thisbluespirit | Reading

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I picked up Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s William S. and the Great Escape intending to read a chapter or two, and then accidentally gulped down the whole thing. William S. Bagget (he add the S after playing Ariel in a production of The Tempest last spring) and his siblings run away from their horrible family to live with their Aunt Fiona. As always, Snyder writes great little kids (even children’s authors often stumble on four-year-olds), and I loved the way that Shakespeare-obsessed William found ways to compare his everyday life to Shakespeare scenarios.

I also read Daphne du Maurier’s The Winding Stair: Sir Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall, which mostly about Sir Francis Bacon’s political and literary career, but features a few forays into not-quite-full-blown Baconian theories. Now du Maurier is not saying that Bacon wrote ALL of Shakespeare’s plays, but what if he talked the plays over with Shakespeare while he was writing them? What if he contributed some of the witty quotes during tavern arguments? What if maybe he actually DID write the plays that were never printed during Shakespeare’s lifetime…

Du Maurier doesn’t so much provide an argument for this as just say “Hey guys what if?”, but I find it delightful on the same level of “What if Audubon was secretly the escaped dauphin of France?” What if indeed! Don’t believe it for a second actually! But you shine on, you crazy diamond of an author.

What I’m Reading Now

Sachiko Kashiwaba’s The Village Beyond the Mist, the book on which Spirited Away is very (very) loosely based. Really enjoying this! Rationing it out a bit because I don’t want it to end… However the library does have Temple Alley Summer so I might move on to that.

What I Plan to Read Next

Going absolutely ham on the Christmas books this year. Besides the picture book Advent calendar, I’m planning Ruth Sawyer’s The Long Christmas (a collection of Christmas short stories), Tasha Tudor’s Forever Christmas (a book about Christmas at Tasha Tudor’s place), Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal, Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, and Ally Carter’s The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, although as I am 25th on the hold list for that last book it may have to wait for next year.

thedarlingone

Google Docs is getting increasingly finicky, especially in its Android app, which I have had to reinstall three times in three days to get it to work. Recently it has also begun forcing exclusively curly quotation marks in the app; I went into the browser version and they were still turned off, and I can't find anywhere in the app to turn them off there. Because I handcode all my HTML for all our fics, this makes it utterly unusable.

I've been trying intermittently to switch to Ellipsus, which is the new hotness as far as online collaboration docs -- no AI, has a dedicated "export to AO3" button, all that sort of fandom marketing, with what seems like a reasonably privacy-focused terms of service and a *sort* of usable system underneath it. :P

It's not actually terrible, I just hate change, and also Ellipsus is very much not set up for people who handcode their HTML. I've spent this evening wrestling with their paragraph spacing, because their text editor is utterly married to the thing where you press enter once and instead of getting a single newline (or carriage return) as the good lord intended, you get *two* newlines at once, which I massively fucking hate and there's no way to turn it off.

With some help from

melannen I have determined that copypasting from Gdocs is Worse, which is known (I've been mostly getting around it because copypasting my beloved double carriage returns from Gdocs into AO3's HTML editor does not cause issues); if I am able to use my laptop, copypasting from Gdocs to Notepad to Ellipsus seems to be a functional option. However, I cannot in fact sit up to use the laptop for more than about five minutes at a time, and trying to use it lying down janks up my shoulder. Copypasting the next thirty chapters of Subjugation through Notepad one at a time is not an option.

(I'm casually trying to find out whether there's an Android phone version of Notepad or similar that performs the same handy function to strip weird formatting, but I am not hopeful.)

Other than that, I had an excellent day, got to hang out with

mara at a park for a couple hours, and then watched the new dub of Castle of Cagliostro (which is awesometastic) with

tabbiewolf. The website says it launches December 15, which is the 46th anniversary of the movie's original release, but preorders have definitely already started shipping.

(I am not buying a copy for myself because it's $50 and I don't have a Blu-ray player or indeed a TV, but it's a really excellent dub.)

teaotter posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: set the hook
Fandom: Delightfully Deceitful (mods: you can use the kdrama tag)
Author's note: refers obliquely to an event late in the series
Challenge: Fish
Length: 100 words

Summary: As Ro-eum says: It's easy to forget that Kyung-Ja is a grifter, too.

( Read more... )

ride_4ever

Voted first place by the FWF participants for best use of prompt.

