Patron Saint of Falling Over Things

Wow, two posts in two weeks? It's almost too much!

Work is busy, mostly due to tourists who can't go overseas for holidays. It's okay. I haven't murdered anyone. Yet.

lilacigil and I have been making strata with our leftover bread, thanks partly to kass mentioning it, and also to seeing Sohla El Waylly make it on Food52 . One of the positive things that came out of the Bon Appetit collapse was getting more Sohla content. She's great. Also strata is great - it's like a savoury bread pudding that you can put all kinds of things in. A really good way to clean the veggie crisper drawer in the fridge. We're doing ours with broccoli, frozen peas, mushrooms and spinach. And a mix of feta and shredded mozzarella.


Smol Random Linkspam
Via mergatrude
NITV Top 40 Survival Day Playlist
It was Australia Day/Invasion Day/Survival Day on Tuesday.

From canadianwheatpirates :
When you browse Instagram and find former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's passport number
This was such a weird, simple thing to do. I cannot believe.

Via my casual drifting through Reddit:
Podcasts with female hosts?
I found a bunch of new shows to listen to in this list.

Via my flist during the Snowflake Challenge
Hidden search operators cheatsheet
I've linked this before, but it's so handy! It's like ordering from the secret menu of fic.

Via the_old_guard
The Old Guard 2: The Surprise Hit Film Gets An Official Greenlight For New Sequel
EEEEEEEEEE!!! One of the things I enjoyed very much about 2020, and we're going to get more!

Via topaz119
Mars Rover Soundtrack  
Also collected up on Spotify: Wake Up Every Day with Mars Rover Opportunity
I just really love how much people care about the rovers. It's a small joy.

Via lilacsigil pointing me that way:
Rihanna’s January/February Essence Cover Is REALLY Cool
Okay, another thing I enjoyed in 2020 was the way magazines got really inventive with their cover art, whether it was by helping the celebrity to do their own photographs at home, or by doing stuff like this.

olivermoss has a post on the Gamestop/Reddit situation that makes a lot of sense to me:
I am opinionated on the stock market and on social media

Via dine and from Vidukon 2020:
I Will Go Down With This Ship by ace-of-wands
I do love a multifandom vid.

Via dine again ( dine does good linkspam!)
An instagram post about Dr Biden's inauguration evening coat and dress, by gabrielahearst
It's gorgeous. And I am calling her Dr Biden forever, because people were such assholes about it.

Via dine but also everywhere, because Shantytok is everywhere
Nathan Evans Wellerman Family Tree — shantytok mashup/supercut
This is my favourite supercut, because it has dancing. Also, because non-Aussies might not know, the ship's name, the Billy of Tea, is referring to a metal bucket you make your tea in. You hang it over the campfire, when it's boiling, you chuck in your tea leaves, and when it's steeped you swing it in a circle to settle the leaves. Thus: Swinging the billy to settle the leaf tea

theficclub is a bookclub for fanfic. They're collecting recs for the February theme here: Soulmate-Themed Recs Wanted (Fic Club February Rec Call)

(Related: at poi_fanworks I run a Person of Interest bookclub, which will kick off again in February.)

Various Fic and Other Challenges:
Via corvidology

Post about things you love in February. I'm going to try to do this! I love the simplicity of it.

flash_fiction - a new community for drabbles/double drabbles/triple drabbles and flash-fic under 300 words. Weekly prompts here.

fan_flashworks - I should also point out this, which is an all-fandoms multi-media flashworks community. I always mean to write for the monthly prompt but somehow never manage to do so.

starspangledbigbang - a tumblr-run big bang for Team Cap characters of the MCU (linked because I have a Bucky fic I wrote for NaNo in 2014 that I really, really need to finish and post.)

snowflake_challenge is running right now, and also sunshine_challenge is going to run mid-year

homemade2homemade is running this year. It's an exchange for handmade crafted good. I've signed up this year, yay! I'm excited. Sign-up are open!

halfamoon is a 14 day celebration of women in fandom, from the first to the 14th of February. There's a bunch of prompt tables at the prep post:
Prep Post for HalfAMoon 2021

hurtcomfortex has a schedule up. Nominations open in a couple of weeks:
Schedule 2021

lilly_c is garnering interest for a Stargate Big Bang
Stargate Big Bang - planning

Brain report:
It goes up tiddly up up, it goes down tiddly down down. But it goes up? I guess that's good. I'm back to two sessions a week with my trainer and I think it's giving me a mood boost, but with every mood boost comes a kind of mood flop. I wake up, I feel good and optimistic for a few hours, then it feels like the ground has dropped out from under me and I wonder what the point is to existence.

It's one year since 60% of Australia voted to let me get married. I am surprised at how bitter I am about the whole fucking thing. Every time I see my straight friends on facebook congratulating themselves on being so openminded, I want to cry. I mean, in that twelve months I didn't get married. I weaned myself off the extra antidepressant I had to start taking so I wouldn't have panic attacks in public during the debate. Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. (And down tiddly down down...)

