Snowflake Challenge #6
Jan. 19th, 2026 07:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
used_songsChallenge #6
Top 10 Challenge. The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.
10 happy times
1. Quiet mornings before my wife gets up when I can read, write and update my DW with Ella nearby.
2. Hammock time with Ella.
3. Browsing in a bookstore.
4. Cooking for my parents and/or wife.
5. When I'm in the midst of a solid piece of writing that is flowing.
6. Puttering around outside looking at trees and rocks.
7. Listening to music, discovering new-to-me music, talking to people about music.
8. Sending and receiving snail mail, whether it's Postcrossing or mail to/from people I know.
9. Figuring things out, making something new, having to work out how to put something together.
10. When you see something or hear something and it sparks an idea.
Top 10 Challenge. The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.
10 happy times
1. Quiet mornings before my wife gets up when I can read, write and update my DW with Ella nearby.
2. Hammock time with Ella.
3. Browsing in a bookstore.
4. Cooking for my parents and/or wife.
5. When I'm in the midst of a solid piece of writing that is flowing.
6. Puttering around outside looking at trees and rocks.
7. Listening to music, discovering new-to-me music, talking to people about music.
8. Sending and receiving snail mail, whether it's Postcrossing or mail to/from people I know.
9. Figuring things out, making something new, having to work out how to put something together.
10. When you see something or hear something and it sparks an idea.
Snowflake Challenge #7
Jan. 19th, 2026 07:44 amused_songsChallenge #7
LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.
I like my ability to be all in and focused in a conversation with a student, especially when it comes to their writing.
I like how I can chain together random things and make something beautiful.
I like my purple glasses.
LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.
I like my ability to be all in and focused in a conversation with a student, especially when it comes to their writing.
I like how I can chain together random things and make something beautiful.
I like my purple glasses.
Snowflake Challenge #8
Jan. 19th, 2026 07:22 amused_songsChallenge #8
Talk about your creative process.
I keep copious notes on my phone and in commonplace books of raw material for writing. I collect stories from people, interesting words, bits of poetry, images, etc. When I have an idea for something, I page randomly through all of that and see what if anything sticks. Then I do an enormous amount of research (my favorite part of the process) and start a google doc with research notes and chunks of writing. Sometimes I do a sketch to help visualize the motion of the plot. When I wrote a crossover that involved House of Leaves, I sketched the house I was using as my setting so I could keep the physical space in front of me.
Then I write from both ends and the middle in pieces that are gradually stitched together. I'm not great at plots; I let the imagery and characters do the heavy lifting.
Once I have a draft, I rewrite it obsessively until I'm happy with it.
( pics )
I also generally carry sticky notes and have a lot of things jotted on those. I've been keeping commonplace books since middle school (they were spirals back then), so I have a lot of material. Honestly, I never have used most of it directly in my writing, but I feel like the ideas I have tried out in those pages are like training for when I do write a completed pieces. And sometimes I just enjoy writing short pieces that no one else will ever see, just for me.
Talk about your creative process.
I keep copious notes on my phone and in commonplace books of raw material for writing. I collect stories from people, interesting words, bits of poetry, images, etc. When I have an idea for something, I page randomly through all of that and see what if anything sticks. Then I do an enormous amount of research (my favorite part of the process) and start a google doc with research notes and chunks of writing. Sometimes I do a sketch to help visualize the motion of the plot. When I wrote a crossover that involved House of Leaves, I sketched the house I was using as my setting so I could keep the physical space in front of me.
Then I write from both ends and the middle in pieces that are gradually stitched together. I'm not great at plots; I let the imagery and characters do the heavy lifting.
Once I have a draft, I rewrite it obsessively until I'm happy with it.
( pics )
I also generally carry sticky notes and have a lot of things jotted on those. I've been keeping commonplace books since middle school (they were spirals back then), so I have a lot of material. Honestly, I never have used most of it directly in my writing, but I feel like the ideas I have tried out in those pages are like training for when I do write a completed pieces. And sometimes I just enjoy writing short pieces that no one else will ever see, just for me.
Ugh y'all I'm so far behind!
Jan. 17th, 2026 03:11 pmused_songsChallenge #9 at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge
Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)
I cheated and read an article online that listed a bunch of tropes and these are my findings. I like hidden worlds and secret societies, but I strongly dislike chosen one stories. And I don't read a lot of fantasy, so I don't tend to encounter hidden worlds much. I guess I just like the idea of their being a secret mirror of our society. I've written a couple of fics where various pantheons of gods intersect with modern society and with each other because I like imagining what might be going on that we don't see.
I LOVE me an amateur sleuth. That's why Miss Marple has always been my absolute favorite, closely followed by Jessica Fletcher. Right now I'm reading Three Bags Full where the sleuths are the ultimate amateurs - a flock of sheep whose shepherd has been murdered! I also like amateur spies like Tommy and Tuppence and Mrs. Pollifax.