My FWF First Place Winner - Category: "Best Use of Prompt" - Shocktober Edition

Title: Things Counter, Original, Spare, Strange
Fandoms: due South, Wristcutters
Rating: Mature
Category: Gen, M/M
Pairing: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Characters: Robert "Bob" Fraser, Benton Fraser, Ray Kowalski, mention of Uncle Tiberius Fraser, mention of Diefenbaker (the half-wolf, not the former Canadian Prime Minister), mention of Nanuk (from Wristcutters), mention of Raife Kneller (from Wristcutters)
Word count: 400 (quadruple drabble)

Summary: Sergeant Robert Fraser -- dead Robert Fraser -- knows first-hand that All Hallow’s Eve is when The Veil between the living and the dead is at its most thin...but he doesn't know anything about Halloween-themed sex toys until Ray Kowalski has something to say about it.

Author's Notes: Written for the recurring Firewhiskey Fic Challenge, a 48-hour period during which fanworks creators drink "adult beverages" or "do the 420" and create their fanworks "under the influence" with no editing allowed. Participants then view all the fanworks and vote on them in the categories of Most Coherent Entry, Least Coherent Entry, Funniest Entry, Favorite Entry, Best Use of Prompt, and Best Smut.

Fic on AO3.

Current Mood: awarded
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

astrogirl

Here's a little thing I wrote as a treat for

seasonsofdrabbles, after seeing it show up on a pinch hit list. Possibly I should actually do Seasons of Drabbles properly sometime. I do like me some drabbles.

Title: A Reevaluation of Prior Data
Fandom: The Orville
Characters/Relationships: Kaylon Primary
Rating: General Audiences. Spoilers for season 3.
Summary: Kaylon Primary may have a new perspective on the past.
Tags: Post-"Domino", Drabble
Length: 100 words
Author's Notes: Written for ToothpasteCheesecake. I saw the request on the Seasons of Drabbles pinch-hit list, but by the time I decided that, yes, I could write something for it, it had been claimed, so I posted it as an extra treat.

A Reevaluation of Prior Data

Current Mood: busy

senmut

AO3 Link | A Shared Lunch (100 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Drizzt Do'Urden/Alustriel Silverhand
Characters: Alustriel Silverhand, Drizzt Do'Urden
Additional Tags: Drabble, Domestic Fluff
Summary:

They trade off who handles lunch

Drizzt had set the basket of food and jug of cider on the table, then gone back to his room to clean up, thinking he had plenty of time.

He came back to find Alustriel already dividing the portions onto plates, the cider poured (and likely warmed by her spells).

"I thought it was my day to treat us with our lunch? And you are early."

"My last appointment sent her regrets, and why should I not help? You hunted it, in a fashion, and this is me preparing it."

He kissed her, smiling in the kiss.

"You spoil me."

sovay

As far as I can tell, after three or so nights of pain-driven sleeplessness broken only by the occasional hour unconscious, I crashed so hard last night that I may have slept as much as fifteen hours, which would be amazing except that we are now on the later side of autumn and I slept out all the sunlight in the day. My entire plan had been to take a walk this afternoon. Tomorrow I have a round of doctor's appointments starting early in the morning, but it's not exactly the same thing. Have some links.

1. Mythic Delirium Books is reviving! In order to celebrate the relaunch and their ten-year anniversary, they are offering a deal on three of their most acclaimed collections, all of which I can recommend from reading as well as general enthusiasm for the press and its authors. Various combinations and formats available and an enticing pre-order bundled if you order through their own website. Check it out! Mythic Delirium was the home of my first published poem twenty-four years ago when it was a cardstock-covered 'zine with black-and-white interior illustrations and my affection for it has not dimmed even now that it publishes actual trade-bound books.

2. Until

selkie sent it over to me, I had no idea an online archive had been compiled of the Call, the historic English-language newsletter of the Workers Circle. I am thrilled, even if the first article I selected was, in 2025, a little like being socked in the jaw by 1942:

America is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Bill [of] Rights. The Bill of Rights is the Magna Charta of our fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech and press, of petition and assembly, of religion. Together with these go concomitant rights such as the security of the home against the military, against search and seizure, and the recognition of due process of law and trial by jury. In brief, the Bill of Rights stands as a guarantee that the individual and the home are inviolate unless certain clearly defined legal procedures are followed.

