voleuse | Network

Fandom: Hench, Ask A Manager Blog
Pairings/Characters:
Rating: teen
Length: 2k
Creator Links:
Theme: crack taken seriously, superpowers, small fandoms, secret identities, crossovers

Summary: It's hench week at Ask a Manager!

Reccer's Notes: Ask a Manager is an advice column for workplace issues, and Hench is a comic about henchmen. This hilarious story is a series of good advice for both evil henchmen and people who manage evil henchmen, dealing with all sorts of workplace hazards ranging from the aftermath of sex pollen to how to manage someone who is using their evil to annoy their own team and beyond. It's amazing and funny whether you know either canon or not.

Fanwork Links: my wife doesn't know I hench, the evil sex ray made my employees do it, and more

Mods, I need some fandom tags.

luthien

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

In which I ramble on about how I write...

( My creative process )

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

sonia

I'm training for a 100K bike ride in April, so I'm going out on long hilly rides on the weekends. The weather has been delightfully sunny and warm (if a bit odd for January), and they've mostly been great rides.

However, people seem to assume they need to cheer me on. Maybe because I'm a woman, or because I'm not skinny, or because I climb hills slowly, but I do get there.

Half way up Spruce St., a woman waiting to pull out from a side street in her car gives me two big thumbs up as I approached. I smiled and kept biking. That would have been fine. But she rolls down the window and says, "You can do it!" I said, "This is only the thousandth time I've climbed this hill." She was smiling and nodding, and then her face fell as I said "thousandth," probably because she was assuming I would say, "first." Maybe she won't make as many assumptions next time.

Then, getting close to the top, a couple of guys pass me on mountain bikes and one of them says, "Good job!" I said, "You too!" After all, we had both climbed the same hill to the same point. He looked surprised, because young men get to congratulate middle-aged women, but not the other way around.

Yesterday I biked up the hill, down the far side, and then back up. At the corner of Grizzly Peak and Claremont (the beginning of the steep fast descent out of the hills), there is often a Mexican produce stand, and I like to stop there for fruit, even if it tends to end up bruised on the ride down. This time I bought pistachios and mandarins, and they did better on the descent.

When I rode up, there was an older white dude arguing about his total in Spanish with the young Mexican woman staffing the stand. They started over counting it all up and it turns out she was right (surprising me not at all). He said something about buying fruit for his friend with the nasty flu, and I said I was keeping my distance then. He said, "I didn't touch him or anything."

He had been over on the seller's side of the table, and now he came around and said, "Nice bike." I thanked him and answered his questions about it. At this point he's touching the handlebars and standing quite close to me, blocking my way forward. I paid the seller and said, "Excuse me please." He said, "Why do you have to be so rude?" I said, "I need to go home." He said, "You're being rude!" I sighed and backed up the bike to get out of there. He said, "Why do you have to be so American?" as I rode away.

Reminds me of the time a guy on a bike stopped me to ask for directions on a dark rainy night in Portland. I'm generally willing to help, but it was a wide, empty street and he stood too close and blocked my way, at which point I similarly said, "Excuse me" and biked around him. He called after me, "Don't go! I need help!" Which he may have, but he wasn't going to get it with threatening body language. He had a European-sounding accent and maybe it was ignorance of American personal space, but I wasn't going to ignore my spidey-sense to find out.

This dude at the fruit stand spoke unaccented English, so I don't know if he's from somewhere with less personal space, but I don't think I was the one being rude. I guess wherever he's from, he gets to touch other people's (women's) stuff and take up as much time as he wants.

littlefics in

seasonsofdrabbles

You have about 48 hours, as of this post, before both signups and nominations close on Sunday, January 18 @ 11:59pm Eastern Standard time (Countdown).

As you finalize or submit your signup, remember to check out Uncategorized Fandoms for crossovers and other fandoms you might have missed! Here's the requests app that may be easier to browse than AO3.

As usual, there will be a 12-hour grace period after signups close during which you can ask us to add tags to your requests/offers.

cephy

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

torachan

1. I had a very nice relaxing WFH day. (The only annoying part was the very loud construction on one end of the street and the tar smell which was coming from either that site or the construction at the other end of the street lol.)

2. We walked down to the Italian deli this morning to get sandwiches for lunch. Also a nice part of working from home! We knew it would be pretty hot today, so rather than walk there at lunch time, we went right after Carla woke up, when it wasn't too hot and there was still some shade for most of the walk.

