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Title: The Garden of Selene
Fandom: Ducktales (2017)
Rating: G
Summary: A drawing of the garden of Selene.
( Read more... )
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Since I'm going to the office on Tuesday and my whole team is supposed to be in, I am finally going to be able to get some feedback on funfetti cupcakes. So today, I baked both the Sally's Baking Addiction recipe (black and white cupcake papers) and the Smitten Kitchen recipe (yellow and red cupcake papers) (pics), and I think the Sally's recipe is the winner. I particularly like that it uses melted butter instead of having to cream the butter and sugar, so it can be done easily by hand. (For Christmas, I will double the recipe, so I'll use the stand mixer anyway, but overall, I do like a recipe that can be made without one.) My plan is to make the SK frosting attached to that recipe (doubled, and potentially tripled if necessary since I have 72 cupcakes to frost (38 Sally's, 34 Smitten Kitchen - overall they made 40 and 36 mini cupcakes, respectively, but I ate 2 of each). Normally, I would go for cream cheese frosting for funfetti, but both my nephews have said they prefer buttercream, and since this is specifically for them (and to replace the vanilla cupcakes I've been making but have been unhappy with), I figured I'd go with their preference. We'll see how it goes.
In other news, I am so sad HGTV cancelled Bargain Block - I still have the last couple of post-New Orleans episodes to watch, but then it will be all over and I will miss Keith and Evan a lot. I heard they also cancelled Married to Real Estate, which I also enjoy but still have a couple of seasons I haven't seen, and that Unsellable Houses is probably also going to get canned, which is a shame because that is my other favorite HGTV show and I have already watched all that is available. On the plus side, it seems like Home Town will be coming back, and I do enjoy that one, plus the new season of Help! I Wrecked My House (now in Park City, UT) has started (though I haven't watched it yet). And of course, my Elementary rewatch continues.
*Current Mood:  productive Current Music: Chargers vs Commanders on tv
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Thank you kindly to my "interplanetary" friend ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) james who in September sent me a postcard that says Visit Beautiful Southern Enceladus: More Than 100 Breathtaking Geysers! The Home of "Cold Faithful"!
(For those of you who might think this is a place in California because it sounds like "Escondido" and "Encino" and other similar California location names..uhm...no...Enceladus is a moon of the planet Saturn.)Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan Current Mood: starships were meant to fly
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Gilt edges not pictured, largely because I couldn't wrangle a photo setup for them.
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Last week's bread had a mould episode, chiz, so I made a loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, crust sprung a bit while baking, I think due to age of yeast, but otherwise okay.
Friday night supper, penne with sauce of roasted red peppers in brine whizzed in blender + chopped Calabrian salami.
Saturday breakfast rolls: brown grated apple, strong brown flour, maple syrup (also new batch of yeast): v nice.
Today's lunch: tempeh stirfried with sugar snap peas and a sauce of soy sauce, maple syrup, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, cornflour mixed in water, crushed garlic and minced ginger: am not sure the tempeh was supposed to crumble like that during cooking?? served with sticky rice with lime leaves and chicory quartered, healthygrilled in pumpkinseed oil and splashed with lemon and lime balsamic vinegar.
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Dishes
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Oct. 5th, 2025 @ 12:00 am
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Title: The Countess Conspiracy
Author: Courtney Milan
Genre: Historical Romance
ISBN-13: 978-1937248208
Today I am reviewing The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan, which is a historical romance that takes place in England in 1867.
Folks, it is brilliant. Utterly brilliant, and perfect, and just wonderful.
I've been reading romance novels since I was a teenager. The ones I read back then were pretty predictable: hero and heroine meet and fall instantly in lust but dance around each other for a time until they finally come together. There is a lot of banter and fun conversations, but usually the hero denies his feelings for her (sometimes the heroine is in denial, too, but usually it's the hero.) Then the damsel gets in distress and shoot, the hero realizes how much he loves her and rescues her and they live happily ever after, the end.