Before the rise of totalitarianism, we took these freedoms for granted. They were part of the air we breathed. Now we realize that they are a precious heritage, that they are worth preserving and defending. America is not Utopia. Unemployment, economic crises, poverty and need in the midst of plenty, slums and avoidable sickness, are still with us. But as long as the Bill of Rights prevails, as long as we have freedom of speech and of assembly, of petition and protest, of criticism and political organization, there is hope abundant. With these freedoms, we can go on working for the things we hold dear and good, inveighing against injustice wherever we find it, improving the lot of the masses. Without these, we are lost, doomed either to abject silence or the concentration camp.

3. I missed it for Armistice Day, but Frederic Manning's "Leaves" (1917) is a delicately upsetting war poem and completely at the other end of effects of language from his novel Her Privates We (1929).

Cone of Silence (U.S. Trouble in the Sky, 1960) does such wonderfully anoraky suspense about human factors in aviation accidents that it should not be faulted for including Peter Cushing in its cast and then not having him play the brilliant, haunted designer of the Atlas Phoenix which seems to be doing too close an impression of the de Havilland Comet for anyone's comfort, but I did have to adjust to that being Noel Willman.

P.S. Dammit: now TCM has tabletized itself and in the process apparently expunged its considerable database of linked articles, not to mention the hitherto useful indices or even listings of cast and crew. Because what I want when considering a movie is not even to know who's in it unless I can recognize someone from the visual tile which could be anything from a random frame to a production still to part of a poster. The player itself has also been reorganized into a much less pleasant interface. Is there some kind of literal race on to the enshittification? Isn't that one where the only way to win is not to play?

Current Music: Girl Ray, "Tell Me"

china_shop posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: The Mouse and the Dragon
Fandom: Guardian (TV)
Rating: G-rated
Length: 1,561 words
Notes: Much, much thanks to

trobadora for beta. <3 <3 <3 This is along the same lines as Going Fishing (which I posted for the last round). I was going to call it Going Fishing II (because they’re both interrogations, fishing for hints and clues), but in the end, it doesn’t quite fit the vibe…
Tags: Background pre-relationship Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Missing Scene, Episode 4, Guo Changcheng interrogates Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan POV
Summary: Zhao Yunlan watched Shen Wei closely. Could his unflappable demeanour survive Xiao-Guo’s naïve bluntness?

( The Mouse and the Dragon )

shivver

A couple of years ago, Magic: the Gathering put out a Doctor Who set of cards, and I wrote an entry about that, explaining the card set and our progress in collecting the cards we wanted. The set came out in October 2023, just before the 60th, and covered the show up until the end of Thirteen's run.

Well, a few weeks ago, a friend of ours in Guild Wars 2, who we call Cupcake and who is a big MtG player, was talking about the set and lamented that he couldn't justify how much he'd have to spend to get the Fourteenth Doctor card.

Wait, Fourteenth Doctor card? There was no Fourteenth Doctor card. The set ended with Thirteen.

It was part of a Secret Lair drop. Didn't you guys know about it?

Yeah, brb, buying cards...

Apparently, MtG does this, put out small sets of cards in limited printing. In the case of DW, they released a set called "Secret Lair: Regeneration" for the 60th, with cards for the Fourteenth Doctor, the Meep, Rose Noble, the Toymaker, and the Fifteenth Doctor. The set came out in December 2023, so the BBC must have released details of the specials to Wizards of the Coast long before that so that they could make these cards. (Though obviously not *all* the details since the set isn't named "Secret Lair: Bigeneration". :P )

So, of course, we bought the cards -- well, the ones we were interested in, anyway, as we're trying to cut down on our spending. (Though, the two cards we didn't get aren't all that expensive.) The expensive one was Fourteen, expensive enough that it's counting as my birthday and Christmas present this year. I looked online to find out why in the world this card is so expensive, and it's a combination of two things: 1) a completely unique mechanic that makes for an interesting Commander deck, and 2) David Tennant. As Cupcake said, "He is so handsome on that card!"

Anyway, here they are! Click to expand. They're in soft sleeves and hard sleeves, so there are a few artifacts in the photo. Also, Fifteen is a foil, and that also played games with my phone camera.

beck_liz posting in

doctor_who_sonic

Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth Links
Blogtor Who: Review of the Doctor Who Christmas Jumper 2025
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – Doctor Who: The Rescue, 1965

(News from

doctorwhonews_feed and

blogtorwho_feed, among others.)

