just spent two and a half hours setting up a new phone for my mom and getting all her new contacts in it and everything...

I'm EXHAUSTED from this. she was so anxious about it and over my shoulder the whole time. omg. OMG. I need to sleep for a WEEK now.

PETS OF FANDOM

Interestingly enough, I have no pets in my fanfics. There IS a pet in my personal myth - Cerberus, the three-headed dog. And I have only ever mentioned him once. In an older Persephone / Hades modern dress fic here - Imprint the Stars to Remember the Sky

Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

Gotta say my favorite 'pet' from my fandoms is Diefenbaker from Due South. But I'm gonna go with a more obscure one and then some from my own stories, instead.

Prada is Lydia Martin's canon dog from Teen Wolf. He's a six-pound black and white Papillon. He was onscreen once (in season 2's Frenemy) and then mentioned a couple more times later on.

I love animals, but I don't write original pets too often. I have in the past, though. Let's see if I can remember...

( behind a cut because I include snippets of my stories plus pet pics )

Pets of fandom!

I've only been the owner of one pet so far - a Syrian hamster I had when I was twenty that I called Tribble after the Star Trek critters. I was told by the pet shop she was a boy (false, Syrians have big balls and she had nothing visible, also she had a colouring that's rare in male hamsters.) Also in retrospect I wasn't the best owner - her cage was small and I put her in a hamster ball when cleaning it, which can hurt the little things. I didn't know this at the time.

My last flatmate had a Syrian in a much larger cage than I did, and put the pet out for free roam in a repurposed child's playpen with high walls, so she could run about or hide under toys and other bits of enrichment.

I love cats due to having lived with several, but have not been in a position to have my own - my dad hated the thought of pets when I lived with my parents, and most of the places I've rented have either forbidden them or not wanted another cat to disrupt current pets. (The aforementioned flatmate kept their hamster hidden when anyone from the letting company came around. Our neighbours across the hallway had a cat that they took out into their car when it was inspection time. I could do similar - inspections are much rare in my current studio flat - but the thought makes me anxious.)

The theme also reminded me of the only petsite I'm currently on, Flight Rising, where you breed dragons. I've not been interested in similar sites before; this was entirely due to fiance being obsessed with it. Sey bred the below dragon hatchling (a permababy with an addon) and I liked it so much I made an account last year to have him for myself (same handle as here.) I called him Tribble, after my long gone pet,




Or the direct link - https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/102394330

Tribble is an Aether - there are a lot of breeds of dragons with different designs, and a fair amount of lore and clans and what not. It's pretty entertaining.

My personal fave breed is the Everlux - podgy little bookwyrm dragons that only eat plants https://www1.flightrising.com/wiki/wiki/article/everlux-dragons

Me.jpg

Because I happen to have a bit of RL knowledge and pulled this list together in a comment elsewhere.

In no order, and this is in no way intended to be comprehensive (if you've got other suggestions, please add them in the comments), but these are groups who I know are doing good work:

TransActual -- they've been taking the lead on campaigning after the Supreme Court ruling and are extremely on the ball: https://transactual.org.uk/

Gendered Intelligence -- support primarily focused on children and young people (up to 25), doing lifesaving work as so many trans kids and teens in the UK are really suffering right now, with the puberty blockers ban and also the overwhelming sense that the entire country hates them: https://genderedintelligence.co.uk/

The Trans Legal Clinic -- new organization providing free legal help for trans people in the UK; I know someone doing third-sector work who's met them and was incredibly impressed by them: https://www.translegalclinic.com

The Trans Safety Network -- a tiny group of people doing formidable investigative work: https://transsafety.network/

The Trans+ Solidarity Alliance -- impressively-organized political lobbying and briefing of MPs, again I think being done by a tiny group of people: https://www.transsolidarityalliance.com/

Not trans-led or trans-specific (unlike all the others I've linked), but the Good Law Project are fighting a bunch of the key legal cases at the moment: https://goodlawproject.org

They're much bigger and better-funded, though, so you might wish to send donations to the smaller groups for whom it'll make a lot more difference.

Also, if you're thinking of donating, some of these are legally charities (e.g. Gendered Intelligence) and some aren't because they're too "political" and are thus registered as CICs or suchlike (this is just relevant in terms of being able to use Gift Aid etc.).

Trans+ Solidarity Alliance and TransActual also have good info and advice on emailing your MP (including template letters), if you have the time/spoons free at some point.

