muninnhuginn | Network

Welcome aboard WED, everyone! Glad to see you all here this month, may it be a great one for writing!

It snowed here last night! And unlike the previous time this winter, it was cold enough that the snow stayed on the ground. I really should have gone for a walk, but felt very lazy today and only went out briefly for groceries.

Yesterday's and today's writing

Yesterday, I only wrote a small snippet and made some notes - but they were important pieces: I figured out how to end my

fffx fic!

For this story, I had a great beginning and I knew some thing I wanted to have happen, but until yesterday I was completely unclear about how to end it. And I always struggle with writing when I don't know what I'm writing towards. I find it really hard to write without having an ending in mind! Now I know what I'm aiming for - the story still has a gaping hole in the middle, but now it's just about plotting a course from Point A to Point B. *g*

Today, I poked at various

fandomtrees things, but didn't really make much progress. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive!

WED Question of the Day

Poll #34037

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

View Respondents

Do you have days when you forget to write?

View Answers

yes
2 (50.0%)

no
1 (25.0%)

it's more complicated than that
1 (25.0%)

Do you have strategies to help you remember?

View Answers

yes, I'll tell you in the comments!
1 (33.3%)

no
2 (66.7%)

it's more complicated than that
0 (0.0%)

I just want to tick a tickybox!

View Answers

tick!
2 (50.0%)

tock!
3 (75.0%)

tick!
1 (25.0%)

When I'm busy, I sometimes forget or just don't find any time/energy to write. So my strategy is to keep a physical notebook on my pillow so I'll be reminded when I go to bed.

The other thing that helps - because I do try to write every day, and don't want to break my streak - is to use alibi sentences with abandon. (Those are the sentences you write just so you can say you wrote something. No matter how short they are, they're still something - and enough of them in a chain can add up to considerably more. *g*)

Tally

Day 1:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

philomytha,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 2:

china_shop,

trobadora

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

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/la-perouse-memorial

La Pérouse Bay today

Although James Cook is the first European known to have reached Hawaii (then called the Sandwich Islands), he did not land on all of the islands. For instance, he passed by Maui but could not land there because the surf was too high and he could not find a suitable harbor. The first European to actually set foot there would end up being Jean-François de Galaup, Count of La Pérouse, who landed at the bay now named after himself on May 18, 1786.

On behalf of the French crown, La Pérouse embarked on an expedition in the Pacific with scientific and trade goals. Heavily admiring Cook, La Pérouse aimed to complete his discoveries made in the region. Arriving in Hawaii, he had much better fortune than the ill-fated Cook, who was murdered here. La Pérouse was able to trade pieces of iron for food, and also obtained an outrigger canoe and small pieces of native furniture. However, he was disappointed about the lack of water at La Pérouse Bay. Remarkably, he refused to claim the islands for France, writing that the natives should have the right to their own land.

After leaving the islands, La Pérouse met an ill-fated end when he disappeared and was presumably shipwrecked in the Solomon Islands. Today, he is remembered for his humanistic ideals and efforts to better understand the Pacific. Today at La Pérouse Bay stands a monument to him, erected by a group of French in 1994. A plaque nearby gives a more in-depth explanation into La Pérouse and his expedition.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/la-perouse-memorial

tedium_rss_feed

Posted by Ernie Smith

https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/17245690/tedium-trends-2026

https://tedium.co/2026/01/02/tedium-trends-2026/

The number 26, which gets back-burnered compared to numbers with neater divisibility, is an essential digit. And you’re gonna be hearing all about it in 2026.

Today in Tedium: In 2017, Google corporate parent Alphabet founded a holding company called XXVI Holdings, named for the number of letters in the alphabet. (26, for those playing at home.) The goal of the company was to better separate the different companies from one another—meaning that, in a corporate sense, Google is distinct, from, say, Waymo. The ultimate end-user-facing result of this subtle change is that, if you receive a 1099 tax form for revenue received from a Google-owned platform, you’re likely getting it from this seemingly obscure company. But, here’s the spoiler alert: It’s actually from the most common company in the world. It sort of points out the prevalence of 26 as a number in our lives. While Google is the clean, front-facing version of this giant company that is all over you phone (even if you’re an iPhone user), it’s the number 26 doing the dirty work. The number 26 is behind the scenes, but in 2026, it’s gonna be everywhere. And, as today’s Tedium highlights, everyone is going to be holding XXVI this year. — Ernie @ Tedium

“For obvious reasons, tₒ shall be called ‘doomsday,’ since it is on that date, t = tₒ, that N goes to infinity and that the clever population annihilates itself.”