Fanfiction
Complete
Costume Change by

badly_knitted (PG | Real Countess, fake Countess)

Recommendations

paranoidangel recommends Zombie (a Doctor Who fanvid) by Calapine

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.

thisbluespirit

I've not been around so much again, because I had to go out and have a filling amongst other things, and ME/CFS and anaesthetic do not play well together. The rest of the time, when I had energy, in fannish things, I have been mainly focused on making sure I get my

yuletide fic typed up. Anyway, as of yesterday, I have a first draft and am not too far off a bus pass version even (\o/), so I shall try and be a bit less faily at keeping up around here again.

I had half a watching post done, and it was already quite long actually, so I will just post that here:

Some more summer watching! This isn't the order I watched them in, but I made my way through two more cosy crime series, and some of Jeremy Northam's remaining CV.

The two BBC cosies were Ludwig starring David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin, which was very good although an odd mix of tone that is exactly encapsulated by the two leads. Some parts of Ludwig felt like the kind of tense, proper crime drama with bent coppers and the like in which you might expect to find AMM and others were more of an outright comedy than most, as seems only right with David Mitchell. It was a strong entry, though! David Mitchell is a reclusive puzzle-setter ("Ludwig"), John, whose identical twin brother James is a police detective who has vanished. His sister-in-law Lucy manages to prise John out of his house to come and help - by pretending to John. Cue John getting a) extremely stressed by all of this and b) distracted by the need to solve the murders that he's sent to deal with, all the while trying to find out why James has disappeared and help out Lucy and his nephew.

Anyway, there should be a s2, with hopefully less stress for John helping the police as a consultant now, rather than trying to pretend to be his twin brother and panicking a lot. I look forward to seeing how that goes.

Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders have been on my radar for a while because people kept mentioning them, so nearing the end of the summer of the cosies, I thought, why not go for broke, and watched it too. These were really great! They were one serialised mystery per series, rather than case of the week, but Lesley Manville is crime editor Susan Ryeland, whose star crime writer gets murdered. In the course of trying to find the missing chapter of his otherwise complete last manuscript, she inadvertantly winds up on the trail of his killer. The really fun/clever thing about this series is that as she reads the last novel, we follow the fictional detective Atticus Pünd in his investigations, which parallel hers and which are a pastiche of a golden age detective series. Occasionally, she imagines discussing the murder with him, so they meet in dreamlike sequences. Tim McMullan as Pünd is really great - I hadn't come across him before, and it's a lovely performance. Conleth Hill is also fun as the late Alan Conway. Moonflower Murders follows the same pattern, as someone else has noted Alan Conway's spiteful tendency to put real things he oughtn't into his books and pays Susan to investigate the parallels between an earlier book in the series and a death at their hotel.

There's supposed to be a third series to come, so I'll look forward to it, although I understand that it's supposed to have a different writer (as in not Alan Conway in-narrative, not irl - they're all adapted by Anthony Horowitz who wrote the original books), and we'll see how that goes. But it was really unusual and fun.

Creation (2009) Biopic about Charles Darwin, starring Paul Bettany. ( This got quite long )

andersenmom posting in

100ships

Creator:

andersenmom
Title: Amnesia
Rating: G
Type: Fic
Size/length/word count etc.: 790
Prompt: 038: Crimson
Fandom/Ship: Onewe; Son Dongmyeong, Kang Hyungu | Kanghyun
Notes/Warnings: None
Summary Dongmyeong didn’t expect to have his friend forget all of them.

Find the table with the list of fics here

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Cresent Moon's Wish - &Team

littlefics posting in

seasonsofdrabbles

Authors are now revealed! Thank you for another round, which, as of this post, yielded 411 fics!

Reveals doesn't mean you should stop reading and commenting, so we hope you continue to enjoy all the great drabbles.

abyss_valkyrie posting in

perioddrama_ic

Welcome to the voting for Challenge 83: Seasons Change.
For this round we received a lovely 13 icons for you to vote on. Please read the following rules before casting your votes!
RULES/GUIDELINES:

1. For this challenge, people will be asked to vote for their Top THREE favourites in order, Best Composition and Best Colour icons by leaving a comment on this post. Mods will also decide on which icon gets Mod's Choice.
2. Participants are allowed to vote in this challenge; however they are not permitted to vote for themselves or encourage others to vote for them.
3. When deciding please vote for icons that you think are the best and/or represent the theme, rather than on your favourite subject/s in the icons.
4. People have three days to vote. Voting will end on 21st November, Friday 2025 at midnight in your timezone. If they are any tie/s we need to break, we will post additional posts.
5. Lastly, if you have any questions or concerns, please leave a comment below.

