cephy | Network

While that was not the result I wanted...

Today's USA versus Canada game was a big deal because NHL players couldn't be in the Olympics for a while. Today was the most top talent on the ice that's been seen ever, because last time USA was in the Olympics we had far fewer NHL players on our roster. This was as close to 'just let all the best players play each other' as we've ever gotten.

Youtube short that is a visualization of the increasing parity between countries and comparing this year to the last time NHLers could play.

zarla

I NEED TO MAKE A POST AAAAAAAA I constantly get stuck thinking of long posts and then they seem like too much work and I never do them!! I just have to do shorter ones and get them out there!! Bleaaghhhh

In stars-aligning type news, I've been doing a lot of good work on the next Vargas chapter! It was the Vargas anniversary like a week ago, which is one I constantly forget even though I usually try to keep track of this stuff. I had this really old meme I started in Flash ages ago I'd just found again, so I figured finishing that up would be something. So I did! I'd matched it to the source video so it's at a WAY higher framerate than usual, so Scri's little breakdance looks surprisingly smooth. It's also on Youtube if the Flash version isn't working for some reason. It should though, I have Ruffle set up so you can get the full experience! I used Swivel to convert it for Youtube which was so much easier than some other things I've had to do to get Flash videos into a workable format. I love the UI of Swivel, it's so dramatic and colorful and unique. I'm sick of the current minimalism trend in programs! Give me more elaborate UIs!

Oh right, Vargas chapter! Anyway, did a lot of good work the past few days smoothing out a lot of more tangled or awkward bits that had been bugging me for a while. I'm going to cut the chapter in half I think and just focus on getting this first part done and out. It's still like 20k so it's lengthy but it's more managable and it's at a good breaking point. It's been almost five years since the last update which is way too long lol. If I hadn't hurt my arm I'd be more on schedule! Or so I tell myself, anyway. I'd like to get it done before May... I'm mostly doing small adjustments with each pass now. I need to email my beta and see if she's still up for taking a look at it... god, 23 years, can you believe it? It's crazy to have characters 23 years old that still show up with some regularity that I still think about and write stuff for, haha. Even if there are long gaps, they're always going to be there. The number doesn't feel real to me at all. |D I wonder how many readers are younger than the fic itself at this point...?

It's still crazy to me how invested people get in the fic since it's so bizarre and long and complicated. It's so hard to pitch to people! And yet it seems to snag people and draw them in...

lj post

Current Mood: thirsty
Current Music: 32199. Double Dragon Neon - City Streets 1 (Double Dragon 1 - Mission 1)

jadelennox

I take a lot of pictures of three classes of things:

Cats: This pictures are good on any camera, including my agéd single-lens SE.
Birds: These pics are shit on the aforementioned handheld phone.
Moss and lichens and bugs: These pics are fine on the phone, but could be much better.

My real constraint is my hands and arms. I can't hold my arms above my head, I can't hold a phone still very long, the non-ergonomic controls and shape of a phone are shit, I realistically can't carry a tripod on a hike, and I can't bear weight on my shoulders or the back of my neck for any length of time. (I recognize that this collection of constraints means my pictures will never be great, and that's okay.)

So, questions:

Are there any cameras that have particularly good ergonomics, are particularly light, or have a good reputation for accessibility?
I believe I could get a remote shutter trigger & a remote focus, so I could prop the camera somewhere and get a good pic from a less painful angle; do you know how to choose a hand-friendly one? (Not finger-fiddly, easy to attach & detach, easy to click buttons.)
On a modern camera, is it possible to get lenses good enough for bird pics that are not, you know, heavy? Last time I had an SLR I was taking pictures on film, so that tells you how out of date my knowledge is.
What's the lightest tripod that works well for people with shit fine motor control and no finger strength? I can sort by weight on hiking sites, but hikers put up with a lot of fiddly controls that I can't handle.

(I'm only looking for advice from your experience or from the experience of people you trust. Please don't GoogleKagiGoPT it for me!)

phoenixdown_mod posting in

phoenixdown_ex

Signups are open and will be until March 1st, at 9PM UTC (countdown here).

The tagset is here, the AO3 automagic app to look at requests is here.

sarajayechan

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

sovay

I spent much of yesterday running pre-blizzard errands, but the local state of the parking spots is the truest gauge of the meteorology about to go down.