They're fun for escapism, but I don't think I could really tolerate them today, mostly because of the damsel in distress trope. But also: there is nothing in the books to really convince me that the couple is in love with each other, other than the author says they are.
Contrast that with Courtney Milan's books. The Countess Conspiracy is a romance novel, so yes there is a certain amount of sexy stuff going on, but it's really a book about love. Halfway through the book I was thinking, "Of course he loves her, look at all he's done for her! Look at how she sees him. I would be in love, too, if someone saw me the way she saw him." And the same goes for the heroine, who has her own reasons to love him that are just as believable.
One of the things I really love about Courtney's books is that there's not just the main plot of "heroine and hero get together" but also, at the very least, a B plot, sometimes with a bonus romance happening. The B plot usually involves character(s) that are important to the heroine or hero, and really helps to flesh out story and characters. You get the sense that these are real people with their cares and concerns and yes, flaws and foibles.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I'd suggest reading the other books in the series first as the heroine and hero of The Countess Conspiracy are introduced in the earlier books: there's a pre-quel novella that's a great read, called "The Governess Affair"; it's not as required for enjoying The Countess Conspiracy but is a good read on its own. Book 1 in the series is The Duchess War and book 2 is The Heiress Effect. The Duchess War is really good; The Heiress Effect is super fun and I loved it for its nuanced characters (and what a cast of characters it has!). And I didn't think it possible, but The Countess Conspiracy got even BETTER.
By now you're probably wondering just what The Countess Conspiracy is about. If you read the other books in the series first, then when you read The Countess Conspiracy, your jaw will drop at a revelation early in the story. I don't want to give it away, so I'll just say the book is about smart people doing brilliant things and being the odd ones in their families. I will warn that the book's blurb on Amazon gives away what the "conspiracy" is about; I'm glad I didn't know that going into the book because the surprise was quite fun for me.
There's also some overcoming of past trauma. Some folks might be upset by that trauma, so I'll put it in a cut.
SPOILERS but content warning for medical traumaSo Violet (the heroine) was previously married; at the minimum, her husband was a selfish jerk. She gets repeatedly pregnant, but suffers from some really traumatic miscarriages. Folks with medical trauma might be upset with this, so read with caution.
I've read a bunch of Courtney's books by now, and they've all been wonderful in their own ways, but The Countess Conspiracy is by far my favorite. I hope you give it a try.
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So, I don't know if Attack of the Clones is necessarily "better" than The Phantom Menace, but I had a more enjoyable experience watching it. I was feeling pretty cheerful through most of the runtime, while I think poor sdk was suffering much more than I was. I definitely had watched the last half of this movie on TV at some point in the mid-2000s. Nothing from the first half was familiar to me at all.
( cut for length, and still negativity though a little less than the last one )
Anyway, here's a song about Anakin and sand.
Embedded video: Fan edit autotunes scenes from the prequels and OT to craft a musical narrative centering on Anakin's enduring hatred of sand.
One more. We can do it! I believe in us!
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Fandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Ray Vecchio, Diefenbaker, Frannie Vecchio, Margaret Thatcher, Armando Langoustini, Victoria Metcalf
Rating: Teen
Length: 60,820 (whole series) Real Boys is 22,820, Real Worlds is 38,000
Content Notes: Author "chose not to warn", but I don't think any AO3 warnings apply.
Creator Links: MSSalieri (aka Troyswann, Salieri): MSSalieri on AO3 and Salieri's old site on Wayback
Themes: Uncommon settings, Friends to lovers, Action/adventure, AU: Science Fiction, AU: robots & AI, Fandom Classics, Worldbuilding
Summaries: for Real Boys:
Ray looked out from between his fingers. The creature was there, on the other side of Mr. Thug, and it had lots of silvery fur and teeth that would be gleaming really nicely if the 'liner hadn't gone and taken most of the light with it. Between Mr. Thug and Ray, there was a pair of tall boots. Tilting his head back, Ray looked up, up past the red jacket all the way to the head, which was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. On the face under the hat there was a small smile.