3. I changed the bandage on my tattoo this morning and cleaned it up. It's looking really good! After changing it, there is still some fluid coming out, but doesn't seem to be any blood. They said to use the clear "second skin" bandage for up to a week, so I actually ordered some more off Amazon (she gave me enough for one change) in case I need to change it sooner. With the amount of fluid under it right now, I might.

4. Upon closer inspection it looks like Tuxie is missing some fur on his forehead, so I think he might have been in a fight while he was gone, but he seems fine otherwise. Better than that time he got a chunk of his ear ripped out.

scrubjayspeaks

It took the adults a long time to notice the correlation: the little boy would drop his blocks or markers or lunch, head popping up to scan the horizon, at the same moment a cloud of birds would rise up shrieking from the trees just outside the preschool fence. Compared to strange little boys and flocks of starlings, the adults weren’t very observant, and their ideas of what counted as a red alert danger mostly concerned parking lot etiquette and the misplacing of bake sale proceeds. By the time they were whispering about distractability and assessments, he knew seventeen separate distress calls and had been practicing his wheeling and diving patterns for the day he joined the murmuration.

---

LL#1357

adafrog in

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 #34088 Daily poll

Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 14

How are you doing?

I am okay
11 (78.6%)

I am not okay, but don't need help right now
3 (21.4%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans are you living with?

I am living single
7 (50.0%)

One other person
5 (35.7%)

More than one other person
2 (14.3%)

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.

kingstoken in

fandomtrees

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

thistleingrey

Random link: We Were the Scenery (2025), a 15-minute documentary about the experiences of two of the background extras in Apocalypse Now (1979). It's written and produced by their child.

Coincidentally, Piecework magazine's newsletter recently had a link to a short essay on Hmong story cloths and the US NE---same cluster of ruptures, different segment.

Aditi Rao's review of Spinney's Proto and Scappettone's Poetry after Barbarism asserts mildly that "both books mobilize language, and the prospect of translingual communication, as their objects of study, with markedly different political ambitions and veneers," but there's so much thought and care amongst the review's remarks that I can't summarize. The review's title is "Against Babel: or, How to Talk to Strangers."

mrkinch

I went out to Valle Vista again and walked out over the bridge and beside the reservoir just until I could see a bit of shoreline. I'd checked ebird before going and knew there weren't many ducks, so it was a disappointment but not a surprise to find only Ring-necked Ducks and a few Mallards. I'd hoped for Wood Ducks, but no. I did get a great view of the singing California Thrasher, and a couple of male Ruby-crowned Kinglets were getting territorial and flashing their bright red crowns. A Belted Kingfisher flew around rattling, though I never saw them, and I heard, once, a Red-breasted Sapsucker. Also heard my first Spotted Towhee song of the year. ( The list: )

I encountered no school traffic at 9:40 am, which was lovely. I'll try to go a little earlier next time, and walk out a lot further.

siderea

This was it. This was the week that America admitted America is going fascist – which is to say has gone fascist, i.e. has had its government seized by fascists with broad fascist support for imposing fascism which it is now doing with zeal, i.e. has an acute case of fulminant fascism.

I've been watching this bear down on us for a half a century, so it's slightly dizzying to finally have everybody else come into alignment. One of the basic exigencies of my life has been moving through the world being reasonably certain of a bunch of things that I knew the vast majority of my fellows thought were insane to believe. Over the last ten years, more and more people have been noticing, "what are we doing in this handbasket and where is it going?" but – as evidenced by the behavior of the DNC over the last year – it's taken the secret police gunning Americans down in the streets (since I started writing this: and throwing flashbang grenades at or into (reports vary) passing cars carrying little kids) for the greater liberal mass to come around.

Obviously, it would have been nicer for the realization It Could Happen Here to have not required It Happening Here to be the conclusive rebuttal of their pathological skepticism. But one of my favorite sayings is, "There's three kinds. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves," (Will Rogers) and this is why. Clearly America needed to piss on the electric fence for itself. I try to be philosophical about it.

I just felt, if only for myself and posterity, I should note this long-in-coming nation-wide realization has finally been attained.

I'm not getting too carried away, though. It's hard to be too jubilant when the problem that brought us here is still very much with us, by which I don't mean the fascism itself, I mean the terrible mentality on "my" "side" that causes that pathological skepticism and other catastrophic thinking faults that brought us to this pass and lead to the fascists getting away, quite literally, with murder.

torachan

Recently Finished

Peril at the Exposition
Second in the Captain Jim and Lady Diana mystery series. I was disappointed to see that this one doesn't take place in India, so I hadn't jumped right on it after finishing the first, but my backlog of audiobooks was going down, so I decided to give it a go. It was fine. I'll probably read more in the series at the same pace, but it's also not really what I'm wanting in a mystery (and that was the same with the first one).