I have not yet managed to get hold of her memoir, but I deeply appreciate being notified of the existence of E. M. Barraud, who identified herself with chalk-cut hill figures, candidly described her relationship status as "technically single, but 'married' in a permanent homosexual relationship with another woman," published under her assigned initials and was known in Little Eversden where she worked for the Women's Land Army as John. She gave her wartime responses for Mass-Observation as both a man and a woman: "People are people, not specifics of a gender." I had never even encountered her poetry.

Current Music: Pram, "The Owl Service"

oursin

This week's bread was a Standen loaf, strong brown/buckwheat flour, maple syrup, malt extract - but due to electric scale going weird and giving strange readings, the proportions got very odd and it turned out larger and a lot denser than usual, if still edible.

Friday night supper: Gujerati khichchari, with pinenuts.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft roll recipe, 4:1 strong white/buckwheat flour, a touch of maple syrup, dried cranberries, turned out rather well.

Today's lunch: Scottish salmon tail fillets baked in foil with butter and lime slices; served with La Ratte potatoes boiled with salt and dill and tossed in butter, buttered spinach and baked San Marzano tomatoes.

inchoatewords

Movies: None

Television/Streaming: a couple of episodes of Buffy and Farscape.
Buffy:

"Faith, Hope & Trick" - first appearance of Faith (she's an interesting foil to Buffy)

"Beauty and the Beasts" - Angel comes back. Oz might have mauled some kids out in the wood when he escaped his cage.

"Homecoming" - Both Cordelia and Buffy are annoying as fuck in this one, but I am watching this through adult eyes and that's probably coloring my attitude with some of these episodes. (Use your words)!

"Band Candy" - this one had some pretty funny bits; especially Giles being an absolute fool. And Principal Snyder!

Farscape:

". . . Different Destinations" - they end up going back in time at the memorial and change the path of history.

"Eat me" - they come upon a damaged Leviathan and find all the Peacekeepers turned feral and cannibalistic. Also some of the Moya crew get split into two. Crichton's double makes it back on board ship with him. That would be freaky! It will be interesting to see what happens with the two of them.

Books: It has not been a great week for books! I had two books I stopped reading: T. Kingfisher's Hemlock and Silver and Ben Greenman's Emotional Rescue.

The Kingfisher book was a book club read for January that I never got in time. It just recently became available as I was finishing The Reformatory. I got about twenty percent or so in and I was just kind of annoyed at the book, so I stopped reading.

The Greenman book is essays on music. I thought it would be more like Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape or Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. No. Greenman's book was rather boring and also felt a bit misogynistic, so I had to quit reading that one, too.

I'm now reading Pylon by William Faulkner. It's a bit different than the other fare of his I've read, but I'm interested to see where it goes. It's set in a fictionalized New Orleans during an air show, so lots of talk of planes and pilots.

Listening to: only one Rolling Stone Top 500 album this week. Number 488 is The Stooges self-titled album from 1969. On the 2012 list, this album was at 185. Rolling Stone blurb:

Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” Michigan’s Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun,” and “1969,” bedrock examples of the weaponized boredom that would become a de rigueur punk posture.

This one is not really my cuppa, but I didn't outwardly hate it (like the Suicide album). It's a pretty short album, too. I can see the influences they had on other bands. Of the songs here, I like "I Wanna Be Your Dog," which I've also heard covered by several bands, as well.

Playing: I finished Assemble With Care; this is by the same studio that did Alba: a wildlife adventure. It's a visual novel with puzzles; you are Maria, who repairs electronics and such, and you've come to a little town for their festival. Various folks want your help, so you take apart and reassemble game systems, tape decks, watches, and more as you learn about issues in these folks' lives. It's a short but sweet game. The controls were occasionally a little frustrating (you can use your mouse on PC, but sometimes if I clicked too quickly, I'd put the piece I was working on to the side and then would have to hover over and pick it up again).

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6988 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #998.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

casemod posting in

caseficexchange

If you need a little help in fine-tuning your gift, this is the post to find the Watson to your Holmes (or the Holmes to your Watson—who wouldn't want to be Lucy Liu?)!

