donutsweeper

Got my yuletide assignment posted and have been keeping my eye out for pinch hits over at the PH comm, yuletide_pinch_hits but so far there's been nothing I could take. I am hoping to manage a few treats, we'll see, the writing brain has not been braining.

Generally speaking, there's not much going on here, but I wanted to post my recthething recs while the exchanges they were from are still anon (because I am lazy and don't want to have to look them all up and recode things rather than C&Ping them) so here are two weeks of recs, from ficinabox (assorted things) and doodle4doodle (art):

Some recs from ficinabox, creators anon until Dec 20th:

Casablanca
- Victor Lazlo: A Retrospective (excerpt). Summary: ...no review of the life of Victor Laszlo would be complete without mention of his long-time collaborator (some say long-time lover) Richard “Rick” Blaine, well known for his brief stint as founder and owner of “Rick’s Americain” café and casino in Casablanca. [excerpts of a magazine article] (neat papercraft/magazine article/in universe magazine article combined work)

DCU
- kiss and fly (absolutely adorable Superman/Batman animation)
- Alfred Pennyworth: Amigurumi!. Summary: It's Alfred Pennyworth - As an amigurumi weeble-wobble. (really cute crocheted Alfred)
- we can get a little reckless. Summary: Diana and a beautiful evening. (beautiful colorwork on this art)
- Not Fit To Print. Summary: When Dick leaves Gotham on bad terms with Bruce, he takes an internship at the Daily Planet in an attempt to move on. Instead, he submits a series of unpublishable articles—each one stranger and more personal than the last. Gargoyle surveillance. Emotional furniture. The weather patterns of Bruce Wayne’s guilt. These are the short excerpts, quotes, and fragments from the stories that never made it to print. (Hilarious snippets with great commentary on each by Lois, Perry and Clark. 4k)
- Continuity Error (And Other Family Traditions). Summary: When a curse summons the ghosts of Dick’s younger selves, his family comes face to face with the boy, the partner, the leader, and the survivor they each thought they knew. (great weaving together of different glimpses of Dick and interactions with his favorite people, 6k)

Discworld
- Minder of the Keys [ART - pottery]. Summary: Sybil Ramkin's smallest dragon likes to keep watch over her trinkets. (amazingly detailed pottery dragon guarding a trinket dish)

Original Work
- [Art] Excerpts from 'Field Guide to Woodgeists' (Interlibrary Loan). Summary: Forest Spirit via pottery and a field guide that definitely, totally, actually exists. (brilliant ceramic woodgeist and its 'write up' in a field guide.
- [Art] Leaf Friends. Summary: Pottery leaf friends in autumn colors (lovely collection of ceramic leaves)
- [Art] Fig. 8. Megafauna of the Southern Hemisphere. Summary: Excerpt from A.Y. Oaks, Megafauna & Environmental Anthropology (3d ed. 9673). (really fascinatingly done scientific illustration)

MDZS/The Untamed
- Love, Love Love. Summary: It all went wrong. (Yungmeng Brothers vid, right in the feels)
- price of postage. Summary Snippet: Wei Changze sends one letter to his old friend Jiang Fengmian, and inadvertently changes the course of the future - all out of love for his wife... Or, an epistolary fic, comprising of letters sent across the Jianghu over the course of several years, starting with a letter to an old friend. (love when stories are told creatively like this, 6.6k, locked to archive)

Some art recs from doodle4doodle (works anon until Dec 19th):

Original Work:
- forest friends. Summary: A couple of small critters I encounter on nature walks: a wood frog and a white-lipped snail. (a neat looking frog and snail)
- houseproud. Summary: I'd be proud too, with a nice house like that one! (very impressive box turtle)
- snow bunting. Summary: A small subarctic friend. (gorgeous bird, amazing work on the feathers)
- Owl Moon. Summary: A great horned owl. A waxing gibbous moon. (beautiful owl and moon)
- [Art] Looking for this? (An adorable rat familiar in a wizard hat)
- Fancy Little Men. Summary: Three penguins midway through molting their baby feathers. (so cute!)
- frogs on leaf (four cute, colorful frogs on a leaf)

