Good News

Mar. 4th, 2026 12:11 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.

What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?

Women's History Month

Mar. 3rd, 2026 11:06 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
March is Women's History Month.  Here are some ways to celebrate it.  Here on Dreamwidth check out communities like [community profile] girlgay[community profile] hooked_on_heroines[community profile] shes_awesome[community profile] fem_thoughts, or [community profile] historium.


Women's History Month 

I know the planets are in retrograde

Mar. 3rd, 2026 10:51 pm
cornerofmadness: (Default)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
but damn today was something. I woke up 40 minutes before the alarm. Got 2 miles from work and realized I had forgotten my phone on the charger. Because of the multifactorial verification I can't get into my work email or the online teaching stuff.

I can't turn around as I was giving a test in the morning. The entire handicapped parking lot was full (we have asked parents of CCP kids to STOP fucking parking there to wait but no one enforces this) so I have to park up the hill.

So after the test I run home (I'm only 10 miles away) Also today was SO much warmer than yesterday I don't even care I had to run home. I changed shirts. Go back. Students were supposed to show up today but didn't (but at least I got stuff graded).

I still can't get anything done at work and more and more is getting added on us and then the dean in charge of this is gone effective today. What happened? No clue.

I get to CVS and the line is so long I eat my KFC sandwich in line and wasn't halfway thru it (but I was out of both meds so I had to get them)

I'm not bringing you any new Fannish 50 today but I'm really looking forward to being able to share some of the open calls later this week. I am lining up stories in my head. I'm thrilled to finally have things that might fit some of these open calls.

It's women's history month so I hope to highlight a woman a day, oh probably not every day but I'll try.


So while this is niche for Pittsburgh, it's our women of WWII which with the way Trump and Hesgeth are ripping out military women's history, I think it's important to share it so those fucks can't succeed. You can see it here.

Poem: "Refusing to Melt"

Mar. 3rd, 2026 06:04 pm
ysabetwordsmith: (Fly Free)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] gs_silva. It also fills the "ribbon" square in my 3-1-26 card for the National Crafting Month Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Alien Romance by [personal profile] gs_silva.

Read more... )

current fandom events

Mar. 3rd, 2026 10:27 am
svgurl: (smallville: dp globe)
[personal profile] svgurl
[community profile] youtuberecs is a community where you can rec YouTube videos

[community profile] marchmetamatterschallenge, a challenge that involves locating and copying over meta you've created to a second site in order to ensure its preservation and also including some prompts for creating new meta, is running again this year.

[community profile] allbingo is running a National Crafting Month Bingo Fest through March. There are pre-made cards or you can create your own using the available prompts.

[community profile] sufficiently_advanced_ex, a fanworks exchange for science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature canons, is open for nominations until March 7th.

[community profile] worldbuildex, a fic exchange based on world building in canon, is accepting nominations until March 8th, 9PM EDT.

[community profile] unsent_letters_exchange, an epistolary fic exchange, is open for sign-ups until March 9th, 11:59PM UTC (posts says the 7th, but it was extended due to AO3 outages)

[community profile] monstersmashexchange, a gift exchange that features monsters, is accepting nominations until March 11th, 8PM Eastern.

[community profile] bethefirst, a challenge where you write the first fic in a fandom that previously had none, is open for sign-ups. The deadline to submit a fic is April 20th, 11:59PM GMT.

Multifandom Shelter for Abandoned Fics is an event where you can submit your abandoned WIPs if you want someone else to complete them or claim others

[community profile] fancake's theme of the month is: siblings. Click on the banner below to learn more!

Photograph of two adorable Vietnamese toddlers in identical denim overalls and dinosaur sweaters, text: Siblings, at Fancake.

Birdfeeding

Mar. 3rd, 2026 12:24 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy, chilly, and wet.  It's been raining most of the morning, supposed to clear up midday, then thunderstorms today.  A beautiful day to stay indoors and write!

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and a male house finch.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 3/3/26 -- i did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 3/3/26 -- i did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Poetry Fishbowl Open!