— A passage from “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026,” an article published by Heinz von Foerster in 1960. Unlike most predictions about the end of the world, von Foerster, considered a key early figure in cybernetics, made his prediction in Science, the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (He and his colleagues also developed an equation for it, which one guesses his doomsday-predicting peers did not.) One silver lining, per von Foerster? We have control over the outcome. “Since today man’s environment becomes less and less influenced by ‘natural forces’ and is more and more defined by social forces determined by man, he himself can take control over his fate in this matter, as well as he has done in almost all areas of life where the activity of the individual has influenced his own kind,” he writes. Optimistic stuff.

Try as we might, this joke will never get old. (
gena96/DepositPhotos.com)

Oh good, another year of AI ruining wall calendars for everyone

Last year, you might remember that there was a real AI infusion in the year’s wall calendars, which made me do something unexpected: Ban Etsy calendars from my annual review of wall calendars.

In the 12 months since, the AI has gotten more realistic, and it’s infused even deeper in the calendars, some of which now appear on Amazon. And some of them are straight ripoffs—check out this semi-NSFW “Extremely Accurate Birds” calendar, which has cake for weeks and was created by an artist, and compare it to this “Various Actions” calendar, by a no-name manufacturer. If you’re looking for birds with big human-like butts, you will need to be more discerning to ensure that you’re getting something drawn by a human and not Midjourney.

A few highlights for 2026:

Space Cats: There is a strong overlap between modern cat wall calendars and late-’90s No Limit album covers, and this wall calendar definitely found the delta. (Also I hate to inform you of this, but it’s possible to get the wrong Space Cats calendar, because there’s another one. And a third. And a fourth. Collect ’em all, I guess!)

A Punbelievable Year: “The things you say/your lame dad jokes just give you away/the things you say/they’re punbelievable.”

2026 9 To 5 Bigfoot Calendar: I’m in the wrong line of business. I should be throwing the most insane visual ideas to Sora and Nano Banana and hoping that those lead me to create the next calendar of Bigfoot working a regular job like the rest of us. Word of warning: One of the images features Bigfoot wearing a leotard and leading an aerobics class, which should be a deterrent, but if you were thinking about buying this, probably isn’t.

Mud, 12-Month Calendar: Finally, a kind of wall calendar too hard for Gemini to realistically recreate in five minutes. However, you could probably recreate this on a rainy day with an all-wheel-drive vehicle if you so desired. If calendars are a way of selling a fantasy, a break from normal life, this mud-themed wall calendar ain’t doing it.

Aspire 2026 wall calendar: It seems like such a great way to make money. Hop on BrainyQuote, grab the best quotes, put some flowers behind it, and boom! Revenue. But as I noted in a 2022 piece on quotes, quotation cites like BrainyQuote go out of their way to obfuscate the sources of their quotes. Which means that these quotes could be real, or they could be made up. Wonder if the Aspire folks thought to add any Kurt Cobain quotes to this one.

Overall, the slop is seeping into the wall calendar this year, just like your Uncle Walter’s Facebook feed. I really need to get on building that wall calendar I’m too much of a coward to make.

26

The number of Oscars personally won by Walt Disney, 22 of which were in competition and four were honorary. (And one of which was an unusual bespoke Oscar with one giant statue and seven small ones, which was of course won for Snow White & The Seven Dwarves.) That makes him the individual with the most Oscars in Academy Award history, a record likely to be unbroken. (Show-off.)

I know, “now with more folic acid” isn’t exactly a great selling point for tortillas, but there’s a real logic to it. (miflippo/DepositPhotos.com)

