mess of a Wheel of Time dream last night - maybe because I saw a video from the costume exhibit on Insta right before bed idk - clearly this means today's fandom has already been chosen.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 8

Wheel of Time
the children we once were by QuickYoke (18, 083 words). Moiraine and Siuan, before the Tower. Both stories gripping tightly. Book!verse. Actually a prequel to a 60k fic, but I'll have to save that treat for later! Rec-Cember waits for no one ;)
When she turns a cramped corner in the crawlspace, a needlepoint of light greets her. It's small as a distant star in an otherwise ink black sky, but it is there. Moiraine shuffles forward and presses with all her might. The sound of a faint click, and an opening in the wall slides up to let her out.

Moiraine squeezes through and collapses on the other side, breathing heavily. When she sneezes, a plume of dust shivers off of her like a second skin. The floor beneath her is polished marble in a deep blue and gold pattern. Moiraine would recognise it anywhere. The air around her seems to hum, as though a glass had been struck with the flat edge of a knife and the sound is forever on the brink of fading. With dread rising in her throat, she looks up and climbs to her feet.

Early afternoon light streams through the windows of the throne room, tall and bursting in radiant patterns to mimic the rays that shine through them. Every surface is polished until it feels like standing upon a pane of glass or perhaps still water. The squared pillars and the arched midnight ceiling reflect perfect inversions of themselves down into the ground, so that it is less like walking through a chamber and more like being hung between the infinite space between mirrors; she is an insect suspended in a sea of abyssal amber.

The throne itself is ensconced atop a low-slung dais. Plain and unadorned but for an enormous disk of pure gold that enshrines the head of whosoever dares sit there in a halo. The chamber is empty, but still she wraps her arms around herself, glancing about for sign of any royal guardsmen lurking in the usual places. There are none.

They cancelled WoT. Motherfuckers.

I was a bit sneaky during the last meal yesterday and caught most of the first half of the premiere during the live event.

( To Race The Shadow )

Last season I had a hoot watching along other folks at tar_valon, and we're doing it again. There are still three episodes up for grabs if you'd like to do one of them.

The first three will be split up over six days, so not a ginormous dump on the 13th. Honestly so much fun talking over stuff with others, and we do our best to curtail any book spoilers for show-only folks :)

There's an 11 minute preview up on Amazon \o/ Also yt.

( Read more... )

tv_talk did a bunch of genres for a 2024 Rec Fest, and that was very cool of them. Extremely late to the game, I threw in a rec for WoT. Figured it should go here as well.


Show Title: Wheel of Time
Audience Rating: rated TV-14 with violence, some nudity and language.
Warnings: Season 2 deals with a culture that enslaves and tortures.
Length of Episodes: 54-69 minutes.
Length of Series: 2 seasons, 8 episodes each. Season 3 premieres March 13th.
Why you recommend it: Do you like a large and varied cast of characters? Romantic and platonic BFFs? Do you like pretty fantasy costumes? Cool magic systems? Extremely cool villains? An expansive fantasy world with varied cultures? Does a whole magical faction with a lot of power in the world, consisting only of women, peak your interest? (behold our awesome lady Pope!) How about psychosexual fixations? Some loyalty kink? Bound by fate to fight the Dark One/doomed by the narrative?

There are so many great characters on this show!! Though season one opens on a much smaller scale, and was strongly hampered by Covid and a main cast member abruptly leaving. The world opens somewhat through the first season, but in season two the political games and factions come much more into play. And there is evil in the world.

Or to parrot the flawless rec from an angry chud on Twitter: Season two is just a bunch of middle-aged women with strong jawlines talking at one another.
(false, but also, ✨✨✨)

To close this off: they cast Shohreh Aghdashloo. I am very aware this is highly relevant to some of y'all's interests. *g*

(We're doing episode reaction posts again this year at tar_valon btw. Much fun!)

( I love having read the books so I don't care about spoilers, teaser trailer for meeeeeee )

March 13th :D

+ Tried to be helpful with my mom's sink and borked the whole thing. Got new parts today, which the guy behind the counter picked out, and they did not fit one another :/

+ Wheel of Time is getting shiny leather editions, with new art and everything. Inside me there are two wolves, one is cheering and one is clutching a wallet while weeping.