If I like the source material, I will try almost any type of AU. The only kind I tend to bounce off of are set in school; as a teacher, I find them so unbelievable that I can't suspend my disbelief.
I'm also very fond of crossovers. Sometimes I'll see someone bigging up a crossover on the AO3 subreddit and, even if I know nothing about either canon, I'll give it a try. I also really enjoy writing crossovers; it's like weaving together two different fabrics or putting together a puzzle.
And while we are on the subject of things I like, I love writing and reading drabbles. I enjoy a fic where someone has provided a link to a playlist. I like when people play around with form and experiment, even when it doesn't quite work. I like an author with audacity.
snowflake_challenge Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)
I cheated and read an article online that listed a bunch of tropes and these are my findings. I like hidden worlds and secret societies, but I strongly dislike chosen one stories. And I don't read a lot of fantasy, so I don't tend to encounter hidden worlds much. I guess I just like the idea of their being a secret mirror of our society. I've written a couple of fics where various pantheons of gods intersect with modern society and with each other because I like imagining what might be going on that we don't see.
I LOVE me an amateur sleuth. That's why Miss Marple has always been my absolute favorite, closely followed by Jessica Fletcher. Right now I'm reading Three Bags Full where the sleuths are the ultimate amateurs - a flock of sheep whose shepherd has been murdered! I also like amateur spies like Tommy and Tuppence and Mrs. Pollifax.
If I like the source material, I will try almost any type of AU. The only kind I tend to bounce off of are set in school; as a teacher, I find them so unbelievable that I can't suspend my disbelief.
I'm also very fond of crossovers. Sometimes I'll see someone bigging up a crossover on the AO3 subreddit and, even if I know nothing about either canon, I'll give it a try. I also really enjoy writing crossovers; it's like weaving together two different fabrics or putting together a puzzle.
And while we are on the subject of things I like, I love writing and reading drabbles. I enjoy a fic where someone has provided a link to a playlist. I like when people play around with form and experiment, even when it doesn't quite work. I like an author with audacity.
Weekly proof of life: mainly media again
Jan. 17th, 2026 02:44 pmumadoshiI finished Chuck Wendig's Wanderers (which according to the acknowledgements clocks in around 800 pages in hard copy) and wound up in that all-too-familiar place of "that was interesting, but I don't think I'm going to bother with the sequel". (Although by definition, I imagine the sequel must be telling a very different kind of story.) No idea why it is that I can often tell only partway through a book that I probably won't pick up its sequel and yet still want to finish the current one.
I also just read Inside Threat, the sixth of K.B. Spangler's Rachel Peng [see icon] novels. There's one more planned, and then that's it for this novel series; I think she's still intending to write a third Hope Blackwell novel (some of the events of that probably-someday book directly influenced what happened in this one, but the whole 'verse is a very twisty pretzel in terms of chronological vs. publication order). And this reminds me--I don't think I ever mentioned here that Act III of the A Girl and Her Fed comic, the core of the whole thing, wrapped up a few months ago, ending the series. (IIRC, Spangler does have ideas that could eventually turn into a fourth act of the webcomic, but has no current plans to pursue doing it. It sounds like AGAHF and the associated works understandably got harder and more exhausting to do over the last decade as the real-world US political situation got worse and worse and worse.)
There isn't a whole lot I can say about a sixth novel in a series, but Spangler's descriptions of the series when she's doing promo on Bluesky always entertain me. Yesterday she posted "It's book launch week! Spend the weekend catching up with my bargain basement cyborg hivemind. Murder, mystery, and a detective who just wants to be left alone with her poetry and bad romance novels"; here's her "what's this series about?" Bluesky thread from a few days ago.
So once again: highly recommended, and it's entirely possible to just read this set of novels without reading/knowing the comic. It means not knowing a lot of things about the world overall, but they're things that Rachel herself doesn't know at this point (and doesn't learn about until Act II of the comic, which starts after her books have wrapped up). I enjoy the comic and other material very much, but the Rachel books are by far my favorite.
And that bit got long, so just quickly:
--I'm a few more chapters into Braiding Sweetgrass and haven't picked up a next novel yet.
--scruloose and I are current on the new season of The Pitt and four episodes into Pluribus, and just watched the season 2 premiere of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. (Now to just hope this season covers past vol. 10 of the manga, since after we finished season 1 in 2024, I read volumes 7-10 before deciding to stop reading ahead and stick with the anime. It'd be nice to get at least a bit of new-to-me material this season, given that. Anyone know offhand how many episodes S2 will be?)
--And I've technically started a new (!) video game, in the form of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (on Switch), but am not very far at all yet.
