fests and exchanges

Sep. 5th, 2025 11:36 pm
trobadora: (mightier)
[personal profile] trobadora
After not writing anything more than alibi sentences for ages - my last fic was in May (The Consultant, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan), and the one before that in March (Beyond the Gates, the Mountain, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan) - I'm signing up for a lot of stuff now! Deadlines are usually very effective at making me write, so now that I'm not so busy any more and it's actually possible, that should get me back to where I want to be, writing-wise. I hope. *g*

In order of reveals:
  • There's [community profile] rarepairexchange, which has its deadline a little over two weeks from now, though reveals aren't until October. I've been poking at my assignment, and I have a bunch of things I know I want to be in it, but so far I haven't managed to pull it all together into a coherent narrative. Hopefully once I've conquered this one, things will be flowing again!

  • Then there's [community profile] guardian_wishlist, for which I just finished my sign-up last night - and we've only just posted the first batch of wishlists. (Mine is here; I'm requesting Guardian drama and RPF, as well as Guardian/Grimm and Guardian/Stargate crossovers.) And there are so many tempting prompts already! Reveals are on 6 October, and I hope to make a bunch of stuff before then.

  • Next comes [community profile] ficinabox, with a deadline in October and reveals in November - assignments aren't out yet, but should come soon. I won't seriously tackle that one until after Rarepair Exchange, though. Plenty of time if I brainstorm and have a plan by then!

  • There's also the Guardian Bonus Bingo grace period in November, for which I hope to finish at least some of the things I started and didn't finish so far. *g*

  • Yuletide is of course gearing up again as well, so that's what I'll be working on in December. Can't wait to find out which rare fandom I get to write this time!

  • Then, hopefully [community profile] fandomtrees will also run again this year, and I'll get to make a bunch of stuff for that too! Reveals are genearally early to mid-January.

  • And finally, there's [community profile] fffx which doesn't have its deadline until the second half of January. I still need to finish my sign-up for that (planning on doing that this weekend), but that deadline is so far away, there'd still be plenty of time even if I didn't start thinking about it until after Yuletide ends. (Though I hope to have a plan before then!) Of course, an idea might grab me right away and I might be working on this in parallel to everything else, you never know! *g*

Yeah, I know that's a lot. *g* I hope to make up a bit for all those months of not writing! But everything's nicely spaced out, except for Rarepair Exchange revealing one day before Guardian Wishlist, and the Bingo grace period overlapping with FIAB reveals. So it should be very doable without being too exhausting. *g*

What fests or exchanges is everyone else doing?
wychwood: Kosh has moments of revelation (B5 - moments of revelation)
[personal profile] wychwood
I am on a real reading tear at the moment, and my bedside book pile is down to five! Naturally I then celebrated this by buying another six or seven cheap ebooks, because I delight in causing my own suffering. I'm hoping to finish another couple of the bedside books soon and then do a poll so you all can decide which bits of the epic to-read shelf I should use to rebuild it with.

A proper gaming post is in the works, but I have been delighted by the recent changes which mean that all Steam games now work on Linux - I haven't tested it extensively, but I've already played several previously-Windows-only games with no issues at all. Aside from work that was the main thing causing me to spend time in Windows, so suddenly I'm spending a lot more time logged into Linux, which means I'm getting to more of the tasks I do there! Including writing up my booklog, although at the rate I'm reading it's going to be a while before that's ready to post, and I've already finished six books in September...

Miss H and I are going to see Florence + The Machine in February, which was extortionately expensive but I'm still looking forward to it! This is why I don't believe people who say that classical audiences are low because tickets are too expensive, because you can get into most CBSO concerts for under £30 and the cheapest Florence tickets were £45 plus fees for standing room only. Which is not to say that £30 isn't a lot of money, but if pop artists can sell out in ten minutes for an average price over £100 then I just don't believe that price point is the major issue.