Okay. Up. Go up, brain. There are lots of good things in my life. I have a big bang to post at the end of the month! I'm 22K into this year's NaNo! I have lots of lovely wool to work with! It's okay. I can manage this.


Garden report:
Tomatoes went in the beds on Cup Day (the first Tuesday in November) as is traditionally recommended by old gardners who know things. We've got three from Bunnings (big box hardware): Grosse Lise, mini Roma truss and Nonna's Favourite. And from seed I've got Green Zebra and Red Pear in the beds. In the greenhouse there's Orange Sunrise Bumblebee (this is too many adjectives for a tomato, IJS), valentines, and Wapsipinicon Peach which is apparently a fuzzy tomato. (Not sure if want? But could not resist trying to grow it.)

Cucumbers: Lebanese and Crystal Apple. Zucchini: Blackjack and Costata Romanesco. Climbing beans: Purple King, European and Northern. Peas: purple and yakimono giant. (The giant peas really are huge. Fingertip to wrist in length.) I've optimistically started eggplants - Long Purples, which I call Lebanese - and put lots of dynamic lifter on this time but they've been stalled at the two-leaf stage and I think I really can't grow eggplant which is one of life's cruel ironies.

Is that everything? Lime and Genovese basil... Some other rando tomato leftovers from years past that I can't remember. Oh, purple spring onions, but they're still at the skinny chive-looking stage. Celery is finishing up. Broccoletti is getting lots of brockles. Spinach has been slumbering all through winter, sadly, but is now starting to get leafy.


Linkspam:
History
- I think this comes via jenett? Folklorist shares the untold story of Australian fortune teller, Mary Barrell
I find this fascinating because of my long-languishing YA Melbourne based Victorian-era paranormal novel. I love all these gradually disappearing stories of Australia's occult history.

Politics and Reproductive Health
Via goodbyebird, The California Sunday Magazine: A secret network of women is working outside the law and the medical establishment to provide safe, cheap home abortions.
Interesting but very explicit - it talks medication, equipment, training for providing grass roots abortion.


Recs
Fic rec of great love from the Person of Interest Big Bang:
Just One Stray Match (41961 words) by loveandthetruth, livenudebigfoot
Chapters: 14/14
Fandom: Person of Interest (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lionel Fusco/John Reese
Characters: Lionel Fusco, John Reese, Harold Finch, Sameen Shaw, Root | Samantha Groves
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Firewatch Fusion, Cabin Fic, Wilderness, Hiking Porn
Summary:

1989. Lionel Fusco doesn't belong in the woods in general or the Shoshone National Forest in particular. But he doesn't need to be a good fire lookout. He just needs a place to hide.

Unfortunately for him, he's been found.

---
It's an AU set well before the series, and it's a fusion with Firewatch, a mystery video game where you play someone living in one of those firewatch cabins in the forest looking out for brushfires. It's so good. It's loyalty kink and examining who you really are when you're outside your comfort zone. It's an ode to Fusco and his utter goodness (which as a dirty cop can be problematic.) It's a love song to National Parks and hiking and living wild in isolated places.

If you're not familiar with the fandoms, I'd still rec it, since it takes place long before we get to know the characters from the show, and you don't need much canon info. Think of it as a story about a disheartened dirty cop who takes a summer job he's completely unsuited for, and falls for a mysterious and traumatised stranger living wild in the forest.

(Bearing in mind the week that California has had, if you're unhappy reading about fire or fire damage, this one probably isn't for you.)

tl;dr, it's the kind of fic that makes you pick up a fandom - I've got the Firewatch game in my wishlist on Steam for the next time it goes on special.
---

More recs:
- Fanart - No I in Team - by goss. Beautiful, beautiful Daredevil and Ironman art for marvel_bang. Just - when can I see this on a comicbook cover pls? Pls.

- XVII by phoxinus. Tarot fanart for Watership Down in the style of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot. It's beautiful and full of symbolism and very apt. Of course Hyzenthlay is the Star. Of course. I second everyone saying they'd love a deck in this theme.

- Singing Again at Seven Bells by selden, from the Original Works Exchange. I'd say "Lady pirate mermaid femslash" and that would ordinarily be enough for me, but there's so much more going on in this fic. There's boarding school backstory and there's historical pirate world building and there's... so much. It's so good. Nhhgggnh.


Other Fandom Joy
-This Metafilter post: Please rec me your fabulous fanfiction
Take a trip down memory lane or find some new faves

- Femslash Kink 18! The Annual Femslash Kink Meme 2018 is Coming!
Prompting opens soon.

- at navaan, Spicy Advent, a porn advent calendar.
All the slots are filled (snerk) but the collection is open for submission (snerk snerk) and as Advent progresses, navaan will post the links. (I think? I think this is how it works. It sounds like fun.)