+ Another Star Wars rec, you say? Well, there's so many movies and shows now! I'm still counting it as a win multi-fandom wise, just you try and stop me.

Rogue One
wrong place, wrong time by hellotailor (5,404 words).
How my space husbands met 😊

The man called Chirrut smiled a smile that Baze would later learn to recognize as bad news. 'Hypothetically,' he said, leaning forward. 'If someone were to suggest hijacking this vessel and getting everyone out of here, would you help to remove the guards on this patrol level?'

Baze fumbled the tie he was using to fasten his hair, snapping it against his knuckles. 'No! Do I seem crazy to you? Just sit tight for another few hours, then you can get lost in the connection point at Mataou like everyone else in this shithole.'

'That was my original plan, but this ship is no longer bound for Mataou.'

Baze looked up sharply. Chirrut's face was serene, almost amiable. Very possibly the serenity of a madman. 'What?'

Chirrut shrugged. 'We should have passed through an Imperial blockade this morning, but the engine sounds never changed. They're taking us somewhere else, probably outside the sector.'

Listening to the implacable certainty in Chirrut's tone, Baze was caught between two warring instincts: his automatic distrust of strangers spouting paranoid bullshit, and his decade-long belief in the Empire's ability to fuck him over at every available opportunity.

+ Wheel of Time has a poster! Air date will be announced this Saturday! (is the horniest of shows gonna drive thru this Moiraine/Rand thing for me? jfc they just might. the mind boggles.)

+ Wildlife Photographer of the Year's People's Choice 2024 are up. Some really cool shots!

+ European Federation of Journalists to stop posting content on X.

I followed the South Korean mess a couple of days ago on BlueSky; felt so nice to have a calm and linear timeline of events, with some solid reporting happening.

(Aaand now they've removed the time stamps on tweets. Truly unrivaled self-sabotage.)

+ 20 Astonishing Indie Games To Play Or Wishlist Immediately. I hadn't heard of most of these myself, and I tend to have my ear to the ground. I already nabbed the Write Warz demo.

+ New French Guidelines Recommend Trans Youth Care, Denounce "Wait-And-See" Approach.

+Biden bars new ‘forever chemicals’ from expedited approval . Any bit of a guard railing they can get in there.

+ Things are not boding well for this Rec-Cember either, le sigh. Today the house was crowded by not one but two sick kids. At this rate, it'll be a miracle if I don't get sick again. And then my mom with the tv blaring nearly the whole day, meaning I get no reading done. Oh well. I'll keep on until I run out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
reminder to Self: you picked a 150k beast to read tho dumdum

Stranger Things
one of those new wave boys by glorious_spoon (2,510).
Had me at buddy roadtrip.

“That’s like two hours from now, plenty of time to nap,” Steve decides, kicking off his shoes and falling backward against the mattress. It creaks ominously beneath him, but the bedspread doesn't smell like anything worse than bleach and stale cigarettes. He shoves his hair out of his face, closes his eyes, hears Robin snort out loud. “Wake me up when it’s time to go.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Robin sighs, but it sounds amused. Possibly even fond.

Steve sticks his thumb up without opening his eyes. “I think you mean charming and generous, and oh, also, thank you, Steve, for giving me a ride at ass o’clock in the morning, something like that.”

Nabbed from rionaleheart
TV questions: pick five TV shows you like (in no particular order) and answer the following questions. Don’t cheat!

1. Interview With The vampire
2. Wheel of Time
3. Sarah Connor Chronicles
4. Yellowjackets
5. The Mandalorian

( Me and by goldfish brain having to scroll up to see what fandom each number is for every single question. )

+ Random icon button gave me a Star Wars icon, so that's today's fic pick for #Rec-Cember!

Star Wars
when you lay me down you'll only bury bones by onespaceace (18,959 words)
AU where Mando couldn't save Grogu at the Seeing Stone (Chapter 14: The Tragedy). This grabbed me beginning to end, both the POVs and the character interactions were *chef's kiss*

Luke jerks awake with a gasp, and immediately gags.

Artoo whistles a question behind him, but he can't give a better answer than the groan behind his clenched teeth. He shuts his eyes and swallows hard a few times until he's sure he isn't about to throw up in his lap.

