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30 miles, new forest

30 mile walk on Friday! And my left knee, left hamstrings, and back all held up better! As in, my knee became painful and/or sliding and popping, requiring intervention, 3 times, not a million times; my back made me lie down once, not a million times; my hamstrings hurt a lot but not so much that I had to stop for them!

I did have to take a 45-minute break for a work meeting (it was a workday), so that probably contributed to my feet not hurting as much. I definitely had foot pain, and for the last 4 or so miles, that was the majority of the pain (especially as I was able to take off my bag for the last 3 miles and ease up on my back).

That night, I lay in bed with hurting legs, and I eventually realized that it was nerve pain from tight glutes, not muscle pain. My legs were not actually that tired! My muscles actually felt really strong at the end of the walk, like they could have easily kept going another 5-10 miles, if not for the foot pain, the hamstrings, the nerve pain, and the running out of time at 10 pm. If I hadn't been worried about my knee, I would have run as much as I could (I ran half a block near the end and felt fine, had the fitness if not the knee stability to keep going.)

Lying in bed, I tentatively halfway stretched the glutes on my right side once. That's the stretch that's extremely effective but fucks up my knees, so I only did it a little bit, only on the side with the stable knee, and I stopped as soon as I got some pain relief. But it really helped! I'm going to see if I can figure out a stretch for the gluteus medius and minimus that doesn't fuck up my knee; I have an idea.

Soreness over the weekend was minimal, although my legs are definitely not fresh and have no desire to do another 30 mile walk immediately.

One thing that went wrong was that in order to keep my left knee happy, I had to put my weight on the inside of my foot, not the center. That's obviously bad alignment, so I not only ended up with a bit of a tight muscle in the shin and ankle area, I wore out the seam in the spot I was leaning on in my shoe. These amazing shoes are freaking expensive, so I'm not happy about that, especially with all the expenses of 2025. Oh, well!

I did get a blister on my left little toe, which has been a thing on all my long walks, but it's never a bad blister, only comes on toward the last mile or two of the ~30 mile walks, never interferes with my walking even then (very mild discomfort), and goes away quickly. I do wonder how much of that is angling my left foot wrong to appease my injured knee.

The worst pains were my left hamstrings, which have clearly not recovered as much as I'd hoped (though they are a lot better than they were, and are not hurting me on short walks), and my back. The good news is that in the last two weeks, my back pain did miraculously get back to where it was before May! No idea why that is, but previously, if I only took out my phone once or twice for navigational purposes, I'd be in agony and needing to lie down every mile afterwards. This time, I took out my phone a million times, because it was a workday and I had to monitor Slack*, and I didn't have to lie down!

Oh, yeah, where did I go on this walk? I went to a state forest 11 miles away that I've been wanting to go to for over a year. I've been working up to being able to walk 11 miles in each direction plus an amount of time in the forest to make it worth it, and now I can! I want the second half to be less of a sufferfest, but we're getting there (I hope). The fitness is clearly there, the injuries still need work.

I was able to spend over 90 minutes in the forest, and I would have spent another hour if I hadn't run out of food and been concerned about making it out and to a place of purveyance (we're talking remote!) before hunger became too much. Next time I remember to stock up at the last grocery store before the forest! (Ugh, I just remembered I'm moving soon, there probably won't be a next time. Anyway! The point remains. Slightly more food, slightly less worry about too much backpack weight for my back pain.)

* My boss started off my walk by pinging me about an error and asking if it was related to my Wednesday migration. I obviously couldn't check, so we asked someone else to check, and I had to monitor closely to see if/when that person was going to get online, and then monitor and respond to what they were saying about the error, and I had to keep checking if my boss would need me to turn around (or call a Lyft) and go home. Fortunately, it turned out to be unrelated to my work (which I thought it was, hence why I kept walking, but I could have been wrong!).

All the flexibility we get at work is highly contingent on responsiveness. If you want to be the kind of person who never responds to work messages when you're off, you can, but then you're going to have to request all your time off formally. If you're willing to monitor Slack and be responsive, you can have a bunch of informal time off. I choose to take the latter approach, which is how I get to take 30-mile walks on workdays that I'm technically "working". My boss has actually commented that he's happy to give me walking time, as I'm often more responsive when I'm walking than people who are at the computer working and focused on what they're doing.

Entry tags:

vital functions

vital functions

Reading. ( Wells, Lister, Tufte, Brosh, McMillan-Webster )

... I also technically started reading a little bit of Descartes, and more around Descartes, for the pain project -- but really not very much as yet.

Playing. A round of Hanabi with A & houseguest! We were playing with very different House Norms which led to some hilarious miscommunication, but A Good Time Was Had.

