seventhe | Network

Haven't worked on any icons yet, but I'm still intending to. I think the plan for that is going to be to do it when I'm not house-sitting so I have the better screen to do it with. Right now I'm on a 17in screen, which is fine, but it's a portable one that isn't the best for playing with something like graphics.

I will say that since I had that mindset shift about what I want to try to do every day, I'm seeing some interesting results.

1. I get a lot of stuff done on certain days, but then the next day I do less. This doesn't bother me, though, because I'm still getting a lot of life stuff done. I don't feel so guilty and awful on those second days, and that's the kind of thing I was hoping to accomplish.

2. I'm able to catch up on things like beta reading with less difficulty. Reading any fiction has been kind of hard lately, but I'm having an easier time getting to things I need to give feedback of some kind on, so that's nice.

3. My writing is...not really happening right now. Not drafting, and also not editing. I'm not sure what to make of that, but we'll see. This whole thing is still barely started, so maybe I just need to give it more time before I can start integrating words back into my life.

4. However, I did post on Bluesky asking for prompts to write microfiction off. I love doing these things every couple of months, so I'm looking forward to playing with those prompts soon.

So, I've been house-sitting for S again, which I can't recall if I've said or not on here yet, but I'm going back to my house tomorrow, then coming back here again on Monday. This is because I need to pick up some clothes, meds, and maybe a few other things while also swapping some stuff out too. Which is fine. Right now this is my life, switching between the two houses until S finally moves upstate.

voxtekmod posting in

fandomcalendar

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trobadora

Dear

fandom5k writer,

thank you so much for writing a story for me! I've requested and received all of these fandoms before - some for many, many years, and often with the same prompts, because when I really enjoy something, I immediately want fifty more takes on the same thing. *g* So if that's what we matched on, don't worry about repeating things! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships I requested.

Everything important is in the requests themselves, but if you'd like even more info, general likes etc., here you go.

My AO3 account is

Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

( Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms and relationships

In somewhat alphabetical order - note that some sections are expanded compared to the sign-up form:

Jump directly to:

Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette
镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing
Grimm/镇魂 | Guardian (TV) crossovers: Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan & Sean Renard & Nick Burkhardt, Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan & Sean Renard, Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan & Juliette Silverton, Shen Wei & Sean Renard, Shen Wei & Juliette Silverton, Sean Renard & Ya Qing, Sean Renard/Ya Qing
Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha
Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock/Moriarty
山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

( Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette )

( 镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing )

( Grimm/Guardian crossovers: Nick Burkhardt & Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Ya Qing, Sean Renard/Ya Qing )

( Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha )

( Sherlock (BBC): Jim Moriarty/Sherlock Holmes )

( 山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu )

otw_news_feed

Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-457-0-9-461-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=283115

Our February releases included new admin tools for our Support and Policy & Abuse teams, as well as a bunch of challenge and collection fixes and a host of small updates and improvements. We also upgraded to Rails 8 and Elasticsearch 9!

Many thanks to first-time contributor Shel!

Credits

Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, Danaël/Rever, FlyingFalcon, Hunter Ada Smith, james_, Jennifer He (DisappearEagle 无鸢), marcus8448, Richard Hajek, Scott, slavalamp, varram
Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, sarken
Testers: ana, Bilka, choux, hvalrann, Lute, mumble, ömer faruk, pk2317, therealmorticia, Yuca

Details

0.9.457

On February 2, we deployed a major Rails update.

[AO3-7231] – Updated the framework the Archive runs on to Rails 8.0.