Mar. 3rd, 2026 11:55 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "World Cuisine." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for cooks, fusion chefs, immigrant cooks, eaters, farmers, foragers, food scientists, inventors, recipe writers, famous figures in food history, cooks of disadvantaged groups who should have become famous, superheroes, supervillains, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people active in the food world, cooking, gardening, harvesting, foraging, preserving, writing recipes, discovering things, decolonizing diets, building or using kitchen equipment, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, kitchens, restaurants, food trucks or carts, campfires, barbecue sites, laboratories, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, picnics, grocery stores, farmer's markets, roadside fruit stands, U-pick farms, gardens, food forests, other places where people make food, world cuisine, ethnic cuisines, cookbooks, online recipe archives, permaculture, heritage diets, climatarian diet, traditional foodways, culinary archaeology, food sovereignty, drought-resistant crops, trial and error, ethnic spice sets, weird food, fusion food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, new ideas in cuisine, alternate agriculture, lab conditions are not field conditions, ethics of food, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

National Crafting Month Bingo Card 3-1-26

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One has to figure out how to feed a diverse, far-flung group of people who sometimes have special dietary needs.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past, including some aspects of food science.

A Conflagration of Dragons has the Six Races (plus the dragons) who all have different diets.  This often poses challenges for the refugees.

Daughters of the Apocalypse has people trying to find and prepare enough food to survive, when city libraries are out of reach.

Fiorenza the Wisewoman uses herbs and healing foods to care for her village.

Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania.  Igor enjoys cooking and has gotten at least one of the werewolves curious about cooking the human way.

Hart's Farm is a community with food used as one of the popular bonding methods.

Peculiar Obligations combines Quakers and pirates in the Caribbean, among other groups and places, leading to a wide variety of foods.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all of whom need to eat.  Primal soups and high-burn soups often have special dietary needs.  Comfort food and healing food are also very popular here.  The Rutledge thread includes Kardal and his food truck Syrian Foods, along with references to Vermont, French, and hippie cuisines.  Pain's Gray, Shiv, and the Finns are all fond of cooking too.

The Wandering features old people who drift back in time, the first of whom lands in Goa, India.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

Read more... )

Praise be to March.

Mar. 3rd, 2026 01:27 pm
hindsightseeing: ([FS] Nyah!)
[personal profile] hindsightseeing
Not to be the kind of person who updates with pointless and artibrary nonsense while the world is falling apart... but holy heck, a day with sunshine and a temperature above 0°? I was truly starting to think I'd never see such a thing again.

We take what tiny joys and pleasures we can these days, and honestly, right now, this feels like a pretty big one.

(no subject)

Mar. 3rd, 2026 09:29 am
galadhir: (Totoro)
[personal profile] galadhir

On very bad news: my belly dance teacher, Elizabeth, popped over to the Middle East to get some dancing in during the half term holiday, and she is now trapped there thanks to the war. We suggested she find the embassy and let them know she's there but that's all we've heard, so none of us know what's happening beyond that. Some prayers for her safety would not come amiss if anyone reading this has a prayer list :(

On slightly better news, DH and I are having a heat pump put in, to run our central heating, instead of the gas boiler we previously had. And when I say 'we're having a heat pump put in' I mean right now. One engineer is outside drilling something. One is putting sticky back plastic over our carpets to protect them, prior to checking which radiators need to be replaced.

(Apparently we need larger radiators because the water coming from the heat pump will be at a lower temperature than that coming from a boiler, so we'll need a larger surface area of radiator to provide equivalent heating.)

We were keen to get a heat pump because we are with an electricity provider who get all their electricity from renewables (mostly wind farms around here.) That way, once we swap our gas hob for an electric one, we will be freed from fossil fuel use except for the cars. (They're on the plan too, but second hand electric cars are not yet as available as we need, and who can afford a new car?)

I'm very impressed with our electricity people so far (Octopus Electric.) They said they'd be here by 8am and they were here at 8.10am. (In contrast to the scaffolding people who said they'd be here yesterday and never turned up at all.)

They're putting protectors on our carpeting where they intend to walk. They say it will take them three days to install the heat pump system, but we'll only have one day without heating. And they have given us three fan heaters to keep us warm on that one day, and told us we can keep them afterward.

