I will post about this again, but...

Feb. 28th, 2026 11:02 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
I signed up to do work for [community profile] fandomtrumpshate this year. So, er.

Two different auctions, one for writing (obvs) and one for fan labor.

Writing auction is here — 20-50k words, up to E rating, original work. There's more details at the link, but basically, if you want a bespoke romance novel, you get a bespoke romance novel. Or, you know, SFF action-adventure or whatnot, it's really up to you.

People who are familiar with The Road Through the Mountains or In the Lord's Manor: YEAH, YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT I LIKE TO WRITE, AND IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT, I'M FUCKING THRILLED.

(People that liked the House Ilizana stuff in particular — you know who you are — I have a planned-but-not-written longfic about Jastira and her lady's maid and what they got up to prior to her marriage to Mal's dad that I have been itching for an excuse to write, so if you look at this and go, "man, $5, that's pretty reasonable, I wonder if she'd be willing to...", the answer is YES.)

Genuinely, though, if there's anything I've done that you've liked and wanted more of, bids start at $5! It goes to charity! I will write basically anything as long as it doesn't hit my DNWs!

Bidder's choice as to which charity stuff goes to, please bid on me? Ha ♥


The fan labor action is here, and it's the one I imagine more people will be interested in. Ever wanted to play one of my campaigns but not had a chance to because of timing, wanting to play solely with people you know, or similar? GOOD NEWS. I'm offering a bespoke ttrpg one-shot. Limited in system (D&D 5e, Monster of the Week, Blades in the Dark), but 3-4 hours depending on players and what people want, I will work with the bidder on what themes they want present, etc. Again, details are at the link, but if you've ever been like, "the games you run sound cool, I want to play with you", good news!

Bidding for that starts at $20, again bidder's choice as to which charity you donate to. ♥ Please note that $20 total for tabletop for up to 6 people is a fucking steal, for most DMs/GMs it's more like $15-20 per person at the table, on the low end, so!

Bidding will open on March 3rd (and you bet your sweet bippy that I'm going to advertise again, so!).


I really doubt there'll be much competition for bids, so! Keep an eye out, if you want to bid, please do so, or if you know someone who would be interested in what I'm offering, point 'em at the auctions, yeah? :D

Slow Day

Mar. 1st, 2026 01:19 am
diffrentcolours: (Default)
[personal profile] diffrentcolours

Today I missed going to the gym because I had a morning hospital appointment. Next Sunday, I'm having surgery on my umbilical hernia, so today I was having bloods taken, being swabbed for MRSA, and having a pre-operative interview to discuss the procedure. This has taken literal years since I was diagnosed with the hernia in 2022, so I'm happy it's finally going ahead.

Other than that we didn't have many plans for the day. I finished playing through Control again, in time for the sequel to come out soon. Then I went upstairs and spent a couple of hours blitzing ADHD paperwork. I got so caught up in this that I forgot to come down for dinner and was exhausted by the time I did. We tuned into a Nunkie MR James stream, but I promptly fell asleep!

After that I made myself a snack and watched this week's Starfleet Academy, which was lovely. It has made me simultaneously curious about and terrified of reading / seeing Our Town.

Also, I noticed that iPlayer has the Derek Jacobi teleplay of Breaking the Code, the biographical play about Alan Turing. It's a much better portrayal of Turing (at least according to the biographies I've read) than the terrible "The Imitation Game". Me and [personal profile] cosmolinguist saw it on stage last October, which was a competent enough production.

[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Thanks to [personal profile] otter for sharing this video the other day: Emotional Neglect: Healing from the Hidden Trauma of What Didn't Happen

I got around to watching it and it hit me so hard I needed to write this huge long thing about it. It's mostly transcript of the parts of the video that I wanted to make a note of, because it's not very accessible to me otherwise. But my thoughts are sprinkled around the block quotes of course.