A good time was also had following the toddler around a playground, including some time On A Swing where we worked out How Legs Do. :)

Cooking. Several Questionable loaves of bread (mostly "too much liquid, ergo puddle"). Three more recipes from East, none of which were particularly interesting to us. (Piccalilli spiced rice; Sodha's variant on egg fried rice; a tempeh-and-pak-choi Situation.)

And Ribiselkuchen! I have been very very happily eating Appropriately Seasonal Ribiselkuchen.

Eating. A made us waffles for breakfast this morning. I had them with SLICED STRAWBERRIES and SLICED APRICOT and MAPLE SYRUP and also LEMON JUICE and VANILLA SUGAR and I was very happy about all of this.

Making & mending. It is Event Prep Week. There are so many potions.

Growing. ... I got some more supports in for my beans? I have just about managed to break even on the sugar snap peas this year (should NOT have eaten the handful I did...) and might yet manage to do a little better than that, with luck.

Squash starting to produce female flowers (yes I was late starting them). More soft fruit (which desperately needs processing; I will be sad if I wind up needing to just compost the jostaberries that have been sat in the fridge for ...a while, now). Many many tomatoes, none of which were actually ripe yet last time I actually made it to the plot...

Observing. Peacock butterfly at the plot! Tawny owl (audio only)! Bats (ditto)! The Teenage Magpie Persists!

Also a variety of awkward teenage waterfowl in Barking Park, along with a squirrel who was most unimpressed when our attempts to feed it mostly involved accidentally handing it an empty half-peanut-shell. It made it very clear (well before any of us had independently noticed The Issue) that it understood we were willing to feed it but that we were doing a terrible job at this and Should Try Harder. I was delighted.

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Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Chapters 21 & 22

Welcome aboard for this week's chapters of our Guardian readalong!

Here are last week's chapters. You can find all previous discussions on the schedule post (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5), or via the !readalong tag.

This week's chapters:

Chapter 21: The Yanluo Kings want to use Zhao Yunlan's heart's blood as the Guardian Lantern's wick, but the yao storm the Yanluo Courts under the leadership of Fourth Uncle, and likewise the daoists and assorted other immortals who were present at Kunlun Mountain. Ghost Face and various gui break free from the Wangchuan, and Shen Wei's trap is sprung. Zhao Yunlan half learns, half figures out Shen Wei's plan, and Zhu Hong clarifies Zhao Yunlan's feelings for Shen Wei. Ghost Face blows himself up.
Chapter 22: Guo Changcheng and Chu Shuzhi fight various youchu (including the fake rogue cultivator) with the combined might of fear stick and zombie powers, then escape to the top of the mountain, but end up in trouble there again anyway. Meanwhile, Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan and Lin Jing run into Daqing, escape from the Netherworld, and find SID and other people waiting for them. Shen Wei plans to re-seal the Four Pillars with the Hallows, and Zhao Yunlan tells Shennong's mortar to take his place and take care of his parents. Everyone comes together to help Shen Wei.

The corresponding part in the Chinese version on JJWXC/the fan translation starts a little less than half-way through chapter 102 and goes up to a little less than half-way through chapter 105.

Excerpts:

( 1) Zhu Hong defends Zhao Yunlan against the Yanluo Kings' designs )

( 2) Shen Wei is caught out )

( 3) Zhu Hong and Shen Wei have a rapprochement )

( 4) Speech time for Ghost Face )

( 5) Chu Shuzhi weaponises Guo Changcheng's fear )

( 6) Shen Wei addresses the crowd )

( 7) Zhao Yunlan's request for Shennong's mortar )

Questions:

What do you think of Shen Wei's plans? Or of the way he acts towards Zhao Yunlan? Is it satisfying seeing all the different characters coming together again? Are you following everything that's going on? How annoyed are you that we don't learn how Lin Jing made it to the Yanluo Courts in one piece? Any thoughts about Ghost Face exploding himself, and what the drama made out of that? Which of the things that has a direct parallel in the drama is your favourite bit of adaptation?

(As usual, these are just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like!)

Our schedule - please sign up to host a post if you can!

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Check-In #2

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Current Mood: sleepy

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Weekly proof of life: books (reading and ordering thereof), inc. an audiobook | A bounty of berries

Reading: Mostly non-fiction last week, oddly. Still slowly reading through An Everlasting Meal, as well as flipping through a couple of new cookbooks in hard copy*. I also started reading Maureen Ryan's Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood.

As for fiction, I started--brace yourself--listening to an audiobook. I don't really do audio formats at all! But

scruloose has never read Murderbot, and the audiobooks seem to be WIDELY beloved, so I thought maybe we could follow Kas and Ginny's example and listen to one or more of those together. So I borrowed All Systems Red from Hoopla (another first for me), and yesterday we listened to the first three chapters or so. (I highly doubt I'm going to take up non-music audio media in any meaningful way, but who knows? Three chapters was definitely not enough to make it stop feeling weird, though.)