Introduction Post * Meet The Mods Post * Challenge #1

Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

Pets! We know them, we probably have positive associations with at least one type of pet, and they've appeared in our creative endeavors since time immemorial. Considering that, we felt that a challenge revolving around them would be appropriate.

Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Also, feel free to entice engagement by giving us a preview of what your post covers.

And please do check out the comments for all the awesome participants of the challenge and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.

Challenge #1

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

I've been wanting to use this space more, and it's been a long time since I posted regularly so this challenge looked like a fun way to ease back into it -

Hi, I'm Dances (not my wallet name, that's on a need-to-know basis.) I'm a queer trans Desi guy in his late thirties living in a suburb of one of the larger Northern cities in England, Manchester. I moved here about seven years ago as I wanted to be nearer some family who were more accepting of my transition than my parents were and are.

I recently finished studying for an undergraduate degree in Sociology, and am now doing a CILIP certified part-time postgrad course focusing on being a librarian. (I know the public field in the UK is dying after years of austerity - as much as I love public libraries, I'm more interested in something like academic or health librarianship or related fields, I don't have the temperament for public facing work.)

I'm also long-term disabled due to a small pile of mental health issues - so far I've been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and ADHD, and spent years trying to be seen for a autism diagnosis but the paperwork was lost somewhere and I gave up. The diagnosis wouldn't mean any extra support, as far as I know; it also further limits my future emigration options as many countries refuse to grant residency to folk with that diagnosis.

Talking of, I have a fiance (he/him, sey/sem pronouns.) Sey live in (Deep South state) in the US. Neither of us are blessed with extra cash so IRL visits have been extremely limited over the past seven and a half years of online dating; sey're hopefully coming to visit me this year and I am bouncing out of my skin with excitement :D We plan to marry once I've finished my current postgrad, though immigration stuff is hellish even with our US and UK passports and borders shouldn't exist.

lol i've completely forgotten how to write coherent and cohesive long posts. This is why civilization is the way it is.

A series of updates:

( Pets (cw: pet death) )
( Crafting )
( Writing )
Okay, I have successfully posted. I'm gonna get back to writing. Farewell folks!

Hello on Friday!  Looking back at the day today -- or yesterday, if today hasn't gotten going yet -- how did it go?

   - I thought about my fic once or twice
   - I wrote
   - I did some planning and/or research
   - I edited
   - I've sent my fic off to my beta
   - I posted today!
   - I'm taking a break
   - I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

Looking forward, how are you planning to spend your weekend?

   - I'm going to make up for not writing all week by having a writing marathon
   - I'm going to keep writing at my current rate and see how it goes
   - I have other plans, but I might have time to get some writing in
   - I'm going to take a break from writing

Hi! I have previous past letters with likes lists and prompts that still hold true, so feel free to peruse old letters, though please be aware of my current DNWs and requests.

For ease of finding me: tuesday.

What I've written and what I want as a gift can differ, so for best results, please rely on my likes and DNWs over what you may find on my AO3 works page.

This letter is A Lot due to having years and years of material to copy-paste from for my general likes, etc. I'm taking advantage of how Chocolate Box is set up to request a single fandom I'm excited for, and if a work has my requested relationship and medium, so long as it avoids my DNWs, I will be very happy! This is just to give my creator a ton of direction for things I do like and some optional prompts if my creator wants them. You can skip to the things you think will be relevant in the letter, or the whole letter entirely.

( Text Likes )

( Art Likes )

( General Likes )

( Horror Likes )

( Ship Likes )

( Smut Likes )

Do Not Wants

( General DNWs )

( DNW Clarifications and Explications )

( DCC AI/Carl request & fandom specific DNWs )

Art Title: ⟫ The Love of Your Darkest Dreams by Maralagidyne
Fandom: ⟫ Teen Wolf
Posted @ sites: ⟫ AO3 or DW
Warnings: ⟫ N/A
Bragging Rights: ⟫ I was utterly intrigued by the concept when I saw the snippets that were posted, so was incredibly pleased to be given this fic for my art assignment. Maralagidyne was a joy to work with – she answered all of my questions about her characters, the tone of the fic, and any particular things that she wanted.

My original ideas (four of them) were much brighter in tone than where we ended up, but after talking to Maralagidyne, my brain came up with a slightly darker concept and she was more than happy to let me run with it. I deliberately left the images that I sent to Maralagidyne large enough to show all of the detail of the images and they shouldn’t be lost when they are made smaller for actual posting.