Five reasons 2026 will be better than 2025

Your tortillas (at least in California) are getting healthier. A new law in California requires that corn masa flour, and products based on corn masa, include added folic acid—something already required by the FDA in other types of flour. The result is that corn tortillas, a staple food of Mexican cuisine, are going to be healthier for infants in particular.
A bunch more stuff is hitting the public domain. Books from Langston Hughes and William Faulkner are now public domain in the United States. Meanwhile, outside the U.S., works from a number of figures who died in 1955—most notably Albert Einstein and Charlie Parker—are also getting the public domain treatment, per the Public Domain Review.
Peace out, tiny shampoo bottles. One key part of business travel is the tiny toiletries that come in every single hotel room ever. But that’s starting to change, especially in Illinois, considered one of the hubs of event travel. A law banning tiny shampoo bottles in the state’s hotels took effect this week. (They join Washington, New York, and California.) You can’t take the bottles home, but the dispensers are more environmentally friendly anyway.
Utah’s ID checks are about to get even tougher. I’ve only been to Utah once, and when I went, I remember getting a lot of grief for leaving my ID in my hotel room and then attempting to order a beer somewhere. The state, known for having a lot of teetotalers, is further tightening its grip, requiring 100% ID checks and adding a big red “no alcohol sale” message on the drivers’ licenses of people with extreme DUI convictions. (Oh yeah, if you want to be banned from buying alcohol, you can just ask for an ID with that restriction. Nothing like a little state-sponsored self-control.)
We’re finally getting a little closer to the moon. After taking a multi-decade break from moon travel, NASA is sending astronauts within shouting distance of it for the first crewed mission in more than 50 years. The Artemis II mission, expected to launch as soon as next month, will have astronauts getting close to the moon, but not landing on it. But if all goes well, future landings might be in the cards.

The fingerprints of the past stick with us far beyond the actual people. It’s worth remembering that. (Alex Dukhanov/Unsplash)

The state of our Tedium in 2026 is defined by our loss

We lose people every year, but something about 2025 made those losses feel more visual and visceral than usual.

Two of the most high-profile news stories of 2025 involved murders of public figures—one in an assassination, two others by a family member. Political violence crept up, and it was painful whether or not their politics were your politics. A governor nearly had his mansion burned down while he was inside of it. And the flare-ups of the current political moment certainly feel like they’re not going away just because we changed the page on the calendar.

But I think there’s something a bit less dramatic and a bit more matter-of-fact going on. We are about 40 years from the peak of the monoculture, before television had yet to split into hundreds of cable channels, before computers and smartphones let us find our own tribes and self-select around our very specific hobbies.

And because of that distance, the truth is that we’re going to lose more important people in quick succession, whether we like it or not.

I was reminded of this when I was looking back at my coverage earlier this year for our year-end pieces. I had almost forgotten that we lost Biff Wiff, the oddball character actor that became a late-in-life favorite of I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson, at the beginning of the year. (To be fair, there was an absolute avalanche of news around that time.)

Watch on YouTube

But I was also reminded of this in a more visceral way. I was in a store, shopping for hiking boots (hoping to take part in a first-day hike), when I got an email informing me that Stewart Cheifet had just died. This hit me harder than most.

For those not familiar, Cheifet is one of the most important journalists in the history of technology, because of two important things he did: First, he created and hosted Computer Chronicles, a nationally syndicated television show highlighting important technology trends. (It was on PBS, the natural home for such a show.) And second, once the show ended, he went out of his way to ensure that the show got properly archived, working closely with the Internet Archive to solve that problem.

He essentially gave many formative technology trends some of their only television exposure. (As I noted in a February 2025 piece about technology, Cheifet gave the topic of my story, ACCESS.bus, some of the only video-based coverage around.) But is also reflected the sheer challenge of the monoculture at this time. When he started around 1983, we were many years away from having a network like TechTV or G4. (Linus Tech Tips? Hah, Linus Sebastian wasn’t even born yet.) For most viewers, if you cared about computers and wanted to watch a show about it, this was it.

And by taking the time to archive it, he essentially created the window through which so much of our understanding of tech history flows. Like it or not, we live in a visual medium. As great as it is to have a John C. Dvorak column or a 6,000-word feature about a tech concept, having Cheifet talk about that same concept on a screen is a lot more impactful to digital culture.

When Cheifet’s obit was posted on Hacker News on Wednesday, some people described falling asleep to marathons of Cheifet’s old videos (many of which were done with Gary Kildall, himself a stone-cold tech legend). He represented the bridge between the monoculture of tech and the microculture of tech we have now.

I will be the first to admit that Cheifet won’t hit the radar for the average person, but he is more important than he seems. The work he was doing was extremely uncommon then, but is everywhere now. Every major media outlet that presents tech in video form owes him a mountain of praise.

We are going to see more losses like his in the years ahead, and they’re going to come from a moment where these figures were dominant in culture in a way that your favorite creator could never think of. Sure, it’s just how time goes, but I think they’re going to hit harder because the people we lose are likely going to be those you watched on TV every week for 20 years, not some faded figure from another time.

The loss of Rob Reiner underlines this. He died a mere four months after creating a long-awaited sequel to his first film, This Is Spinal Tap. People pointed out that, while his recent films have struggled to make quite the same impact, his early work has numerous quotable moments that have become cultural touchstones. Someone with a similar skill set, starting today, would struggle to reach the same heights, and not even for artistic reasons. When we live in a world of 1,000 true fans, it’s hard for one person to so effectively dominate the culture.