Emotional Neglect )

Emotions Draw Our Attention to What Matters to Us )

Shame, and Phobia of Inner Experiences )

Existential Loneliness )

Unconscious Self-Abandonment )

Sensitivity to Rejection )

Using Emotions to Connect Your Inner World to the Outer World )

Ordinary days

Feb. 28th, 2026 11:59 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I started getting a migraine halfway through lift club this morning.

I ignored it of course -- just the aura, at that point -- knowing that I'd have a while before it got, y'know, debilitating.

I enjoyed the rest of the exercises. I did nearly fall both at the beginning and the end of the escalator I took to get from the tram to the train, oops. But also I got home fine, via B&M for medicinal snacks -- mostly sugar, which I often crave during migraines, but also one particular 59p instant ramen thing that I suddenly needed, and enjoyed very much for my lunch.

It was that rare rough day for the whole house: D's IBS was playing up and he had to make his brain work on paperwork so much this afternoon that when he finally emerged I wondered if migraines were contagious (luckily he perked up a little after eating something). V slept through all their alarms and so has been off-kilter all day. I slept for four hours this afternoon and after that reached the point where I felt okay unless I tried to move or even think too hard.

Then we watched a Starfleet Academy episode and as soon as Sam mentioned Our Town I was like ...you come to me, on the day of my migraine, and now I'm gonna have to cry? (Crying is fine but a physically unenjoyable experience for me at the best of times. Which, we've established, today is not.) (I got a tear in my eye, but even that was only at the very end.)

Like I've said here, Our Town is largely responsible for why I write almost every day here. "I can't look at everything hard enough" fucking haunts me (of course we heard that line in the episode), and it's important to me to look at things as hard as I can while they are happening.

tl;dr: People are actually bad at predicting how much they'll enjoy reading back what they've written about their lives! Writing about the ordinary experiences of your life can be even more cheering to you when you go back and read them than the extraordinary ones.

A nice reminder on an excessively ordinary day.

Good news

Feb. 27th, 2026 09:06 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I slept like ass again, but if I'm gonna wake up at 6am it was nice to wake up to good news: the obvious bigots of Reform didn't win, and the more normie bigots of Labour didn't win either -- the Greens won!

I don't really care what this means for Labour or Keir Starmer -- it has never in my 20 years of living here made much tangible difference who the Prime Minister is -- I'm just glad to have an MP who might not be totally useless because I've had enough of that the last couple years! We've had a functionally useless MP in Gorton and Denton since Gwynne lost the Labour whip and his ministerial post but kept voting along with Labour anyway. Worst of both worlds: he couldn't really advocate for us any more but still voted like he would've before. Not that he was much use as public health minister: my hopes were high when he first got the position, especially as he was open about his Long Covid (which I think ended up being why he had to resign on health grounds), but he was a real disappointment to people I know who have ME or LC who'd also expected him to help, and he wasn't interested in advocating for clean air in public places or anything that would help with the ongoing pandemic, and my attempt to explain to him the public health implications of transphobia-as-policy (like the totally-predictable spike in teen suicides) didn't get anywhere either.

And more widely, of course, this is making some people feel more hopeful than we have in a long time. My queer and community-defense group chats were full of relief, congratulations to the volunteers we know who knocked on doors and did other thankless work for this (in the rain! even for Manchester it's been rainy lately), and a little bit of giddy meme-making.

There's all kinds of speculation now on what this means for the upcoming local elections in England (and devolved government elections in both Wales and Scotland, but they get to have nationalistic parties to vote for there too), as well as for Labour and Reform and so on.

But for now, there's a lot of hope in a lot of people who didn't have much (I caught a link to this video and watched it before I realized it's Owen Jones, heh), and that is a great gift.

Talking Meme Month - 27 and 28!

Feb. 28th, 2026 09:56 am
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
27 is late, of course, because I saw friends last night and didn't get home til late :D

27: If I had unlimited resources (including time), what hobby would I pursue?

There are two!

