Spring garden

Oct. 12th, 2025 04:31 pm
mific: (Garden salad)
[personal profile] mific
I've been messing about in the garden, repotting and planting various things, and weeding what beds I have. We're in the midst of spring now so there are more flowers out, and my kōwhai tree is in full bloom. The weather's been living up to the Auckland tradition of "four seasons in one day", and there's been enough rain that I haven't had to do much watering, just in the rain shadow under the eaves. I'm enjoying getting back into gardening now it's warm enough, and the exercise is good. Here are some pics - the stars are the clivias I rescued from my old house before I moved. They're in two big containers and after two years here, are now happily rootbound and flowering. Cabbage species are also putting on a show.

pics here )
mific: (dragon's eye)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] fanart_recs
Fandom: Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Aragorn
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: gvalesdraws on tumblr
Why this piece is awesome: The palette is mostly subtle earth colours for Strider, and the design is gorgeous, the bulk being a portrait of Aragorn as Strider, but the reflection in his raised sword is white and gold, showing Aragorn crowned as king.
Link: The crownless again shall be king
starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
[personal profile] starwatcher
 
Till "midnight." Still no clue to which midnight.

Filter genres and/or booksellers at top of page.

https://earlybirdbooks.com/deals/best-ebook-deals
 

SGA Secret Santa sign ups.

Oct. 9th, 2025 03:05 pm
melagan: Coffee cup with Atlantis in the rising steam (Default)
[personal profile] melagan
Banner for Sga Secret Santa*


It's that time of year again. This is one of my favorite SGA challenges. Interested? Thinking about it?

Sign-ups: Are now thru October 26

The where, when, how, and rules can be found HERE

*The icons used to make the banner were created by tarlanx and popkin16 for SGA Secret Santa

dSSS Dear Creator letter

Oct. 9th, 2025 02:55 pm
mific: (Dief is happy)
[personal profile] mific
Placeholder

What I'm Doing Wednesday

Oct. 8th, 2025 03:53 pm
sage: image of the word "create" in orange on a white background. (create)
[personal profile] sage
books
Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles #6) by Dorothy Dunnett. 1975. cw: war, murder, offscreen sexual assault, subsequent PTSD. The exciting conclusion to the series. No lie, this one was rollicking, despite an overuse of untranslated French.

still reading: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. Book one. So charming.

still reading: Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed. 2023. Graphic novel. Shubeik lubeik translates to "Your wish is my command" in Arabic. This version of Egypt is modern except it has wishes that come true, and are regulated (and black market). Great concept. I'm only 20% through, but it's a good book so far.


yarning
finished a yellow bunny and the above calico Cat Stitch scarf. The scarf sold this morning (without even me listing it first) & another person wants to get a custom one made! Yay! I worked on a grey and black kickbunny at yarn group Sunday and had a nice time. I'm nearly finished with it, though now I have a commission to recreate a cat's favorite turkey leg toy with wool and catnip. And scarf customer reminded me that xmas is coming and it's time to to work on stocking the shop! I ordered more catnip & hopefully won't run out of silvervine yet. All in all, a productive week!

healthcrap
The drooping eyelid is making me crazy -- double vision, blurry vision, the eyelid being in the way of seeing. more healthcrap )

#resist
October 18: No Kings Day 2!

I hope all of y'all are doing well and can see with your regular number of eyes. :g:

Void Trilogy, by Peter F. Hamilton

Oct. 8th, 2025 09:28 am
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
The Void Trilogy is three books that are really just one long, enormous book: The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void. They don't stand on their own even as installments in a series and must be read one after another, no dawdling.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the Commonwealth Saga, its predecessor, which I remember as being dense but interesting science fiction. It had a lot of characters, in a lot of locations, but all were distinct and memorable and their stories slowly converged in a satisfying way. This book (all three of it) is written to the same formula, but bloated to the point where so much was happening, and for so little reason, that the people, locations, and factions all ran together despite them being on many different planets, which also ran together. The only memorable parts of the book were Edeard and Araminta, and in the beginning I mostly kept reading for Edeard, though I became less interested in him as time went on and he became so powerful that all that was left to do was wait for the corruption to set in. Luckily Araminta started to get more attention around that same time.

I think perhaps Hamilton is best held to two volume books because this story seriously got away from him in three. There was stuff in here that just did not need to be in here, and then once it became relevant again (if it ever did) Hamilton did not give a flying fuck whether you remembered it or not and refused to give you a hint even if it was referencing something from the last book or two thousand pages ago.

It's so long that by the time you get to the actual climax of the series it's like, they ask a guy not to do the thing that'll end the universe, and he's like, idk, and then they ask him once more with feeling and he's like, well, okay. There's plenty of excitement on the way, but talk about anti-climatic. And then everyone goes home to a happy ending because no one (with insurance) ever dies in this universe. They just get downloaded to new bodies. Though you do kind of forget about that while you're reading because the characters are in so much peril.

Also, and I don't know how else to put this, but every reference to sex read like it was written by a man, like the beautiful identical twins who married the same man, and the one guy in multiple bodies who told his singular-bodied girlfriend that he had to fuck other women with his other bodies while he was with her because she (the girlfriend) just made him so hot, baby.

The eye rolls I rolled.

Still, obviously I found something compelling about this in order to spend, according to Libby, something like 72 hours reading it. But if you're looking to get into granular space operas, I don't think this is the place to start with Hamilton.

Status Updates from Goodreads )

Contains: Descriptions of sexual violence; graphic physical violence; animal harm/death; references to forced impregnation and forced abortion; "Oriental" used to describe people; lingers on fatness in a way that isn't positive; mind control; cops; and for the ebooks: so many OCR errors I was instantly transported back in time to 2009.

Amperslash, and new B5 fic

Oct. 8th, 2025 12:03 am
sholio: (B5-station)
[personal profile] sholio
I have a bare-bones signup in for [personal profile] amperslashexchange, which I will try to add to over the next few days! Fandom selections are unsurprising.

Completely unrelated to that or Whumptober, I posted something new for Babylon 5 over on AO3 just now: Balance in Duty, a slightly canon-divergent missing scene for 5x06 "Strange Relations," in which I lean into the episode's completely averted presumed-dead potential.

Drawtober challenge days 1-8

Oct. 8th, 2025 06:55 pm
mific: (A pen and ink)
[personal profile] mific
Our annual October art challenge is underway over at [community profile] drawesome. I've been combining some of the prompts where possible as it adds an extra twist. The pics are all made in Procreate - you can click on each one for the full-sized art. The individual posts are here.

"through a window" & "molten"

"friendship" & "pool"

"mushroom procession"

"ignite" (mushroom procession at night)

"fluffy" and "under the bed"


sholio: Londo from Babylon 5 smiling (B5-Londo)
[personal profile] sholio
No. 5: “My panic’s at the ceiling, but I’m face down on the carpet.”
Quivering | Dream Journal | Phobia

Babylon 5, post-canon, Londo, gen (700 wds)
This is the one I was having trouble with a few days ago. Set in some kind of nebulous fixit universe.

700 wds under the cut )
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