Stargate Atlantis
- [Art] Not Himself. Summary: John: Last night, Ronon clubbed me in the head. Ronon: By accident. Sort of. John: I was cut. I went to the Infirmary...and by the time I got there it was completely healed. (gorgeous use of color and negative space in this one)

Star Wars (Original Trilogy)
- Leia (an adorable doodle)

Had a hilarious exchange in one of my discords recently where someone commented something to the effect of "Oh man it's 37 out now" and, after checking my weather I responded with "Oh wow, here too" but then after thinking about it for a half sec quickly added "But I think you're complaining about 37c being too hot while I'm thrilled since it had been -19f here a few days ago and 37f is a lovely change!" (It was, but the weather's supposed to drop again and a massive snow storm is supposed to blow through YUCK but still, the internationalism of fandom will always be a wonder to me)

Hope everyone's having a good Hanukkah/holiday season and staying warm/cool!

While I will probably never be able to divest myself from google completely, I'm thinking of trying to start shifting some things off google (and also juno, I have an ancient juno email acct I really need to move away from) so I turn to my brilliant friends to ask what you all use. I had heard tons of good things about proton (both its mail and docs) but just read it is possibly wishy-washy on AI so am not as sure about it. I've also heard good things about thunderbird and one or two places suggested tuta.

Anyone use one of these or have opinions? Are there others I have missed? (GMX used to be suggested but I haven't seen it mentioned recently?) Besides google's well, everything, I am sick and tired of having to turn off its AI "features" every few weeks/months every time they push a new update/product. I loathe all things AI it is just an annoying scourge that is *everywhere*.

I mostly want just reliable email that can be accessed via a browser webpage without having to download anything. If I can also access it on my phone via an app or browser there, great, but that is less important. Free is ideal, although I guess I'll consider a one time purchase if it's not too bad and is for a well established, reliable company. I do like googledocs and plan on moving away from that eventually but for now just starting to establish a new email would be a good step.

Livejournal is down today when I use firefox but if I try in another browser it seems to load (I have Edge on this laptop but only because it came installed and I used it to DL firefox, I haven't signed into anything on it). I even tried turning off uBlockOrigin and it still wouldn't work on firefox. I wonder if firefox tweaked its settings or something, one of the things that kicked off my new email client search was juno being weird on firefox. SIGH. I did check and my firefox is up to date. (The 'is it down right now' sites seem mixed on if LJ is down for everyone or not so I guess there is an actual issue. I barely use LJ anymore but still, twas my fannish home for a bit, I hope it doesn't go down for good)

I managed to find things to post to recthething the past two weeks (behold! tumblr art for Batman, DMBJ/Lost Tomb, MDZS/Untamed, Sherlock, SPN, Superman, and X-Men):

Batman
- Yapping on a random rooftop until sunrise. (really great Dick and Tim art)

DMBJ/Lost Tomb:
- "Next time, can we not come to such a cold place?" (gorgeous artist interpretation of the finale scene in Mystery of The Abyss, the Heihua Russia adventure tease)
- Clair-Obscur also on AO3 here Summary: Summary: Xie Yuchen is kidnapped. Hei Xiazi comes to the rescue... As his lift. (wonderful, and wonderfully detailed, B&W wordless Heihua comic)

MDZS/The Untamed
- Happy radish family! (adorable WWX, WN and a-Yuan during the burial mounds settlement days)

Sherlock
- Bleak (sherlock in the rain, love it)

Superman
- Sunshine Boy (this is one of my favorite Clark fanarts I have ever seen)

X-Men
- Halloween at the x mansion but it’s just everyone wearing starfleet uniforms. Charles does Not think it’s funny. (absolutely hilarious but the bonus is just *chef's kiss*)

I've been seeing articles and comments about both a White Collar and Stargate reboot possibly happening. The White Collar one seems like it's mostly rumor and hopeful folks rehashing comments made a few years ago (or, there's nothing specific behind the chatter at least) but Amazon/MGM has actually greenlit a Stargate project with a showrunner who had been involved with SGA so that might be something. (I am not entirely sure stargate can work in today's world/climate considering the military push and 'ancient aliens' conspiracy theories but still, I loved SG1/SGA back in the day so I guess I am cautiously optimistic?)