1). I learned how to oil paint when I was a teenager, I loved it (I was not very good at it, but that's fine), and I miss it. Would love to do it again at some point!

2). Stained glass.

Both are specifically, "money/having a space to do it in"; would also love to learn to blow glass someday (there's a bunch of workshops for it out here, oddly enough), but that's something where it's like, "I fully expect that I will try doing this and go, 'hmm, cool, not for me!'", whereas the other two are things I know I like. :D


28: Best moment of the last month?

Oh, seeing that my fucking sourdough worked and being able to make myself a sandwich with it (which was very good), almost definitely! :D

Talking Meme Month - day 26

Feb. 26th, 2026 07:51 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
if I could travel anywhere, where would I go/what would I do?

I mean, honestly? I'm kind of boring. I'd go back to Spain and spend a week or two doing nothing more important than eating good food and visiting all the historical sites, maybe hit up Portugal while out there.

Max wants to visit Japan, someday I would like to visit Chile, but like — for the most part, "go back to Europe now that I'm older and theoretically have money" is near the top of the list. :D


Anyway, er — the sourdough adventures continue! I made crackers from discard (very good, worth doing again), and today I experimented and did a weird loaf (this recipe).

It turned out pretty well, actually!

It's very high hydration, which means it stuck awfully to my brotforms, but I'm going to drop it for next time, I think, and try again. "Next time" as in, "I'm probably going to make more bread this weekend, because Why Not".

We are moving ever closer to the cranberry walnut loaf of my dreams, which is the Important part. :D

Talking Meme Month - day 25

Feb. 25th, 2026 08:57 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
talk about a TTRPG system other than Dungeons and Dragons

Easy — there's a number of them I like. Blades in the Dark and Monster of the Week/Thirsty Sword Lesbians/Apocalypse World/every other PbtA game out there come to mind, as do some lovely GMless indie ones (Stewpot! Rusalka! Fiasco! The Quiet Year!), BUT.

Honestly, okay, the top complaint I get about tabletop?

"I don't want to play online, I don't want to play with strangers, and I don't know anyone offline that wants to play with me, where do I even start?"

The answer for that is:

SOLO GAMES.

There's a bunch. I'm not talking about the weird D&D hacks, either, though those do exist (and I don't recommend them!). Solo tabletop as a genre has expanded a lot and there's a bunch of wonderful stuff out there now. I've played a few, but my favorite, by and large, is Thousand Year Old Vampire.

In TYOV, you play as a vampire made sometime in history. You pick when, give yourself a handful of possessions, and then roll dice and respond to prompts to figure out what happens to you. Do you survive and thrive, or do you die? What do you remember, what do you forget, and how do you adapt to being a vampire? It's extraordinarily well-done, and unlike a lot of journaling games, which can feel like writing prompts, it manages to capture the experience of roleplay extremely well. I played it for the first time a couple of years ago, and ended up documenting what happened to a Roman peasant girl as she lived through the collapse of the empire and into the Middle Ages. Some of the choices I was faced with and things that my character had to do were among the hardest I've ever made as a player, and it required a great amount of consideration and thought to move from point A to point B. The game broke my heart (in a good way), and I highly recommend it. It is, to this day, one of my favorite games. ♥



In non-Talking Meme Month news: reveals happened for the January round of a remix exchange I'm involved in, so I now have something new on AO3 that is (surprise!) not rated E.

And I Awoke on the Cold Hill's Side (rated T, 7.5k words) is a love letter to growing up queer in Salt Lake. It's set around the time that I would have been in undergrad. It's not perfect (what is?), but I hit the mark for what I set out to do, and, well, yeah. People familiar with the valley can probably pinpoint exactly which warehouse I'm talking about for where the party toward the middle of the piece takes place.