It's really funny how the last couple of weeks are suddenly waving AUTUMN IS COMING signs. We've had more rain this week than in about the previous month, and while it's still warm, I'm becoming increasingly aware that the sheet I sleep under is going to need to be switched for the duvet in the near future, and that there is a limited time for shirt-sleeves at home. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to being able to wear my jacket again. I used the hot water bottle on Tuesday night, but it's not back into the regular rotation quite yet...

Bohemian Rhapsody (Zulu version)

Sep. 4th, 2025 03:09 pm
trobadora: (Default)
[personal profile] trobadora
Via [personal profile] brithistorian: the South African Ndlovu Youth Choir has translated Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody into Zulu. It's gorgeous - and after I saw the video, I just had to share it. It's completely stunning:

YULETIDE!!!!

Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:56 pm
trobadora: (Discworld: Hogfather)
[personal profile] trobadora
It's that time of year again!

Yuletide is still my favourite multifannish exchange, and this year's schedule is out - nominations start on the 15th. And they're running an experiment with giving us more nominations and requests this year! Very cool, and I hope it works out well!

What's new this year:
  • The deadline is 12 hours earlier than it was the last few years. (First time in a while that the deadline will be when I'm actually awake, but I'll try not to cut it too close. *g*)

  • Reveals are also 12 hours earlier than they've been the last few years. (First time in a while that I'll be awake when the collection opens!)

  • We get 5 fandom nominations instead of 4. (Woohoo!)

  • We get 8 requests instead of 6! (And again, woohoo! It's so hard to choose between rare fandoms.)

Who else is doing Yuletide? Have you thought about what you're going to nominate/request/offer this year?

Going back to work

Sep. 2nd, 2025 05:09 pm
resonant: Ray Kowalski (Due South) (Default)
[personal profile] resonant
I start my new job tomorrow! My brain is a hive of bees.

I've been out of work since I was laid off in July 2024. It would have been really inconvenient to be working for a lot of that time, as I was helping my brother see our mother through her decline and death from dementia and also having some serious health issues of my own. (And Mom left me some money, which allowed me to say "I'm too stressed to job-hunt" and then not job-hunt, a rare luxury that I'm very grateful for.)

But I have to admit I've also been bored and restless and lonely. It will be nice to have co-workers, and tasks, and a paycheck again.

On the other hand, it's been thirteen months since I consistently had to be any place in particular in the morning. And the cat is going to be sad.

Beauty

Sep. 2nd, 2025 03:16 pm
sheafrotherdon: Two men, seated, leaning in to touch their foreheads together (Default)
[personal profile] sheafrotherdon
There was a time in my life where I would not articulate what I wanted or needed from people, and then would take their "inability" to provide what I wanted or needed as evidence that I was fucked up and broken.

This coalesced a lot around birthdays, especially in my 20s. I wanted to be made a fuss of, but never told anyone that yes, I would like a card, or yes, cake would be great, or yes, why don't you come over, and then I would feel lonely and isolated and sink further into dark places when there wasn't a 76-trombone parade on September 3rd.

I learned over time to state my needs and make plans. Buy a cake! Invite people over. Life is so much simpler when it's not an elaborate guessing game you're secretly making people play. And I no longer worry that I won't have a fun day on my birthday because I not only tell other people "hey come on over!" but I do things for myself too! Bonus!

This is all by way of saying I have an enormous bunch of flowers in front of me which I bought for myself for tomorrow, and they are making me so happy. Because not only are they gorgeous, and richly scented, they match the color scheme of my living room because that's what I asked for - purples, creams, and lots of greenery. And my neighbor is the florist, so it's a lovely celebration of her artistry, too.

Other happy things - a plumber has been here all day working on my downstairs bathroom. Said bathroom is literally a former coat closet - there are still coat hooks on the wall (which I should take down). My plumber's best guess is that it was changed to a tiny little toilet nook in the 60s, and that the toilet has been there since at least the 70s. There's no sink, and so for the last several years I've had a little Japanese-tank sink, where you hook it up so that the clean water coming into the toilet tank first flows through a faucet so you can wash your hands. It's neat, and it saves water, but washing your hands with ice-cold water in, say, January is not awesome. And the toilet tank is enormous - newer toilets are so much more water efficient.