Only a few more days to signup for yuletide! They close 9pm UTC 24 October (time converter thingy) The post with all the info is here, there's some differences this year including a trial run of allowing DNMs (do not matches) as well as upping requests from 6 to 8.

Not surprisingly, neither of those changes have effected me. In my previous yuletides I only signed up with the maximum number of requests a few times, I am way way way more likely to do the minimum (8 vs 3 according to past letters) with a handful of 4 requests and a single 5. I also tend to repeat requests a lot (having asked for only 30 different fandoms in total) although I've never repeated a signup exactly, since I haven't re-requested anything that I've received (perfectly valid thing for people to do that, I have even filled certain people's requests numerous times, I just haven't ever done it).

This year I've asked for four fandoms (All Souls (TV), Vampire Gastelbrau (2011), 看見愛 | See Your Love (TV), and 雪迷宫 | The First Shot (TV)) and my letter went up about a week ago. I will probably continue to tweak my offers until shortly before they close because I always do that and never can leave them alone. (Although the requests are kept hidden during signups, the signup summary is available and updates every hour or so).

I didn't have the headspace to finish putting together my usual short stories in the yuletide tagset list but thankfully embraidery was willing to pick up the job and posted the list, with links when possible, here over on the yuletide community comm.

In exciting news, an old fic of mine Appeasement Fed (a The Yellow Wallpaper & The Residence at Whitminster crossover) from Yuletide 2020 was recently podficced. You can listen to the amazing job wilfriede0815 did for it here.

And before I forget, here's two (I think?) weeks of recthething recs (one mdzs/untamed fic and tumblr art for Doctor Who, FMA/FMA:B, Merlin and SPN):

The Third Bow by Ashura (20k, locked to archive)
Summary: Finally Wei Ying drops onto the edge of the bed and blurts, ‘Lan Zhan, are we married?’
Lan Wangji’s hands freeze in place, the soft cloth slipping from between his fingers. Whatever he imagined Wei Ying was gathering the courage to say, this is a question he absolutely would not have predicted. He looks up, blindsided, to see Wei Ying shifting uncomfortably, fingers twisting in the folds of his robe. ‘We — what?’
Or: Wei Wuxian has feelings. So does Lan Wangji. They figure it out. (aka WWX and LWJ get a clue :) a part of the 2025 MDZS Reverse Big Bang)

Tumblr art:
Doctor Who
- 3rd doctor, UNIT and Master (love their expressions, particularly Jo's)

Fullmetal Alchemist (all Oct 3rd related art)
- Don’t forget. (animation of the watch with flames reflected on it)
- Don't forget 3. oct. 11 (gorgeous Ed and Al)
- Don’t forget! (amazing painting of the watch and fire)
- don’t forget (so many layers to this one, I love the juxtaposition between Ed's determined look and Al's wistful one)

Merlin
- i'll keep the king, i'll keep him safe from the dark things that wait (amazing Merlin and kilgharrah art)

Supernatural
- Untitled (Dean sleeping in the Impala, clutching Cas' coat. Oh my heart)

So many, many years after we probably should have we finally went out and bought a new bed to replace the 20 yr old futon (do not be me, that was *far* too long to keep that cheap thing) and when taking apart the bedframe I found an old braided rug I'd stored between the board and the slats in an attempt to flatten it *ages* ago.

And when I say ages, I mean ages. As I vaguely remembered posting about it, I search through my livejournal and found a mention of pulling out the rug to work on (while watching an episode of due South, good taste past!me) in a post from December 2007 (2007!! who knows when I actually started it) and included a picture of the rug then:



The rug I pulled out only had two more color rounds completed so wasn't all that much further along but was left with a long section of braid unattached and needing new strips sewn on. I never quite mastered the technique of sewing on the new strips properly so that the seam didn't show and always found lacing the braid to the rug was frustrating, fiddly and hard to do for any length of time without hurting my back so it's not surprising I just gave up at some point. Tension was always a perpetual problem so I must have shoved the rug there in an attempt to flatten it. (Something that mostly, but not completely, succeeded). Deciding to just figure out some way to finish it (unfortunately, that's a part I had never really mastered either) I eventually finagled something and TADA:



(Do I need another rug? No. Do I have a place for the rug? Also no. Am I also in the process of making a knotted rug that I took a break from to finish this guy off? Yes. Do I have a place for that rug? Bwhahaha, no.)