...I also have another piece up that is, uh, rated E. Slaying the Dragon (E, 14k words) is about grief and how we recover from it and come back to ourselves. It's set in the same universe as The Road Through the Mountains, though it's obviously not the same characters or set-up, and no familiarity with it is required. ♥


Not much happening. Have thus far been ghosted or rejected by every job I've applied to. I feel mostly okay about that. I have some freelance work lined up for the fall (we're drawing up contracts), so I am perhaps less worried about money coming in than I should be. Still noodling on various and sundry stuff; been dealing with some pretty awful chronic pain things lately so that's taken most of my focus, and I'm trying to like, gently remind myself that I can in fact take this time to simply Be and not worry about, you know. Everything.

talking about FOSS/software stuff, probably not interesting to most people. )
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I've accrued a simply horrifying number of open tabs, and I'm finally able to whittle them down a bit.

I'm finally able to read a few of those I've accumulated about Minneapolis/ICE. Here's my favorite one so far:

I feel more from Minnesota than I’ve ever felt. is a great quote -- even from four thousand miles away I feel more from Minnesota than I ever have, but this goes on:

But now I know as I’m walking down the street that I have hundreds of people who will swarm to help me if needed, and that I will swarm to help them.... It’s like building a muscle of solidarity across race, across class. It’s something the Left talks about a lot, but I’ve never experienced it like this. And it’s truly ordinary people — it’s not majority organizers or activists. It’s people who’ve never organized a day in their lives but know something wrong is happening and want to do something.

And on dealing with the fear:

it starts really small, and then the small things become more risky, and you don’t want to give them up... So now the people delivering groceries — which, again, is a very low-risk thing — have been trained to know that in case ICE grabs them, they should never write the list of addresses down digitally. You write it on a physical piece of paper, and if ICE grabs you, you eat the piece of paper. ...[D]elivering groceries shouldn’t be high-risk. It violates people’s sense of dignity and basic rights, and that’s what creates courage.

The whole thing is so good, it's well worth a read.

Talking Meme Month - day 24

Feb. 24th, 2026 04:05 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
what book(s) have you read only once that have stayed with you so long that you can never stop thinking about them? (Good and bad)

Ha, I'm a compulsive re-reader, so it's more like, "what have I read only once?"

Two come immediately to mind:

1). Atonement. If you know, you know. I don't know that it is possible to reread this book considering what the ending reveals — I mean, perhaps people do, but...lord.

2). A Fine Balance. It's a historical fiction novel about The Emergency declared in India in the 1970s. It's a brutal book. You end up caring for all the characters and, well. Given the time period and who they are socially, nothing good happens. It's not bleak per se (looking at you, A Little Life), but it's realistic in what was likely to have happened to each of them given considerations like caste, etc. It's a lot. I don't regret reading it, but I won't reread it. Once was enough.

I will say that for the most part, I don't finish stuff I'm not enjoying — life is short, there are many books, if I'm not into something I usually don't make it all the way through.

With that said, though, I absolutely loathed Blindsight by Peter Watts, and I am still annoyed that for a few years there it was held up as the piece of Science Fiction For Scientists.

(These days it seems to be stuff by Andy Weir, which I by and large haven't read, because The Martian was aggressively fine, and I could not get into Artemis.)

Interesting places

Feb. 24th, 2026 10:25 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Looking at my podcasts the other day, glaring at the ones I want to update for not updating enough, I did a thing that I know I've done before and I'm sure I will again: I thought gosh I really like that Gareth Dennis, why am I so behind on his??

Then I listen to some and (when it's not about train crashes) pretty soon I'm like I should be taking notes on this, this is about WORK. Free bus passes, driverless public transport, that's stuff I get paid to think about so I don't wanna do it in my spare time so much.

So the podcast episode goes half-unlistened to. Again.

I was already thinking that before the most recent episode, about the Gorton & Denton by-election. I listen to podcasts for escapism, that's why I like baseball! This is no kind of escape.

But today, maybe because of my time off (both a break from thinking about transport policy, and more time to listen to podcasts so I'm burning through them quicker) or maybe because the podcasts I like really aren't updating enough no matter how much I glare at the app, I put this one on.