This year represents a decade since 2016, when we saw many extremely influential musicians die in a single year. We lost David Bowie, and Prince, and George Michael, and Leonard Cohen. (That’s only the tip of the iceberg, by the way.) We may be due for a similar tipping-point year like that. Our heroes of the TV monoculture era aren’t going to be with us forever.

Recently, I wrote a piece about losing a friend, and as I get older, I’m sure more of those pieces will come, and they will hurt every time. Loss is not a new thing in my life, but there’s cultural loss and personal loss. I feel like we’re a point where the cultural loss will feel personal.

And yes, it will be hard. But remember the impact it had on us.

Fe

The atomic symbol for iron, the 26th element of the Periodic Table. It’s one of many elements, but one of the most important ones. After all, iron gave us steel, and is key to the human body’s function via its bloodstream. (Also, it’s found in the sun, which is not nothing.) It highlights how the number 26, even as it takes a backseat to other numbers, is everywhere.

Going back to our intro, which talked about 1099s, here’s a fun quirk involving the number 26 and the year 2026.

See, many companies tend to pay people on a biweekly basis—which, since there are 52 weeks in a year, means that you’re generally getting paid 26 times per year. But here’s the fun, ironic thing: Because of a quirk of the payroll system, people will actually get 27 payments in 2026, not 26.

It’s an issue that happens once every 11 years or so, which means the last time it happened was in 2015. Sounds kind of silly, but it’s surprisingly a fraught issue.

Every 11 years, biweekly paydays create a problem for large companies. (NewAfrica/DepositPhotos.com)

See, it puts employers in a catch-22: They could pay slightly less money over those 27 payments and hope it doesn’t run afoul of labor law. (Or that their employees don’t notice.) Or they could simply make the extra payment, temporarily increasing their salary by a couple thousand dollars just to keep things consistent.

As Mike Fussell of the Employment Law Worldview blog writes, this is going to cause a problem for some companies that might find themselves running into legal issues or added costs, depending on how they handle this shift:

Additionally, employers should ensure any decreases in exempt salaried employees’ biweekly wage payments do not reduce the employees’ weekly salary below the salary threshold necessary to claim an exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act—currently $684/week—or similar state wage laws (some of which have even higher weekly salary thresholds). A failure to meet such weekly salary thresholds could result in an employee losing their exempt status, making them eligible for overtime pay.

If you ask me, paying the checks on time and correctly is a better move than changing the pay structure. (Or, you could do what some companies do instead—pay each month on the 15th and last day of the month, losing the every-other-Friday cadence but ensuring you’re not overpaying once every 11 years.)

But I think this odd numerical quirk of the 2026 calendar year points to the tension that the year inherently has. It’s an odd middle year, one that doesn’t draw a ton of attention to itself most of the time. (Barring the fact that, well, it’s the country’s 250th anniversary in 2026, as the country’s symbolic vape shop, the Washington Monument, pointed out this week.)

For the sake of everyone, I hope it’s the year when you get an unexpected extra check.

Find this one an interesting read? Share it with a pal! And thanks again for sticking with us into year 11 of this crazy platform.

Need a machine that’s gonna stick by you every year? Our friends at la machine will definitely do the trick. It works the same no matter what the date on the calendar says—and we love it for that. Thanks to them for sponsoring!

https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/17245690/tedium-trends-2026

https://tedium.co/2026/01/02/tedium-trends-2026/

starwatcher posting in

ebooks

This is the list where you can choose different sellers. Here's the sale link --

https://earlybirdbooks.com/deals/1000-ebook-sale

**

Folks, I often don't open my laptop until noon or later. Since my timezone is GMT+7, that's awfully late for anyone in Europe, and these posts are fairly useless.

BUT! Note that there's a "subscribe" button at the top of the Early Bird Books page. If you subscribe, you'll get a daily email that lists a dozen or so discounted books, as well as early notification of these massive sales. (This one hit my inbox at 5:20 A.M.)

Also check out Bookbub -- https://www.bookbub.com/ If you sign up, you select the genres you like to read and your seller of choice. Then you get a daily email with approximately 15 to 30 discounted books in your selected genres. Bookbub doesn't have the massive sales like Early Bird Books, but often there are 3 or 4 titles "free" in the daily list. (At least, in the Romance genre.)