Deeds and Words
Another second book in a mystery series, though it seems like this is also the final book. It was also just all right.

Riot Baby
Set in a slightly more dystopic alternate reality, this tells the story of a girl with psychic powers and her brother, who was born after the LA riots, thus being nicknamed Riot Baby, in alternating POVs. I liked this, but it felt like the two POVs weren't really well integrated.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
In the late 1800s England, a man gets a mysterious watch that saves him from a bomb exploding, and then is tasked with finding out if the watchmaker, a Japanese man who can remember the future, is the one who set the bomb. I didn't much like this at all. The first half or more was extremely boring, and then once the action seemed to finally get going, the characters got worse and worse, especially the lone female character, who seems to exist only as a plot device to make everything horrible for the men.

Little Monsters vol. 1-2
Two volume comic series about child vampires living in an empty city after an apocalypse. I liked it all right. The ending was good.

Sakura, Saku vol. 8

otw_news_feed

Posted by Caitlynne

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-440-0-9-446-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=275827

We spent the end of October and whole of November rolling out improvements across the site—from multiple fixes to the Download and Chapter Index menus on small screens to refreshing our footer and error pages to link to the status page. We also made an important security change: password resets can now only be requested using an email address when logged out. For some exciting news, we also finished our work making AO3 emails translatable! We’re now going to target other areas of AO3 for internationalization.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Danaël / Rever, Daniel Haven, Edgar San Martin, Jr, Jennifer He, Kiyazz, Lisa Huang, mgettytehan, ProtonDev, quen, ryeleap, Snehal Mane, and TangkoNoAi!

Credits

Coders: alien, anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Cubostar, Danaël / Rever, Daniel Haven, EchoEkhi, Edgar San Martin, Jr, Jennifer He, Kiyazz, Lisa Huang, marcus8448, mgettytehan, ProtonDev, quen, ryeleap, sarken, Scott, slavalamp, Snehal Mane, TangkoNoAi, weeklies, Yanpei Wang
Code reviewers: anna, Bilka, bingeling, Brian Austin, ceithir, Hamham6, lydia-theda, marcus8448, ömer faruk, sarken, weeklies
Testers: Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Deniz, hvalrann, Irina, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, ömer faruk, pk2317, Sam Johnsson, sarken, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.440

On October 28, we made some small changes to a variety of areas of the site, including updating our footer and error pages to link to the status page.

[AO3-7129] – Bluesky blocks AO3’s attempts to check whether a URL on the site is active, so we’re now skipping the check when you try to create an external bookmark of a Bluesky URL or try to mark a work as inspired by something hosted on Bluesky.
[AO3-7149] – We removed some unused code for formatting text.
[AO3-7175] – We updated cache-apt-pkgs-action from 1.5.3 to 1.6.0.
[AO3-7178] – We updated the gems for Sentry, our error tracking and performance monitoring service.
[AO3-6167] – When logged in as admin, restricted series are now included on a user’s series page and counted in their dashboard sidebar.
[AO3-7027] – We’ve been posting status updates on our status page and Bluesky account for a while now, so we’ve updated a number of pages to reflect that.
[AO3-7040] – We restricted the ability to search through invitations to admins with certain roles, instead of allowing all admins access to the search.
[AO3-7104] – We updated the page used for claiming your works if they were imported by Open Doors.
[AO3-7167] – When someone reports a comment to our Policy & Abuse committee (PAC), the report now automatically includes the user ID of the person who left the comment.
[AO3-6484] – We made a small change to the code that generates the HTML class names we use for hiding work blurbs by muted users. We were hoping this tweak would improve performance, but unfortunately it made it worse. So we reverted it later.

0.9.441

On November 5, we made some improvements to the admin side of AO3 and deployed the first of what would be several changes to fix issues with the Chapter Index and Download menus on small screens.

[AO3-6484] – We reverted the change to the blurb code that worsened performance (it’s later).
[AO3-4519] – If two of your pseuds are set as owners of a collection, the collection will no longer be counted twice in your dashboard sidebar.
[AO3-7142] – Under certain circumstances, the number of collections in a user’s sidebar was different than the number of collections on the user’s collections page. The number on the collections page was right, so we updated the one in the sidebar to match.
[AO3-7166] – We upgraded the will_paginate gem to version 4.0.1 to fix a deprecation warning.
[AO3-7183] – We upgraded the version of actions/upload-artifact from 4 to 5.
[AO3-4629] – On small screens, the Download and Chapter Index menus could overlap the buttons, making them impossible to close. We made them narrower and adjusted their position to make sure you can always close them.
[AO3-6542] – We gave specific admins the ability to access user Preference pages.
[AO3-6833] – When you submit a ticket to PAC or Support, the submission to their ticket trackers will now automatically include information about which form you submitted.
[AO3-6931] – We split the “Assignments sent” and the “Challenge default by USER” into two separate emails and updated the text while we were at it.
[AO3-7071] – We made the emails you get when you reply to a comment translatable.
[AO3-7171] – We will now include the user ID of a profile page when it is reported to PAC.