Non-Fandom Joy
- At Mashable: If you want to explore the Australian bush as a sleepy wombat, 'Paperbark' is the game is for you.
I cannot wait for this game, it looks so pretty!!

- From the ABC, A sleeping quokka in the Rottnest Island settlement.
Everything quokkas do is adorable.

- Monterey Bay Aquarium Builds Life-Sized Blue Whale Art Installation Made from Discarded Single-Use Plastic to Raise Awareness About Ocean Pollution.
It's a very pretty whale, too.

- Also from the ABC, Warrnambool's popular wombat mural a happy accident.
This is such a country town thing - artist goes to his local bridge to do a trial of chalks on concrete thinking it will just wash away in the next rains. Council worker sees wonderful mural and realises that it's just in chalk, so quickly seals it in place. Presto! Permanent mural!!

- From Eyewatch Warrnambool's facebook, Why did the duck cross the road?
Obligatory 'police stop the traffic for ducklings' video. Interestingly, this is just near the old McDonalds that got turned into a funeral parlour. (Must make for some interesting ghosts, I think.)

- via spindle_ella, the first episode of Wellington Paranormal: Wellington Paranormal S01E01 - Demon Girl.
This show is amazing. Just. Yeah. Amazing.

In conclusion, my NaNo progres:

I have new glasses and everything is weird. There are two prescriptions: near/far bifocals and an intermediate pair for computer work. I haven't figured out the bifocals yet - they are great for far vision, but the line between the two types of lens feels strangely like my eyes are brimming with tears. And yet I've taken to the idea that when I look down (through the second lens) small print will leap into focus, which makes things strange when I'm not wearing them and gives me a bit of a headache. Also when I am wearing them, I spend a lot of time examining my boobs which are suddenly very close and exquisitely in focus. It's like I've had a boob lift, or at least the optical illusion of a boob lift. I've got the intermediates on right now at work, and that's fine as long as I don't want anything in the distance to be clear. It kind of gives me a bubble of insulation against approaching people, in a way, because I don't have to acknowledge them or make eye contact until I can genuinely make eye contact. It gives me a little respite between customers.


( The Ballad of Fanny the Fan Spider )


This thread on FFA, Worst thing you've ever watched for an actor you like, was illuminating.

Because of this:
Nonnie: [types "Outlander" into Amazon]
Amazon: Do you mean the wildly popular book series by Diana Gabaldon or the arguably MORE popular television series based on the books?
Nonnie: YOU FOOL. I MEAN THE VERY BAD ALIENS VS. VIKINGS MOVIE AND YOU DAMN WELL KNOW IT.

And this:
I'm about halfway through and I think I might owe this movie an apology. I think I noped out pretty early the first time because the beginning is a little slow and then my stream failed and then I noticed that this movie is two hours long and ughhhh do I really want to watch two hours of Beowulf With Aliens?

And I guess the answer is maybe? Mostly because this is not JUST Beowulf With Aliens. This is Vikings Adopt A Socially Awkward Space Marine and it's like...pretty delightful. Somebody gives Jim Caviezel a horse and he's all ???? why this????? He gets his own fancy Viking furs and when he shows up to the party everyone falls silent and stares at him like he's the prettiest girl at Viking prom. He gets bullied into playing Viking party games. It's like...it's some doofy shit. I'm having a good time.

Also, this is less relevant to my good time, but he spends the first 30 minutes of this movie tied up or chained up in various configurations and I can imagine that being relevant to someone else's good time.

(Why yes, this is relevant to my good time. Thank you, nonnie.)

And this poster, which made me realise that I have reached the stage where I will look for John Reese in anything:

[Movie poster for Outlander, featuring Jim Caviezel looking gaunt in a fur cloak]

Sigh. It's a stage. I've done it for Amy Acker. I watched A Nutcracker Christmas. I am not ashamed.
( Behold the glory of A Nutcracker Christmas )

Things I am working on/interested in:

- shopfront is hosting Write Every Day for February. It's really easy to take part - you just write something then check in on that day's post to say what you did. It has a good atmosphere, people are friendly and supportive, and it's okay to flake out (which is why I don't go with something like GYWO, because the moment I have a concrete deadline, I ditch.)

- wipbigbang is running again this year. Get your shit done! They're also hosting a mini challenge for works shorter than 7500 words, to culminate on International Fanworks Day on February 15th. (I have many works to finish but this big bang always gives me impetus.)

- Halfamoon isn't running this year but senmut is posting a Star Wars drabble a day at halfamoon to celebrate women, and is encouraging others to do so. I will try with Person of Interest.

- and Femslash February, of course. Yay!

So cold this morning. For values of cold in Australia, which is to say there's frost on the grass and I have my giant scarf on. I am having crappy, crappy low moods but weirdly and ferociously creative times. It is strange and I don't understand the rhythms of it at all. I feel like the world is being sucked into a black hole, and yet I cannot stop writing POI fic.