"What the," Ray said. "Who the."
for Real Worlds:
"His existence is a violation of Armistice Statute—"
"God laws."
"Yes."
It took only one long stride for Ray to get into Thatcher's space and to her credit she didn’t back down. "You're gonna quote God laws at me?" He jabbed her with a stiff finger. "Who's playin God here, huh? You wave the fucking God laws at me while you got Fraser strapped to a table somewhere so you can put his fucking brains in a blender and take what he is? Look in a fucking mirror, lady."
"For some reason I can't fathom, Mr. Kowalski, I like you, so I'm going to give you a piece of advice." Her chin came up. "You might watch your words. Unless you want to join Fraser on charges of sedition."
"What?" Vecchio was incredulous. "You're yankin me, right? Fraser’s a kitchen appliance, but he's man enough to be brought up on charges? How the Jee does that compute?"
A sequel to Real Boys:
Three years raising sheep on Clementine, and it all comes crashing down in a skip storm, some consequential psychosis, a kidnapping and a global catastrophe. He may be the universe's punching bag, but Ray will fight for freak love. He's getting Fraser back, God Laws be damned.
Reccer's Notes: There are very few AUs that put the due South characters into spaaace! This is a fusion with the Bladerunner universe where Fraser's an android who arrives to assist Ray Kowalski (who's trying to survive on a settler planet). Salieri's a marvelous writer who takes aspects of the Bladerunner universe and expands on them with extraordinary worldbuilding to tell a complex and riveting tale. There's a gradually developing relationship between Ray and Fraser, nefarious villains, and anti-android laws that wrench the boys apart so that both Rays have to fight to get Fraser back. A triumph, and a due South classic. Here's a quote from a comment by Moth: "The other day I was talking to a friend about Philip K. Dick adaptations and I said that it was funny how one of the best adaptations out there was a due South fanfic. So I went and searched for it to see if it lived up to my memories and it actually exceeded them. This is the best type of AU, one that transplants the canon characters, storylines, and themes to a new universe, while also commenting on the both the canon as well as the nature of fiction." It's also a bloody good read!
Fanwork Links: Real Life series on AO3
Podfics of both stories: Real Boys read by Zabira & Real Worlds read by Luzula
Fanart for the series is here (scroll to the end)
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Two-ply ramie handspun. I still have to BOIL it with soda ash to set the twist, but this will be going to ilyena_sylph. ♥
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Title: A Place To Relax
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 641
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: The garden in the TARDIS is the ideal place for Ianto to relax when everything he’s dealing with starts to weigh him down.
Content Notes: Nada. Set in my Through Time and Space ‘Verse.
Written For: Challenge 493: Garden.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Current Location: my desk Current Mood:  tired
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Oct. 5th, 2025 @ 01:02 pm
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Happy birthday, foxinsand!
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Whoever it is at the NFL who picks half-time musicians for the Super Bowl has chosen (Puerto Rican, therefore US citizen) Bad Bunny. I presume his band will be there too. My personal opinion is that while I like his music, half-time shows in any American football game should be marching bands doing interesting formations. They didn't ask me.
There has been blowback in certain circles because his first language is Spanish. He was a host on Saturday Night Live yesterday. I don't watch it but the web has offered me a snip from his monologue. Part of it was in Spanish. Then he said, in English, "If you didn't understand that, you have four months to learn."
I've been half-assing Spanish on Duolingo for almost six years (it was the reason I started Duo to begin with) and while I have acquired a bit, I still don't understand most of his lyrics. Four months? Maybe in an immersion program, or at least hours a day?
Tiny desk concert from earlier this year
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This is the fanworks round-up post for August! Please link in the comments to any Guardian (or related fandoms) fanworks you created or enjoyed last month.
