darkemeralds. Network

HELLO FRIENDS. Guess who hasn't posted in a million (okay, five) years despite all best intentions? But continues to be straight-up desperate to replace all other social media with Dreamwidth? I'm all set up with Tuta Mail, too, and I've been using Ecosia for awhile. We can have the internet without psychic damage, damn it.

In 2025, I got married, moved into a condo, and started a new job. New job is great with pay and benefits and low on drama, so far—fingers crossed. I'm gradually working through all the traumatic aftereffects of finally being a children's book editor, then not being a children's book editor, then surviving the first few years of a pandemic, then being a children's book editor again, then not being a children's book editor again. But I am currently working on my first small press picture book (with an artist I found in Armenia, no less!) so I suppose I can't be stopped.

These are...terribly anxiety-making times, but I am so lucky to have the friends I have and the quality romance stories (who else is into Heated Rivalry especially the Kip/Scott parts? let's chat!) to boot. In 2026 I hope to continue to serve my communities and heal. Love to you for being here.

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intro

dine

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jamethiel

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brightly_lit

I can't believe no one loved my post about the slug. And such pretty pictures, too. XD

Challenge #3: Write a love letter to fandom.

It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

There have been times in my life when the walls that surrounded my limited existence, that defined what I thought was all there was to life, were suddenly broken through. Two of those times -- the funnest, most enlivening times -- had to do with fandom. The first time was a "bandom" -- a singer-songwriter my best friend and I were obsessed with. We followed him around on tour for a few dates sometimes, much like going to a convention. We got to meet him and talk to him (I even received a couple of letters from him!), meet other fans, and above all, experience for the first time the joys of travel. I was raised in a really repressive environment where I was taught to fear everyone and everything. I was SOOO stressed on our first solo trip for the first few days, until I learned the hard way to just let go, upon which I came to cherish the experience of adventure. Oh, the adventures we had! Crazy, amazing stuff happened, and I'm so so glad. My life would have been immeasurably less rich without all that travel and all those adventures.

The second time was getting involved in online fandom through lj because I got really into Supernatural. Apparently many more people were there before I got involved during season eight, but by my standards it was still hoppin' at that time. Part of that repression of my youth was severe sexual repression. My mom was terrified we would get pregnant as teenagers, so we were raised under such dire threats that I was left with the general impression that sex would never be part of my life. That musician we so loved wrote very sensual songs, and he was a very sensual person, so that got me in contact with my sexuality. So did lj fandom, but even more than that, it burst through my artificial walls around what it's "acceptable" or even possible to write about. I discovered that literally, anything goes. My world expanded exponentially. I discovered via fanworks that there's no limit to what one can make art about, nor should there be. There were things I was still afraid to say in my art, and suddenly I was freed.

So thank you, fandom. So many of the most precious gifts of my life came to me because of you.

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snowflake challenge

brumeier

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soc_puppet posting in

queerly_beloved

Time for more Thursday Recs!

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

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community: thursday recs

princessofgeeks

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Mood curious

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heated rivalry

davidgillon

Storm Goretti has finally brought us some snow. Not much, just a light covering, but it really was getting ridiculous, it seemed like everywhere else in the country had snow, while we were surrounded by it, but resolutely dry.

Not any more. Let's see what the morning brings.

Mood Drifting
Location Snowiest bit of England, normally

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snow

momijizukamori

A new year means time for one of my six posts a year here, lol. I'm most active on Bluesky at the moment but 90% of it is reposting TKRB fanart and replying to friends.

2025 was weird in that I kept being like 'wait how is it [date] already???' but also there is stuff where I'm like 'wait that was this year????'. Time, man. Anyway!