It was at first pretty novel to hear a voice I associate with engineering disasters etc. talking about roads I've been on and places I know well.

I do think it's interesting how much transport has been emblematic of this election: when I first saw the locally-infamous "Patricia Clegg" letter that Reform is trying to deceive people with, the thing that stuck out to me most was "the buses aren't working," and I just scoffed at this slight on my beloved Bee Network -- not like I'm anything to do with TfGM or Labour or anything, but I'm really impressed at what Andy Burnham has been able to do and it really is nonsense to say that buses don't work when we have, for the first time, real-time information available in the app and AV announcements on increasingly many buses. This more than anything, more than even a candidate from Hitchin, made me feel like that letter was not written by any "concerned neighbour" but by someone who hasn't been to Manchester, not recently.

We got a postcard today "from" Andy Burnham himself telling us "the community has to unite around our candidate or you'll get a Reform MP" (typical Labour, telling us we have to do what they tell us to) and on this postcard, as well as the expected photo of him with the candidate is just a particular photo of yellow Bee Network buses that I've seen in every TfGM press release and news story about them. It really is a symbol of his; bringing about the first franchise outside of London, and the coming integration with local train services, really does feel miraculous.

So yeah, it really is interesting how much transport has been a useful lens to view the by-election with.

But man. Between this by-election and Minnesota, I'm like... never mind living in interesting times, I'm weary of living in interesting places.

Talking Meme Month - day 23

Feb. 23rd, 2026 10:08 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
favorite tarot card (whether for art, meaning, or something else)?

(As per usual, I will do the writing ones when I get my shit together, preferably on a day when I'm not dealing with a migraine.)

I have a few favorite cards, less because of art, and more because of meaning. As per usual, in no particular order:

The Magician: The Magician represents ambition, manifestation, resourcefulness and inspired action. I have a lot of fondness for this one simply because it was one of the major arcana I used to pull most frequently when doing readings for myself. One of the potential interpretations of the Magician is that it represents balance and having the ability to do things because you have all the resources at your disposal — and, yeah, I liked that. Ha. In my favorite (goblin) deck, he's a juggler and it's quite pretty art, but it doesn't appear to be online (boo), so I suppose you'll have to take my word for it.

Death: Not literally about death; also the card I tend to pull the most these days. Er, hmm. Death is about change, transformation, endings — it's a pretty positive card and it is only rarely about literal death. One of my favorite books about tarot talks about accepting Death as part of life, and I think about it a lot in that context — there are constant deaths in the form of endings around us every day, and part of finding meaning and purpose in life is learning to accept this.

The Ten of Cups: Cups as a suit are meant to represent relationships and connections, both romantic and not. The Ten of Cups is specifically about having those relationships/connections in abundance and feeling connected and cared for — it's basically "happiness: the card".

At one point, one of my very good friends, who does tarot, offered to tell each of us what cards in her deck she associated with us. She left it to us to figure out the "why". Most of my friends were major arcana — I still remember being mildly jealous of the person who was told theirs was 'the Star' — and I was sort of upset at the time that I was the 10 of Cups.

Now that I do tarot, I think it may be one of the best compliments I've ever been given. So. Yeah.

Political engagement

Feb. 23rd, 2026 10:02 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Tonight's knock on the door was a Labour canvasser who asked if I was planning to vote; I said I'd just done my postal vote this afternoon, and "I'm afraid I voted Green," I tried to let him down gently.

He still tried to show me the latest "only Labour can beat Reform" chart which baffled me: from my own time canvassing I can only expect that in such circumstances they have a box to tick for "voted for someone else" and you move on! Arguing with people who've already voted is a waste of time.

I hadn't been going to get in to this but since he wasn't going away I told him that I'm a disabled immigrant and Labour are making life more difficult for all of those so I couldn't vote for them. He said "well Angeliki settled here from Europe..."