0.9.458

On February 9, we introduced a way for our Support team to add information to the support form without disabling the form, and deployed a bunch of miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

[AO3-6983] – It was already possible for our Support team to temporarily close the support form and replace it with a message to users, e.g. about a known site-wide issue the development team was already working to solve. Additionally, they can now add a temporary message to the form without disabling the form entirely.
[AO3-3245] – Trying to open the posting form to add a work to a closed collection (only possible by manually typing in the appropriate URL) would lead to an error message that looked like the form had already been submitted. The URL now redirects to the collection with a more helpful error message.
[AO3-7246] – We added a “Parent” link to comments, so you can quickly jump to the specific comment that is being replied to.
[AO3-7260] – Passwords must now be between 8 and 72 characters long. (The previous minimum was 6 characters.)
[AO3-7274] – Comment previews for Policy & Abuse admins were previously truncated after the first 100 characters, and admins had to click on the preview to access the full comment. Now the preview includes the first 1,000 characters, which is much more useful.
[AO3-7279] – When a collection is set to “revealed” or “non-anonymous”, the collection is placed in a queue that runs when resources are available to change the status of potentially thousands of works. This means the moderator often has enough time to quickly change the setting back if a checkbox was ticked in error. We now make sure the process really only runs if the revealed or non-anonymous option is still wanted when the servers are ready to work through the queue.
[AO3-7240] – In our ongoing internationalization efforts, we prepared the text in the help pop-ups for Rating, Warning, and Fandom tags for translation.
[AO3-7047], [AO3-7281], [AO3-7287], [AO3-7288] – Code clean-up, database performance improvements, and system updates.

0.9.459

Our February 17 deploy included various small fixes and updates.

[AO3-4031] – Draft works include a message at the top, warning the creator that unposted drafts will be automatically deleted after a certain time. If you had a draft with multiple chapters, this message would not be displayed! Now it appears everywhere it should.
[AO3-5367] – If someone bookmarked a mystery work, i.e. a work in an unrevealed collection, the bookmark would show up in bookmark searches that matched elements of the mystery work. Since we don’t want information about a mystery work to be guessable in this manner, we now make sure searching bookmarks doesn’t give away information about unrevealed works.
[AO3-5870] – A blockquote in a comment would awkwardly overlap with the commenter’s user icon, so we’ve taken steps to make sure it stays within its own boundaries.
[AO3-5963] – You can’t request an invite with an email address that is already used by an existing account. If an existing account updates their email address to one that’s waiting in the request queue, we now make sure that request is deleted.
[AO3-7206] – Downloads of a work in progress with only one chapter posted were missing that chapter’s title, summary, and notes, displaying only the information entered for the work as a whole. Now all data is present and accounted for!
[AO3-7254] – We’ve added a limit to how many times a specific comment can be reported to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
[AO3-7263] – Under certain circumstances, an admin would get a 500 error trying to access a user’s preferences page. Now they can access it even under those circumstances.
[AO3-7289] – When a user tried to create a skin with faulty CSS, the parser would just throw an error 500 instead of telling the user which part was stressing it out. It now helpfully points to the problem in the CSS code.
[AO3-7210] – The help pop-up that provides information about creating skins is now prepared for translation.
[AO3-6853], [AO3-7048] – Code clean-up and database performance improvements.

0.9.460

A bunch of gem updates went out on February 21.

[AO3-7036] – When reviewing comments held in moderation, to either approve or reject, there was no “Thread” link to get the URL for a specific comment, e.g. to report it to the Policy & Abuse team. Now there is!
[AO3-7278] – AO3 admins from the Open Doors team can now track invitations in the admin area.
[AO3-7236] – Prepared the text in a couple of skins-related help pop-ups for translation.
[AO3-7265], [AO3-7297], [AO3-7298], [AO3-7299], [AO3-7300] – Code clean-up and database performance improvements.

0.9.461

On February 28, we upgraded to Elasticsearch 9.

[AO3-7282] – Upgraded the search engine that powers, among other things, work searches and filtering from version 8 to 9.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-457-0-9-461-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=283115

straightforwardly

While I’ve been doing a good job of keeping up with Shield updates while playing, I can’t say the same thing for Digimon Ghost Game—but I have been watching it! Currently up to episode 38. ( thoughts & spoilers beneath the cut )

badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: Where do you do most of your crafting?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

bookscorpion

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Current Mood: tired
Current Location: armchair, feet up
Current Music: Resident Evil 7 let's play

umadoshi

Seasonal crunch is over! Feels like freedom, if you ignore the part where I still have, y'know, a job + freelance stuff. Increased freedom. We'll go with that.