( Voting this way! )

scottishgenes_feed

Posted by Chris Paton

http://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2025/11/scottish-research-online-course-returns.html

Hi folks, the next Scottish Research Online course from Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd (https://www.pharostutors.com) returns 5 January 2026. The following is its description:

Scottish Research Online (102)
Tutor: Chris Paton

Scotland was one of the first countries to digitise its major family history records collections for accessibility online, and continues to this day to use such resources to promote a worldwide interest in family history for those with Caledonian connections.

This course describes the major sites and record types that you will encounter in your research, and how to analyse the results. It compares and contrasts many of the key websites available for Scottish research, drilling down to key features within each to help improve a users knowledge of what is contained within the presented records, and equally important, what is not. It explores the key resources for vital records such as births, marriages and deaths, as recorded by the state from 1855 onwards, and the usefulness of the decennial censuses from 1841-1911 in connecting family members and branches together.

Prior to civil registration there are the records created by the Church of Scotland as the state church, with the course exploring access to its Old Parish Registers (OPRs) on ScotlandsPeople and through FamilySearchs various finding aids. In the final lesson, wills and inventories generated by Scotlands confirmation process are explored, with some of the many differences flagged up between the records of Scotland and the rest of the UK, thanks to the distinctly different legal system north of the border.

Most importantly this course will inspire you to actively pursue your interest in Scottish genealogy and take it to the next level.

Lesson Headings:

    * Understanding Scotlands People, FindmyPast, Family Search, Ancestry, and FreeCen
    * Essential Maps and Gazetteers
    * Civil Registration and Census Research
    * Searching in Church of Scotland Registers
    * Scottish Wills and Inventories

Note: it is recommended but not required that students in this course sign up for the basic search option, 30 units/seven days, at ScotlandsPeople (cost is £7.50 for 30 credits)

Each lesson includes exercises and activities; a minimum of 1 one-hour chats See How Courses Work.

STUDENTS SAID:

'I've learnt so much more context around the types of records that really help to understand the value and possible other clues they offer, it's been incredibly useful.'

'Excellent course materials; I learned so much that wouldn't have been easy to do on my own. I also learned more about Family Search than I have in the past, which was helpful.'

'Class material was introduced in an organized manner. Way more information provided than I expected. Many, many leads provided for me to follow up on through learning about specific website holdings.'

'I particularly liked the fact that the course didn't just focus on the well-known BMD resources available, but on a much wider range of websites, including many which give extremely useful background information on the geography and history of the localities where our ancestors lived.'

'Excellent tuition from Chris Paton; very good course materials; well-paced; excellent value for money. I very much liked the opportunity to work at my own pace.'

Relevant Countries: Scotland
Course Length: 5 Weeks
Start Date: 5 January 2026
Cost: £70.00

I hope to maybe see you there!

Chris

Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. Also available -Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. To purchase in the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.

http://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2025/11/scottish-research-online-course-returns.html

m_findlow posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: Fishy business
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 584 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 497 - Fish
Summary: Jack has a track record for being wary of all things Torchwood One.

( Read more... )

sholio posting in

fandomcalendar

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

chrysalid posting in

fandom_icons

warning: contains spoilers, and canon typical blood and violence.

here @

caleidoscope.

lycomingst

I have achieved persimmons. I finally went to Trader Joe's. I decide to stop treating it like an Arctic expedition I need to prepare for: get up very early, shower the night before so I don't have to take time in the morning, etc. Instead, just go. It was, of course, filled with people (mostly men) just standing there (including the guy who just stepped back and almost landed on me), but I got all the sweets I need, and some I don't. And, at long last, persimmons.

When I was in Dollar Tree the other day, I bought some solar Christmas doodads for outside. I don't know if we get enough sun to activate them, it's raining or threatening rain most days. I've laid them out in the backyard to test them. And I'll peek through the blinds at night to see if they light up. But they're cute and they'll be seen in the daytime, so, good.

senmut

AO3 Link | Not So Deadly Questioning (100 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Gilad Pellaeon
Additional Tags: Drabble
Summary:

Everyone holds their breath when Pellaeon questions

The silence on the bridge spoke volumes to the terror they had Known. Pellaeon questioning orders had everyone running the roster, trying to determine how close to the danger they would move when the Grand Moff Admiral eliminated the officer.