Five things about winter Saturdays in rural Australia:
- Frosty, foggy mornings that will become clear and sunny by twelve
- The footy scoreboard shining orange through the fog as the under-twelves play the 8am match
- Teenage girls in netball skirts with goosepimpled legs, poor things
- People leaving their shoes at the front door so they don't track mud through the pharmacy
- Farmers all hollow-eyed from helping calves into the world, eating hot pies for breakfast

I want to say some things about media I've been enjoying but I keep procrastinating because I don't have the time to write long and involved things. So, here are some short thinkings on things:


Five things about Wonder Woman
( Not very spoilery but I wouldn't want to ruin anyone's joy )


Five things about Legion
( Not too spoilery. Defs not addressing the big spoilers, anyway. )


Five things about Twin Peaks
( I have seen episode five, so assume spoilers for up to there )


Five Things to Do
- Via leecetheartist, a zooniverse project based in Western Australia: Western Shield Camera Watch. Their description: Western Shield is a government funded conservation project that is dedicated to managing introduced predators, primarily foxes and cats, that threaten native wildlife in Western Australia.
This is a very gentle and calming kind of thing to do, I enjoy it a lot. You get to identify kangaroos and emus and all sorts of weird little hopping things. You could also identify this murderous looking bird:

[A giant, yellow eyed bird, going at the lens of a camera with an angry beak]

- springviolets is talking about communities on Dreamwidth: active comms, comms you'd like to see become more active. let's talk communities

- read this Beatles zombie AU webcomic: Eleanor Rigby
(when i was very small i assumed this song was about some lady who literally kept a human face in a jar by the door and since father mckenzie buried her that meant that he also killed her and basically i thought eleanor rigby was about zombies until i was like 12 years old)

- Check out this new prompt comm, picture_prompt_fun, write a story for a picture prompt.

- sign-up for multifandomdrabble, and write someone 100 words. I did this last year, when it was being trialled at Imzy, and it was fun! More details here.


Five Linkspams to make your day a little better
- This woman's joyful reaction at a woman proposing to her girlfriend at a museum: No One Can Get Over This Older Lady's Reaction To A Woman Proposing To Her Girlfriend (This gave me life at a time when I was feeling very bitter at yet another friend's marriage where they did not do anything about the hateful 'Man and woman' clause of the marriage act that must be read out at a wedding in Australia. Like this: Objectors block out Marriage Act's 'union of man and woman' words at civil weddings.)

- The Grenfell Tower fire is a horrible, terrifying tragedy. I am buoyed by the stories of how people have helped, how emergency workers have been amazing. (Like Mr Rogers: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.) Today in my email, I saw this about pharmacists dealing with the logistics of people losing all their medication and prescriptions and records: Pharmacists in West London have been working to help people affected by the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy.

- Remember Tommy Westphall and the snowglobe phenomenon? Check in with it again here: The Tommy Westphall Universe. Apparently reboots have really kicked the database into overdrive this year. I saw a pack of Morley cigarettes on Twin Peaks, which means the Twin Peaks verse doesn't exist. No surprises there, though.

- Knitting spies!! The Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool

- From some of my Person of Interest research: The 10 Best Bottles of Vodka in the World. Linked because the tasting notes are even more amazing and wanky than wine tasting notes. For example: Soft and laser-precise on the palate with a seamless balance and great length of flavor.

Now I want vodka. But it is illegal for me to drink vodka and be a health professional. So cruel.

Son of ETA: As people have asked, yes, I am legally forbidden to drink vodka only while I am at work being a health professional. After work, I may freely engage in the drinking of vodka, and indeed, many other spirits.

Just wanted to put that out there, for my US friends. I feel for you, I'm along on this ride with you, even if I'm not in your country. I will do what I can to support you and I will keep posting here so this community stays strong, so you have a place to retreat to, to spread information through, and to feel as safe as you can.

I can't get to a march, but I've got my pussyhat made and ready to wear: Pussyhat Project.

( Okay, it looks a bit lavender, but it's pale pink on the top, I swear )

For More Joy Day, I have linkspam:

- 100words - a drabble com, yay!


- Giving a friend's etsy a boost: gilascave
James, aka zortified or gilafied, is a long-time fan who, in addition to writing fanfic, makes things with fabric! Tote bags, quilts, and more. The shop is Gilascave on Etsy, https://www.etsy.com/shop/GilasCave , and right now there is a 10% off coupon available through the end of January!

- Fandom Snowflake Challenge – Day 12
Day Twelve at snowflake_challenge was to nominate fannish communities:
In your own space, post a rec for fannish spaces and resources - comms, challenges, twitters, tumblrs, etc. Tell us about where you hang out. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I wasn't doing the challenge this year, but I thought I'd link to Day Twelve for others who weren't following it or who are new to Dreamwidth, because there are a lot of good comms linked there.