It just felt so point-missing. I don't really care about the demographics of a candidate too much. I care how they'll vote, I care about their party's policies and how they'll affect all immigrants! (Or any other group on the wrong side of this power imbalance.)

I appreciate there's a lot of new volunteers on all sides in this by-election. (Seriously dude, I hope they trained you enough that you know there should be a box for you to tick that says I can be done wasting your and all your colleagues' time!) But it's hard not to feel like this is what Labour has been for all twenty of the years I lived here: focus on this exceptional individual, not the boring systemic problems that the party will always shy away from.

The funniest thing was, as I was finally getting this guy to go away, I'd spotted another guy behind him and I'd assumed he was a fellow canvasser with this guy, but as I started to close the door, he caught my attention to say "I'm from the Greens, did you want to put up a sign?" And only then I remembered that D had in fact asked for one the other day, so me and this guy and D eventually ended up out in the rain trying to find something to affix it to before ending up dragging a big tree in a big pot to the edge of the driveway for maximum visibility.

I hope that sends the Labour canvassers a message, for the couple more days until this election finally happens.

Springing

Feb. 22nd, 2026 11:50 am
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Today is a good day because I came downstairs to find that the house was warm enough that the heating hadn't needed to kick in, which is so much more comfortable for me.

First thing I noticed when I went outside yesterday was that it smelled like a rainy spring day instead of a rainy winter day.

I am so ready for fresh air and open windows.

Talking Meme Month - day 21

Feb. 21st, 2026 06:37 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
What is my favorite place in the world?

God. Uh. Hmm.

I want to toss some far-flung locales on here, but I haven't been there in over twenty years and God only knows if they're still nice, so. I guess we'll go with the places I have known well and loved.

It's a toss-up between:

The Salt Lake City Public Library, at least as I remember it circa 2010 (which, God, was a long time ago...!) — I went to a bunch of poetry readings etc here and always loved it and felt very in my element whenever I was there, and the rooftop garden is super neat.

Cape Perpetua, because it's fucking beautiful.

Swan Lake, Montana, because I spent just about every childhood here from the time I was 4 to the time I was 14.

Mesa Verde, because it's just fucking cool.

SF MoMA, because I adore it and have a lot of great memories of visiting different exhibits there (for several years in a row I had business stuff that took me to San Francisco at least once if not twice a year, and I always hit up SF MoMA when I went).

Anyway yes, I am Indecisive, you are welcome :D

Resolution

Feb. 21st, 2026 11:33 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Like D, I have been telling all the canvassers who come to the door that I'll vote for whoever has the best chance of beating Reform, but I am relieved that now the constituency-level polling indicates that it's more likely to be the Greens than Labour, because I really didn't want to have to hold my nose and vote for Labour. I'm a trans disabled immigrant and they went through a phase last year of trying to make things more difficult for every single one of those groups of people.

And I do like the points the Greens in the person of Zack Polanski are making, particularly in their most recent party political broadcast. (With one note: I have very strong feelings about "make X Y again" constructions of any kind these days, but I'm grudgingly willing to make an exception for "make hope normal again" despite how loaded "hope" and "normal" are as the X and Y in this case!)

Gorton and Denton By-Election

Feb. 21st, 2026 08:47 pm
diffrentcolours: (Default)
[personal profile] diffrentcolours

For the last couple of weeks I've been telling every canvasser that's come to my door the same thing - that I'd like to vote Green, but I'm going to vote to keep Reform out, and that there wasn't any clear evidence of the best way to do that. Labour have been relying on an opinion poll of 150 people taken weeks ago before the close of nominations, which shows them in second place to Reform. The Greens have been relying on betting shop odds (very easy to manipulate) and internal polling (very unreliable). Both have been telling me that their "internal data" points to them being the best option.