Anyway... Just a few more days left for Yuletide nominations! We get 5 slots, it's so exciting! (I really need to make an actual decision on my last slot, I've been waffling for ages about it)

And, last but not least, recthething tumblr art recs (whoops, I've been forgetting to crosspost these here, sorry!)

Batman
- images that came to me in a vision. i just needed to see him in a nice cottage kitchen. (this vision of Batman made me laugh)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- buffy summers more like buffy snork mimimi <3333

Guardian
- boop the snoot (Adorable cat!da qing booping Zhao Yunlan)

Merlin
- [Dragonlord merlin - 2]: Magic returning slowly. (subtle but sweet)

MDZS/The Untamed
- His love language is being a menace (WWX has the best expression on his face when teasing LWJ)
- I have drawn many, many pictures of Jiujiu Holding A-Ling! Yet somehow, not enough. So I present to you all: Another One (adorable grumpy jin ling!)
- Emotional support hug (aww sweet)

Supernatural
- lazarus rising as a paperback (there's a whole series of these linked on the post and all are amazing)

Under the Skin
- Not sure if they should drink this… (Late night Shen Yi/Du Cheng and a very judgy but adorable cat)
- Cat Cuddles "Because everyone need a little sweetness in september I decided to make a fluffy little animation of DuCheng being adopted by the 2 cats of the house" (absolutely adorable)

Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah, L'Shana Tova everyone! May your new year be sweet!

I threw together some Battleship recs for the last two weeks' recthething community rec posts (mostly art but a little fic) and just remembered I should share it here too (creators will still be anon until Wednesday):

Art recs:
Carmilla
- Art: Your Sleep Demon (delightfully creepy)

DCU
- Art: Just a little more, Superman... A young Jason helps Clark to safety.(gorgeous, particularly the lighting)

Dracula
- Art: Midnight The scene after Dracula leaves Jonathan and Mina's room. (the emotions in this!)

Dredge (Video Game)
- [Art] Sunset Scene Summary: A small atmospheric piece.(absolutely beautiful, no canon knowledge needed digital art piece)

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- [Art] The Ghost Hunter AU Summary: No-dialogue comic imagining if the events of the book were loosely adapted into a found footage horror piece centered on Ahab's quest to prove the existence of the spirit Moby-Dick. (so many details in this comic and so well done!)

Original Works
- [Art] She was a fairy This art was inspired by samiabenchaou_ on Instagram. She’s a hijabi fashion influencer. (beautiful)
- A Regency grape angel enjoying some tea with her pets (so sweet)
- Art: Madame Poire A woman wearing a pear-themed historical dress. (wonderfully detailed)
- The Fruit Heist Glorbo, Barry, and Pearry stealing fruits. (All of the teams' mascots and friends, so cute!)
- [art] Glorby Be (Manuscript art! Amazing)
- Battleship 2025: Paper Dolls (A series of paper dolls of Glorbo and others that can be cut out with clothing and whatnot to add, so neat!)
- [Art] The Tower Sumary: A mermaid is... happy to see the lighthouse keeper she's been watching. (beautiful, if slightly creepy charcoal/chalk/pastels on paper piece)
- [Art] Monster in 8B Summary: The shadows aren't cruel. (amazingly creepy)

fic recs:
Eureka/Stargate SG1 crossover
- Bugs in the System Summary: SG-1's visit to Eureka has some unexpected results. (Jack Carter and Sam Carter are cousins and amazing in this)

Leverage/DCU crossover
- They Meet Again Summary: At a charity gala, Bruce Wayne meets a beautiful woman he's run into many, many times before. (great Bruce voice and so many neat little details)

Star Trek Lower Decks
- Battlesheep Potemkin Summary: First officer's log, stardate, uh, computer, add the stardate in. The Cerritos is responding to a distress call from the USS Potemkin, an Excelsior-class starship that was exploring the Gra'pe-2025 system. Upon arrival, we found Potemkin adrift in orbit of the third planet, which is currently surrounded by an ion storm. There is no sign of the crew. However, the ship is filled with hundreds of strange mammalian life-forms. (hilarious)

The last team, Lemon, cleared their final board today and those works will go live tomorrow. I will be very interested in hearing from their team (and everyone else) when the feedback post is put up. I don't usually comment on those posts but I might this year, depending on what the mods say in the first place about how the game might change for next year (there was already mention in the discord that the tag count will drop back down to 400 from the 574 of this year which is such a relief). Without some mod changes (or at least issue acknowledgements) I'll have to think very hard about signing up again next year, which is a shame since I'm one of the very few who've done it every year but the things I love about it are starting to be outweighed but what I find stressful or outright dislike. Sigh.