Book Cover: ⟫



The story and the rest of the art can be found at the links above.

In non writing thoughts, by which I mean I wanted to talk about aikido and then realised that maybe I should mention watching a movie first, since I finally watched the new Benoit Blanc movie. xD

I watched Wake Up Dead Man today with hafnia, who had seen it once before and was like "I am BITING MY TONGUE not to point out the REALLY GOOD FORESHADOWING", paused the movie at two points to tell me about (a) her opinions that the reading list in-universe could've been better (with her suggestions) and (b) A Science Complaint (while going "this is the only thing that annoys me about this movie"), and was delighted to agree with me about how well they used LIGHT. The cinematography was gorgeous, the plot was very fun, and I adored Father Jud and Martha and enjoyed going "ughhhh" about how awful many other characters were. The film quotes/references I caught were also great!

also my twin messaged me right as I was finishing the movie to tell me about a post he'd seen saying that the opening scene of the movie was filmed at the same location as Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video, including a tweet (bsky version) (bweet, my brain wants to say, but I think it's skeet. or just, y'know. tweet.) from Rian Johnson going "yes, it was, and I was the only person on set excited about this fact", which I thought was very funny in its own right and also incredible timing.


anyway, AIKIDO

Last night we had a new year's eve practice, and there weren't many people there, but—

There is so much joy in doing aikido on a mat where the practice is meant as meditation, and there are few enough people that you don't need to worry about throwing anyone into anyone else (or off the mat), and the people who are there are all advanced and so you don't need to worry too much about taking care of them (because their ukemi will take care of them).

( let me save your reading pages from how much I'm talking about aikido )

Sensei also was like "you could take nidan tomorrow and be fine" when I said that it was sort of frustrating knowing that in this, the lead-up to when I'll be taking nidan (at the end of May), I'll probably not be practicing more than once a week on average. She's right! I know she's right! I could take it tomorrow if I were asked to!

But it'll be better with more practice and active reminders of the stuff we don't do very often. Reversals (uke becomes nage). Weapon take-aways. Some nage-holds-the-jo, maybe? I'm solid on everything else, I think, though it's always nice to review koshinage. Working with friends on shodan prep last year means that most of it's in my body via taking ukemi, anyway, which is good.

Challenge #1

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

Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Hi, I'm greenie (or Green, if you want to be formal-polite), and I'm a 47-year-old weirdo who is back once again to play with the Snowflake Challenge!! Wooooo!!

Maybe we can get to know each other a little this month as we skip along the challenges together. (Hopefully, I'm skipping along and not outright skipping any like usual. Forgive me if that happens lol)

I love Snowflake because it gives me things to do and be excited about here on Dreamwidth, which is a place I love but don't spend enough time with.

Also, Snowflake frequently reminds me what's so great about fandom and fannishness to begin with!

Start of a new year, fun! I hope it's a good year; certainly I'll try and work to make it good for me. <3

hafnia got me to sign up for getyourwordsout with her this year, which should be fun. I'm doing it as a habit pledge, because that's usually not very hard for me and tracking wordcount seemed exhausting. (Which also means that Write Every Day folk will start seeing me around again in those posts. xD I have missed that since my writing brain plunged into a hole over the summer! I think I've crawled out of it now!)


anyway, VERY IMPORTANTLY, Yuletide creators have been revealed, so I can talk about what I wrote for it! :D

My assignment was for china_shop, and we matched on The Spear Cuts Through Water, a book I adore and which I offered because I was like "okay if someone requests this fantastic book surely they will have ideas for what to write" and also the idea of having an excuse to read the book while thinking about the voice and feel of the prose was exciting.

I wrote a brief epilogue fic, barely over 1k: After the Moon Rose Anew (T, 1,048 words, Jun/Keema, post-canon)

Judging by all the lovely comments, I succeeded in my goal of matching the novel's prose! Most people commented on the voice! Considering how beautiful and lyrical the prose is, it's truly a joy and a relief to know I could match it for even a thousand words.

Also, it was just fun to reference as much as I could of what I found really cool about the prose: the layered POVs, the omniscient style that drifted between POV easily, the occasional brief asides to background POVs... Honestly, the poetics are easier for me to be confident in! I know I can do poetic prose; it's the smooth movement between heads that seems natural and is easy to follow that I wanted to learn from.

And china_shop liked it, of course, which is the most important part of a gift—especially one for a friend!