* Big thing this year - top surgery! Was early June, and everything went smoothly, so all the initial healing has been done for a few months and it's now the long tail of like, nerve regrowth and scar remodeling. I was also extremely lucky in that my health insurance covered basically all of it!
* Related to the above, I did my first truly shirtless cosplay at Dragon*Con, which was also my first time trying to do fake facial hair - Goro Majima from Yazuka for an 'oops all Majima group with friends'. We also got badge ribbons made to hand out for the first time.
* After years of refusing to care about 2.5D stuff, I made new sword friends at Katsucon who convinced me to give it a go and two months later I had watched basically all the Musical Touken Ranbu back catalogue and I now own more blu-rays that I'm sure I want to admit. Half the songs are like 'these lyrics are so dumb but this melody line slaps so hard'
* I bought a kit to copperplate 3d prints - I've only done a few small things so far, so my technique still needs a lot of refinement, but it's very neat to be able to basically turn things into actual metal.
* I took an intro blacksmithing class! It was offered through the community education program at a localish vocational high school and was very resonably priced. It was really need and got me interested in learning more, even if most of my creations from the class are extremely janky-looking (no, we didn't get to make knives, being at a school meant no weapons)
* Went outside the US for the first time in... probably close to a decade? Only as far as Montreal to visit family for Christmas, but look, the world's been weird. Managed to forget cellphone roaming was a thing, but we spent most of the time inside watching movies and playing with cats anyway.
* Got around to setting up my lathe, and turned one extremely messy test piece out of some scrap pine I had, then realized I needed better safety gear before getting more into it. So more to come on that this year hopefully.
* Signed up for an e-learning course on sewing machine servicing and maintenence, in part because the place I used to take my machines to closed and in part because I want to Learn All The Things.
* I finally saw Labyrinth. Yes, the 1986 Jim Henson film. Yes, I somehow managed to have not seen it before. It was delightful, I want most of Jareth's clothes, and afterwards we watched the making-of featurette filmed at the same time as the movie and it was super-cool to see all the stuff that went into the puppets and effects.
* Bought a smart ring in September, which feels hopelessly tech-bougie of me, but I wanted some fitness/heartrate tracking and the one I have (Oura) is particularly good at tracking sleep as well as having good privacy policies. We'll see how useful it ends up being.

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year in review

olivermoss

* This is an unlisted youtube video that is Canadian news special from 2010 about the Legacy of Brendan Burke. In it, a then current NHL player confirms that there are gay players, their teams know, and other details. Also, it mentions a 'cancelled press conference' that was going to be about a player coming out.

Weird thing is, I swear to you I remember hearing about that press conference thing way back then. I wasn't into hockey then, but I knew people on LJ who were and also people who just were hype for queer news.

* Anyway, I am making references posts for myself of links to things like that. I also need to start one for some HR media about things Jacob Tierny and others have said, because they said cool thing... but if I ever quote them I want sources. There has just been so much media... so many good statements, François Arnaud pushing back against bullshit criticisms of the show, etc. I need to make like a personal reference index... eventually.

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6943 ⌋

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

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 10 secrets from Secret Submission Post #991.
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.

neekabe

The holidays felt like a marathon this year and I'm only now just feeling like I have a chance to stop and breathe. Not bad at all, but I just never had that moment of recharge.

It was a good holiday. Friends got married then we spent a week with my family. Then home for New Years and a little bit of time to chill before back to work. I got the waterfall dress finished well in time for the wedding and was very happy with it. It fit in nicely with the vibe and was very comfortable!

I'm very slowly cutting out my next sewing project - a jumper in black and gray plaid flannel.

Monday was back to work and I took advantage of the boss till being away to catch up on a whack of scanning and filing, and putting away all the items that have ended up at my place to be used as gifts. What was going to be my decorative office shelf now looks like a mini game store XD I'd be more annoyed but I'm getting a home office allowance, so technically they're paying my rent for the room.

Boss was back today and it was nice to get some idea of a rhythm again.

--

We watched the first three episodes of Heated Rivalry before the Holidays break. My government funded hockey yaoi ^_^ (I do somewhat twitch at the use of the word yaoi, as to me that means anime, but I acknowledge that if you start calling it hockey slash there is some ambiguity XD )

We came back after the holidays to finish the last three episodes. It was lovely. I see why everyone is so ridiculous about it. I then spent a bunch of time watching straight-dude youtube channels do reviews and they were lovely. There were tears. It was really positive and encouraging and it's fun to feel shiny new fannish about something that is shiny new for everyone (I'm having shiny new moments with DC, but that's not a shiny new fandom in any way).

In the way that faandom exists to fill in the gaps, I find I'm not looking for the smutty fics there, but rather the post-show found family fics, and the team moments. And stuff that actually focuses on the hockey :D

The Gentleman Caller also got me a "Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird" shirt XD

--

On the DC front I'm enjoying my comics and went to the shop to pick up this week's comics before we went off to dinner to celebrate the Gentleman Caller's birthday. One of the things I was looking for wasn't on the shelf, and it turns out it had an unexpected number of people in for it so they had sold out. BUT! the owner had a stash and let me have one from there. He said when he sees something selling quick, he'll put some aside so good customers who aren't able to show up immediately still have a chance. I was perfectly willing to wait until they could order me in a copy but it was nice. I got a good grade in buying comics, which is normal to want and possible to achieve XD
(I feel like it's a bit of a reward for the time when I impulsively bought a comic for a kid clearly trying to decide on which comics in his box to buy and which ones would have to wait for his next allowance)

Dinner was at a restored art deco department store restaurant, from back when high end department stores had fancy dining options. It was a lovely meal and excellent atmosphere.