Now that battleship's winding down hopefully I'll have time to tackle a few things on my to-watch and to-read lists. I would really like to get through the official Guardian translation before the Guardian-read-along finishes up but I am just not sure I'll manage it. (And then there's my poor MDL to-watch list. So long despite efforts earlier this year to work my way through it. Somehow, I keep adding to it. Too many good shows/movies out there I guess.) I also have to start thinking about Yuletide and what I'll want to nominate for it.

Crafting-wise I've been working on a blanket my daughter 'commissioned' from me (aka she bought the yarn). I'm about 3 skeins into the 7 I think it'll need for the length she wants. It's turning out nice, but will still take a while to finish. After that (or maybe during a break from that) I need to do another bread/bagel bag rug because my stack of bags is starting to get unwieldly. Not sure what I'll do with it/where I'll put it once I make it, but that's a future me problem. I also have a string bag I was designing that I ran out of crochet thread for that I need to get back to now that I've bought more. (Here's hoping my notes still make sense)

Anyway, hope all of you are doing well and August is being nice to you! :)

Whoops, I completely forgot to mention in my last post that there was a Friday the 13th tattoo related flash and I wrote an Iron Triangle triple drabble for it: As Evening Slowly Slides Into Night. Summary: An evening, like many others, for the Iron Triangle. (And their shared big bed.)

The Hurt/Comfort exchange has (finally) opened! Lots of fandoms to peruse here. Authors will be revealed on the 11th. I got great Guardian art and a fic for The First Shot and, as always, there's just a ton of amazing things in the collection.

Battleship hit its signup cap within 36 hours of opening so now it's just a random prompt period for a few more days until teams are assigned and then it actually starts on the 12th I think. If you want the chance of getting stuff created (fic, art or podfic) for you, prompting is open to anyone. As prompting is a bit complicated, a few different people have written up guides on how to do it: guide #1, guide #2, and guide #3. All are tumblr posts but I checked them in a private tab and they all work when not signed into tumblr. You might not get anything, but, then again, you might so feel free to peruse the tagset (also linked in all the tumblr posts) and see if there's some fandoms and a few freeform additional tags (500+ ranging from the most E rated things to very, very G) that catch your eye and consider throwing in a prompt or two (or 50, the max).

I've only done 11 prompts so far and haven't decided if I want to do more or not. I tend to keep mine pretty simple as I find my eyes glaze over at huge walls of tags so I pick 10-20 and leave it at that with a few comments in the prompt box along with my DNWs but everyone does it differently. If you want to prompt and have any questions, I'd be happy to help.

Well into the ramp up of this year's Battleship it randomly changed its rules to no longer accept crochet art. I'd already started planning a project to fulfill the 'battlesheep' additional tag and decided to finish it anyway. Behold the 'fearsome' (major use of airquotes there) Battlesheep!! (And I now make up 12.7% of AO3's entire crochet tag between my main and birthday bash account.)

I still haven't gotten any of the links from Pocket posted to any of my research link posts, I really need to start working on that. Ugh. So much to do, so little time.

Last but not least, a single recthething fic rec (MDZS/Untamed):

Burn with the sun, die with the sun (series). Summary: A collection of works in which Wen Xu picks Wei Wuxian off Yiling's streets and makes him an integral part of the Wen Sect. (An interesting AU series where shortly after getting his sword WWX is sort of thrown out of the Jiang/Madam Yu sends him to Yiling and tells him he can't return until he's tamed the Burial Mounds but after saving Wen Xu's life there he is taken in by the Wen, currently 3 works, 21k total)