- [DW, LJ, Patreon] Welcome Back to Social Journaling
Another link about adjusting to Dreamwidth when you're more used to using apps like Facebook and so on, via umadoshi. I want you to feel at home here, all you new peeps! I like my flist being full and long.

- via misbegotten, ‘Constantine’ Returning as Animated CW Seed Series With Matt Ryan
Matt Ryan is going to voice John Constantine in an animated series, omg yay!

-
A cuddle fic meme! Cuddle for Comfort!!

- from nenya_kanadka: 13 LGBTQ Comics to Look Forward to in 2017. America Chavez!!

- from spikedluv via snowflake_challenge: Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Day 11
A bunch of Captive Prince vids. I DID NOT REALISE THIS WAS A THING. I DID NOT. OMG. (Also vids for The Raven Boys, which I haven't read, but how much do I love that fandom just goes and makes vids for things with no visual canon? THIS MUCH.)

- Rogue swan’s reign of terror leaves lake’s model boaters in a fowl mood.
This motherfucking swan is smashing up motherfucking boats. I think we found Voltswan's nemesis! (Voltswan is the name we have given to a local GI-FUCKING-NORMOUS swan that may also be made up of five swans.)

- Early breaking meme for 2017: I LIK THE BREAD, from Health Inspectors of Reddit, what's the worst violation you've ever seen?:
My stepdad used to be a baker in an authentic recreation of an 18th century New French fortress. Because they sell bread to the public, the health inspector came by, and she was ripping into my stepdad for violations like the stonework walls, the doorless entranceways, or the lack of a mosquito zapper. He pointed out that they were following the highest standards except for things that would destroy the authenticity of this 18th-century bakery. The health inspector relented and agreed to give him a pass after verifying the food storage area was secure. They went to the shed, which was a doorless building attached to the bakery. As the health inspector went in, there happened to be an escaped cow licking all of the loaves. My stepdad could only say, "Honestly, this never happens." They passed the health inspection.

tl;dr: Health inspector witnesses escaped farm animal licking all the bread in a bakery, passes health inspection anyway

Which spawned this genius from Sam Garland:

my name is Cow,
and wen its nite,
or wen the moon
is shiyning brite,
and all the men
haf gon to bed -
i stay up late.

i lik the bred.

fail_fandom had a good summary yesterday, including a spin-off into Imperial Radch fandom, and some excellently phrased wank.

My favourite, via Ann Leckie:

my name is catte
and i hav found
that wen the moon
is big n round
the humans sleep
all nite in bed
and do not kis me
on my hed
so i can plot
my onle wish
to sumhow, sumday
eat the fish

State of the notes left on my bench at work
( No spiders were harmed in the making of this lj-cut )


State of the Dwircle
Hello people from the friending meme! Hello people not from the friending meme! HELLO EVERYONE.

I have an intro post about me and where I live: right here.

I realised my sticky post doesn't have a lot of personal information, so I updated it with this:
Things to know about me: I'm queer, I'm fat and body-positive, I'm Australian, I'm left-leaning in a big way. I was born in 1971 so I'm basically old as balls. I'm cis-female, white, the daughter of an Italian immigrant.Fannishly, I'm multifannish, I multiship. I love gen, slash, femslash and het. You can track my preferences through my Dear Author tag, here.

So. That was a thing I needed to do, and now it's done.

ETA: I meant to also say that though I pretty much give access to everyone, it's done with no expectation of reciprocity.


State of the garden
Lots of spinach, which is great, because I crave that mineral. I think it's low-key bolting? But I keep chopping bits off and eating it voraciously, so it's working out. Some of the pea vines died, but we're still getting plenty of snow peas. lilacsigil cut the coriander back murderously hard, but it's springing back fast.

Tomatoes are running so, so late; we've only just got flowers in the last week. The button squash are titchy but flowering, and we've got baby zucchini that's looking promising. It was a really cool run up through November, and things are sloooow. But I fed everything again yesterday, and we've got hot days coming so I'm hopeful. The basil is doing great! And we put in a tarragon plant, because there was a space on the fenceline and tarragon will be handy. None of the capsicum seedlings made it, so that's a thing we can put where the celery was. And soon we'll have a space when the beets are finished, because I don't think we'll replant them - I did it originally for the greens, so we'd have a pick-and-eat green between autumn's bok choy and summer's lettuce, but they got tough fast. Though, apparently you can steam/saute the leaves? That would possibly be nice and tasty, but now I have spinach and spinach is the superior green for me. (I've had so many weird cravings since I was sick in November - spinach and salmon and squid, oh my. Alliterative cravings, that's me.)

I wish we were warm enough for a curry tree. No, actually, I will forgo curry leaves for cooler weather.


State of Writing
- fandom_stocking got extended, yay! I think the Christmas weekend really messed up people's schedules because I wasn't the only gobsmacked by the date creeping up on me. We've got till the eleventh, now, apparently. This is good, because I am disorganised but I want to stuff stockings.