**

As always, feel free to share this post or info wherever you choose. Happy reading!

cosmolinguist

A year and a bit ago, we acquired a weight bench (and the associated barbells, dumbbells and weights) from a transgym acquaintance. His partner was delighted to get it out of their loft and I was delighted to have it during the dark winter months when my ankle still wasn't up to walking to and from -- not if I wanted to actually do anything at the gym once I got there!

It served me well but isn't making good use of the space in my computer room now that it's easier for me to go to the gym. So today I passed it on to another acquaintance from transgym. He's so excited to have it and I'm so excited to have it out of my room! The circle of life.

I'm excited generally to be dealing with things that have been cluttering up the place. angelofthenorth said she'll take the stand mixer that we've never made enough use of.

(I know this sounds horribly middle-class of me, to be so burdened by possessions...and I am, but in my defense both of these were things I got from others, for no money.)

D and I walked Teddy this afternoon. Wintery mix overnight got us our first ice and/or snow this winter, a little of which has now re-frozen into black ice. With hiking shoes and a little of what my dad calls "duck walk" (apparently here it's called "penguin walk"!), D and I were fine. But Sylvia was so grateful that we showed up to walk the dog at all today. Which gave me the rare opportunity to be like "Don't worry ma'am, I'm from Minnesota."

pairatime posting in

smallfandomfest

Title: The Investment
Author: pairatime
Fandom: Hit The Floor (tv)
Pairing/Characters: Jude/Zero & Laura
Rating/Category: PG
Prompt: Jude secretly contacts Laura
Spoilers: Season 3. Who Laura is.
Summary: Jude sets up a meeting to talk with Laura to find out why.
Notes/Warnings: This is a follow up to The Letter but all you really need to know is Jude sent Laura a few letters, she returned them.

Link:AO3

pegkerr

Christmas itself was pretty quiet for me. Delia was in Eau Claire with her fiancé's family, and the Onas gathered with Alona's family. They invited Eric and me to join them, but Eric wanted to keep things low-key because he was still recovering from his surgery. So I made roast duck for the two of us on Christmas Eve:

any my traditional Christmas breakfast on Christmas morning:

In my family, however, Christmas isn't over on the 26th of December. My extended family gathers between Christmas and New Year's day:

My brother, who lives in New York, has been faithfully bringing his entire family out for family week for decades. We gather in various configurations: some go out to movies. Some of my nephews and nieces went to one of my nephew's house to get a lesson in throwing pottery. We gathered with my mom for lunch one day in the party room of her assisted living facility. We gathered in the evenings to eat hors d'ouevres, cook food together, and play games. And as always, we gathered at my sister Cindy's house on New Year's Eve and spent the day together, feasting on Chinese take out and sharing memories. All of the nieces and nephews had stories to tell of their memories of family week. My brother-in-law remarked how splendid it is to see the rich and deep relationships that the cousins share with one another, which have been nurtured by our family traditions of getting together every year to enjoy one another's company.

This year we had the additional joy of two new babies joining the festivities. M is a genuine extrovert who obviously had a wonderful time flirting with everyone, and when Fiona and Alone arrived each evening, there were plenty of eager volunteers to cuddle with her.

We genuinely enjoy each other.

I hope you all had as splendid a holiday as my family and I did.

This is my last collage of the year, but I intend to continue next year.

Image description: Top: members of a family, men and women, smile at the camera. Below: a table covered with a red tablecloth set for Christmas breakfast. Right: an older woman holding a walker (Peg's mom) stands beside a younger woman (Peg). Lower right corner: four young woman smile. Left corner: a silver candlestick with a gold lit candle with two glittering snowflake brooches.

Christmas

52 Christmas

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: grateful

pairatime posting in

smallfandomfest

Title:Cookies and Clean-up
Author: pairatime
Fandom: Shelter (2007)
Pairing/Characters: Zach/Shaun & Cody
Rating/Category: PG
Prompt: They make a mess of the kitchen while baking cookies for Cody’s class (or author’s choice), but Zach and Shaun have fun cleaning up after Cody’s in bed
Spoilers: The movie
Summary: Shaun helps Cody make cookies, Zach and Shaun talk after.

Link:AO3

juliet

(2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)

( 2025 in review; contains brief references to death and suicide )

petra

[Podfic] Oh freddled gruntbuggly (23 words) by peasina, MelancholyMorningstar
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Leia Organa & Darth Vader
Characters: Leia Organa, Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader
Additional Tags: Bad Poetry, Vogon Poetry (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes
Summary:

Darth Vader learned his torture tactics from the Vogons.