Those interested in providing support can pin their details to our metaphorical noticeboard. Support can include brainstorming, offering critique, canon-checking, fact-checking, tips on structure, language issues, looking for specialised knowledge of various kinds, sense checking that something makes sense, visual effects for comics, audio effects for podfic, and some casefic solving.

Participants and non-participants are welcome to volunteer to beta for the 2026 round.

Quick links: Tagset · AO3 app · Sign-up summary of requested fandoms

I've provided an optional template to fill out below, which you're welcome to add and subtract details from:

AO3 name:
Best contact method(s): Please only include details that you are happy to have public.

Fandoms:

Specific topics of expertise:

Mediums: We allow comics, fic, and podfic in this exchange, so please specify which medium(s) you're comfortable working with.

What can you beta?: This is a good opportunity to include content (smut, graphic violence, etc.), length (the minimum is 3k for fic, 10 panels for comics, and various lengths of time for podfic).

What will you not beta?:

Preferred file formats: Would you prefer to beta in Google docs or PDFs? How would you like audio files to be sent, if you have any preference?

Availability: This is a good place to mention if you're okay with being contacted five days out from the assignment deadline, your turnaround times, i.e. will it take you a week to review? Is it dependent on the size?

AO3 name: Best contact method(s): Fandoms: Specific topics of expertise: Mediums: What can you beta?: What will you not beta?: Preferred file formats: Availability:

If you're interested in contacting someone offering to beta, please do so at their contact methods to preserve anonymity. Please email gumshoeagency@gmail.com if you need to get in touch with me to ask any questions.

I stole the base of this from

fffx and

yuletide ♥.

shakalooloo posting in

scans_daily

Another tradition of forming a super-hero team: the members having a little bit of conflict first.

( Read more... )

donutsweeper

In exchanges news, Candy Hearts exchange had reveals- I wrote an angsty triple drabble for S.C.I.谜案集 | S.C.I. Mystery (TV):
- To Banishing Memories Summary: It wasn't a bedside vigil, it was more that Bai Yutang just couldn't make himself leave.

hurtcomfortex also announced it would not be running this year :( but will be back in 2027 :)

Since the beginning of the year I got it in my head to teach myself nalbinding (an incredibly ancient technique, while now thought of mostly as a Viking era thing it actually predates the Vikings by thousands of years, with textile fragments made using the technique found at the Nahal Hemar Cave (modern Israel) dating back to 6500BCE and from 4200BCE in Tybrind Vig (modern Denmark) but there's lots of evidence from many places more "recently" like socks from 4th C CE Egypt and hats and shawls from Peru from 300BCE to 300 CE) and post-Birthday Bash really threw myself into figuring it out. There are SO many different stitches and techniques and very little standardization and there's very, very little out there about it (i.e. NO patterns basically whatsoever). After watching approximately eleventy billion videos and trying to muddle my way though some articles and books I have sort of figured out a few different styles/stitches but who knows if I'll manage to actually make anything. It's been fun (and frustrating but whatever) to attempt though!

And, as always,

recthething recs (tumblr art for Bridgerton, Doctor Who, Merlin and Under the Skin):

Bridgerton
- Sophie at the ball (gorgeous)

Doctor Who
- Sillies (cute doodle of Ten and Thirteen interacting)

Merlin
- Happy Valentine's Day!! (adorable modern!au doodle)
- I once read a fanfic with a modern AU where Arthur is a restorer. Now I think about it all the time (I haven't read that fic - it's in Russian and incomplete - but I really like this art for it)

Under the Skin (TV)
- Cuddle (adorable Du Cheng hugging Shen Yi and settling in Shen Yi's lap)
- uno reverse of the cuddle (so gentle and sweet of the two in reversed positions)

If, like me, languages interest you, I thought these two Old English/Middle English/Modern English story telling techniques were a fascinating way to show the way English has changed through time. How far back in time can you understand English? (posted story) and From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue (video).

kat_lair

***

Title: too many hits off this memory
Author:

kat_lair
Fandom: Telephone - Lady Gaga ft Beyoncé (Music Video)
Pairing: Beyoncé Knowles/Lady Gaga
Tags: Ficlet, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Post-Canon, Kissing, Vaginal Fingering
Rating: M
Word count: 491

Summary: Gaga likes making memories more than she likes revisiting them.