It'll be hard to go back to a system where you have to heat up the hot water tank in order to have hot water, (rather than the current system where the boiler heats the water on demand.) But we're doing our bit for the planet, so that will have to be the consolation :)

Photos: House Yard

Mar. 2nd, 2026 10:51 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today I set up a new label for the Sharpie Oil Paint Pen Extra Fine that I bought recently. I also took some other pictures around the yard.

Walk with me ... )

I wish I didn't know

Mar. 2nd, 2026 11:29 pm
cornerofmadness: (Default)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
I've been looking at what's been going on at Ohio U for things to do and relax at. Somehow even though it's linked to the literature festival ongoing there, it was never mentioned on their site. Tomorrow LeVar Burton is at OU. OMFG. It's FREE first come first serve b ut that's the rub. I wish there were tickets (even free) because it's an hour drive with nightmare parking so I am not sure I want to go out (into the icy rain) drive 40 miles, park, walk blocks only to find out it's sold out. Sigh.

How did I find out? I was telling the new admin assistant about the Irish Storyteller at the library next week (I can't go) and he's like so did you hear about LeVar? Sigh. If I had known earlier, I could have had local friends get us seats. Ah well

Today was the rescheduled writers group zoom. It was very productive.

And now I need to hurriedly submit one more story. It's about time. It took me until March to submit anything.

It's music monday 30 weeks of music. This week's prompt is 16 a song that calms you down Share your faves too.

I didn't have time to really think this one thru so I went with an old standard )





here's the whole prompt list

It's under here )
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
My order has arrived from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds. :D

Read more... )

Willow Cuttings

Mar. 2nd, 2026 03:18 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
My willow cuttings have arrived! :D I will need to unpack them and set them up. My plan is to put some in water, which makes willow water, which can be used to root other things. I shall take cuttings from some dogwoods and other things here to see if this works. I also intend to put some willow cuttings in soil to see how that works. Since willows are pretty much the easiest thing to propagate from cuttings, and I have 3 of each color, I figure at least one of each should survive.

Willow is a keystone plant, supporting many other species. Early blooms feed bees. Birds like to nest in willows. Many species of insects, especially butterfly and moth larvae, feed on them. They also make great craft materials and, as mentioned above, spew out rooting hormones.

Read more... )

Birdfeeding

Mar. 2nd, 2026 01:51 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy, cold, and damp. Last night it snowed a bit, then sleeted, and seems to have rained later. Now most of the ice has melted off.

I fed the birds. I've seen a flock of sparrows and a male cardinal.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 3/2/26 -- I transplanted snowdrops from the parking lot to the white garden.

EDIT 3/2/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I set up a label with the new Sharpie Oil Paint Pen (Extra Fine) and took pictures.

I saw a squirrel in the trees.

EDIT 3/2/26 -- My red curly willow cuttings arrived, as did my order from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds. I have set up two of the willow cuttings in water, one in potting soil. I also took a cutting from the fishpond mulberry tree and one from a red dogwood, which I added to the water cups to see if the willows will help those root too.

EDIT 3/2/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 3/2/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I've seen a male cardinal chasing a female, and a fox squirrel at the hopper feeder.

I am done for the night.
merricatb: Image of Rajalagang (Complicated1)
[personal profile] merricatb
The [community profile] threeisnotacrowd exchange has been revealed and now I can talk about my new fic! This was a gift for [personal profile] flareonfury with Dani/Hernando/Lito from Sense8. I hadn't written Dani before but I've done Lito (he's exhausting) and Hernando (less exhausting but still not something I wanted to revisit again so soon after my foray into his POV). I tried a couple of different approaches to missing scene fics with their big Found Family moments throughout the series, and finally settled on this one, with some inspiration from a different Wachowski work (shouldn't be too hard to guess but bonus points to anyone who recognizes it). By the time they go to Pride in 2.6 she's already well established as their third, but it's really cemented upon their return and that scene of her accepting that she's home is so beautiful. This takes place shortly after the confrontation with Joaquin and her parents.

No Use Crying Over Dropped Jewelry
Dani has a crisis of confidence when she can't pay her part of Lito and Hernando's rent.
Teen 1118 words

osteophage: photo of a leaping coyote (Default)
[personal profile] osteophage

In the controversy surrounding Cory Doctorow’s anniversary post, many people have engaged with the spirit of the thing, but I have yet to see any in-depth discussion of his choice to invoke the term purity culture. Purity culture is a term with very particular origins, and it’s not some general term for people being mean on the internet. It’s a term for a specific enculturation into a pattern of sexual abuse.