Which: The odds of matching to a friend in Yuletide are... not that low if you both know you're in the same tiny fandom and that you're both going to request it, but I hadn't realised that china_shop was going to request The Spear Cuts Through Water until after I'd already offered it, and she could of course not know I would offer it! Certainly we'd talked about the book before, but it's still very special to have this kind of match happen by chance. <3


The other fic I wrote for Yuletide was a pinch hit. wolffyluna went up for PH, and one of the fandoms requested was Oathsworn, an actual play podcast I love. I knew that if WolffyLuna had listened to it, it was because of my promo posting about it. So, y'know. The pinch hit went up one evening, and I told myself that if it was still up when I got home from work the next day I could claim it.

It was still up. So. I claimed it, and proceeded to spend the weekend mainlining episode transcripts and internally screaming about what even I was going to write, oh god, this would've been a lot easier if I'd gotten it as an assignment (which I could have! I'd also offered Oathsworn!) due to the time crunch.

I'm very pleased with what I came up with, especially considering the time pressure. And WolffyLuna liked it, especially the scenes I added post-deadline because I was like "WAIT I NEED THIS TOO", which made me very happy that I'd taken the time to write and add them. <3

I dream of what I'll become next life (3.5k, T, CNTW, Waloot-centric) is a character study of my favorite character, and also includes a dive into the chosen of the gods, a specific religion within the world, and also Waloot's whole deal of being an ordinary person who died, came back, and was one of the most magically powerful people in the area by the time the story concluded. She has a lot of angst. I gave her a bit of time with some weird horses (as WolffyLuna requested!) as part of helping her deal with that.

This, and the gift WolffyLuna wrote for me (my suspicion that we'd be trading Oathsworn fics also factored into taking the PH), are the first works for the fandom on ao3! Yay for Yuletide! It's very exciting! I hope more people take a chance on this COMPLETE actual play podcast! An ongoing apocalypse, a last stand against the oncoming hordes, and a lot of people desperately doing their best to survive and be in community with each other despite not always liking each other very much!

These questions were written by tabular_rasa.

1. Do you mostly drink tap, filtered, or bottled water?

2. Is it safe/recommended to drink tap water where you live? If not, why?

3. What does the tap water taste/smell like where you live?

4. Do you collect rainwater? If so, what do you use it for?

5. Do you/have you ever had restrictions on water use where you live? What did you have to change about your lifestyle?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

**Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.**

Gosh, I nearly forgot!

10 things I did in 2025 that I have never done before:

1. Hosted nearly 20 people in our lounge at the same time!

2. First important marriage anniversary milestone (Copper anniversary, 12½ years)

3. Discovered the Fish Doorbell, and spent a LOT of time just staring at a coloured rectangle with no fish in it.

4. Saw Heilung in concert

5. Went to a baby shower

6. Sewed a skirt out of some unused duvet covers.

7. Released a hedgehog in our garden.

8. Signed up to be a stem cell donor. (Apparently this can be done with blood these days and there's a less than one percent chance of being a match with someone, but then at least I'm on file.)

9. Dug and planted a whole flower bed almost all by myself.

10. Was present for the death of a pet.

GUESS WHAT TIME IT IS

is it time for my yearly promise that I will post here more, starting with the Snowflake Challenge, only to abandon DW again sometime in February?

Yes.

( Snowflake Challenge - Day 1 )

Challenge #1

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


Here's my journal's intro post!


My goal with Snowflake is to create a daily posting habit! Also to meet new journalers!

I'm not currently writing in any particular fandom. Last year, some of us were writing rabidly in Nosferatu. That was invigorating, to say the least! I'm always interested in drabbling and miss the drabble communities but will post one from time to time. I do have plans for a writing project for this year! 

Happy New Year! Here's to 2026!

Introduction Post*
Meet the Mods Post *

Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

( Fandom Snowflake Challenge #1 ) And please do check out the comments for all the awesome participants of the challenge and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.



<a href="https://snowflake-challenge.dreamwidth.org/" _fcksavedurl="https://snowflake-challenge.dreamwidth.org/"><img src="https://images.squidge.org/images/2024/12/28/sfc2.png" _fcksavedurl="https://images.squidge.org/images/2024/12/28/sfc2.png" alt="two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text" border="0"></a>

 Hello on Thursday! What kind of a writing day has it been so far today -- or if today hasn't gotten going yet, how did you fare yesterday?