My day off yesterday entailed such thrilling things as sleeping in and then taking ages to get up because Jinksy came to snuggle*; finishing my breakfast and tea by around noon; getting some banking done; washing my hair; vacuuming the two main levels of the house; spending several full hours being a cat-lap for Sinha; and starting in on a new novel for the first time since March Break or so.

*When I texted

scruloose to say good morning, they said, "When my first alarm went, it was competing with Jinksy over on your other side rumble-purring so hard I swear the mattress was reverberating with it."

Reading: A couple more chapters of Braiding Sweetgrass, and I've finished Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks, which has a fair number of recipes but is, as the title indicates, more of a family history than a cookbook.

And last night I didn't want to spend much mental energy on choosing what fiction to read, so I decided to just go with Tough Guy, the third Game Changers novel. I imagine in the not-too-distant future I'll pick up the ebook "box set" of books 4-6 just to have them on hand.

Watching: We're caught up on The Pitt and have seen five episodes of One Piece season 2, and I imagine we'll finish the latter before backtracking for the last couple-few episodes of Frieren. (I've also made note of this elsewhere, but to reinforce it in my brain: after The Pitt finishes, I need to remember to cancel our Crave subscription again.)

Eating: After the crunch ended on Thursday,

scruloose and I ordered from a new (?) Korean BBQ place (bb.q Chicken) that a stranger in the local Bluesky feed had mentioned was good. We tried the bone-in Classic Fried Chicken (very minimal spicing, but very solid) and the boneless Golden Fried Chicken, the description of which didn't indicate any particular spiciness, but it turned out to be right on the edge of my comfort level...but also a really delicious seasoning to go with the heat, so I'm counting that as a definite win. The place offers a whole array of flavor options, so I imagine we'll be trying it again.

Weathering/Growing: Yesterday was sunny and relatively warm, and now we're back to a slightly-chilly rainy/damp stretch, but a few days in the forecast will theoretically get back up into the double digits.

At my instigation, we're going to take another stab at Doing Garden Stuff this year. ( VERY preliminary notes )

Current Mood: thoughtful

carenejeans

Quote of the Day:

(Another quote from Elizabeth McCracken.)

"Any writer’s ideal craft manual must be bespoke, like a suit, made to measure. Write a manifesto aimed only at your own work without worrying whether it applies to or offends anybody else in the world. Address, in your silent heart, punctuation, plot, character, all your picayune concerns and grandiose plans, all the things that made you want to be a writer. Make it living, an armor-clad list that might change. It will be dearer to you than any other guide."

— Elizabeth McCracken, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (HarperCollins, 2025).

My Check-In:

Alibi sentence! An angry one! Adulting, gah. It's also why I'm behind on comments. 8-(

Today should be better!

Tally
( Days 1-9 )

Day 10:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

wavesagainstrocks

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Current Mood: hyper

sholio

The other prompt fill I wrote today ended up being full-story-length (~1100 wds) for Babylon 5, posted on AO3 as Exercises in Linguistics.

The prompt was: G'Kar and Londo (slash or gen, up to you!) and Language. Set in early season 5, probably between about 5x02 & 5x06.

( Exercises in Linguistics )

canyonwalker

Last night I wrote about finishing off two bottles of booze in my out-of-control collection. I suggested that the next bottle I'd knock out would be San Matias Extra Añejo. Well, that was an oversight. While I really dig that tequila and wouldn't mind finishing it off, the discipline I'm practicing right now is to finish off bottles that are almost empty. San Matias is still over half full. What is/was almost empty? Espolón Añejo.

I recently finished my bottle of Espol�n Tequila A�ejo (Apr 2026)

I recently finished my bottle of Espol�n Tequila A�ejo (Apr 2026)

I poured the last shot and a half for a nightcap drink on Friday.