0.9.442

On November 8, we deployed a single-issue release to fix menus having problems on multi-chapter works.

[AO3-7195] – Following our last release to update Download and Chapter Index menus, we fixed a bug from that update which was causing Chapter and Download menus to be cut off on small screens.

0.9.443

On November 17, we deployed a grab bag release targeting bugs and improvements in a variety of areas. We also made a change to improve account security by only allowing password resets using an email address (as compared to a username) if you’re logged out. We announced this change on social media as well to get the word out.

[AO3-3976] – Series links in subscription emails will now show up in red and be stylized like all other email links.
[AO3-6054] – Works marked as inspired by or a translation of an existing work would show on your Related Works page even if you hadn’t approved the relationship—now they won’t do that!
[AO3-7134] – The tips for new users linked in the new user help banner will once again open in a pop-up instead of as an ugly, unstyled page.
[AO3-7159] – You’ll no longer get an empty message if you press Accept or Reject on the Co-Creator Requests page with nothing selected.
[AO3-7180] – The pseud name field is now marked as required on the page for creating a new pseud.
[AO3-7202] – We fixed a issue that was causing the Chapter Index menu to be cut off in the Low Vision Default skin.
[AO3-7061] – To reduce unsolicited password reset emails, logged out users who want to reset their password must now enter the email address associated with their account, not their username.
[AO3-7204] – We upgraded appleboy/ssh-action from one version to another.
[AO3-7037] – If you request a password reset and it fails, it will now redirect you to the Reset Password page instead of the homepage.
[AO3-7039] – We’ve restricted which admin accounts have the ability to grant invitations to people waiting in the queue.
[AO3-7070] – We prepared the emails you get when you leave a comment on a work, admin post, or tag (if you’re a tag wrangler) for translation.
[AO3-7115] – We updated the error messages you may get when you request a password reset while logged-in and something goes wrong.

0.9.445

Our November 25 release was a big milestone: all existing AO3 emails have been internationalized and are ready to be translated!

(Our deploy script accidentally bumped us ahead, so this ended up being released as 0.9.445 instead of 0.9.444.)

[AO3-5542] – If a gift exchange didn’t use tags, its Sign-up Summary page used to have a permanent and misleading message saying the summary was being generated. We’ve updated it to display the correct message: “Tags were not used in this Challenge, so there is no summary to display here.”
[AO3-5668] – When determining whether to display the “Fandom” sort button, the challenge request summary sometimes ended up loading all prompts in the collection—now it won’t!
[AO3-7187] – If you try to create a skin with a title that’s more than 255 characters long, we’ll now tell you the title is too long instead of giving you a 500 error.
[AO3-7190] – Trying to create skins that included a ^ used to result in error messages missing part of the text. We’ve fixed that, which should make the error message far more helpful.
[AO3-7201] – We made one more change to the Chapter Index menu, which was still too narrow in some browsers on Android devices.
[AO3-7205] – You can add private bookmarks to collections even though they won’t be listed on the collections’ Bookmarked Items page. We’ve now added a warning to the success banner to let you know to expect this.
[AO3-6941] – We’ve added more information to the browser titles of many of our comment-related pages.
[AO3-7056] – The emails you get when someone replies to or edits a reply to a comment you’ve left are now ready to be translated.
[AO3-7116] – We updated the wording of the reset password link on the login form.
[AO3-7168] – When a series is reported to PAC, the report now automatically includes the IDs of the series creators.

0.9.446

Our November 30 release focused on changes submitted by first-time contributors to our project!