So I'm having the toilet taken out and replaced with a taller, efficient model, and a tiiiiiiny little sink plumbed in. The sink is 7 inches wide and 12 inches long, and it is adorable. I'm having hot and cold water plumbed in, and the bathroom will be so much more usable as of tomorrow!

Plumber has worked super hard all day, and has so much done. All the basement work is finished, and he's finishing up the water lines before he leaves for the day. He was listened to Eminem earlier this morning, but then switched to The Andrews Sisters. He is maaaaaybe 30 years old, and was singing harmonies with 1940s hits. I am so charmed.

And lastly I watched Thunderbolts yesterday and adored it. Spoilers ahead )
trobadora: (Guardian - SID team)
[personal profile] trobadora
I haven't been posting much lately - or rather, in a long while. In March I crashed pretty hard after a writing marathon, and then work got very busy for a very long time, so I spent several months putting almost all my energy into that. Until late May I kept thinking I could do more, fannishly, but after that I gave up on keeping up with anything other than the Guardian novel readalong on [community profile] sid_guardian. August has been (finally) back to normal at work, but the month just flew past before I could get back on my feet, never mind in the saddle. *g*

But this month I'm trying to make that happen. Writing more than alibi sentences: something I need to relearn, LOL.

And I'm trying to post more again here too, finally! My plan for that is twofold:
  1. post something every day of September, and

  2. because I keep feeling like I did literally nothing at all since April other than work, but that's not in fact literally true, I want to remind myself of that by posting about stuff I did do during these months.
Yesterday I got off to a good start by posting about the very last thing I did in August, namely watching Dongji Rescue.

For today, here's another thing I did do recently, together with [personal profile] china_shop: preparing for [community profile] guardian_wishlist! And then sign-ups just opened at the end of August:

A gifting fest for Guardian and related fandoms: guardian-wishlist.dreamwidth.org


I really love this fest. It's our Guardian-and-related-fandoms version of [community profile] fandomtrees (rules), and we're in our fifth year already, wow! I love that this fandom is still going strong. :D

Our schedule for 2025:
  • 28 August: sign-ups open - open now!
  • 5 September: first wishlists posted
  • 15 September: sign-ups close
  • 16 September: final wishlists posted
  • 6 October: gifts revealed
Wishlist reveals are on Reunion Festival/Mid-Autumn Festival, which is late this year. Hopefully I can actually get back in the saddle and write some significant amount of gifts in that time!

We already have 8 sign-ups! I haven't finished mine yet, but soon. Definitely hoping so see some more of you there as well! ♥ ♥ ♥

东极岛 Dongji Rescue

Sep. 1st, 2025 08:23 pm
trobadora: (Zhu Yilong - pirate)
[personal profile] trobadora
Last night I saw 东极岛 Dongji Rescue (IMDB | MyDramaList), Zhu Yilong's new film.

It's based on a historical episode from World War 2 (the sinking of the Lisbon Maru), though it's heavily fictionalised and in no way historically accurate. *g*

(There's a 2024 documentary on the real event, which I'd love to see if anyone knows where to find it!)

Anyway, Dongji Rescue is a really well done, effective film! spoilers below the cut )

Also, watching this movie was a very multilingual experience - the film itself has Chinese, Japanese and English dialogue all aplenty (which you don't see nearly enough of, IMO!), handling the language barriers really well - and then we had German subtitles on top of that. *g* They were good, too, and not as distracting as I might have expected. Since I've generally watched Chinese media with English subtitles, and also learned what Chinese I have with English-language material, all my Chinese is routed through English, and it's usually somewhat disorienting to watch something with German subtitles instead. But the multilingual mix of this film somehow balanced that out, and I didn't have an issue. Though I was happy to have the Chinese subtitles as well as they helped me follow along the Chinese dialogue where I could!