*A small order from Book Outlet contained What Goes with What: 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities (Julia Turshen); Half the Sugar, All the Love: 100 Easy, Low-Sugar Recipes for Every Meal of the Day (Jennifer Tyler Lee and Anisha Patel), which crossed my radar early on in the "must keep an eye on blood sugar" process and stuck because it doesn't use any artificial sweeteners (since I've never met one I didn't hate); Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End; and the first and third installments of the Murderbot Diaries consolidated editions, which means I now own books 1, 2, 6, and 7 in hard copy.

Not sure if I'll just keep an eye out for the second volume to turn up there too or if I'll cave and just buy it. I'm glad there's a release that combines novellas! But I'm also eyeing the hard copy option for Network Effect and wondering if there's going to be a release of it that matches this set. I like all the original covers, but I also like my physical books to match. (Does anyone know if there's any plan for a matching rerelease?)

(Am I still grumpy that--unless something's changed?--it seems like the first three of Wells' Raksura books got released in mass market paperbacks, which I pounced on because that's my preferred format, but the fourth and fifth didn't? YES.)

Cooking/Baking: Mid-week,

scruloose picked up some strawberries that tasted and looked fine but had a slightly odd texture (kind of...mushy? But nothing was visibly wrong?), so we turned most of them into this Buttermilk ~~Blueberry~~ Strawberry Breakfast Cake. It was tasty enough, but not so tasty that I immediately understood why it's one of the two most popular recipes on the site; that said, in addition to swapping the berries, we didn't have fresh lemon zest on hand and used the granulated peel from Silk Road (and also, my impression is that while blueberry and lemon are an iconic flavor pairing, that's not true of strawberry and lemon) and did the vinegar-in-milk substitution for buttermilk. So who knows.

Yesterday

scruloose had to go downtown to one of the large markets because that's the only place our usual meat guy vends and we'd placed a fairly large order (sadly, to replace one from a few weeks ago that met a tragic end by not getting put into the freezer soon enough). But en route, they stopped at the little corner market and got two containers each of raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries, plus some new potatoes. So now we are SWIMMING in berries, which is a wonderful state of affairs. I imagine there's no way we'll make it through all of them by just eating them straight, so we'll see what we wind up doing.

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2025 Posting Instructions

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work

Momentum

Apropos of my previous post, I also want to say that if you do the math, i.e., the 4.5 months of work that I put into prepping the migration (mostly researching, writing, and testing code), you will see it started in early March, which means I sustained momentum on this project through the disruption of my life that was my partner announcing on April 8 that she was leaving the country and leaving on May 1.

I am proud of that. I did it by dint of

1) working on it a little bit every day, weekend or weekday, except for April 8 and May 1 themselves,

2) agreeing with my boss that while the massive disruption was ongoing, I would keep the CouchDB migration moving along, and be responsive to team needs and do small amounts of work, but not take on medium-sized additional projects like I normally would.

My brain works largely by momentum, and I knew that if I took time away from this project, even if everyone understood and supported that decision, even just a weekend, it would be hell trying to pick it back up again, and I would be making my own life easier with my minimum daily quota.

This is why in the last few years,

cahn's job has been to hold me accountable for various quotas, mostly German study and Peter Keith writing.

I'm hoping to finish the current batch of Peter Keith writing in the next week or two, and then get back to other things, like German study and reading! I miss reading.

Entry tags:

work

Big database migration

On Wednesday, I performed one of the biggest/hardest/scariest database migrations of my career, from CouchDB to Postgres. It took 11 intense hours to complete, the culmination of 4 and a half months of work, but it went off without a hitch (to everyone's surprise, mine most of all; I was expecting to have to debug issues along the way).

This is something my boss has been saying the company needs to do for at least 5 years. He brings it up at executive meetings and tries to get the company to allocate resources to the migration. But everybody else always had higher priorities.

Two years ago, he told me our team didn't have the skills and the engineering team would have to do it. I mean, we (I) would do the database part, but they would have to write all the code.

Last year, one of the engineers on my team and I pulled off a couple major database migrations by ourselves--again without a hitch--that had my boss going, "Actually, I think the two of you could do it!"

Then, this year, when it finally got prioritized, I actually volunteered to do it myself, because I thought I finally had the skills.

And I did! I pulled it off! It's one of the biggest engineering triumphs at our company. And my doing it meant everybody else could keep working on their major projects and nothing had to be delayed to make this happen.

On Thursday, my boss asked what would make me feel appreciated. I responded with the two most me things ever:

One, I wanted him to lead the team meeting on Friday so I could take a long walk and dial in without having to share my screen and walk us through the slide deck. (Also, it ended up being super windy, so I could barely talk at all.)

Two, when he commented that he noticed I had already started a MySQL to Postgres migration, I was like, "Yeah, that was going to be the other thing I asked for: let me focus on that next."

IOW, my reaction to being praised for work is to ask to do more work. :P

Also, also! While I was out for my walk, the VP of Engineering came back from an executive business trip and discovered we had completely eliminated CouchDB from our system. He started posting the below in Slack channels with hundreds of people across the company, so everyone could appreciate this accomplishment. (Note that CouchDB *per se* is not a problem, it's how we had it implemented at our company. I don't want to badmouth CouchDB, which is a perfectly fine database if you use it right.)

Here is what he said:

Over the past 3–5 years, it's hard to count how many times we've heard some version of "CouchDB is a huge risk." But while many of us have voiced the concern, Mildred actually took action.

Their work to fully remove CouchDB from our platform is a huge win—not just for reducing technical debt, but for improving our overall security posture. This change has a direct impact on our ability to meet and maintain the compliance standards we hold ourselves to.

Even more importantly, it eliminates a system none of us had deep expertise in, which clears the path for a healthier, more sustainable platform going forward.

Thank you for your leadership and execution,

mildred_of_midgard—this is real impact.

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My latest Guardian fanworks

2 novel Weilan fics, Zhubai fic, Zhubai art. :)

Found (472 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Set During the Hanga Arc, Hypothermia, Confusion, Rescue, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, alternate identity reveal, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Summary: Maybe none of that happened. Maybe they're both in the hut, or in Dragon City, and Zhao Yunlan is not actually dying at the bottom of some mountain in the middle of nowhere.

Too Hot for Work (559 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Hot Weather, Implied/Referenced Sex, Established Relationship, Banter, Zhao Yunlan Being Zhao Yunlan, Shameless Zhao Yunlan
Summary: "Fine, you work and I'll just do this—" Zhao Yunlan continues to unbutton the shirt, and then lies down with his face in Shen Wei's lap, pressing his forehead against Shen Wei's bare stomach. "You're so cold. This is heaven."

I Look Over at You and See Sunshine (894 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, Chinese Actor RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Characters: Bai Yu (Actor), Zhu Yilong
Additional Tags: 5+1 Things, Fluff, Tenderness, Banter, Implied Sexual Content, (very non-explicit), Summer
Summary: Five snapshots of summer memories and one present moment.

But Love Is Long by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, Chinese Actor RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Characters: Bai Yu (Actor), Zhu Yilong
Additional Tags: Wedding, Wedding Rings, Hand Kisses, Guardian Bingo, Fanart, Drawing
Series: Part 8 of Zhubai ~canon~ but with more kissing, Part 5 of Guardian Bingo 2025
Summary: The wedding photo shoot, but it's not just a photo shoot this time.

some good things

Pilates. Managed to drag myself onto the mat, at gone 9.30 p.m., and wound up smiling to myself and the ceiling.
COOL SHOWER. LOW ENOUGH HUMIDITY TO AIR-DRY.
Listening to the bats as I type this up. (Less active than closer to dusk, but definitely still poking their heads out intermittently!)
Local supermarket has resumed stocking an apple-and-pear juice, and I do in fact prefer it to the significantly more expensive stuff from the ridiculous fancy veg box people. HURRAH for Treats For Me.
Played a round of Hanabi this evening. Enjoyed discovering a Clash Of House Styles, but nonetheless pleased with how we'd done. :)

(I have also made two extremely questionable loaves of bread -- the soda bread I managed to leave out half the flour, which meant it was... not quite inedibly salty, but... definitely Really Quite; the sourdough was just too high a hydration and Wanted To Be A Puddle -- and sent a couple of e-mails I was avoiding. And ordered a Small Treat.)

Current Mood: melancholy

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Z1L movie-release news | An etrike update I may not have mentioned | Weather

On Bluesky, Wenella reports that "Dongjj Rescue, starring Zhu Yilong, Ni Ni, and Leo Wu, will be released in the US on Aug 22, 2025. The film will be released in mainland China on Aug 8." Time to start haunting the Cineplex site in hopes of Canadian showtimes!

I took today off in hopes of getting a bit more sleep (done, although not an impressive amount) and actually starting in on my next manga rewrite. I have just over a couple of hours before I need to venture out, so...we'll see how the latter goes in practice.

I can't remember if I've mentioned here that almost two months ago, I concluded that I'm going to sell my poor basically-unused etrike. ( In case I haven't, here's the gist )

Anyway, this comes to mind because for once I have a little venture that would, in fact, be perfect for taking the trike if I were at all in the habit of/comfortable with using it. Ah, well.

In related news, at least we're not under a heat warning anymore, unlike the last few days. (It's still currently 22°C and humid as hell, resulting in a 30°C humidex, and it's supposed to be a couple degrees warmer later this afternoon. But it's still an improvement.)

Entry tags:

medical issues

Knee update

My knee has been doing a bit better in the last week, as well as my hamstrings. Once the weather cools off a bit (it's been in the low to mid 30s Celsius), I'm hoping to try another long walk. I'm fine with shorter walks at those temperatures, but 12 hours is a bit much.

Speaking of which, my partner and I had this funny exchange:

Me: Hopefully no thunderstorms this weekend.
Me: It's hard to plan 12-hour walks if you know it might lightning on you.
Her: yeah
Her: i mean, i believe you, i don't really know what 12 hr walks are
Her: even as a concept, it's a bit like "not even light can escape a black hole", ok I trust you, but I don't understand
Me: 😂

Entry tags:

[embodiment] ... well that's just rude

Beginning of last week: experimented with dropping my amitriptyline dose from 75 mg to 50 mg, after a week of having been really fairly good at actually taking it at or around 9 p.m. rather than... later... as an experiment in "does this reduce daytime sleepiness?"

(Prompted by the all-nighter I pulled filling out the EHRC consultation and trying to get the house to cool down overnight during the 35 °C weather: in service of same I did not take my amitriptyline and... felt weirdly good all the following day? With no naps? Like, not even sleep-dep euphoria, just... relatively cheerful and with it and so on and so forth?)

And, see, I'd been aware that last time I tried dropping the ami dose my insomnia got much worse again, so I was alert for that, but after the first night of Fretting I've actually been doing remarkably well! It is possible that I have more or less learned how to go to sleep! I'm super proud of myself!

... and then at the beginning of this week I started going "huh, I'm getting a bunch of endometriosis-y abdominal twinges. that's... interesting. like, it's about six months post-op, and that's when pain commonly recurs, but this doesn't feel like my pre-op pain at all, so what's... going on?"

WHAT IS GOING ON IS THAT I HAVE REDUCED THE DOSE OF MY ONE AND ONLY PAINKILLER.

But the really unfair bit, right, the bit I am actually aggrieved about?

... is that apparently last time I tried this my pain also kicked up a gear and I was also surprised then and I had completely forgotten about this. I remembered the insomnia!!! I did not remember the increased pain. How dare I produce evidence that Sometimes Painkillers Work. :|

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Picspam & poll: Zhao Yunlan & Da Qing (drama)

( More pics! )

Poll #33369 Zhao Yunlan & Da Qing

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

View Respondents

Your favourite Zhao Yunlan & Da Qing moment

View Answers

At the flat, speculating about Shen Wei before the break-in (ep 6)
2 (13.3%)

Breaking into Shen Wei's flat (ep 6)
5 (33.3%)

Da Qing teasingly pretending to call for Hei Pao Shi (ep 6)
4 (26.7%)

Kunlun fastening Da Qing's bells around his neck (ep 36)
6 (40.0%)

Da Qing shifting into cat form so Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei can meet cute (ep 1)
6 (40.0%)

Hanging out at the hospital during the blindness arc, with snacks (ep 21)
7 (46.7%)

Da Qing explaining his Shen Wei suspicions in the Dixing bedroom (ep 23)
1 (6.7%)

Going jogging (ep 5)
0 (0.0%)

Da Qing waking Zhao Yunlan by miaowing (and Zhao Yunlan knocking him onto the floor) (ep 12)
5 (33.3%)

Other
2 (13.3%)

Does Da Qing take showers?

View Answers

Only under duress
3 (20.0%)

He shifts and licks himself
6 (40.0%)

Shifting cleans him
5 (33.3%)

Cats are naturally clean
2 (13.3%)

He hogs the bathroom indulging in long bubble baths, to Zhao Yunlan's endless annoyance (cats only don't like water when it makes their fur wet)
7 (46.7%)

Other
1 (6.7%)

Current Mood: excited

Entry tags:

!event

Guardian Wishlist 2025 is coming!

Next month, Guardian Wishlist 2025 will open for business at

guardian_wishlist!

This gifting fest runs along the lines of

fandomtrees and its ilk, but is specifically for Guardian (show, novel, and RPF) and related fandoms (main actors' other roles). It works like this:

People sign up with a wishlist of prompts and things they'd like to receive. Requests can include any media, including transformative works like fic, art, icons, vids, podfic, and also picspams and meta, translation advice, related music links, ~~lollipops, dried fish snacks, powerful ancient artefacts~~ anything.
Anyone can write, draw, record, or otherwise create gifts for any sign-up. Gifts can be posted directly in comments (which are screened until reveals) or to an AO3 collection. Gift posting continues right up until reveals. There are no minimums for gifts.

It’s been really fantastic the last four years, and we're looking forward to another round to celebrate this year's Reunion Festival (Mid-Autumn Festival) - so start thinking about what kinds of things you want to ask for. (Don't hold back! Your wishlist could prompt someone to finally make the thing they've been meaning to make for ages - or something they hadn't realised they were dying to put together!)

The Mid-Autumn Festival is late this year, so our schedule starts at the end of August. We'll be back closer to the date with updated rules and guidelines (all announcements and such are crossposted here on

sid_guardian), but we wanted to let you know the schedule now:

28 August: sign-ups open
5 September: first wishlists posted
15 September: sign-ups close
16 September: final wishlists posted
6 October (Reunion Festival): gifts revealed

Poll #33367 Guardian fandom gifting fest

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

View Respondents

Guardian Wishlist 2025

View Answers

Yay!
6 (46.2%)

I will definitely sign up with a wishlist!
5 (38.5%)

I might sign up with a wishlist
6 (46.2%)

I'll definitely write/draw/record/make some fills!
5 (38.5%)

I might write/draw/record/make some fills
5 (38.5%)

I wish I could make fills, but I probably won't have time
2 (15.4%)

I can post a promo to Tumblr/Twitter/Discord/elsewhere, to spread the word (we'll PM you a reminder)
3 (23.1%)

If you have any questions, suggestions or other feedback, please comment here or PM

trobadora or

china_shop.

some good things

Really enjoying the redcurrant cake I finally managed to make the other evening.
First of the clothes-for-me from the latest Oxfam order showed up and is in fact more or less Perfect, hurrah. (Cargo shorts. Two pairs of linen cargo trousers due tomorrow...)
Mulberries! ewt informed me that they were starting to come ready, so I took a detour via the local tree and did indeed manage to munch a token handful.
I made a batch of mostly-white-some-rye caraway-and-poppyseed bread, and it goes spectacularly well with the cherry plum and vanilla jam a friend gave me at the weekend. I have been having some Very Happy Breakfasts.
My extremely late-into-the-ground squash are starting to produce female flowers!
And I found some more lurking long bamboo to install for the late-sown beans to maybe make their way up.
AND I might actually break even on peas-for-sowing-next-year if the second flush on one of the plants does what it's threatening to, which I would be extremely excited about because I had been mildly regretting eating (instead of saving for seed) the handful we did eat, when my original intention had in fact been to Just Save Seed this year... (... but they were very tasty.)
We are reading Hyperbole and a Half (the book) together a chapter at a time! They are an excellent short Shared Activity.
I have this evening spent a pleasant ten minutes playing around with the dragons game and enjoying getting some very pretty possible dragons out of it. Yes good.
Read about three elephants graduating to the Reintegration Unit run by the Sheldrick Trust and cried a lot. (Also at the accompanying video.) (Good crying.)

Entry tags:

fanfic,
worldcon

All the Fanfic Panels at Worldcon 2025

I've done this exercise some past years (2020 2019, I've also written up a few Philcons, I think...), mostly to show how inadequate and silly the treatment of fanfic has been at past Worldcons. But here's the list of all of the fanfic panels at the Seattle Worldcon, and it's frankly incredible. It's such a diverse group of panel topics, covering history, technique, craft, culture, community. I'm excited to be on a couple of these panels myself, and to attend some of the others. The team who came up with them and got them onto the schedule deserves all the kudos.

Full Program for Seattle Worldcon

Fix-It Fic
The “fix-it fic” is a staple of the fanfic community, but why do we write it? What do we get out of it? What tropes are fix-it fic writers drawn to, and how can it be done well? What happens when the fanfic is better than the show, and how do small tweaks in canon lore to “fix” canon mistakes change everything?

Star Trek and Fanfic
The earliest modern fanfic arose in the mid-1960s, while the original Star Trek was still on the air. It’s often called the ur-fandom in fanfic communities, even though the roots of fanfic can be traced to Homer or earlier. What made Trek fanfic different from the earlier stories-about-stories, and what’s made it so enduring?

Filk and Fanfic: Two Great Tastes
Filk and fanfic cover some of the same ground: character studies, missing scenes, genre twists (from dramatic to funny or vice-versa), new stories in an existing universe, adding a sexy twist, or shifting the POV character. Sometimes, they don’t use a single character or event from the original, but everyone recognizes it as specific commentary. Come explore what else these two often-neglected types of fan works have in common.

Is That Fanfic?
Some books that might be “fanfic” aren’t called fanfic: Unauthorized spinoffs (Wicked, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Wind Done Gone), sequels by different authors (most comic books), and authorized books based on TV series. It’s not limited to text: Gaming mods for video games, role-playing games in licensed settings (Middle Earth, Call of Cthulhu), and fan-made games like Jumpchain also put a new spin on existing content. Are they types of fanfic? What else would we call “I made a story about someone else’s story?”

Building Writing Skills Through Fan Fiction
Before we write, we read, and often, it’s our favorite stories and characters that inspire us to be writers in the first place. Whether you stick with fan fiction or not, fan fiction is a place where young writers can play in a familiar sandbox, honing their skills and building their own authorial voice. Which fanfic writing skills translate directly to pro-writer skills—and what fanfic skills don’t connect to commercial markets at all?

ao3 mcu a:aou a.b.o. bdsm ot3 hs au pwp
Do you know what the title of this panel means? Come learn about the specialized vocabulary of fanfic: how and why the abbreviations and other terms get invented, and how that language works to build and sustain fanfic communities. (The kink tomato is not a food; dead dove is not a bird. Does “HS” stand for high school or Homestuck?)

Filing Off the Serial Numbers
Plenty of fanfic authors have “filed off the serial numbers” and republished their fic as mainstream stories. The most famous is Fifty Shades of Grey, but the Vorkosigan Saga began as Star Trek fanfic. What works, and what doesn’t? Is this a reasonable career-starter for new would-be pro writers? Are there any tips to make it work better or any traps to avoid?

What Is the OTW/AO3?
In 2007, Astolat blogged that fanfic writers need an archive of their own, not beholden to corporate interests and censorship. Eighteen years after the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) started it, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) is going strong, with a Hugo Award in 2019, and now over 4 million users and 14 million works. Come find out how it happened, how it works, how you can find what you want to read—and, if you’re interested, how to get involved.

Fanfic as Therapy
Fanfic isn’t just writing practice or sharing ideas about what happens next when the series is over—it’s also used to explore personal emotions and reactions to trauma. Come discuss the therapeutic value of fanfic as both writers and readers in a moderated open discussion rather than a traditional panel.

What *Is* Fanfiction, Anyway?
What is fanfic, and why is it important to science fiction fandom? Panelists will discuss the history of fanfiction and its connections to SFF fandom, what makes it different from authorized spinoffs, and how the fanfic community perceives itself.

Licenced TTRPGs as Fanfic
TTRPGs have a long history of media-licensed game systems: Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Universe, Middle Earth Role-Playing, and dozens of lesser-known games for TV shows or movies. Panelists will explore the connections and differences between “Let’s play a game in this setting” and “I want to write a story in this setting.”

Fanfic Community as Gift Economy
The pros and cons of an artistic community with a strong non-economic, even anti-commercial, bias. How fanfic works outside of writing markets, and what happens when fanfic writers go pro. This will be a moderated group discussion, rather than a regular panel—everyone can participate.

Not Just Training Wheels
Fanfic is often claimed to be “good practice” on one’s route to becoming a professional author, but this is not the only reason people write fanfic. Panelists will discuss some of the others: bonding with a community, exploring story concepts with very niche appeal, enjoying a personal fantasy, and more.

Fanfic on Paper
From mimeograph with staples or comb-binding to small runs of offset printing and artisanal fanbindings with custom covers, fanfic has never been published like other literature. Find out how it used to be done, how it shifted to digital publishing, and how it’s shared on paper now. We’ll look at the history of fanzines and the current fanbinding hobby, the ethics of publishing in a niche community, and the controversies of commercialization.

Making It Gay… or Trans, Neurodivergent, BIPOC, and More
In a media world that too often does not represent women, queerness, BIPOC identities, neurodivergence, or people with disabilities, it’s no wonder we choose to represent ourselves and/or our desires in the fanfic we write. This panel isn’t about why we take cishet characters and make them gay, trans, or a dozen other things; it’s about why we should and the freedom and joy that goes with knowing we can.

The Absent S: (Fem)Slash and Sapphics
When most people hear slash, they think man-and-man (M/M), but in modern parlance the term actually applies to any “ship” that is same-sex. In some fandoms, femslash is the main “ship”! Let’s talk about the differences between F/F and M/M fanfic and fandoms, how femslash is often overlooked or looked down upon in fandom (even when it’s the main “ship” of certain fandoms!), and what femslash means to sapphics in fandom.

Dipping One Toe In: First-Time Fanfic
Have you never read fanfic or are a little interested but are not sure where to start? Come to this panel, where our set of talented and friendly experts will try to give you recommendations—suggestions on which fandoms, authors, and fics might be right up your alley.

Reclamation Through Fanfiction
Fanfiction often ignores the canon setting and relationships to tell stories the original creators never intended. But can it ignore the setting’s creator? From Lovecraft to Rowling to Gaiman, many authors of beloved works are later discovered to be prejudiced or predatory or both. Can fanfiction be used to take back some of these works and put distance between the author and the art?

Smut for Fun, Not Profit
Fanfic erotica is so famous that many believe it’s all of fanfic. Learn how the tropes and styles of kinky and erotic topics change when they are written by and for a shared community. Let’s discuss how kinky writing changes when there’s no potential of commercial activity and it’s all about what gets you hot and what gets your readers hot.

Entry tags:

today I have been dragged kicking and screaming into maybe reading some Descartes

Specifically I have tracked down a copy of Treatise on Man, which is probably the source of the claim I've seen phrased several ways, most eyebrow-raisingly and also most readily to hand by Steve Haines, attributing to Descartes the idea that pain is

something similar to hearing, it is a fixed signal and measurable response

and it turns out I've got access to a whole entire PDF which turns out to be only 71 pages, including quite a lot of fairly large images, so I suppose I'm going to read Descartes now as a break from working my way through the BBC's Higher revision guides on neurobiology, which is itself a detour from reading the introductory text on nerves aimed at undergraduates...

(The things I've actually been reading today consist of two chapters of Hyperbole and a Half, a partial chapter of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, both as Shared Activities with A, and about half of A Handful of Flour, a recipe book I have owned for quite a while now and am rapidly concluding I might no longer wish to dedicate shelf space to...)

Current Mood: hungry

Entry tags:

cooking log

Foodstuffs from last week

I was sort of kitchen-assistanting for both of last week's cooking ventures, with

scruloose doing most of the heavy lifting, but hey.

Last weekend we made this carnitas recipe that E.K. Johnston linked to (and she mentioned mango-lime salsa, which I hadn't had before but sounded good, so I bought some of that too, and liked it a lot), and it was really, really tasty. We got three meals out of it (and between that and a two-meal HelloFresh box, that pretty much covered last week's suppers).

Later in the week we roasted strawberries basically using this method (that recipe is also how I learned you can toast sugar, which I'd like to try sometime), but the only thing we added to the berries was sugar--specifically the summer fruit sugar blend from Silk Road Spices ("a delicious blend of maple and turbinado sugars with mint, ginger and freshly ground green cardamom"). This approach involves roasting the berries in a baking dish, while others do it by spreading them out in a single layer on baking sheets. I'd like to try it that way at some point too.

I also want to try slow roasting them sometime to compare the result.

Entry tags:

vital functions

vital functions

Reading. This week I have mostly but not entirely been reading more murdery bot: Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, System Collapse, Rapport, aaaand I've also immediately launched myself into yet another quick reread of All Systems Red because we finished watching the TV series and therefore I want The Murderbot Of My Heart Thank You.

However! I have also continued reading about nerves! I have now read the entire first chapter of Nerve and Muscle, supplemented by a bunch more Wikipedia, and I think I am starting to have a better mental picture of how all of this works? I am going into way more depth than required by The Project, really, I think, but I will be happier if I know what's going on at least to the extent that I understand a little more about what it means, physically, when it is explained that some migraine preventives target Type A nerve fibre and others target Type C (which in turn is why if you get partial relief from something that targets Type C it's worth at least experimenting with adding in something targeting Type A).

And I have also made a tiny bit more progress with The Age of Seeds, but... yeah, mostly Murderbot.

Watching. Murderbot! I will concede that "I need to check the perimeter" did indeed get me Right In The Feels. I still prefer my book-Murderbot but I am beginning to acquire a better understanding of why folk love this Murderbot too.

The fanvid Bohemian Like You, by kuwdora, via sholio, via recessional.

Cooking. Several new things! Aubergine larb with sticky rice and shallot salad, lavender & honey Welsh cakes out of the Welsh cakes tourist tat mini-book, coconut pancakes. Now officially over two thirds of the way through East (with another Several planned for this week coming).

Eating. TODAY WE WENT ON AN ADVENTURE TO SEE ONE OF MY UNIVERSITY FRIENDS. I don't understand how it has been somewhere in the vicinity of ten years since I last got my act together to see this friend in particular given the part where, you know, we live in the same city, BUT we sorted ourselves out to meet up at King's Cross today and in addition to talking solidly for the entire duration we had FOOD including:

Ruby Violet (maxi moo moo with hazelnut crunch & raspberry, rosewater and prosecco on the grass by the canal; hazelnut & hazelnut brittle, salted caramel & almond brittle, hot cross bun, raspberry ripple, and coffee mocha ripple brought home, those last two primarily for A)
for lunch I had a funghi ma po tofu from rice guys, and A had a veg biriyani from somewhere I'm not immediately managing to spot on the Canopy Market trader list
from Bread Ahead we brought home two doughnuts -- pistachio crème brûlée for me, and something involving honeycomb for A; I think this is quite possibly the first custard doughnut I have ever eaten and actually liked (though were I to buy from them again I'd skip the pistachios)

... and upon meeting up with said friend, they reached into their bag with an "oh before I forget--" and pulled out a jar of jam, which conveniently gave me an excuse to reach into my bag and pull out the jar of jam I'd brought to give them, so I have swapped one blood orange + cardamom for one cherry plum + vanilla, and I've not eaten it yet but I am very excited about doing so.

... also raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, jostaberries...

Exploring. We poked around Granary Square a bit to go with Meeting Friends; we came home with lots of stickers (I also got some washi tape from that first one...), a gorgeous bowl (which she was not charging that much for at the market, goodness), and a business card for Creature Crafts by Nat so I could send their details on to Interested Parties.

Growing. ... I spent a whole day at the plot mostly reading Murderbot? (And did also do some weeding, and some harvesting, and some watering, and some general pootling.)