Next up for me is going to be editing and posting some of the NaNo fics I wrote. (And wtf-ing at them, too, because I was writing with a fever and I know it's going to be weird in there.)


State of the Big Scary World
For the new people, since the US election, I try to pass on various activism links, even though I'm not from the US because I feel like that's a positive thing I can do. A lot of them come from thisfinecrew, which is an excellent resource, if you haven't heard of it.

- From thisfinecrew: Action and community Challenge: Call your reps about the ACA, which is encouraging and has a step by step action plan. I can't call, but I can appreciate an excellent action plan and share it around.
- from snickfic who said "Re:act is a weekly email newsletter full of info and suggestions for actions to take in response:" re:act.


State of yarning
While I have prednisolone-brain, I'm crocheting and crocheting and crocheting. It's very soothing. I have gathered up a collection of cozy murder TV on Netflix, and I put on a show and I crochet into the night.

My cozy murder schedule:
Shetland (aka Scottish murder) (Actually, this is my favourite of the cozy murder TV lineup and I've started being sparing with it because there's not much of it. Yet.)
Hinterland (aka Welsh murder)
Granchester (aka English country garden murder)
The Tunnel (aka on the dotted line French/English murder) (Clémence Poésy is in it playing a delightfully prickly, possibly non-neurotypical French detective and I love her.)

I've tried and not clicked with:
River (aka I see dead people murder, nothing wrong with that, but it didn't work for me)
Wallander (aka you're too smart to be this stupid about your diabetes murder)
Marcella (aka can we stop mental illness as a plot device ffs murder)
Paranoia (aka I wish I would watch a female detective in her late thirties do her job and not be all about her biological clock murder) (I'm particularly mad about this one because Indira Varma, omg, she's so beautiful, I want to watch her solve crimes.)

I do most of my yarn networking on FB (and ravelry: dansnark), and the current fad is these hats with a hole at the top for your hair - messy bun hats or pony tail hats. Hat aren't my usual thing to make - I make blankets and stuff for peoples' babies - but I tried one, and they're a really fun, short project. So I've made a bunch in the last week. It's hilarious to me because (a) it's summer here, and (b) I have close cropped hair anyway so they're useless to me. I'm showing them to people here, though, and they seem to think they're a good idea. Maybe I'll set a trend? Anyway, here are some good patterns that worked for me:

- Mango Tree Crafts messy bun hat - top down, worked around an hair-elastic. It's a yarn-eater, but it works up fast.
- Simplicity Bun Hat - top down. It doesn't work around a hair elastic, but you could easily do that - I think they work better with that stretch, honestly. The ribbing on the brim looks really good, especially if you're working in one colour.
- Bonfire Babe messy bun hat - this one works from the brim up, and either my foundation HDC is too wonky or they work very loose, because it came out huuuuuuge. So I frogged it, but I'm going to try it again with a smaller hook because it's super pretty.

And I think that's about it for me. *waves hello again to all the new folks*

Cat update
( Generally good news! Some vet medical stuff )

Snake Update
We found experts! They came up from Geelong on the day that I called them, it was awesome. They were massive nerds like us, loved our nerdy bookshelves and the nerdy names we gave our cats and considering they had to go right through everything in the house, it actually felt much safer and familiar than you would think. Social anxiety and snake anxiety aside, it was about as good as that experience could be. If anyone of my Aussie flist needs a rec for a local snake team, drop me a PM because I'd rec them.

( more snake specific than some people might want to read )

Quick Recipe Friday
You'd think I'd had no time to bake, wouldn't you? Ha! Every time I picked up a spatula, drama did happen. It was eerie. (Or I pick up a spatula very frequently.)

Something I cooked recently:
Ottolenghi’s Lemon-Semolina Cake

I made it in muffin form, I made the olive oil variant, and they're really good. But my oven cooked the tops really, really quickly, so next time I'm putting the temp down and the time longer. I will never learn, with my terrible, terrible oven, but I can't stand the idea of having tradies in the house right now to put in a new one, so I have to suck it up. Under the over-brown top though, they're nice and moist, are keeping for longer than muffins would, and the lemon taste is really good. Definitely a good GF option for a small, snacky/tea time cake or muffin thing

ETA: After lilacsigil said that the muffins were a little grittier in texture than she expected, I have discovered that semolina is not polenta. I like the slightly gritty texture, but perhaps next time I'll try actual semolina flour rather than polenta. But I thought they were the same!!

Trail Mix Energy Bites
I made these on Sunday, and Baggins started getting sick right in the middle of it, so I forgot to put the rolled oats in. They actually came out okay - but more of a confection than a snack food, if you know what I mean. They're nice! They're not technically a FODMAP friendly food, because of the honey and the fruit. And the pretzels, of which I had none so I smushed up some Ritz instead, but when we needed something sweet for our shocky little selves after the vet visits, they were awesome. Salty-sweet and satisfying. I will be trying them again with the oats in this time.