With this I have now cleared out three bottles this week. Three! Three bottles of booze. It makes me feel like this:

Three! Three bottles of booze. Ah-ha-ha-ha! (Created via Google Gemini, Apr 2026)

Three! Three bottles of booze. Ah-ha-ha-ha! (Created via Google Gemini, Apr 2026)

OMG, I can't believe Google Gemini let me make a Sesame Street cartoon about booze! 😳🤯🤣

I am sure that 6 months ago it would have refused, offering me an explanation about copyrighted property, blah-blah-blah. Our future AI overlords are getting bolder.

oursin

A conversation on witchcraft: history, religion, and persecution - including Ronald Hutton (fangirling).

***

And on subversive women: Archiving Bengal’s Revolutionary Women:

[M]any women participated in the revolutionary movement, taking on roles that challenged colonial authority and social norms. The militants who joined underground networks, manufactured explosives, and participated in acts of political violence, however, remain largely absent from both public memory and archival records. When they do appear in colonial documents, they are often framed through their relationships to men: as daughters, wives, or associates, rather than as political actors in their own right.

Surprised? not really.

***

More on grassroots activism: Travelling activists, Radical Hospitality, and the Intimate History of Socialist Organising in Britain, c. 1880-1914.

***

Women in perhaps unexpected occupations (though I knew a little a bit about this since an old mate of mine did some research on the topic back in the 80s): Women in the Private Asylum Business in Nineteenth-Century England.

***

This association is already fairly well-known but a nuanced set of arguments about the complexity of how it plays out: Inequality and health: Lost in the mists of time?:

Rather than behaving like a toxin that produces a sudden spike in mortality after a fixed incubation period, inequality is more like a fog that gradually seeps into bodies, relationships, and institutions over time.

***

What the information in one scroll recording an C18th Chancery suit opened up concerning George Orwell's ancestors (Jamaica connection).

mere_mortifer posting in

fandomcalendar

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Current Mood: amused

bluapapilio

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Current Mood: happy

rydra_wong

and oh god it's so good, that unique polished authorial confidence of The Fortunate Fall is so back, and like The Fortunate Fall it's a book that's somehow slipped out of time, not exactly in sync with the present moment in sf/f but maybe both older and newer, and it's very quiet and calm except for that bit in a recent chapter which actually made me make an involuntary noise of shock and alarm out loud, and I have no idea where it's going and I hope she sticks the landing but right now the vibes are Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand and The Left Hand of Darkness, and what with those being two of my favourite novels ever, I'm having a very good time.

nialla posting in

gamechangerhr

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firecat

This is an ~30-minute episode of a Vox podcast called “Today Explained.” There is a transcript.

”How fan fiction went mainstream: The community that underpins Heated Rivalry, explained” by Danielle Hewitt and Noel King

It’s a pretty good intro to fanfic and how it’s become something publishers and creators of TV/movies pay attention to. They interview Francesca Kappa, a co-founder of the Organization for Transformative Works, which created AO3.

Things I learned and some bits I liked:

AO3 was created in part to prevent commodification of fanfiction and the social connections it facilitates.
“one of the projects that I worked on in the early days of the OTW organization for transformative works was that we were being contacted by women in their 70s and 80s who were like having to move in with their kids or going into nursing homes and they had like 3,000 fan fiction zines.”
It was claimed that AO3 is “much bigger than Wikipedia.” I’m not sure what metrics they’re using to come up with that.
[AO3 is] “structurally unenshittifiable” because “we don’t have customers and we’re not a business.”
(Discussing copyright) “it would have been terrible if Shakespeare had to, like, negotiate with Netflix for the right to Hamlet and then didn't get it. Like, that's the world we live in, right? We're like, Netflix owns Hamlet, it has a five-year option, Shakespeare really has a great idea for it, but like, no, I'm really sorry because JJ. Abrams is going to do Hamlet.”
(I need to know which circle of Hell shows JJ Abrams’s Hamlet on repeat, because I really want to avoid it.)