at least i'm up to date on laundry

Sep. 1st, 2025 06:05 pm
wychwood: Teyla wonders if you meant to do that (SGA - Teyla mean that)
[personal profile] wychwood
Back to work was a slog today! That was my last day off until Christmas, and September is looking like being pretty intense as a month. The "be on campus for a week to act as a reserve for visa checks" has morphed into "three and a half days of being a reserve plus two full days of actual checking" (yes, this does add up to more days than exist in the work week; I have refrained from accepting the relevant calendar invites until someone can clarify quite how they expect me to staff two desks at the same time). I've also been voluntold to attend a full-day meeting on campus the previous week, which is not only on a work from home day but also a day with choir in the evening (not to mention choir the office day before it and choir the work from home day after it). I am trying very hard not to think about the number of things which I really ought to be getting completed before the start of term, because my odds are looking extremely poor.

On the other hand, I did get through the 300 system emails, 84 personal emails, and 31 Teams notifications which were waiting this morning, and only have a dozen or so new actions to pick up from them. And I did the first round of monthly reports, including desperately scraping my brain to extract suggestions as to what I did during August (not very much, apparently!!). I left the intimidating email from Legal for tomorrow morning, and then have ambitious plans to make a proper list of what I want to get done this month and try and make some progress on... well, anything. Something. A Task of some kind. Perhaps if I can manage that I will feel less like the human incarnation of the scream emoji.

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

july booklog

Aug. 31st, 2025 12:32 pm
wychwood: Sinclair in the light (B5 - Sinclair light)
[personal profile] wychwood
63. Our Precious Lulu - Anne Fine ) This isn't what I would normally call id fic, but there's something of that visceral satisfaction in it; "person with rubbish family wins in the end".


64. The Gabriel Hounds - Mary Stewart ) Not perhaps one of the top Stewarts, but even middling Stewart is pretty good.


65. Enchanted Glass - Diana Wynne Jones ) Even a whole bunch of really annoying elements can't take the pleasure out of this book, but it's not one of her top hits.


66. The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien ) The triumphant conclusion, followed by lots of realisations about what happens after the triumph and how much harder it gets, and then a whole bunch of appendices, which I enjoyed more than I expected! This is a cracking book, though, even as I develop more complicated feelings about it over time.


67. Stone and Sky - Ben Aaronovitch ) Another fun volume; I'm interested in seeing where Aaronovitch is going to take things from here.


68. The Islands of Chaldea - Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones ) DWJ is basically never less than entertaining, but this doesn't manage much more than that.


69. The Adventure of the Demonic Ox - Lois McMaster Bujold ) I feel like I'm saying this a lot this time, but: this is fine! I enjoyed it! Wasn't much more than that!


70. Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy - Sam J Miller ) Fine but I'm not sure I'd read Miller again.


71. Behind Frenemy Lines - Zen Cho ) Deeply delightful; I do prefer SFF to romance, but Cho's romances are so fun I don't mind!

Dear FIAB creator(s)

Aug. 31st, 2025 02:05 am
trobadora: (Trobadora)
[personal profile] trobadora
Dear [community profile] ficinabox creator(s),

thank you so much for creating a gift for me! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships or worldbuilding themes I requested. Here are all my request details and prompts, as well as general preferences/likes etc.!

My AO3 account is [archiveofourown.org profile] Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms, relationships, worldbuilding

In somewhat alphabetical order:

Jump directly to:
Christabel/Grimm crossover: Christabel/Geraldine in Grimm )

Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette, Worldbuilding )

镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing, Worldbuilding )

Grimm/Guardian crossovers: various combinations of Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing, Sean Renard, Juliette Silverton, Nick Burkhardt )

Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha )

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Anastasia/Jabberwocky )

Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty )

山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Worldbuilding )
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

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trinityofone

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