Yesterday, a new poll from Omnisis was published. The sample size is still small (450) but much larger than we've seen before, and the polling was carried out after the candidates were finalised and after the campaign started. I am pleased to say that it puts Greens in front of Reform in the constituency, within margin of error. Labour are trailing Reform, also within margin of error, but the Green-Labour lead is outside that margin. It also says that the Green supporters are more likely to actually turn out and vote than Labour ones, which suggests that the Green lead will be bigger on Thursday than this poll suggests.

I can nitpick some things about the poll such as the sample size, but this is the best indicator I'm likely to get before going to the polls on Thursday. And I'm glad that I have some reasonably solid evidence that convinces my head that I can vote with my heart, rather than just looking for something that reinforces what I want to be true. I know from previous experience that the Labour vote in Gorton is soft as anything, and it's nice to have evidence that the Green squeeze is actually working.

There are some interesting nuggets in the data which show how people either don't understand questions or give nonsense answers, like the Labour supporter who would vote Reform if they "knew" this was a Labour-Reform battle. There are a small minority of both Green and Labour supporters who would vote Reform to stop the other from winning. The Reform vote is largely unsqueezable - even if they think Reform can't win, most supporters would either vote for them, or not vote at all, than vote for either Greens or Labour. More would break Green though, which suggests the "vote to get Kier Starmer out" message is working.

Talking Meme Month - day 20

Feb. 20th, 2026 10:39 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
A favorite or hilarious story from the TTRPG table?

Oh, God, there are so many little moments that are burned into my brain, but I think the one I have to talk about is the Desk Goat.

Beneath the jump. )

I will say that the other "favorite" moments I have are all ones that had pretty serious story consequences, etc, and so aren't particularly funny (or easy to explain). Think along the lines of deciding to redeem villains, challenging certain narrative assumptions about where stuff was going (and forcing me to pivot on a dime, ha), etc.

Technically, the players becoming attached to and deciding to redeem one specific villain is what led to the weird poly romance novel I (mostly) wrote last year, but...yeah.

(I say "mostly" because [personal profile] shadaras was there the entire time and most of the worldbuilding etc was stuff done in tandem as, wouldn't it be fun if..., so though the prose is like 95% mine, the story is definitely a collaborative effort.)

I survived this week!

Feb. 20th, 2026 10:11 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I am so tired I can hardly string a sentence together but I wanted to say that today went great from a "finding a new place on my own" perspective, from actually being incredibly useful from a work perspective. Getting back was actually the annoying part (road works made it difficult to escape the area I'd arrived to by bus, and I got lost trying to walk back to anywhere I could get a bus or Uber; getting back from Stockport took much longer thanks to Piccadilly still being closed).

But I made it just in time to get to a much-needed yoga session, and got home to eat delicious takeout, and a basically-empty weekend and most-of-a-week off now stretches before me.

Talking Meme Month - day 19

Feb. 19th, 2026 07:09 pm
hafnia: Animated drawing of a flickering fire with a pair of eyes peeping out of it, from the film Howl's Moving Castle. (Default)
[personal profile] hafnia
Tabletop goals for the year?

In no particular order:

1). Finish the Bounty Hunter's Guild and give it a satisfying ending.
2). Run and wrap Goodbye My Darling.
3). Start the long-form Eberron campaign (name TBD).
4). Finish Space Heist and get it on itch.io, even if it's only as a public beta or something, because IT HAS BEEN LONG ENOUGH.

That's nice and concise, I think? :D

Will say that I do have a brief update re: sourdough — I made a successful starter and yesterday, I baked bread with it for the first time. Nothing fancy; I made two regular boules. The prove on it could probably have been a bit better, but dang, y'all, it tasted great. :D I ate sourdough toast this morning and it was everything I wanted. 10/10, would do again. ♥ So that's one thing crossed off my, "I want to try to do this" list, and now that I've done it the straight way, I can start playing with different flours and such (want to incorporate a bit of rye into it, for flavor), start thinking about inclusions, etc. I had this amazing fruit and nut bread at one point that I kinda want to try remaking...was like, walnut with dried cranberries? so, yeah.

We shall see!

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