I have managed to go through all of the links I'd saved to Pocket. It was honestly interesting to work my way backwards through fannish interests (the big ones like Sherlock, MCU, SPN, Merlin, NCIS, SGA, Mag7, and DW/TW but also random ones I dipped into like Sleepy Hollow, SouthLAnd, Haven and so many more) via fics and anon meme comments saved, different research rabbit holes, and general hobby interests. Out of the 1.5-2k links I've kept a little over 300 or so (many articles/fics were read but didn't need to be kept and probably at least half the links were dead). About half those kept were genealogy links-I used to be massively interested in that but mostly researched backwards as much as possible (quite far for a few ancestors including some of hub's to late 1600s/early 1700s Sweden on his dad's side and his mom's to 1500/1600 France->Quebec; many of mine I can't trace before they arrive in the US 1900ish but there's a few I've traced back to late 1700s/early 1800s in the Pale of Jewish Settlement) - generally I've lost the shine of the whole search process but I kept the links just in case. The other half is pretty random, but includes a good dozen or two things I'll be adding to various of my useful links posts so keep an eye out for that.

The Hurt/Comfort Exchange announced due to unclaimed pinch hits (there were still two unclaimed last time I checked) that there will be a delay in opening so instead of going live tomorrow, it'll be July 4th. Kind of bummed about that.

I've made two more rugs out of prepped strips I'd made a few weeks back:

a big, give or take 37" by 27" rusty batik(ish) one and

a smaller, 27.5" by 17" ish blue/green plaid and grey one, out of the rest of the strips left over from the rug I posted about 2 weeks ago and a pair of old grey flannel sleep pants

I'm pretty much out of places I can put rugs here, but I still have lots of prepped strips and whatnot. Not sure what I'll do about that.

Here's two week's worth of tumblr art recs at recthething (due South, DMBJ, Doctor Who, Guardian, MDZD/Untamed and Merlin):

due South
- Let’s pretend the Rays are in the basement of an all girls school again okay (hilarious would-be reaction of the Rays responding to Fraser, and his action, in the ep he was posing as Ms Fraser)

DMBJ
- The coolest guy ever (absolutely incredible art of Reboot's version of Hei Xiazi)
- Zhang Qiling doodle (amazing take on UN's Xiao Yulang's Xiaoge photoshoot)

Doctor Who
- Two (absolutely darling)

Guardian
- Something dramatic for Weilan (this is incredible and so tender)

MDZS/The Untamed
- Modern mdzs series: 1) Wei Ying, 2) Lan Zhan, 3) Wen Ning, 4) Wen Qing, and 5) Jiang Cheng. (Love the whole series, especially Lan Zhan and Wen Ning's looks)
- sometimes I think about older Mianmian meeting Jin Ling and I just. have to take a moment (a comic/bit of animation with a little meta/thoughts about Mianmian and Jin Ling, hits you in the feels)

Merlin
- Treating myself with some soft Merthur (tender, beautiful kisses)
- my first offering to the merlin fandom, good god i'm so obsessed. look at what i've done to my boy. (amazing use of color and lighting in this)
- (tw suggestive) Lap dance (yes, good, thank you)

Daughter's favorite animal is the pangolin and she moved last week so I hunted down a pattern and made her one for a housewarming present


It's based off the lemon-pangolin pattern here but I made a bunch of changes (and actually took notes!) so if anyone wants to try their hand at it, let me know, I can write up my version.

Weather here has been nuts, it went from a highs of 94 to 48 in only a few days. I loathed the heat and high humidity but that kind of temperature change is nuts and hard on the body as well. Santini isn't thrilled with the weather change either but that's because he's of the belief windows should always be open just in case he wants to properly stalk the bunnies or squirrels (does he ever get off his pile of blankets on the couch to do so? No, of course not. Does that matter? No, of course not. He is cat. His opinion is all that should matter)

Moths got into the chest we were keeping some random linens and clothes in so had to toss the chest and then decide what to do with all the now not wearable/donatable sheets and shirts and whatnot so, of course, it's all going to be rugs. I spent most of the week prepping about half of it -cutting in strips and then rolling the strips into balls/disks depending for easier use later (after washing, of course)- but then decided to start a blanket instead of a rug. Maybe I'll switch off between a skein of blanket, do a rug, another skein, more rug, etc.