I also just read Inside Threat, the sixth of K.B. Spangler's Rachel Peng [see icon] novels. There's one more planned, and then that's it for this novel series; I think she's still intending to write a third Hope Blackwell novel (some of the events of that probably-someday book directly influenced what happened in this one, but the whole 'verse is a very twisty pretzel in terms of chronological vs. publication order). And this reminds me--I don't think I ever mentioned here that Act III of the A Girl and Her Fed comic, the core of the whole thing, wrapped up a few months ago, ending the series. (IIRC, Spangler does have ideas that could eventually turn into a fourth act of the webcomic, but has no current plans to pursue doing it. It sounds like AGAHF and the associated works understandably got harder and more exhausting to do over the last decade as the real-world US political situation got worse and worse and worse.)
There isn't a whole lot I can say about a sixth novel in a series, but Spangler's descriptions of the series when she's doing promo on Bluesky always entertain me. Yesterday she posted "It's book launch week! Spend the weekend catching up with my bargain basement cyborg hivemind. Murder, mystery, and a detective who just wants to be left alone with her poetry and bad romance novels"; here's her "what's this series about?" Bluesky thread from a few days ago.
So once again: highly recommended, and it's entirely possible to just read this set of novels without reading/knowing the comic. It means not knowing a lot of things about the world overall, but they're things that Rachel herself doesn't know at this point (and doesn't learn about until Act II of the comic, which starts after her books have wrapped up). I enjoy the comic and other material very much, but the Rachel books are by far my favorite.
And that bit got long, so just quickly:
--I'm a few more chapters into Braiding Sweetgrass and haven't picked up a next novel yet.
--
scruloose and I are current on the new season of The Pitt and four episodes into Pluribus, and just watched the season 2 premiere of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. (Now to just hope this season covers past vol. 10 of the manga, since after we finished season 1 in 2024, I read volumes 7-10 before deciding to stop reading ahead and stick with the anime. It'd be nice to get at least a bit of new-to-me material this season, given that. Anyone know offhand how many episodes S2 will be?)--And I've technically started a new (!) video game, in the form of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (on Switch), but am not very far at all yet.
A very insubstantial post, but hey, there's a Heated Rivalry link
Jan. 16th, 2026 01:02 pmumadoshiAs so often happens, I had several things I meant to post about and now they've mostly evaporated.
But I do know my tabs situation is staggering out of control. (Reliably over 1700 for at least the last couple of weeks.) Odds that I'll get to replying to all the posts I've read but opened in a tab to reply to later on...are currently very slim.
Have a link: Sarah Kurchak wrote about Heated Rivalry for TIME recently: "Heated Rivalry Handles Autism With Love, Care, and a Touch of Awkwardness".
But I do know my tabs situation is staggering out of control. (Reliably over 1700 for at least the last couple of weeks.) Odds that I'll get to replying to all the posts I've read but opened in a tab to reply to later on...are currently very slim.
Have a link: Sarah Kurchak wrote about Heated Rivalry for TIME recently: "Heated Rivalry Handles Autism With Love, Care, and a Touch of Awkwardness".
Weekly proof of life: media, if nothing else
Jan. 11th, 2026 12:35 pmumadoshiWhat I Just Finished Reading: A novella and two novels since the last time I posted about books, I think: Automatic Noodle (Annalee Newitz), about sentient robots winding up running their own restaurant; Stone Yard Devotional (Charlotte Wood), a very-much-~literary~ book about a woman who winds up living with a group of nuns, although not a nun herself; and The Lovely and the Lost (Jennifer Lynn Barnes), about a search-and-rescue case from the POV of one of a trio of teenagers who're involved with the rescue effort, who was herself rescued from the woods as a child after she'd been there long enough to go feral and was (largely) resocialized and adopted by her rescuer. Many layers of family history and secrets in that last one, which was my favorite of the three.
(And since I've mentioned a couple of YA books recently where their flavor of YA really didn't work for me, I should say that The Lovely and the Lost is also very clearly YA but in a way I could work with just fine as a reader, despite being very much not the target audience.)
On the nonfiction side, I read The Crone Zone: How to Get Older with Style, Nerve, and a Little Bit of Magic (Nina Bargiel), which was...mostly odd, honestly. It's from the same publisher (and I guess the same...product line?) as Goblin Mode: How to Get Cozy, Embrace Imperfection, and Thrive in the Muck, which I read last year, and the presentation and vibe were really (I mean really) similar in a way that might've made more sense to me if they were also by the same author, but they're not. The Crone Zone's subtitle does accurately reflect its contents, so I feel weird saying "it's such a weird blend of exactly what it says it is", but...yeah. Not my thing.