--

And now the Gentleman Caller is cooking dinner and I'm finally getting groceries ordered and have high hopes of actually doing the December HouseHold Math tonight. And then maybe I'll feel ready for the new year :D

rachelmanija

A new comic from Ignite Press by Stephanie Williams, Letizia Cadonici (main artist) and Juliet Nneka (alternate covers.) At the turn of the century, Etta, a young Black woman, studies both science and a book of old remedies she inherited from her mother, along with some dire warnings she doesn't heed.

This is a really interesting historical fantasy with elements of cosmic horror and dark academia. Each issue has alternate covers in very different styles. I like both of them.

I'll be following this one.

Content notes: So far racism is part of the world and why the characters make some choices, rather than violent or constantly present on-page. The rabbits are used in experiments that are not cruel - Etta tests a healing ointment on one that has an injury - but they seem likely to eventually turn into zombies or get possessed by cosmic horrors or merge with eldritch plants.

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comic: roots of madness

lizbee

Thanks to my podcasting co-host's connections, we got screeners for the first six episodes, and here is my low-spoiler review as per the rules of the embargo.

TL;DR it has a huge heart, and a series about rebuilding democracy and the infrastructure of a functional society in the wake of imperial decay and environmental devastation is exactly what the world needs right now. It overtly follows in the footsteps of Prodigy, as a jumping in point for a young new fan, and the relationship between Holly Hunter as the Academy chancellor and Sandro Rosta as a new cadet who is skeptical of Starfleet and the Federation (and with good reason!) is a real gift.

I'm reluctant to commit to this, because recency bias is a thing, but it's absolutely my favourite live-action series of the streaming era (and you guys will recall that I loved Discovery and wrote a lot of fic for it!), and I think it's very possible I love it more than Voyager. Certainly it has the best opening six episodes of any Trek bar TOS.

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star trek: starfleet academy

ysabetwordsmith

Thanks to a donation from

fuzzyred, there are 10 new verses in "An Inkling of Things to Come." What if it rained diamonds for a week?

Mood busy

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$radiantfracture: a white rabbit swims underwater (water rabbit)$

radiantfracture

Where is there to sit exactly
If everything is shining on me

Friend, you have buttsense
you have stone buns, as your grandma says
Here in the driftwood feeling sundrunk, sunbent
Sensate among the ebb tones of the sea

I thought you said stun bone
You draw with a stick among the ebb stones
The tide wriggles up the sand grooves
Your breathing makes the subtones shimmer

You draw the water up to bait our shoes
Just for the craft of it, just because you can do it
Like a gull riding on the sky tide
Laughing at our temporary ruin

* * * * * *

Every morning very nearly without fail I solve the Merriam-Webster Blossom puzzle, and then I re-solve it to see if I can get a higher score, and if I'm not careful this becomes a kind of intellectual busywork I can use to distract myself from actual writing.

So a thing I'm trying to do (among all the other things) is to use the puzzle as a prompt. Inevitably each group of letters generates a semantic zone. Real and nonce words produce themselves. The letterset today was BENOSTU.

Here's a less complete poem from Sunday (letterset EINRTVW):

The riverine interview of winter,
that inept vintner: cool distillate
interrogates the view, shreds and repurposes it,
turns window to vitrine
where the morning light, when it comes,
cold citrine, tobacco stain,
will ennerve us, animate the inert twin

...Not sure what I planned to do with that twin, but I will let you know.

§rf§

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susandennis

We have, in fact, made our way through the list. My bedroom closet now has ONLY clothes and shoes and my ironing board. Perfection. It just needs organization - designer coming Tuesday.

The storage area used to look like this:

And what you couldn't see was an even bigger pile o' crap.

Now it looks like this:

I need to go through all those plastic boxes and I'll be half that shit can go right to the dumpster but that's a project for another time.

In addition to the closet, the utility room gained some breathing room, too. Nice.