Author notes: Well, in a perfect illustration of 'never say never' here is a surprise new installment of the show me your teeth series after, uhh, over ten years. But a) I heard a rumour of Telephone pt2, and b)

luckyzukky's prompt of i took too many hits off this memory (from 'Hold Me Tight Or Don't') at

likealighthouse's Fall Out Boy Femslash Febrary Ficathon proved inspiring. This is unbetaed so if you spot a typo/mistake, please do let me know.

too many hits off this memory on AO3

( too many hits off this memory )

***

olivermoss

This was not the outcome I wanted, Canada

Silver lining - the big stories out of the gold medal game are about the Hughes bothers and Hellebuyck.

starandrea

Maybe I could make a handwritten Chinese zine that I record myself reading aloud to a bunch of seeds.

This is gonna be my day. Or I'll take a nap. Still hard to say which way it will go.

Also I can't believe I haven't posted any pictures of Daphne in a year. I just spent an hour looking at photos, so I can't make up for it now short of sharing my entire library. But here's a particularly funny sequence from last spring, when her friends came to the back door looking for her.

( Daphne and friends )

Right now everything is covered in snow and ice, except the back patio, so that's nice. I still go out and sit in my rocking chair and look out over where the gardens will be in the spring, and admire the sparkly beauty of a frozen river.

Luckily the dogs love the frozen river, so now the play groups look more like this.

( Daphne and snow )

umadoshi

Reading: Last week I finished Stephanie Burgis' Wooing the Witch Queen (fun!) and read Heated Rivalry. I opted to just skip straight to the actual HR novel rather than first reading the Scott/Kip novel, which worked out fine, since I also had that context from the show. I enjoyed it a fair bit, but now I'm in the awkward position of wanting to see the next chunk for Shane and Ilya but no more urgently than after I finished watching season 1 of the show. The choices now are a) read the entire series (presumably doubling back to actually read book 1), b) skip ahead and read The Long Game, or c) hold off entirely and wait for season 2 of the show.

I also read a few more volumes each of Hikaru no Go and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but I'm still in rereading territory with both. (I think I've already read up to vol. 12 of Kurosagi, but for Hikaru, I think the odds are against me really realizing when I've hit new territory until I go to enter a volume in Goodreads and find it's not already on my Read list there.)

Watching:

scruloose and I are caught up on both The Pitt and Frieren, and we finished Midnight Mass last weekend (a very solid, intense ending).

With my crunch time at work starting, it's not an ideal time for us to start a show that's a significant time commitment or that's going to leave me desperate to see a next episode when work is eating most or all of my evenings. It's possible this will result in me just showing

scruloose Heated Rivalry, since it's apparently our key cultural export of the decade and all. *g* Only six episodes and I don't have to worry about being impatient to see what happens next or about being spoiled.

(I still don't feel actively fannish about HR at all, but am enjoying being adjacent to it and seeing all the fannish excitement and meta and such. I have saved many fic recs to my read-later list on A03, but have yet to actually read a single one [and may never, given how slowly I go through fic--there's still a steady stream of Guardian fic I haven't read that also goes on that list].)

Weathering/Working: We have what sounds like a significant nor'easter blizzard arriving at some point tomorrow, with heavy wet snow. Will this be where our luck fails for the season and we lose power for the first time? (I'm completely astonished that it hasn't happened yet. Probably it's not really because the generator and backup power are warding that off, like carrying an umbrella around...)

And of course the spring crunch is set to start tomorrow in the late afternoon, right around when the storm is likely to be in full swing. Will the weather have much impact? (Mainly, I guess, in terms of Those Who Speak all being able to make it there safely; I kinda hope that there's some kind of backup power in their actual building, but I don't know for sure one way or the other.)

trobadora

candyheartsex author reveals have happened! And here's the fic I wrote for

facethestrange:

**

Title: in the darkness with you
Word count: 4,233
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Rating: Mature
Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc
A/N: Many thanks to

china_shop for beta-reading.

Summary:

Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.

flareonfury

Inspired by

adventdrabbles, I will be posting daily prompts at

40daysofdrabbles from Ash Wednesday to Easter, prompts will mostly be winter/spring themed things.