Current Mood: i don't need a vader icon
Current Music: Thy micturations are to me

senmut posting in

reference_library

1 new link in Crafting and Art

2 new links in Life Tips

1 new link in Writing and Worldbuilding

1 new link in Health

petra

This due South comic is flippin' brilliant, and I don't just say that as someone who loves the way the artist draws RayV looking at Fraser.

( Other things I liked about it )

Ahem.

Give it a go. It's short! It's cracky! It's pretty!

And I have the right icon for it.

Current Mood: charmed
Current Music: If you've ever been a lady to begin with

gelliaclodiana

I had a very successful Yuletide from my perspective! I received a really good story, Threads in the Weave, by tryphaine. It's based on a novella by an author from the 1920s named Eleanor Ingram; her stuff is very iddy if you like loyalty, as I do. There is also rather a lot of orientalizing and general othering, in a way reminiscent of Dorothy Dunnet but turned up a notch or three. In fact I would not be shocked to find that Dunnett had read Ingram's work at some point.

Anyway, you can read the novella here: Don Estevan's Honor, and more of the author's short stories are available on the same website here. it isn't all historical, except in the sense that some of it is about stuff contemporaneous with Ingram herself, like early automobile racing.

I also wrote a story I really liked, and the recipient enjoyed it too. (So, surprisingly, did a couple of other people.)

The Parthenos in All Her Glory (13335 words) by MagnithWrites
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Exiles Saga and Galactic Milieu - Julian May
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Felice Landry & Elizabeth Orme, Felice Landry/Katlinel the Dark-Eyed
Characters: Felice Landry, Elizabeth Orme, Creyn (Julian May), Epone (Julian May), Katlinel the Dark-Eyed (Julian May), Kuhal Earthshaker, Fian Skybreaker, Nodonn Battlemaster, Sebi-Gomnol (Julian May), Thagdal (Julian May)
Additional Tags: Felice as murderous horse girl, the horse is also murderous, Discussion of Forced Pregnancy, rejection of forced pregnancy, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, canon-typical sexual abuse of background characters, Minor Character Death, more than one severed head
Summary: At Castle Gateway, Felice makes an impression on the Tanu. The evolution of the maiden goddess, from Mistress of Beasts to Lady of the City.

I had no idea how much I wanted this story myself until I started writing it! I don't think it would make any sense to someone who hadn't read the books, since basically it involved putting one of the series villains into the position of one of the heroes, and seeing what happens. But it had been years since I reread the start of the series, and I know the first book was published in the early 80s but wow, there was A LOT of casual misogyny and homophobia in the supposedly enlightened future universe. I began to think that maybe this violent and uncooperative character had a point, right from the start.

I also had rather a lot of fun working all the mythological references in, since that's an underlying theme in the books; but mine were more classical than celtic, in the end.

forestofglory

It’s been ages since I did one of these! But I haven’t been reading or watching much that I want to talk about the last couple of months. I read a couple of things that I just don’t have anything to say about, and a ton of fic which I never include in these round ups. And I’ve watched almost nothing – not even mini dramas

But there’s couple of things I did want to talk about and I thought it would be nice to post about the last little bit of 2025 media before I start a new running notes document for the new year.

Crush of Music—This Chinese reality show is the one thing I have been watching recently. Crush of music is a show where songwriters demo original songs and then through a mildly gameifed process are matched with a singer (or two) who then performs the song. It’s the second season of Melody Journey, but I have no idea why the English title is different (the Chinese title is the same) It's a really fun low stress show and features some of my favorite singers! (Liu Yuning and Zhou Shen) I can't really rec the show though because the subtitles are very very bad -- I'm just watching anyway even though I can only understand about half of what people are saying. But it turns out that not understanding the show makes for very slow watching

Off Menu: A Graphic Novel written by Oliver Gerlach drawn by Kelsi Jo Silva—Cute YA graphic novel in D&D-ish world. It’s about a cook called Soup – kind of a coming of age thing with lots of cooking and community. Very Charming!

The Fellowship of The Ring— R has been reading LotR to the kid, they haven’t quite finished but they are close enough to done that we watched the 1st movie. I’ve never been huge into LotR but it was fun to watch – so many classic lines! I did kinda find myself wishing that the characters' names would show up on screen the first time they appear the way they do in the cdrama I watch. NZ remains very beautiful!

rebeccmeister

Tuesday afternoon, I hopped aboard a ferry to Bainbridge Island, for a long-overdue visit to see

ivy and finally meet her dog, Hazel! I was commenting to her that visiting blog friends often feels like something of a crossover episode. We had so much to talk about, but most especially all of the "blah blah blah rowing" that is incredibly interesting to rowers but generally not anybody else, heh.