There isn't much recorded about Force visions anymore - at least, not anywhere that Luke has looked - but he knows that what he saw wasn't a dream. Not really. Shaking, he presses a hand to his throat, running his fingertips over the unmarked skin there, where he swears he can still feel the impossible heat of blaster fire. There's no way of knowing if what he saw has already come to pass, but there's a twisting deep in his gut that tells him they're too late. He can't tell if it's the Force reaching out to him, or simply his own fears, but the cry for help that echoed across the galaxy to him had jolted him from meditation hours ago. There is every chance the child is long gone; their Mandalorian defender long dead.

But Luke, for all his faults, has never learnt to quit while he's ahead. Until he reaches Tython, until he finds the child, there's still a hope that he can't quite abandon.

+ Got out of bed at an acceptable time today! Meaning I got out of the house at a semi-acceptable time!! *is victorious*

+ I am sweating a disgusting amount. It is way too hot. No me gusto.

+ If I've cleaned out my office and set up the desk by the end of the week I'm buying myself ten new icon slots. I need a gd carrot.

+ Picked up some yumyum cheeses today; a local cheese made in apple cider, a maple syrup whiskey cheese, and a chunk of good parmesan. I need to start eating better and cooking, and I guess that makes this carrot number two? Now I need to pick some recipes and print them out or something, bc my phone is a god damn distraction/fugue state machine.

+ Via rogueslayer452: Two new communities have emerged: raikantopeni for Thai dramas/media, and cnovels for everything related to Chinese novels/webnovels.

+ Billie Eilish dropped Lunch a few days ago, so there's everyone set for the song to their next femslash vid. Don't watch unless you're prepared to get backhanded by the 90s.

+ Amazon is set to do the Nick Cage Spider-Man Noir live action thing, and I honestly cannot wait. If it's bad, 50/50 it will be bad in hilarious ways (bonus hilarity if it's the best Marvel show in a good long while so we can't lose :DDD ). Also a Phoebe Waller-Bridge run Tomb Raider series!!

+ Hellblade 2 release and the reviews are looking excellent. They've also been greenlit for their next game, so the studio is not immediately up on the chopping block as I feared (XBOX did fuck all to promote it, seemed they were sending it out to die quietly). Playstation looks to be receiving a steady dribble of XBOX exclusives, so I'll probably wait until that happens. Very much suited for the darker months anyways.

+ Finally got my butt in gear on saving some icons again, as well as textures. Very much in need of fonts still.

+ I'm almost half-way through putting up my old icon masterposts, woop woop. Sadly some of them don't actually register as image files? So I can't re-up them. Fingers crossed it's not the same for my spankulert posts; I went through when I discovered imgur would be deleting stuff and saved them, in order and everything. There's already some missing images in posts :/

eta found the fix! Search the folder for .web, and opening them individually in photos I can then save it as a .png :D

Oh, an actual icon post as well:

01-02 fallout
03-04 abbot elementary
05-12 baldur's gate 3
13-14 wheel of time
15-20 love lies bleeding (check your cinemas, if it's showing, just go for it! Grimy lesbian love story with a sprinkle of magical realism. My top movie of the year.)
21-29 loot
30-32 storm




H E R E

My reaction to a third of the scenes in the finale ✨✨✨
( finale reactions )

I have some complaints, but overall the finale was good, and I wanna marinate in that a bit ☺️

+ Yesterday I didn't get to bed until real late because I keeps compulsively checking back in on this gif-set from 2x07. And having so many feelings. It's bizarre.

Wheel of Time has always been simmering away in my brain. Oh, for about three quarters of my life almost. But none of it particularly revolves around the Forsake. But they had to go and cast Fares Fares, and just. Let him loose with those hands of his.

(To be clear: still full brain rot over Moiraine and Nynaeve, forever faves. Also getting competition from Egwene now! And Perrin continues to be my cozy.)

Buuut. The WoT Show tag is crickets *sigh*

I did try to make a community to have some folks post stuff after the finale, but no luck there so I deleted it. Imma have to make my own fun right here.

And tomorrow is the finale! 😬🙏🫣

Hoping it's a great closer, so the show's popularity can grow, ensuring we get the whole thing (as whole as it gets with five or six seasons). We really need the finale to not flop. 2 years is a long time to build a solid fan base but they need word of mouth to do it. Prayer circle, etc etc.