Any fandom (minus RPF/Reality TV), pairing or rating is allowed. Feel free to combine with other challenges! Minimum word count is 100 words, but no maximum.

Our first five prompts are now up! Feel free to start writing or follow us incase a prompt jumps out at you!

Or want to suggest prompts? Have questions?

So check out

40daysofdrabbles!!

The original purpose

40daysofdrabbles is just to write 40 drabbles about whatever you want to focus on, or ask your friends for prompts/ships/fandoms - this is open year-round although it originally started as a personal challenge ages ago for Lent. This still applies if you want to combine the two events.

Check out the profile page for more information!

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Rating: Explicit
Length: 59,047 words
Content Notes: Bullying and homophobia.
Creator Link:

harriet_vane
Theme: Inept in Love, Pretend Couple, Friends to Lovers, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters

Summary: Will needs a date to his mom's wedding. Mike volunteers.

"I have an idea," says Mike.

Ice cubes form in Will's stomach. "How dangerous is it? Like, should I call Dustin to talk you down, or should I call Nancy to be ready to drive us to the hospital?"

"No," says Mike, "you can't tell anyone or it won't work."

"Or what won't work?" Will asks. It's like picking up a rock you know a spider will be under.

Mike gets up and closes Will's door. Hopper doesn't make them keep it open but sometimes Will does anyway, because every now and then lying around alone with Mike on his bed just makes his chest ache too much. If the door is open he can tell himself You can't do anything right now, someone will see.

Mike leans back against the door. His eyes are lit up with that special maniacal gleam that the Wheelers get right before they do something insane, like when Nancy says, "Then we have to go kill Vecna ourselves," or whatever. "Take me to the wedding," says Mike.

"Yeah," says Will slowly, "you'll be at the wedding. Obviously."

"As your date."

Reccer's Notes: They've fixed Hawkins' Upside Down problem (though this predates the final season), and it's the kids' senior year, and Will is worried his mom is worried about him, so Mike hatches a plan to be Will's (fake) date to Joyce and Hopper's wedding because of course he does. That means we've got Will pretending to pretend he's into Mike and Mike playing gay chicken against himself and...losing? winning? both?? Neither of them is doing a great job (or any job) communicating, but their fake relationship thrives and does what all the best fake relationships do, becomes real. A sweet friends-to-lovers romance with just the right amount of agonizing feelings.

Fanwork Link: Roll To Charm Person

minoanmiss

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Page Summary

olivermoss - (no subject)
zarla - ~Children in the factory??? But this isn't all my other factories!
jadelennox - advice from camera nerds
phoenixdown_mod in phoenixdown_ex - 2026 sign-ups open!
sarajayechan - Fannish 50 round 2, #9
sovay - The bones of houses show in the summertime
oursin - Culinary
inchoatewords - Media Post
case in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #6988 ]
casemod in caseficexchange - Find a beta and offer to beta for round two!
shakalooloo in scans_daily - Crime Syndicate (2021) #2 of 6
donutsweeper - Exchanges and Crafting and Recs and Whatnot
kat_lair - Telephone MV Ficlet: too many hits off this memory
olivermoss - (no subject)
starandrea - "your body hears everything your mind says" (naomi judd)
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: recent media | Spring Crunch Eve
trobadora - FIC: in the darkness with you (Guardian: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan) [Mature]
flareonfury - 40 Days of Drabbles > Updated
runpunkrun in fancake - Stranger Things: Roll To Charm Person, by harriet_vane
minoanmiss - A wee expedition

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(no subject)

~Children in the factory??? But this isn't all my other factories!

advice from camera nerds

2026 sign-ups open!

Fannish 50 round 2, #9

The bones of houses show in the summertime

Culinary

Media Post

[ SECRET POST #6988 ]

Find a beta and offer to beta for round two!

Crime Syndicate (2021) #2 of 6

Exchanges and Crafting and Recs and Whatnot

Telephone MV Ficlet: too many hits off this memory

(no subject)

"your body hears everything your mind says" (naomi judd)

Weekly proof of life: recent media | Spring Crunch Eve

FIC: in the darkness with you (Guardian: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan) [Mature]

40 Days of Drabbles > Updated

Stranger Things: Roll To Charm Person, by harriet_vane

A wee expedition

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February 2026

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