On my way to the ferry terminal, I've come to realize that this recently-opened Overlook Park is kind of analogous to a park thing that opened up in Albany a couple years ago, the Albany Skyway, in that both are just fancy pedestrian overpasses to get humans up and over motor vehicle/train obstructions so they can access a waterfront.

Of course, that's exactly where the similarities end, for in Seattle, the park connects the bustling Pike Place Market to the equally bustling Seattle waterfront, whereas in Albany there are some modest tourist buildings on one side and a very basic park on the other.

But I digress.

( gonna be mostly just more photos from here on... )

heleninwales

I don't do New Year resolutions but for the past few years I've tried to choose a word and a short phrase to help me focus on what needs to be done to make the year a successful one. For 2025 my word was "Fixing" and the theme was "Replacing, updating". Having decided not to have the kitchen completely redone, we continued last year to make small improvements such as a new dining table, Kallax storage unit and a replacement light.

For 2026 my word will be "Improving" and the theme is "changing, completing". I want to make more improvements to the house and especially the garden. I also hope to finish the first draft of Book 3 of the fantasy trilogy, so I'll be revising and hopefully improving the first and third novels with a view to self-publishing them later in the year. I also feel that I've plateaued with my Welsh, so that needs improving too. ( Boring waffling... )

So that's my vague plan for the year. I can get started on some things right away, but I'll leave travel until the days are longer and the weather is warmer.

tassosss

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

(First a little aside for myself because I forget every year, the name of the community is

snowflake_challenge not ~~fandom_snowflake~~.)

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

Hello 2026. I usually do a few snowflake challenges each year, though rarely all of them. I'm tassos around the interwebs. I'm a writer, sometime vidder, and generally grew up in fandom. These days I'm not writing much fic, which I'm a little sad about, but I've gotten into self-pub original sci-fi books, so that's where my time is spent right now.

I came up watching Farscape and Buffy, the Stargates, and since then about a hundred other fandoms. In 2025, I was into the British crime series Shetland, which has a very lovely slash ship of two middle-aged men co-parenting their daughter. I subsequently read the mysteries the show is based on and they're fun, but not slashy at all. Most recently, I watched Heated Rivalry which is fabulous. Haven't gotten into the fic for it yet.

I'm doing the challenge because I'm not as frequent a poster these days, and it's always a fun celebration of fandom and our community.

oursin

Partner's substituted veggie burgers had to be panfried rather than ovencooked (we actually usually spend a fair amount of time making sure that they can) and have RUINED the frying pan with some adherent substance which scrubbing and soaking has failed to shift.

Fortunately we live in the future and I was a) able to consult Which about the best frying pans (they have quite recently surveyed these, yay) and b) order one for same day click and collect at the local Argos.

Even if we entirely failed in entering the details to get our Nectar points on the transaction.

In other news, it appears that there was SNOW some time earlier today or last night which was still lying in shadowed spots when I went for my walk. Bitterly cold out but very bright.

Parakeet disporting around the back gardens and adjacent park.

We have not seen anything more of the fox which came right up the steps from the garden to the back door, after a leisurely descent left its marker on the garden fence, and then got into it with next door's cat, which was sitting on the back fence going 'come and 'ave a go if you think you're 'ard enough'.

trobadora posting in

sid_guardian

For Yuletide, I wrote for Zhu Yilong's Thermos "Flower Series" commercials - if you're not familiar with them, they're worth a watch! Here's a playlist with most of them (though the first video is a bit atypical), and here's one more commercial.

Here's what I wrote (I talk a bit more about it on my journal, in case you're interested):

One story for the "Flower Series" commercials - this features Zhu Yilong's character as a dragon, and a white cat whose human form I imagined as played by Bai Yu::
Heart-Seed, Heart-Flower (8,465 words)
Fandom: Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Zhu Yilong's Character (Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials), White Cat (Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials)
Content Tags: Magic Flowers, Magic Waters, Dragons, Cats, Shape-Shifters, Multiple Worlds, Lonely Wanderers, Magical Quests, Saving Worlds with a Magic Bottle

Summary:

The bottle was plain and unadorned, the lotus pattern that would have signalled the success of his quest nowhere in evidence.