We took Biggie to the vet. His bladder is way better but he still has stones. One option was to operate tomorrow to remove them. But the option the vet recommended was to try one more time to dissolve the rocks. He's now back to a pill twice a day. For a month. If the stones are still there, then operation time. Meanwhile he's Jimmy Buffet stoned on the gabapentin I gave him for the vet visit. And it's pretty hilarious.

Me and Biggie at the vet.

We're off tonight for dinner at a dim sum place Bonny and I have wanted to try and we are taking her with us. Should be fun.

sorcyress

Yesterday I was in a bad mood after my meeting, and also I'm a little sleep-deprived and I've been in a weird mood for a couple days anyways. Also, the band Seeming, who I'd just gotten pretty into one of their albums¹ right before winter break, did a "all our pre-2025 music free" as a special, and it felt prudent to nab it².

Sometimes we can do things the right way though, and so instead of playing mindless phone games, I just put the song du jour on repeat, and got my sketchbook, and drew a picture:

Write the song you need to hear. And draw it, I suppose.

( art process babbling under here )

Anyways, that's what I did last night, and I'm pleased about it! Maybe I will draw other things sometime this year, I would like that.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Specifically, Madness and Extinction. BDan recommended it, on one of the times I was looking for Bandcamp Friday recs. After the third time of tossing it into the "after school album rotation" and being all "damn this is really good I should go tell BDan", I finally took actual notice.

2: Technically I did pay-what-you-will at a dollar per album, since that way they get put into my Bandcamp account and I can stream them, instead of just being emailed the mp3s. I really like this set-up! And I went ahead and put the 2025 stuff into my cart to nab at above-cost on the next Bandcamp Friday.

(I appreciate so much that Bandcamp hasn't fully enshittified yet.)

3: Different fun fact! "The Earth is radiantly suicidal" is written three times because it was too off-kilter when I inked it once, and so I wanted to rebalance the picture. I sorta wish I had stuck with twice, since that's how they do repetitions of it in the song, but it's fine.

sovay

Now that we are back in the swing of the year, my days are marked by doctors' appointments. I preferred being outside the calendar. I did dream briefly and unexpectedly of Alexander Knox, playing one of those harrowed, abrasive, obdurate figures on the other side of some internment or imprisonment that made me think he would have been anachronistically great as E. T. C. Werner. Have some link-like things.

1. John Heffernan falls into the category of actors of whom I have somehow become very fond without actually seeing all that much of them, which normally happens with character faces in the '40's. I am unlikely even to see his latest project, the freshly announced Amazon TV version of Tomb Raider, but since his character is described in the promotional dramatis personae as "an exhausted government official who finds himself tangled up in Lara's unusual world," it's nice to know I would almost certainly develop a disproportionate attachment to him if I had the chance. You can tell I am otherwise a solid generation of actors behind the times since I was impressed by the casting in the same place of Jason Isaacs, Bill Paterson, Celia Imrie, Paterson Joseph, and Sigourney Weaver.

2. This song transfixed me a few nights ago on WHRB: Barbez, "Strange" (2005).

3. I meant once again to praise the Malden Public Library for ordering me a sun-bleached, peach-orange, jacketless first edition of Leslie Howard's Trivial Fond Records (ed. Ronald Howard, 1982), about whose selected nonfiction I have been intensely curious since discovering its existence in 2008, but the problem with reading some of the broadcasts he made for J. B. Priestley's Britain Speaks in 1940 is that one runs into passages like:

Democracy today, to survive at all, must be as militant as autocracy, and what the world is desperately in need of now is not the gentle, philosophic democracy of Jefferson, but the outspoken, militant and ringing democracy of Roosevelt, representing the righteous anger of the free people of the world aroused against the cynical arrogance of the totalitarian feudalists.

Music Barbez, "Strange"

ysabetwordsmith

This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...

Posted 10 Products to Help You Keep Your 2026 New Year’s Resolutions at

goals_on_dw.

Posted "Reading Challenges" on

25book_pwd.

Posted "Reading Challenges" on

50books_poc.

Commented under 01/07/26 on

abc_onceupon.

Commented under Hi There by

dr_zook on

friending_memes.
-- and under the comment thread by

tamena.
-- and under the comment thread by

forestofdreams.
-- and under the comment thread for

autumninpluto.
-- and under the comment thread for

adoptedwriter.

Commented under "Love Note to Quadrants" on

100quadrantedships.

Commented under "Love Note To The Sedoretu" in

40sedoretu.

( Read more... )