But before we get into that, let me give you an overview of why we’re talking about this again. I say “again” because — as long-time readers may recall — I posted about this subject before back in 2019. With that said, that post was written for a different audience, and there are some new facets to address this time, so let’s take it from the top.

Crossposted to Pillowfort and my personal site.

 

Read more... )

Monday Update 3-2-26

Mar. 2nd, 2026 12:04 am
ysabetwordsmith: Artwork of the wordsmith typing. (typing)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Clothes
National Crafting Month Bingo Card 3-1-26
Birdfeeding
Emotional Neglect
Today's Adventures
Bingo
Books
Food
Birdfeeding
New Year's Resolutions Check In
Philosophical Questions: Government
Books
Space Exploration
Moment of Silence: Neil Sedaka
Pinetree Garden Seeds Order
Follow Friday 2-20-26: Active Communities on Dreamwidth Winter 2025-2026 J-Z
Birdfeeding
Recipe: African Spice Cookies
Photos: Water Garden
Photos: Worm Bin
Photos: House Yard
Crafts
Vocabulary: Proforestation
Birdfeeding
Willow Cuttings
Community Thursdays
Vocabulary: Bossage
Linguistics
Birdfeeding
Cuddle Party

Safety has 50 comments. Food has 53 comments. Wildlife has 40 comments. Food has 67 comments. Robotics has 147 comments.


There will be a Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, March 3 with a theme of "World Cuisine." I hope to see you then!


March Meta Matters Challenge banner

[community profile] marchmetamatterschallenge is running this month. See my tracking post and the first check-in post.


"The Struggle Against Overwhelming Odds" belongs to Not Quite Kansas and needs $34.50 to be complete. Raymond and Gideon get attacked on the way home from research.


The weather has been warmish here, though it got colder today. Yesterday it rained a bit. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a large flock of sparrows, several starlings, a pair of house finches courting plus an extra male, two male cardinals, a mourning dove, and a fox squirrel. I saw a downy woodpecker in the trees. Red-winged blackbirds have been singing overhead. Honeybees are out, and finally found the flowers. Currently blooming: crocuses, snowdrops.

Clothes

Mar. 1st, 2026 10:28 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cats playing with goldfish (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Donating clothes to charity has an unfortunate dark side

Here’s what actually happens when you donate clothes. First, they go to charity shops and collectors who sort through everything. The nicest pieces might be sold at the local thrift store.

But there’s a catch: these organizations receive far more clothing than they can sell. We’re talking about mountains of fabric that no one locally wants to buy.

So what happens to the rest? Some items are thrown away. But a huge portion gets packed into bales and shipped overseas.



There are lots of ways to address this issue. First, understand the problem...

Read more... )

Writerly Ways

Mar. 1st, 2026 11:28 pm
cornerofmadness: (Default)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
I'm beginning to wonder what is wrong with me. I thought my Overlook story was formatted. It wasn't. I thought This Little Piggy story had a good ending (a story I have sent out in the past) and it literally trails off. I thought my test for tuesday was done and I just needed to clean it up. I was wrong. Is this part of worsening ADHD? Is this part of the depression? Me being overworked? I am falling further and further behind and I don't like any part of it.

But let's set that aside for now. I wanted to talk about writing monsters. I want to take my story Sharp Little Teeth and expand it into a novella. I think there is something in i t worth saving. It's a bit long for most open calls and at the end of the day, the ending is rushed just to fit it under 8k. There is enough to it to develop to three times its size. A gay mobster in 1947, his lavender marriage to a lady doctor, their forced exile from Boston to Las Vegas, some monster killing people building the new casino experiment.

I need to do more research into Vegas (collecting books now) but that's not my issue. I have used folklore to create the monster. I didn't find any colonizer monsters that fit what I needed, just some big foot knock offs. there is something in Paiute lore that does work and that's what I went for at the time (with only weeks to do this)

I did have the Native American character come up with how to get rid of them but still it feels like it's toeing the line of white savior and mystic native tokenism. I don't want either of those things obviously. So I was thinking I can use the thing from legend but it's not that. It's not the crybaby water things either. While they're working it out, more die.