[AO3-7121] – We fixed a bug that was causing bookmarks of unrevealed works to link to the work’s Bookmark page even if you weren’t the work creator.
[AO3-7133] – The “Flat View” button on your Statistics page wasn’t styled correctly when selected—but now it is!
[AO3-7181] – For tracking purposes, admins have to enter a valid ticket ID in order to edit a user’s pseud or profile. We’ve made sure the field for the ticket ID is clearly marked as required.
[AO3-7185] – We’ve removed the comment form on draft works and replaced it with a message saying you can’t comment on draft works.
[AO3-7138] – We standardized the way the code displays participants in Collections so that site skins with CSS distinguishing them will correctly see participants displayed on both People and Membership pages.
[AO3-7212] – We updated the version of actions/checkout from version 5 to version 6.
[AO3-7198] – When logged in with some admin roles, admins can now more easily search for all invitations sent to specific email addresses.
[AO3-7199] – Some admins have access to a page that provides an overview of a user’s works and comments, but the link was only available on User Administration pages. To make things more convenient, we’ve also added the link to user dashboard and profile pages.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-440-0-9-446-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=275827

siderea

This is blackly hilarious and absolutely worth a read.

Leftist journalist Laura Jedeed showed up at an ICE recruiting events to do scope it out and write about what she found. What happened next is... eye widening.

2026 Jan 13: Slate: "You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof." [Paywall defeater] by Laura Jedeed:

At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America’s Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé—one which omitted my current occupation—I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.

The catch, however, is that there’s only one “Laura Jedeed” with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country’s general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump’s unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you’ll find articles with titles like “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.

In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.

[...]

I completely missed the email when it came. I’d kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but I’d grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.

“Please note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,” the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps I’d need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driver’s license information, an affidavit that I’ve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: “If you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.”

As I mentioned, I’d missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.

And that might have been where this all ended—an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox—if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. “Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,” it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) “Please complete your required pre-employment drug test.”

The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadn’t smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I’d waste a small piece of ICE’s gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I’d failed.

Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.

Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.

According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”

I clicked through to my application tracking page. They’d sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. “Welcome to Ice. … Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.”

By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.

Click through to read the whole thing.

trobadora

Running late again. Normal services should resume tomorrow!

Today's writing

More

fandomtrees work.

Tally

( Days 1-10 )

Day 11:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

daegaer,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 12:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 13:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 14:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 15:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 16:

china_shop,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)

dhampyresa

Prompt 8 for this year is "Talk about your creative process." which made me realise it's been a while since I've had a Story Song. Usually when I have a story I'm working on I have a song that goes with it, that echoes some aspect of the plot, setting or character (dynamics) and yet lately... Nothing. Maybe that's why everything has been feeling so empty and been so hard to write?

ANYWAY all this is a long-winded way to ask for music recs.

glinda

This week I've been working on making a good start to one of my resolutions, to start a new recipe notebook. (When I first started learning to cook in an organised fashion, while I was going my post-grad, I took a nice notebook I had and wrote down all my succesful recipes in it. It's a multi-coloured decade's worth of recipes that I refer to regularly even now that I'm a vegetarian and many of the recipes aren't one's I'd ever cook now.) I've been meaning to start a new one for a few years now, but never got round to it, because, well I had my tablet and most recipes I was cooking that weren't in actual cookbooks were on the internet and it was just easier to look them up, but it's really come home to me in the last year when I've gone to look something up and it's just gone. (Not even random people's food blogs, but places I'd expect things to be like the guardian or the good food magazine page.) So I've started in on recipes from my 'cook new recipes' challenges from the past few years, and a significant percentage of them are lost to link rot and paywalls.

But the other thing I've noticed - and part of what makes me want to keep the project up - is that my handwriting is really rusty. I've had to make fairly heavy usage of my tippex mouse because I keep missing letters out of words, not even in the analogue version of typos just I'm so out of practice of writing by hand that I'm half-forgetting how to form the letters properly. I used to have a problem with missing out letters when I wrote essays because I was writing so fast to keep up with my brain - the main reason I switched to typing, as it's much easier to keep up with the speed of thought/ideas that way - but I'm just copying out recipes here. Though on the plus-side, forcing myself to slow down, to form the letters properly is making it a more meditive experience than I expected it to be.

I've always prided myself on having nice handwriting. Ever since we did a unit on the Victorians and spent that whole term perfecting copperplate script I've written a minorly adapted version of that. (I adjusted some letters to be more easily read by modern eyes, so I wouldn't get marked down for mis-spelling words because my teachers that didn't recognise my old-fashioned letters.) All through secondary and university my preferred method of studying was to make notes and the rewrite my notes and I still have piles of notebooks about the place in neat multi-coloured copperplate. So it's both weird and minorly upsetting when my handwriting isn't neat despite my best efforts. No doubt with regular practice it'll improve but at the moment I'm falling a low way short of my own high standards for my handwriting.

It's a ridiculous thing to be having feelings about, I am aware, but nonetheless, I am having them. My handwriting isn't as nice as it used to be - less smooth, more effort for less pleasing results - and it annoys me. I'm feeling a little rusty here, it's a thing.