And, last but not least, two weeks of recthething tumblr recs (DCU, MDZS/The Untamed, Sherlock Holmes-ACD, ST:DS9, Star Wars, SPN, X-Files)

DCU
- Every tender shrimp needs a soft space to recuperate, amiright? (very tender Bruce/Clark moment)

MDZS/The Untamed
- mdzs fandom, long time no see! it’s been almost five years since i last drew wei wuxian, so please accept my offering now (wonderfully eerie Yiling Patriarch era WWX)
- Nie Mingjue and Baxi-huahua The Unrelenting (absolutely love this idea of how Baxia would be in a swords->dogs modern AU)
- Wangxian lightbox (very neat)

Sherlock Holmes - ACD
- Holmes and Watson overlooking the moors (lovely yet eerie Hound of Baskervilles moment)

ST:DS9
- Quark Study (Quark and tribbles, love it!)

Star Wars
- happy star wars day!!! may the 4th be with you!!! (adorable grogu doodle)
- Skywalker Twins comic (hilarious Leia being better with the force than Luke comic)

Supernatural
- Destiel (I think I like the alt background under the cut better but this is a wonderful scene from a hunt either way)

X-Files
- Mulder and Scully in the rain (lovely painting of these two)

(I'm honestly surprised I managed to find stuff to rec these past two weeks. I keep thinking that I'm going to break my approximately 4yr long weekly reccing streak but have managed to squeak in a few. I doubt I'll keep it up, but oh well, it was a fun challenge while I managed it)

Ugh this month. I am on take 3 of my h/c assignment. Here's hoping this one actually works. After finishing that blanket and oven mitt I decided to try to use a recently adopted skein into shawl/scarf/wrap thing and only after completing a shawl I realized I hated the shape (it was one of those 'start with tiny triangle and increase in the first and last stitch of every row' things and the resulting shape was weird and extreme) so I puttered about with a few different patterns before finally finding one that worked (technically a pattern called the 'Gratitude Wrap'). I'll probably never wear it, but whatever. Lookie:

(Terrible picture, but I actually blocked this and it made such a difference, growing from 52"x13.5" to 62x 15.5

I then decided to make a string/market bag thing and have just frogged my 4th attempt. No idea why none are working but boy they are not. Time to put that project on the back burner for a while.

I don't *think* tumblr will go down any time soon, but the most recent round of 'the sky is falling' posts there got me to start weeding through my favorited posts (aka stuff to look at later posts) and, while I've still tons to go through, I've added a few dozen more links to various of my Resource Posts (here's the link to the Masterpost. And yes, at some point I will figure out how to either organize the stupidly long history (etc) and randomness posts or split them into two posts each or just a new third one? Or something, I don't know). Ugh. Both posts are such a mess. But, to be fair, when I first collected the links for posting them (SEVEN years ago, wow) there was just under 800 or so links in total between the 10 posts. Now there's over 2k and 11 posts, so it's not surprising organization has fallen by the wayside a little.

And, last but not least, several weeks worth of recthething recs (MDZS/Untamed fics and tumblr art for a bunch of different fandoms):

Last(?) Loop by PyrrhaIphis (10k)
Summary Snippet: Have you ever wondered what a time loop story looks like to the people who aren't doing the looping? This is that fic! Wei Wuxian is living his life over and over again, and this time he thinks he's finally figured out how to get it right so no one he cares about will die. But we're only getting to see the effects of what he's doing through the eyes of others. (really neat take on a time travel fix-it)

Documented Fact by Scrippio (7k)
Summary: In which Zizhen transfers schools and can't quite believe his new professors are rivals the way everyone else says. Or: 5 times no one listened to Zizhen and 1 confirmation (adorable modern-with-cultivation Cultivation University Zizhen POV fic)

The Devil Went Down to Gusu by Nomme_dePlume (21k)
Summary Snippet: Wei Wuxian laughed. “Ah, Lan Zhan, I like you! Let’s be friends! And as a sign of friendship, I’ll tell you a little secret.” He leaned forward, and as he did, his sweet, amused smile curled into something nasty, and his eyes glowed a red so bright, the clearing looked bathed in blood. “I’m as much of a devil as I need to be to cleanse this world of the unrighteous.” He winked again. “Tell your friends about me.” (really great canon divergent AU where WWX has been a story told by the cultivation sects for years and finally makes an appearance)

tumblr art:
Babylon 5
- Vir is best boy. (delightful animation of one of Vir's most iconic scenes)

M*A*S*H*:
- P*E*A*N*U*T*S (various characters drawn in 'Peanuts' style. Adorable!)