What I'm Currently Reading: Chuck Wendig's Wanderers, which I chose at random from my ebooks and probably would not have started had I actually known anything about it. It's a 2019 novel that starts with a mysterious phenomenon where people just start...walking...somewhere, but also spotlights (*checks notes*) a world-changing disease, AI, and right-wing violence tearing at the seams of the US, all of which are being amply provided by reality. It's also pretty hefty, length-wise. And yet I keep reading.
I've also begun reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Robin Wall Kimmerer), as the starting point for my 2026 goal* of "aim to read at least one chapter of nonfiction each week" (swiped from a friend else-net). (Another goal is to aim to read a volume of manga each week, and that one hasn't been started in on yet, but we'll see how strict I feel like being about "each week".)
*I have a full bingo card of goals! I will probably share it at some point! But not this minute.
What I Plan to Read Next: K.B. Spangler's newest Rachel Peng novel, Inside Threat is out/about to come out! (It was supposed to come out this week, but Amazon dropped it early, so she's also released it on her website.)
Plus: What I've Been Watching:scruloose and I are two episodes into Pluribus! I also recently watched Challengers. (A movie? So soon in the year?) Hopefully we'll get the premiere of The Pitt season 2 watched today.
(And since I've mentioned a couple of YA books recently where their flavor of YA really didn't work for me, I should say that The Lovely and the Lost is also very clearly YA but in a way I could work with just fine as a reader, despite being very much not the target audience.)
On the nonfiction side, I read The Crone Zone: How to Get Older with Style, Nerve, and a Little Bit of Magic (Nina Bargiel), which was...mostly odd, honestly. It's from the same publisher (and I guess the same...product line?) as Goblin Mode: How to Get Cozy, Embrace Imperfection, and Thrive in the Muck, which I read last year, and the presentation and vibe were really (I mean really) similar in a way that might've made more sense to me if they were also by the same author, but they're not. The Crone Zone's subtitle does accurately reflect its contents, so I feel weird saying "it's such a weird blend of exactly what it says it is", but...yeah. Not my thing.
What I'm Currently Reading: Chuck Wendig's Wanderers, which I chose at random from my ebooks and probably would not have started had I actually known anything about it. It's a 2019 novel that starts with a mysterious phenomenon where people just start...walking...somewhere, but also spotlights (*checks notes*) a world-changing disease, AI, and right-wing violence tearing at the seams of the US, all of which are being amply provided by reality. It's also pretty hefty, length-wise. And yet I keep reading.
I've also begun reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Robin Wall Kimmerer), as the starting point for my 2026 goal* of "aim to read at least one chapter of nonfiction each week" (swiped from a friend else-net). (Another goal is to aim to read a volume of manga each week, and that one hasn't been started in on yet, but we'll see how strict I feel like being about "each week".)
*I have a full bingo card of goals! I will probably share it at some point! But not this minute.
What I Plan to Read Next: K.B. Spangler's newest Rachel Peng novel, Inside Threat is out/about to come out! (It was supposed to come out this week, but Amazon dropped it early, so she's also released it on her website.)
Plus: What I've Been Watching:
scruloose and I are two episodes into Pluribus! I also recently watched Challengers. (A movie? So soon in the year?) Hopefully we'll get the premiere of The Pitt season 2 watched today.
Cheese Quest 1
Jan. 10th, 2026 04:23 pmused_songs
Before New Year's, E and I went to the HEB at Lincoln Heights which is fancier than a regular HEB, but not as fancy as Central Market. I was looking at cheeses while E was in the bakery and the cheesemonger gave me a coupon for 20% off any of their cheeses in that section. So I went with one I knew I'd like and two that were experiments.
The one I thought was a sure bet was the Chimichurri Gouda because I love gouda. I was hoping it would be a bit spicy, but despite tasting of pepper and chilies it was more earthy than spicy. It was also sharper than I expected, but it was good.
My favorite was the white cheddar dill which was a surprise. I love dill, but I'm not a fan of cheddar at all. It's generally way too sharp for me. This one was very herbal and salty and just delicious.
My least favorite, and the one I wouldn't have bought if I hadn't had a coupon, was the smoked cheddar. I took a chance on it because I do like smoked gouda and smokiness in general. However, this was very hard, almost crumbly, and it was way too sharp for me, I'll probably take it to my parents and see if they want it, because I tried it again a couple of days after the first taste and I just don't like it. And honestly I didn't even realize cheddar came in that consistency.
The only other cheese I've put in my analog cheese journal is HEB Monterey jack with jalapeño and habanero which is something I have with my lunch every day during the week. So, obviously, extremely good!
This week we are having enchiladas, so I will be journaling about oaxaca and queso fresca, both of which are delicious. One of the best things in the world is thinly sliced pan sauteed potatoes topped with mole poblano sauce and queso fresca.