He'd failed.
And one Guardian crossover for the above (a Guardian canon divergence/fix-it for the ending):
Dragon of Flowers, Dragon of the City (2,275 words)
Fandoms: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Da Qing, Zhu Yilong's Thermos Character, Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei, SID team
Content Tags: Canon Divergence (for Guardian), Episode Related, Episode 37, Fix-It, Hallows Shenanigans, The Wick of the Guardian Lantern, Magical Flowers, Cross-dimensional Wanderers, Saving Worlds with a Magic Bottle, Dragon City is named after a dragon

Summary:

Lao-Zhao leaned forward, resting an elbow on a knee. "I thought you got all your memories back."

"Yeah, yeah." Da Qing waved a hand in the air, dismissively. "Not remember like 'I don't know my past', remember like 'where did I put my keys'. Except not my keys."

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: enthralled

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muninnhuginn

January 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

trobadora - Write Every day 2026: January, Day 2
atlas_obscura_places_feed - La Pérouse Memorial in Kihei, Hawaii
tedium_rss_feed - A Number Of Surprising Importance
starwatcher in ebooks - Today only -- Jan 2nd -- ebook sale.
cosmolinguist - winter nesting
pairatime in smallfandomfest - Fanfic: Hit The Floor (tv); Jude/Zero & Laura; Jude secretly contacts Laura
pegkerr - 2025 52 Card Project: Week 52: Christmas
pairatime in smallfandomfest - Fanfic: Shelter (2007); Zach/Shaun & Cody; They make a mess of the kitchen while baking cookies for
juliet - 2025 in review
petra - Podfic: Oh freddled gruntbuggly - Darth Vader reads his poetry to torture Leia
senmut in reference_library - Library Update January 2, 2026
petra - Recommendation: Luck, be a lady - due South fancomic by gjdraws
gelliaclodiana - on a brighter note, a Yuletide wrapup
forestofglory - Media Round Up: Loose Ends
rebeccmeister - By land, by sea [rowing, friends]
heleninwales - Not the New Year resolutions
tassosss - Snowflake 2026! #1
oursin - I hope it's not AN OMEN
trobadora in sid_guardian - Two stories (one Guardian-adjacent, one Guardian crossover)
princessofgeeks - Shane Hollander's hair plus spoilers

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Resources: ColourLovers pattern by amethystfirefly and thirdbreakfast

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Page generated Jan. 2nd, 2026 09:19 pm

Between blotch and blok

twa corbies making a mane

Network

Write Every day 2026: January, Day 2

La Pérouse Memorial in Kihei, Hawaii

A Number Of Surprising Importance

The number 26, which gets back-burnered compared to numbers with neater divisibility, is an essential digit. And you’re gonna be hearing all about it in 2026.

“For obvious reasons, tₒ shall be called ‘doomsday,’ since it is on that date, t = tₒ, that N goes to infinity and that the clever population annihilates itself.”

Oh good, another year of AI ruining wall calendars for everyone

Sponsored By … You?

26

Five reasons 2026 will be better than 2025

The state of our Tedium in 2026 is defined by our loss

Fe

Today only -- Jan 2nd -- ebook sale.

winter nesting

Fanfic: Hit The Floor (tv); Jude/Zero & Laura; Jude secretly contacts Laura

2025 52 Card Project: Week 52: Christmas

Fanfic: Shelter (2007); Zach/Shaun & Cody; They make a mess of the kitchen while baking cookies for

2025 in review

Podfic: Oh freddled gruntbuggly - Darth Vader reads his poetry to torture Leia

Library Update January 2, 2026

Recommendation: Luck, be a lady - due South fancomic by gjdraws

on a brighter note, a Yuletide wrapup

Media Round Up: Loose Ends

By land, by sea [rowing, friends]

Not the New Year resolutions

Snowflake 2026! #1

I hope it's not AN OMEN

Two stories (one Guardian-adjacent, one Guardian crossover)

Shane Hollander's hair plus spoilers

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January 2026

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twa corbies making a mane

Network

The number 26, which gets back-burnered compared to numbers with neater divisibility, is an essential digit. And you’re gonna be hearing all about it in 2026.

“For obvious reasons, tₒ shall be called ‘doomsday,’ since it is on that date, t = tₒ, that N goes to infinity and that the clever population annihilates itself.”

Oh good, another year of AI ruining wall calendars for everyone

26

Five reasons 2026 will be better than 2025

The state of our Tedium in 2026 is defined by our loss

Fe

The Past Of The Future

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