MDZS/The Untamed
- they're just so happy (really cute yunmeng trio)
- YLLZ sunshot campaign ver. (spooky wwx at his yiling laozhu best)
- "He has been proper and righteous his whole life, untouched by the corruption of the secular world. The only mistake he has ever made in his life is you!" (powerful art of what the whipping scene might have looked like)

The Muppets
- an album cover for Rowlf (mockup of what a record by rowlf might look like, loved it)

Sylvester - Georgette Heyer
- embroidered hot water bottle cover (excellently done!)

I suspect I'm going to run out of stuff to rec soon, which is a shame since I've been reccing every week there for close to 4 years but I guess it was bound to happen eventually.

A little more than two days left for h/c exchange signups! I finally got mine in yesterday; of course, me being me, they range from stupidly rare to small (in English fandom circles) fandoms. I need to remember to peruse the requests and alter my offers later, I don't think I'm matching any at the moment.

Last week mother nature decided to dump about a foot of snow here, which made for a lot of very unfun shoveling. Weather being weather though, it's already 90% melted. Fingers crossed the weathercritters are lying and the projected snow on Saturday winds up being incorrect.

I've watched/finished watching a bunch of things since my last post!

Xiao Zhan's 2019 movie Jade Dynasty was pretty terrible, but probably not helped by bad and hard to read subs. This felt like it was a movie version of a long, complicated plot I was supposed to already know the basics of. It was by no means the worst thing I've watched for Xiao Zhan and it did have a brief scene of a monkey riding a dog, but it's not something I would recommend.

The Love You Give Me, a 28 episode, second chance romance story had its ups and down and I can see why people would like it if they liked certain tropes but despite Wang Ziqi looking very fine in wonderful suits and having some wonderful whumpy moments, I didn't really like it. All three 'romances' involved the woman first chasing after their guy to the point of being creepy and stalkery and then, just when the guy started being interested, changing their mind until the man begged and pleaded and threw himself at her until they finally gave in. Add in several misunderstandings and purposeful misinterpretations by the FL (and lying to their kid about it) and eh... not my thing.

I *finally* finished Strange Tales of Jiang Cheng. It was fine I guess? Xia Zhiguang (from Spirealm) was gorgeous and had insane chemistry with both his male and female costar. It's 52 short (15min) episodes so not a huge time commitment at least.

I did end up really liking The First Shot, which also starred Wang Ziqi (yes, making it the third thing starring him I watched in about a month since he was also the star of The Embers but I was happily surprised at how different all his characters were). It's about the formation of a makeshift team of police detectives trying to combat a new drug syndicate that popped up in Northern China in 1997. Interesting setting (the modern, but not quite aspect of it) with great, well rounded characters. Some of the subject material is pretty harsh, so while I do recommend it, it's with caveats. (It's even on legally available on youtube)

I liked it so much, it even inspired me to write something outside of an exchange for it (how *weird* right?): The Visible Marking of Memory. Summary: It was only a scar, but was also so much more. (515 words)

There's been lots of due South on my tumblr dash thanks to the Eleventh of March and I came across one little factoid I never knew before: "Leslie Nielsen, who played Sgt. Buck Frobisher, was the son of a Mountie in real life. During his first appearance on the show, he took Paul Gross aside and told him that he was lacing his boots incorrectly and then proceeded to teach him the proper way for a Mountie to tie his shoes." There was even a picture!



How cute is that?

Here's this week's recthething recs (an MDZS fic and a The First Shot ficlet):

what was once your pain (will be your home) by Jenrose (51k)
Summary: What if Wei Wuxian dragged some of his enemies into Luanzang Gang with him when he was thrown there? What if he and Wen Zhuliu had to work together to survive? (absolutely fascinating canon-divergent AU)

Cuddles in the Cold by psghayleaux (329 words, locked to archive)
Summary: Zheng Bei woke up slowly. The light coming in through the windows gave him no indication of the time, only that there was snow falling. (no canon knowledge is necessary for this soft, sweet ficlet)