"It is good that you question," were not words any of them expected. "There are intelligence points that are kept solely within my planning agenda," Thrawn continued. "I ask, Captain, that you trust in my grasp on these matters, given my survival and track record?"

Everyone relaxed slightly when Pellaeon agreed, wondering when Thrawn would kill him out of sight.

fadedwings posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: at the bottom of the sea
Fandom: none
Rating: G
Content Notes: The fish could be in danger - it's open to interpretation - but nothing you wouldn't find in a kid's book.
Artist Notes: 6x9 Mixed Media Painting
Summary: A fish finds a surprise in a mug at the bottom of the sea. Maybe it’s vines, maybe it’s tentacles…who knows?

( Read more... )

paradoxcase posting in

rainbowfic

Name: Mothers
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Realgar #12: Part
Styles and Supplies: Brushes (November 17, 2025: Crucible), Tempera (Knight of Cups reversed from dailytarotdraw.com: "Knight of Cups reversed indicates you may be walking away from a relationship and/or a creative venture. It could signify a lack of commitment or instability in your relationships, as the reversed Knight of Cups is often associated with a tendency to become emotionally unreliable. This card advises exercising caution when making decisions based on emotions alone, as there is a risk of being carried away by unrealistic fantasies or romantic illusions. It urges the need for self-reflection and emotional healing in order to regain a sense of emotional stability and authentic connection with others.")
Word Count: 792
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.4.1.3
Summary: Setsiana and Qhoroali have a conversation over breakfast.

( Mothers )

picnicnic posting in

iconcolors

It screamed Cinderella to me!

https://i.imgur.com/cf5pYim.png
https://i.imgur.com/zXTmkzq.png
https://i.imgur.com/rvLhSgs.png

glinda

7971 / 10000 (79.71%)

I held off on making this post until today, as it’s my last day of annual leave, so the last day of my dedicated writing time. Writing has been going well, I’ve now written as many words as I had by the end of the year last year so I’m officially caught up. As I started November 6000 words ahead of where I was last year, I’m hoping to maintain that, ideally I’d like to be able to say I wrote 10,000 more words this year than last but we’ll call that a stretch goal! (The return of my fic writing ability/motivation means that I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to spend December writing a bunch of treats and pinch hits, thereby getting a decent word count for the final month.) An interesting thing about this year’s writing is that it hasn’t consumed everything else. For a start, I’ve finished the non-fiction book I was reading this month, and I’ve started another.

My other personal target for this month was that I wanted to finish the little crochet crab that I’m making. It’s the first proper amigurumi that I’ve tackled so getting it successfully finished will tick a bunch of boxes. It goes in fits and starts because I keep having to take it to my knitting group to get help. (Being a very beginner crocheter and working between UK and US instructions can be complicated - I was taught by someone who uses US terms, one of the ladies at knitting uses UK terms and the other is Dutch!) So I have finished the body and a leg, and I’ve made half a claw but now I’m stuck until I can get to knitting and have someone show me what’s meant by ‘turn’ in this context. I have, however, found a good video for doing magic circle so hopefully by the time I finish the legs - there’s eight - I’ll have that down pat. I’m travelling for work this week, so I’m hoping to get the rest of the legs and both eyes done while I’m away. That way I can ask about both the claw and the eyestalks while I’m there and get both sorted out. It’s fun looking at the progress that I’ve made on it, I’m quite pleased with the stitch texture I’m getting now, and I’m pleased to have mastered decreasing but already I can see where I’ve improved and got better. Like, I’m having moments of realising ‘oh that’s why keeping the stitch count right was so hard’ and ‘oh that was silly, of course I should do it this way instead’. (I did, as predicted end up breaking the flismy little plastic hook that came with the kit - my tension is tight! - but actually now that I’ve dug out a metal hook of the correct size I feel that I’m getting on better, I don’t know if it’s just that I was worrying about snapping the old one, or if it’s actually easier with a hook of a different material.) I’ve been zooming through my podcast backlog while I’ve been working on the crab, which has also been quite satisfying.