+ In other news, looks like the trip will be cut short by almost a week, meaning I'll probably be ashore Tuesday. Still stuck on the boat for another ten days as repairs happen, but fingers crossed I can get home for a bath and a ten hour sleep. And new socks! Second trip in a row where every single pair has holes on the heels. I think it's the new shoes.

+ Once I know the date we come in I'm arranging the work schedule with the person on the other shift, and then sending in my resignation. 15 years. I gotta move on. *deep breaths*

+ Hope everyone is enjoying the return of Our Flag Means Death. I know the previews were positive. First thing I'm grabbing when we dock! Meanwhile, episode discussion posts are up at ourflagmeansgay (member's locked).

A middling episode, but considering the previous two were bangers and the next one is the finale, I shall graciously accept. By which i mean complain beneath the cut.

( Book spoilers. (whups pressed post by accident...) )

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT TWO LADIES WHO FOR DECADES HAVE PRETENDED TO HAVE HAD A FALLING OUT TO CARRY OFF THEIR PLAN TO SAVE THE WORLD WHILE ALSO BANGING IN SECRET. AND TO CONTINUE CARRYING OUT SAID PLAN ONE HAS TO FAKE-BANISH THE OTHER TO AVOID NOTICE, BUT SHE DOES HAVE TO BANISH HER FOR SHOW IN FRONT OF PEOPLE - SHE'S BASICALLY WIZARD QUEEN - THEN THEY STATE ETERNAL DEVOTION USING THE MAGIC OATH STAFF, PRETTY MUCH GETTING SNEAK MARRIED?? AND HAVING FEELINGS ABOUT SAID BANISHMENT BUT FOLLOWING THROUGH LIKE THE LASER-FOCUSED QUEENS THEY ARE.


IT LOOKS LIKE THIS, by nervouspearl
(getting stabbed by that tiny eyebrow lift tbh)

Now I know it's in fashion to capslock over small stuff that you can read into, but that's not what this is! Every thing I've said is textually accurate, you could have these two severely competent and extremely hot ladies on a secret mission to save the world in your life. You just gotta give season one of Wheel of Time a generous chance. Covid happened. One of the main cast left in the middle. But there's still good stuff, and then eight episodes later season two will be there to emotionally bully you.

Doesn't that sound nice? 👉👈

(this post is brought to you by eyebrow-twinge and tiny headtilt. And a hunger for more WoT in my circle I am go-look-at-tumblr famished)

Trigger warnings apply for depictions of physical and psychological torture, though no gore or sexual stuff. (the episode, not my post 🫠)

This Vulture review says it really well:

Obscenity in art is a powerful thing. Not cussing and fucking, though they’re pretty great too, and thankfully in some abundance during this season of The Wheel of Time. True obscenity — the profaning of the sacred, the desecration of the holy, the soiling of the pure — is a powerful thing when you want to depict what evil really looks like.

( Eyes Without Pity, aka Ow: The Episode. No book spoilers. )

+ I just got the word: the individual internet on board has been unlocked. New WoT episode tomorrow CONFIRMED.

+ Amber Benson and Charisma Carpenter are involved in an upcoming audio drama, Slayers, A Buffyverse Story. (Whedon is not involved) Sounds like good AU fun. Out October 12th.

+ "Inverse vaccines" could be the beginning of the end for autoimmune disorders. Sounds like some wonderful progress has been made!

+ Judging by what I've seen in my circle these Shadowheart icons by inkcharm will be of great interest.

+ It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy. Not shocking, but yikes.

+ How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain.
Day by day, Musk’s companies control more of the Internet, the power grid, the transportation system, objects in orbit, the nation’s security infrastructure, and its energy supply.

And yet. At a jury trial earlier this year, Musk’s lawyer repeatedly referred to his client, a middle-aged man, as a “kid.” The Wall Street Journal has described him as suffering from “tantrums.” The Independent has alleged that selling Twitter to Musk was “like handing a toddler a loaded gun.”

+ Bill Willingham announced he was releasing Fables into the Public Domain. DC is of course firing back. ComicsBeat coverage, AV Club coverage. Curious to see where this one goes.

+ The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul.
Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of impulses, our perpetual miracle — for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says.