Something I have concrete plans to cook soon:
It is gnocchi weekend! It's nice and cool today, so I'm going to be roasting potatoes and making... Omg, I didn't bookmark my gnocchi recipe. *freaking out* It was a roast potato one, it worked really great, omg, I shouldn't even need a recipe! But I am a bad granddaughter and do not know it by heart, ohnoes.

I will use this one from the Guardian: How to make the perfect gnocchi though it be filled with terrible copy.

And I'm going to scoop out some of that potato mash and making this potato focaccia I linked last Friday.

I've got a bottle of passata that I'm going to oomph up with some fresh herbs, and bake the gnocchi in that - eat some, freeze some for Christmas meal time, and hopefully all will be good.


Something I'm idly planning to cook in the future:

Shredded chicken, cucumber and noodle salad
I'm still craving weird things, and single-ingredient foods, like, apparently cucumber. Also this looks nice and summery.

Walnut pesto
I have a bulk bag of walnuts, and I'm still looking for a good sandwich condiment that I can keep the garlic out of.


Yay getting back on track with posting, yay for a better cat, yay for a (probably probably) snake free house.

No Frills Multi-Fandom Friending Meme, thanks to snickfic.

Hello to the new people! I have a sticky post with all the basics and an 'All About Where I Live' post

Hey, Aussie fats - does anyone want to try We Love Colors tights? I bought a pair in fuck-off neon yellow, and fuck-off stop-sign red, and the colours are amazing, but they don't bloody fit me around the thighs. They're fantastic around the calves, and they fit me around the waist, but they don't go comfortably over my thighs. Frustrating! They're so nice and colour-dense, and vivid and so exactly what people tell fat women they shouldn't wear, so I'm really sad. They're size EE. Free to a good home inside Australia - I'll cover the postage.


marvel_bang goes along and along. I really wanted to have old!Peggy take a part in my mystery, and I'm writing her now, but gosh, I worry I'm not going to do okay by her. I know the things I don't want in old!Peggy fic: a cure, Peggy suddenly doing things she's really not physically or mentally capable of, sweet old lady things (because she's never been sweet and I doubt she found it in old age.) It's a matter of working out what I want her to do, what she's plausibly able to do, how she can be awesome, without her sections becoming deus ex machina or overly sickly. It's a very interesting line and I'm glad I have lilacsigil to bounce my draft off as I write it. And I really need to get going on the art, for both of us.

In the garden, there's finally been a bit of spare time to plant the seeds, so yesterday we put tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, cucumber (all heirloom mixes, so who knows what we'll get? So exciting!), mesclun mix, rocket, and basil. They're all in the hothouse which is nice and humid at the moment. Tomatoes need to be ready to go into the beds by Cup Day (which is the first Tuesday in November.) There's tons of bok choy in the beds right now, so I'm making ramen tomorrow to use it up. (There's stock cooking up now while I'm typing this. And I can totally soft-boil eggs now, it's brilliant.)

I finally got 8tracks to work on my laptop and now I can listen to fanmixes again. (I miss megaupload!) I really liked this mix of French rap and pop:
( Player embedded behind here because the art was cute too )
Being able to interact with 8tracks makes me want to re-upload all my old fanmixes that I lost when megaupload went down.


A recipe: Lemon buttermilk donuts. (CN: some diet/'clean eating' talk in the link.) Recipe has quantities in grams as well as cups (important for me, because Australian cups are bigger) and it makes a nice small batch. I had a donut pan that I'd never used but really wanted to, enough that I held onto through the giant kitchen purge before we moved to the new house. I'm glad I tried it because it cooked these little sweeties really perfectly. Definitely going to mess around with that recipe some more in the future.

( This is how ours came out )

I found something to nominate as a microfandom for this year's Yuletide: Find the girls on the negatives. I love the photos - so beautiful, so mysterious - and I think there's lots of potential there for fic. Like, femslash (since it seems possible that each woman photographed the other, right?) Or mermaid femslash - they're going home together at last! Or, really, anything.


Other random things:

- 51 facts you probably didn't know about the Great British Bake-Off. The audition process sounds intense.

- Via conuly, The Disastrous Australian Emu War. I should add that emus don't tweet, they make a thumping drum noise. BOOM BOOM BOOM.

jadelennox is hosting a friending meme, here. I've added a bunch of people - hello! I have a sticky post with most of my details, and this post specifically about where I live.