At the start of last week I kind of felt that I wasn’t making much progress on many things I wanted to have done this week, but looking back on it, I think I’ve done everything I needed to do. There's definitely more things I wanted/intended to do but the time critical stuff - things that needed ordered and bought by deadline, stuff that was expiring both food and digital stuff have been dealt with - has been done, I've added a bunch of lights to places in the unending fight against the lack of light. I got some more cute decorative lights, fairy lights and a snow globe style one. Also while i was tidying out other things, I found some stick on press lights that my dad gave me ages ago and had no idea what I'd do with them, and it dawn on me they'd be ideal for the meter cupboard so now the cupboard with the fuse box and the electric meter and the cupboard where the gas meter lives have little press lights so I don't have to juggle my phone's flashlight when I'm trying to send my meter readings.

I didn’t get my curtains dry cleaned in the end because when I took them in to the dry cleaners, they were like ‘oh no’ because they’re both thermal lined and from Dunelm and apparently they’ve had a run of those where there’s something wrong with the thermal lining, so they stick together in the machine and the lining shreds when you try to separate them again. (Sometimes they’re fine, but they’re not often that they’ve got a special report and letter they give people to get their money back/replacement curtains from Dunelm.) The dry cleaning lady recommended - as mine were dusty rather than actually grubby, I vacuumed them when I took them down - hanging the outside on a nice dry breezy day and giving them a febreeze! I even got my good sewing shears sharpened - now if I could just find my chalk I could get to work on shortening those curtains. Though I do now have...concerns about ironing the new seams...

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company - The Mikado Overture

Profile

thisbluespirit

November 2025

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

Page Summary

osprey_archer - Wednesday Reading Meme
thedarlingone - (no subject)
teaotter in fan_flashworks - Delightfully Deceitful: fanfic: set the hook
ride_4ever - Fannish 50 Challenge 2025: Post # 39: My Firewhisky Fic First Place Winner - Shocktober Edition
astrogirl - Lil' Orville Drabble Thing
senmut - 30 in 30: Forgotten Realms
sovay - Reading your mind is like foreign TV
china_shop in fan_flashworks - Guardian: fanfic: The Mouse and the Dragon
shivver - Magic: the Gathering: Doctor Who Secret Lair
beck_liz in doctor_who_sonic - Tuesday, 18th November 2025
thisbluespirit - Update + (Half) a Watching Post
andersenmom in 100ships - 038: Crimson; Onewe; Amnesia (Son Dongmyeong, Kang Hyungu | Kanghyun)
periwin in fandomcalendar - I Was A Teenage Exocolonist: Exo Week 2026
littlefics in seasonsofdrabbles - Fall Round: Authors Revealed!
abyss_valkyrie in perioddrama_ic - Challenge 83: Seasons Change-Voting!
scottishgenes_feed - Scottish Research Online course returns 5 January 2026
m_findlow in fan_flashworks - Torchwood: Fanfic: Fishy business
sholio in fandomcalendar - Biggles Holiday Airdrop is back for its 4th year!
chrysalid in fandom_icons - 157 icons - wfa, batfamily
lycomingst - (no subject)
senmut - 30 in 30: Star Wars Legends
fadedwings in fan_flashworks - original - art - at the bottom of the sea
paradoxcase in rainbowfic - Realgar #12 [The Fulcrum]
picnicnic in iconcolors - round 180: amnesty round (round 108: freezy winter)
glinda - Progression Ahoy!

Style Credit

Base style: Lefty by sarken
Theme: Foggy Beach by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Nov. 19th, 2025 02:51 pm

Beyond the Roundels

Reading

Navigation

Wednesday Reading Meme

(no subject)

Delightfully Deceitful: fanfic: set the hook

Fannish 50 Challenge 2025: Post # 39: My Firewhisky Fic First Place Winner - Shocktober Edition

Lil' Orville Drabble Thing

30 in 30: Forgotten Realms

Reading your mind is like foreign TV

Guardian: fanfic: The Mouse and the Dragon

Magic: the Gathering: Doctor Who Secret Lair

Tuesday, 18th November 2025

Update + (Half) a Watching Post

038: Crimson; Onewe; Amnesia (Son Dongmyeong, Kang Hyungu | Kanghyun)

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist: Exo Week 2026

Fall Round: Authors Revealed!

Challenge 83: Seasons Change-Voting!

Scottish Research Online course returns 5 January 2026

Torchwood: Fanfic: Fishy business

Biggles Holiday Airdrop is back for its 4th year!

157 icons - wfa, batfamily

(no subject)

30 in 30: Star Wars Legends

original - art - at the bottom of the sea

Realgar #12 [The Fulcrum]

round 180: amnesty round (round 108: freezy winter)

Progression Ahoy!

Profile

November 2025

Links

Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags