Our flock of twelve ducks now number thirteen and occasionally fourteen. Duck #13 is the neighbours' sole surviving duck after the others were taken by a fox (probably). He was keeping them outside. Ours are in a polytunnel inside an enclosure, but I think a determined fox could still get inside. Augh, I hope they survive the winter. Duck #13 is white and looks a lot like our Elsa, but smaller and with a more orange beak; we call her Lill-Elsa (Little Elsa). She has seamlessly merged with the flock.

The occasional #14 is a female wild mallard who seems to be considering the advantages of domestication: free food, water, and shelter! But she comes and goes. One might think our ducks would correspondingly be hearing the call of the wild from her, but no. They like their comforts now. The snow is thawing and I thought I'd make them happy by breaking up the ice in the small pond for them, but when I herded them outside to see it, they just stood there and looked at me like I was committing animal abuse, and hurried back to the polytunnel as soon as I got out of the way. Sigh.

As for me, I am too busy and am looking forward to things calming down a little soon. At least I hope they will.

sovay

Stepping out of the house for a short walk around the neighborhood, I discovered that a friend had sent me a surprise gift in the mail and that between their post office and my doorstep it had been stolen. I received a gutted envelope slit down the side containing brown paper from which the gift had been shaken out. The stiff paper of the accompanying note had wedged hard enough into the envelope that after some stricken searching it was still in there; the handmade buttons and the picture were not. I assume the thief was looking for checks or more conventionally defined valuables, but it seems unspeakably cruel to let the envelope continue on its way and arrive to tell me what kindness I had been robbed of. I still have the note. The kindness itself did travel the distance. But I still want the thief to fall in front of a freight express.

Current Music: The Pack a.d., "Take"

likeadeuce

Watching as many adaptations of 'Wuthering Heights' as I can get my hands on, professional tennis, or updates on the baby monkey at the Japanese zoo that's having trouble making friends.

How are you?

sunshine304

Browsing starts on February 27th, so get ready! :D

This year, I'm not offering anything in the regular auction. I'm still posting my fic from last year and though that's almost finished, I want to concentrate on my backburner-WIPs again. Also, don't feel like offering beta or special expertise, since that one had winners vanish on me two times in a row, which is simply annoying.

So, this year it's only the Crafts Bazaar where I'm offering something:

one fanbinding of a The Untamed/MDZS fanfiction
hand-knitted loop scarves

I haven't yet tried offering fibre crafts, so we'll see how that one goes. It's from the scarves I offered last year to help cover vet costs. I got some more wool in cool colours for cheap and since the whole scarves thing at the very beginning was supposed to be for FTH (I just didn't get around to it last year), I figured I could try it this year. (I also still have scarves to sell in different colours if someone is interested. XD The money goes into the vet cost savings account.)

I've still got two pending fanbindings from last year (didn't get a finished fic to work with), so I didn't want to overdo it for FTH this year. Also, I'm really not motivated to do a random fandom again right now, so that's why I'm exclusively offering for The Untamed/MDZS. I'm sure there will be many fanbinders offering books this year again - it's super popular and basically prints money for the event XD - so there should be enough chances for people to get a book. I might be swayed to offer something to the second highest bidder as well, but that will highly depend on my mood. XD

Are any of you participating as well?

shipperslist

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sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing, unless you count rereading Avengers: Endless Wartime for the 616 server book club. Am I counting that? I guess so. Fuck it. It's really bad.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Iron Man #2, Sorcerer Supreme #3, Ultimates #21, Wiccan Witches Road #3 )

What I'm Reading Next

I am hoping at some point to have enough brain energy to make it through a real book. I am also hoping to have enough brain energy to write some kind of update about my brain. Neither of these things have happened yet, but I now have enough energy to occasionally reblog things on Tumblr.

Current Mood: tired

james_davis_nicoll

The Good Society Bundle featuring Good Society, the Jane Austen-inspired tabletop roleplaying game from Storybrewers Roleplaying.

Bundle of Holding: Good Society (from 2024)

trobadora

Exchanges:

fffx is having a delay, and meanwhile highadrenalineexchange is in sign-ups. As things currently stand, FFFX should reveal right at the HA deadline, which isn't optimal, and if there's another delay, it will be even less optimal. Two 10k exchanges, overlapping - oops?

And yet somehow I'm still signing up for HA! Because I want to be writing, and I know it will reliably make me write. So far this year hasn't gone great writing-wise, and I need it to get better because I always feel better when I'm writing ...

Of course it may turn out that no one else signs up who wants anything I can write, and the whole thing will be moot anyway. *g* Fingers crossed!

Comments:

Over at the Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch, things have gone a little more quiet in the comments than I'd like, but I can't exactly complain because I've been so busy I've fallen behind myself a few times. Including right now. And I'm also a bit behind on AO3 comments - on older stuff, that is; I'm caught up on my most recent fic, including the spam comment I got today. (It's so frustrating when there's so few comments to begin with, and then one of them is spam! *grumbles*) I'm going to see if I can catch up at least on some of it tonight.

In conclusion, still in desperate need of a TARDIS. *g*

How's everyone else doing? Anyone else doing HA?

rionaleonhart

This post will consist of various silly Goes Wrong Show-related things I've posted to Tumblr recently!

I posted a poll to Tumblr, asking people for their favourite member of the Cornley Drama Society. The poll closed at 149 votes with Trevor firmly in first place (27.5%), followed by Chris (21.5%), Max (13.4%), Vanessa (10.7%), Annie and Dennis (8.7%), Jonathan (3.4%), Robert and Sandra (2.7%), and Lucy (0.7%).

(I don't think Lucy is an official member of the drama society, but I created this poll to see how things had changed in the three years since

personinthepalace asked the same question, so I thought I'd better make sure I had exactly the same options.)

I'm surprised and a little wounded by my beloved Robert's unpopularity! I'm just going to have to love him hard enough for everyone. (This will not satisfy him.)

Anyway, I wrote a little snippet of the characters reacting to the results:

( The Cornley Drama Society react to my character popularity poll. )

Another poll I've contemplated recently was this one from

questions-about-blorbos: Would you let your blorbo tie you up and do whatever they wanted with you?

My immediate reaction to this was 'oh, GOD.' Awful!! I think the only one of my blorbos who I actually find sexually attractive is Robert Grove of The Goes Wrong Show, but any sexual encounter with him is guaranteed to be regrettable, and involving bondage would be catastrophic. He ties me up and then gets distracted by an argument with Chris and then rehearses without rest for several days straight, and I am left tied to his bed for seventy-two hours.

Whilst I currently answer blorbo-related polls with Robert in mind, on account of being actively insane about him, the character I usually call on for these polls is Light Yagami of Death Note. Also a terrible idea to let him tie you up! I'm not sexually interested in him, he's not going to be sexually interested in me, and, perhaps most crucially: if he does want to tie me up, it's going to be because he wants to either kill me or frame me for murder. All things considered, I'd rather he didn't.

Finally: for Valentine's Day, I posted a Valentine's message from Robert Grove.

Please accept this as an extremely belated token of my affection for all of you.

calzephyr posting in

1word1day

Bossage - noun.

From the "there must be a word for that" department comes bossage. This architectural term refers to uncut and unfinished stones that act as placeholders for decorative and practical elements that will be carved later. Did you ever think about how carved decorations were placed on a building? Did they just get stuck on? No, a bossage was used :-)

Public Domain, Link

js_thrill

February 18th: The Only Thing I Know
February 19th: Duke Ellington
February 20th: Against Agamemnon
February 21st: Full Flower
February 22nd: Orange Ball of Pain
February 23rd: Blood Royal
February 24th: Going to Scotland

Of thew first four tracks, I am mainly going to write about Against Agamemnon. I liked the first two pretty well, but don't have much to say about them. Against Agamemnon has both the Mountain Goats sound that I like, and the annotations do a nice job of situating the classical reference (Sophocles's Ajax, in which the titular figure is tricked into thinking he has slain his foes but has only been battling sheep, and kills himself from the embarrassment, and Darnielle's reflection on how he is not that tragic figure, but only by dint of maturing a bit more than Ajax got a chance to.

Orange Ball of Pain is fine, especially compared to Blood Royal, which is doing discordant things that are really not working for me. Going to Scotland feels too cutesy, I think, but it may just be that I am trying to catch up on 8 songs at one go. If I had done this song by itself, I'd probably have liked it just fine.

February 25th: Going to Reykjavik

Watch on YouTube

Okay, this is a song I genuinely am enjoying. Serendipity that it is the last song, and it sort of confirms my judgment that Going to Scotland was too cutesy. I still probably would have liked it better if it was on its own. But this song is landing very well, even as the eighth song of the day.

I am glad I am not a music reviewer. Sometimes I have the thought that I like reading books, wouldn't it be great to get paid to read books, but then I think about what that job would actually be and I realize I am very lucky that I am not a professional book reviewer or slush reader or anything like that.

Current Music: Going to Reykjavik — The Mountain Goats

oursin

What I read

Finished Eleven Hours to Murder and went on to Death by the Dozen, which combine the cozy antics of Cat Caliban and her posse with mysteries tending to be rooted in past historical events in and around Cincinnatti. And Cat is after all pursuing a career as a PI, rather than taking up some quirky midlife career and just stumbling over bodies. And her partner is a retired cop who used to work in Juvie, not homicide. So counter to a lot of the recurrent tropes....

Then I realised, oops, that next meeting of in-person book group appears to be next Sunday - though I have not received any further notification since exchange of emails after the last meeting - so I have been reading Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life (2023), which is blurbed as 'genre-bending', meaning it does things I am not that on board with, i.e. the writer's personal stuff/odyssey and b) fictionalising bits as narrative. Though I am marking it up somewhat for her realisation that her Great Hero G Orwell was A Horror. I daresay a lot of his trouble with being basically incapable in managing matters and practicalities was down to class and educational background but you'd have thought he might have cottoned on to some of that? rather than blithely eating up the whole of their butter ration? (fairly minor in the overall marital picture).

On the go

Read a bit more in I Am a Woman but still feeling a bit bogged down, even if Laura has finally had a night of sapphic passion.

Elizabeth George, A Slowly Dying Cause (Inspector Lynley Book 22) (2025). Fortunately this was a Kobo deal. Phoning it in. Also getting rather bogged down. 20% in and only just getting a sight of Lynley, let alone Havers. Includes great chunks of autobiographical reminiscence from the corpse.

Have also made some progress on volume for review.

Up next

Have apparently manifested, in place where I would never have thought to look for it, GB Stern, The Woman in the Hall (1939), which I had been fruitlessly looking for elsewhere, with a notion of maybe recommending for book group, as has recently been reissued for the first time since 1939 by British Library Women Writers.

yourlibrarian posting in

everykindofcraft

How have things been going crafts-wise? Anything to share?

Last month we discussed shows about crafts, but so many people have learned them from another person directly. Is that how you learned any of your crafts? And have you ever taught someone else how to do a craft?

heleninwales

The novel (A Deadly Giftis still progressing. It's slow going because I haven't pre=imagined the ending in detail and only know what needs to happen rather then exactly how it happens. But I have either written words or made plot notes every day so far this month. The Get Your Words Out challenge is still working.

It's interesting that though I'm focusing on keeping the writing habit going, I am writing a decent number of words. I have always known that if I actually start to write, I will produce a reasonable amount of words. In the past, slow progress was mostly due to spending a lot of days not writing.

Writing progress
February writing goal: 8,000 words

A Deadly Gift

Total words this month: 7,063 / 8,000 (84%)
Words in novel (to nearest 100 words): 88,500

goodbyebird

+ Now there's daylight again and I've riffled through it plenty, here's my favorite cards from the Curious Travels Tarot.

You can't at all see the pearlescent shimmer the cardstock is infused with, but it is beautiful. Also this is a Claudia deck to me (I am not responsible for the connections my blender brain makes when I have a hyper fixation).

Spent last night going through my decks and if I see the opportunity to do so locally, there's a bunch of oracles and one tarot that just didn't work for me and I'd love to rehome. Very grumpy the one alternative shop that opened in town barely lasted a few months. Flip side my wish list has grown massive, and with some very much not mass market wants. Especially the Motherwitch Oracle, and both Wisdom of the Divine Feminine/Wisdom of the Shadow + workbook, and the Reclaim Oracle seems to align strongly with the kind of work I'd like to do.

For tarot decks there's less than a handful of strong wants, but it's not like my current decks can't cover that need. I'm really just being greedy there. (gotta keep reminding myself of that: girl your needs are MET). But also, so many fandom decks are happening. The Dune one already ambushed me.

Anyways, linkspam of Ew Gross/Boo Hiss? Yes?

+ AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations. (this is paywalled)
Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases.

+ AI data centre growth could put UK net zero targets under fresh pressure.
...how 140 data centres are currently seeking grid connections with a combined peak demand of 50GW. That figure is striking because it is higher than Britain’s recent peak electricity demand of 45GW.

I know there's a very big queue of centres wanting to get built here as well. As if electricity isn't extravagantly expensive as is.

+ Oh hey, a somewhat cheerful one! 'Breweries using AI could put artists out of work'.
Following conversations with the Free Trade Inn, in Ouseburn, the two venues came together to announce on social media they would no longer be accepting AI art, including on bottles and pump clips, in order to try to protect local artists from losing out on work.

I really do need 2026 to be the year the bubble goes POP.

cakewrecks_feed

Posted by Jen

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/the-labor-of-love-2026

Sure, you could go with rubber duckies and baby blocks, but that's sooo last decade. Today's shower cakes are all about the biology of baby-making: tasty and educational!

And while you're at it, why not congratulate dad, too?

Of course, mom also did her part:

Whoah, whoah, whoah! TMI, Dad, TMI!

You could even illustrate the whole process with the aid of disturbing plant analogies:

Raise your hand if you're going to have nightmares about daisies sprouting Alien-style from your midsection tonight. Anyone? Anyone? Just me? Alrighty, then.

Granted, the process doesn't always start exactly the same way:

Thank goodness that cup is labeled. Otherwise, we'd have some concerned coffee drinkers on our hands right about now.

And what does all this love math equal?

(No, your eyes do not deceive you: that IS a Fetal Bite cookie in that there uterus cake. Excellent.)

And that brings us to the Big, Life-Changing Moment!

AAAAAAUUUGGGHHHH!!

Yep, I'm changed for life.

Casey D., Heidi D., Hillary M., Kristin J., Jess, Shari W., & Tiffany D., when you're ready to have "the talk" with your kids, feel free to come back here for visual aids.

*****

This book has over 2,000 5-star reviews and looks absolutely hysterical, definitely bookmark it for the new parents in your life:

How to Traumatize Your Children: 7 Proven Methods to Help You Screw Up Your Kids Deliberately and with Skill

*****

And from my other blog, Epbot:

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/the-labor-of-love-2026

stormsyndrome posting in

fic_promptly

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james_davis_nicoll

What could possibly go wrong with playing along with an unhappy teen's delusions?

Babel no Toshokan by Tsubana

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

hikyoekizine posting in

fandomcalendar

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luzula - Duck update
sovay - Anything you crave, a certain curse
likeadeuce - Still here
sunshine304 - Fandom Trumps Hate is coming up!
shipperslist - 2026 ABC challenge, 2026 release & all alliteration
sineala - Wednesday Reading Meme
james_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Good Society (from 2024)
trobadora - catching up a bit
rionaleonhart - Max Was On Almost No Votes And Then Suddenly Jumped Ahead, So Robert Might Point The Finger At Him.
calzephyr in 1word1day - Wednesday Word: Bossage
js_thrill - This Year 365 songs: February 18th-25th
oursin - Wednesday dutifully attended the Fellows' symposia
yourlibrarian in everykindofcraft - February Check-In
heleninwales - Writing progress
goodbyebird - Let's shriek about AI for a moment.
cakewrecks_feed - The Labor of Love
stormsyndrome in fic_promptly - Wednesday, February 25 - Sun / Moon / Stars
james_davis_nicoll - Babel no Toshokan by Tsubana
nanila in awesomeers - Just One Thing (25 February 2026)
hikyoekizine in fandomcalendar - Hikyō eki 秘境駅 | A JJK Zine | Applications Open

Fashion's been a Passion

Network

Duck update

Anything you crave, a certain curse

Still here

Fandom Trumps Hate is coming up!

2026 ABC challenge, 2026 release & all alliteration

Wednesday Reading Meme

Bundle of Holding: Good Society (from 2024)

catching up a bit

Max Was On Almost No Votes And Then Suddenly Jumped Ahead, So Robert Might Point The Finger At Him.

Wednesday Word: Bossage

This Year 365 songs: February 18th-25th

Wednesday dutifully attended the Fellows' symposia

February Check-In

Writing progress

Let's shriek about AI for a moment.

The Labor of Love

AAAAAAUUUGGGHHHH!!

Wednesday, February 25 - Sun / Moon / Stars

Babel no Toshokan by Tsubana

Just One Thing (25 February 2026)

Hikyō eki 秘境駅 | A JJK Zine | Applications Open

Profile

January 2026

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