I'm almost caught up with Person of Interest - I think we have five episodes left? It has been an intense run. ( Spoilers for the first half of S4 )


Blurg, I have a cold, and I feel like I have a hairball at the back of my throat. I am displeased. I have been consuming copious amounts of tea with lemon. I bought lemons specifically, which makes me wonder how the lemon tree we planted at the old house is going. (We moved last September, for the new people.) It should be getting fruit, and so should the lime tree - ah, well.

lilacsigil planted another tree here at the new house but it will be a few years before we get anything. We've got bok-choy and baby broccoli in the garden beds right now and I've got rocket and spinach seeds coming in the mail, because our mini-greenhouse is all up and ready for baby plants. This is great, because the greens at the greengrocer are dire at the moment. It's going to be a race between seedlings and scurvy at this rate. (Not really, not with all the lemons I just consumed.)

( Photos of the not-so-new garden beds )

Since I'm posting photos, this was my day today: rain and cows. So much rain. So many cows.

( The oncoming storm... )

I signed up for marvel_bang, even though I should be working on my Winter Soldier NaNo project so I can post it some time before the next movie comes out. It's already been horribly jossed by Agents of SHIELD's second season. (I'm tentatively looking for someone I can ask America questions, if there's anyone out there who'd be willing. Like, can you catch a bus from DC to New York if you're pretty sure that people are going to be monitoring airports and train stations? That sort of thing.)

Otherwise, we are both well, apart from sore throats and woolly heads. Hello again to the new people - I'm very glad to be getting to know you.

I am a little bit ahead in NaNo, huzzah! This is thanks to Steve telling an old man story about this boil he had one time in Poland. That bit is slated for destruction. Steve, you're a super soldier, you probably can't get boils. (He says "Firstly, I got a boil when other men were dying of septicaemia, so have a little respect, and secondly, it was more of a carbuncle.")

Old man stories. I love writing this fic! lilacsigil will be giving me major side-eye when she reads this, because she had to sit through three weeks of hair tearing and chest beating while I got to this point.

(Also, I'm rapidly approaching the part where I really need to know what happens and I really don't know what happens. Again. Every year. I cannot plan for shit, I really can't.)



I work out twice a week with a personal trainer, and we meet at the local netball courts to do this - lately there's been this super cute blue heeler coming to vist me. She's a chronic escape artist - it's a heeler thing - and she pops across the road to see what's going on, and she has this adorable wriggly dance of "HEY PEOPLE I LOVE YOU IF I APPROACH BUTT FIRST WILL YOU PAT IT?".

This morning, I was doing crunches on the mat, and I had my eyes closed because I was dying. I could hear my trainer giggling, which seemed unusually cruel of her, so I opened my eyes to find doggie standing over me, gazing adoringly into my face.

( There's a doggy under this cut, also some discussion of workout goals for this year )



The other thing I wanted to note down so I remember it (because it happened too fast for the phone) was on Tuesday. We were driving along the ridge of a gully, and there was a bird kerfuffle off to the left (my side, the passenger side.) When I looked left, I was eye to eye with an eagle, omg. It was flipping huge, flying through the gully, while magpies buzzed it. It's too late for chicks in the nest, so it must have had a go at the adults? Anyway, wedge tailed eagle, bloody enormous, flying like a boss with those amazing swoops they do, while two magpies about the size of its head chivvied it, fluttering over it and under it, and oh wow. It was like suddenly being in the middle of an aerial dog fight.

Eagle. Very big. (Sometimes they stoop on cars here and damage the roof with their talons.)



Recs:

The Deep End (8697 words) by emilyenrose
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Sex Pollen, Dubious Consent, Humor, Angst
Summary:

In this story: exquisitely tragic and beautiful Russian romance, James Bond shenanigans, designer drugs with highly specific effects, Steve Rogers’ overactive imagination, a swimming metaphor. Also: a villain has a secret sex room, some assassins join the mile high club, and Captain America punches a shark.

Spy shenanigans, and Natasha/Steve/Bucky, and it's all good.

---

what you are asking fits with everything on my list (7356 words) by irnan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Fluff and Angst, Crack
Summary:

Bucky's been trying to set Steve up since 1935. Natasha's been trying to set him up since 2012. What's more logical than that they should join forces?

Bucky would like Sam Wilson to know that that is not actually a dirty joke about him and Nat, thank you and fuck off. (Even though it kinda is.)

I must have been on a bit of a poly bender? This is also Natasha/Steve/Bucky, and also has an excellent villain

---

A particle, a wave (1068 words) by kvikindi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Howard Stark
Additional Tags: Manhattan Project, References to Injury of a Child
Summary:

"My father helped defeat the Nazis. He worked on the Manhattan Project."

Short and very ouchy Howard POV.

---

Hooked on a Feeling (2901 words) by fmo
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: mildly a crossover with X-Men, Fluff, get-together
Summary:

Some guy creates a machine that gives everybody in New York mutant powers. Bucky gets empathy, which initially makes him very cranky, but later enables him to figure some stuff out that he might not have figured out otherwise, and ultimately turns out to be the very best power of all.

X-Men fusion, which is always like candy for me - who gets what power? What do they do with it? This is short, not particularly angsty, and very neatly done.



And back to the carbuncle mine I go.