But that means I have to make a monster. I know I want to keep the small child-like stature of them and of course the titular sharp little teeth but where do I go from there? I don't know yet but I need to think abou that. Might be time look at desert animals and go from there.


Open Calls




Vacations From Hell
Short horror stories about vacations


Hawthorn & Ash 2026 Window 100 and 500 word fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror stories

Sley House Times March 2026 Window

Untitled Folk Horror Anthology Folk horror of all types, preferring a twist on a known folk or fairy tale, but not required


From Around the World

How to Become a Professional Writer With Joanna Penn

How to Make Your Dark Event Pay Off

Should You Tie Up Loose Ends in Your Story—or Leave Them Open?

What Is Cozy Horror?


From Betty


How to Fix a Boring Sex Scene (honestly I think most sex scenes are boring)


Seven Tricks to Improve Your Minions

Must Romance Always Include a Breakup?

Narrative Distance

Using Contradictions to Create Masterful Microtension – Part 3

10 Editing Mistakes First-Time Authors Make (That Could Cost You Readers)

WITS Team Showcase - Jenny Hansen

How to Write Great Taglines in Seven Steps

Self-Editing Pop Quiz Redux

Why Readers Read

Mistakes Were Made

What Does a Character’s Fear of Change Look Like

8 Tips for Writing an Unreliable Narrator

Why Identity Is the Key to Character Development: How True vs. False Identity Shapes Every Story

The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Writers, Part 4: Final Revisions and Beta Reader Feedback

7 Writing Mistakes That Hurt Your Story (and How to Avoid “Literary Leftovers”)



Who Are You? Part Two

Common Mistakes New Writers Make and How to Fix Them



March Meta Matters

Mar. 1st, 2026 06:09 pm
ysabetwordsmith: March Meta Matters Challenge (meta)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The March Meta Matters challenge is now active over on [community profile] marchmetamatterschallenge. See the first check-in post here for introductions. Read the FAQ list, as there may have been some changes from previous years. See my entries from 2023, 2024, and 2025. Here are my How To list and my Meta list from 2024.

This challenge involves locating and copying over meta you've created to a second site in order to ensure its preservation. The fest recommends SquidgeWorld. There will be some prompts for creating new meta. Participants can post their goals for saving old meta and/or creating new meta. You can also collect, recommend, and save meta created by other people if it's not something you make yourself or yours is already up to date and saved.

Some canon-specific or author-specific websites have a section especially for meta about their fandom(s) to help new fans learn the canon(s), explore fandom in general, and to inspire fanworks. In particular, it used to be common for people to make fanifestos about a canon, its ships, major fanworks, etc. as guides to newcomers in hopes of growing the fandom; reviving this custom would be very helpful. Here on Dreamwidth, check out [community profile] shipmanifestos. Another great type of meta is reviews; see communities such as [community profile] books and [community profile] book_love for those. If you know of more such resources, March is a good time to post about them so more folks can find them and make sure that meta is backed up.

An increasing issue of archiving is the decline of archival websites. Ghost barely works anymore. The Archive.fo cluster is iffy at best, and when one of its sites glitches, you can't even use your old links anymore. That was the site that used to have the best ability to archive almost anything, except PDF files. Wayback, formerly the most reliable, and the only one I found that would safe PDFs, has become increasingly slow and prone to outages. It never saved quite as wide a range as Archive.fo but now saves a lot less. It's maddening. Because every page that can't be archived is work that will be wasted when linkrot eventually kills the original.

On the bright side, Dreamwidth remains a great place to crosspost your content from other platforms as a form of archiving by duplication. This is increasingly a good idea at a time when many platforms are collapsing due to misbehavior, locking everything to members only, or disappearing altogether. [community profile] goals_on_dw has a post for Full Content on Dreamwidth if this is your approach to sharing and archiving your work.


Read more... )

TLDR Details

The March Meta Matters Challenge is focused on not just new meta, but making sure older meta gets a chance to be read and remain a part of fandom history. Join us in March to start archiving your work!

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