- all kinds of fanworks are welcome – fic, art, vids, picspams, etc. - including those made for exchanges and events
- new chapters of WIPs count
- meta or discussion posts, too
- whether or not you've already linked these in a post of their own, we still want them here!
If you're linking to fanworks you didn't create yourself, please clearly mark these "REC", so there's no confusion about authorship/creatorship.
(And please still do link your fanworks, meta, etc. separately, in their own post, at any time!)
So ... what Guardian and related fandoms works did you create or enjoy in September?
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https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33186 
I. UPDATES TO AO3 COLLECTIONSIn late September, Accessibility, Design & Technology updated AO3's collections feature by introducing collections tags—allowing more granular filtering and browsing between collections. This update also generally improved collection performance, introduced the ability to mark collections as "Multifandom", and added Subcollections to the Collections filtering page.
For more details on recent AO3 releases and code changes, check out the most recent release notes. II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWNBesides updates to Collections, AO3 committees also continued work in a variety of areas.
Open Doors finished importing My Mongoose, a The Sentinel ezine archive, and announced two new import projects: Faerie: Tolkien Fanfiction and Forging Ghost, a Spike/Angel archive.
Tag Wrangling continued their work on creating new "No Fandom" canonical tags and announced another batch of tags in mid-September. On the @ao3org Tumblr, Tag Wrangling also announced changes to Critical Role fandom tags in light of the upcoming Campaign 4. They hope these changes will help users in finding and filtering for the works they want to see.
In August, Policy & Abuse received 3,863 tickets, while Support received 4,319 tickets—the current record for the most tickets either committee has received in one month. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 579,000 tags, or over 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.
From mid-July to mid-September, User Response Translation helped Support and Policy & Abuse with 38 translation requests. III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTWFanlore's Stub September editing challenge was a big success! Thank you to everyone who took part. For October, Fanlore is currently running a book-themed month. Check out the Help page for how to take part and claim a book-themed badge!
TWC's Transformative Works and Cultures has released issue No. 46, a general issue! It includes the launch of a new special section, New Currents. This section collects articles on new topics or approaches at a smaller scale than a special issue. In this issue, New Currents focuses on how fans and fan studies scholars engage with AI as a tool for transformative engagement with fannish texts.
In September, Legal responded to a number of user queries; they also joined allies in filing an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in the case of Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment. The case deals with when internet service providers can be held responsible for the actions of their users.
Legal's brief discussed the importance of internet access as a practical necessity of daily life and argued that holding service providers liable for users’ copyright infringement based only on accusations of infringement, rather than actual proof of infringement, would threaten innovation and creativity by creating an incentive for service providers to deny service to creators without requiring evidence or providing due process. There is no date set yet for when the case will be argued before the Supreme Court. IV. GOVERNANCEElections closed out the 2025 election—congratulations to the OTW's new Board Directors: Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg!
In preparation for October's membership drive, Development & Membership has been organizing new donation gifts, Finance has been compiling the pre-drive 2025 budget update, and Communications and Translation have prepared the associated news posts.
Board coordinated with Communication's Con Outreach division to attend EagleCon in Los Angeles, USA, and received the Lemonade award on the OTW's behalf. Elsewhere, the Board Assistants Team (BAT) continued work on OTW website updates, prepared for the quarterly Board meeting, and completed a report on non-profit training.
Organizational Culture Roadmap, in conjunction with BAT, Board, and Volunteers & Recruiting, continued work on the cross-committee review of the OTW's Code of Conduct. A survey was sent out to all volunteers soliciting their feedback for potential Code of Conduct updates. V. OUR VOLUNTEERSThis month, Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for 3 committees: Fanlore, TWC, and Tag Wrangling.
From August 21 to September 24, Volunteers & Recruiting received 171 new requests and completed 174, leaving them with 46 open requests. As of September 24, 2025, the OTW has 991 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New BAT Volunteers: Cait B, Deimos Crow, MelMel, MustardPot, and Sullie Tosho (BAT Volunteers)
New Communications Volunteers: 2 Chair Assistants
New Development & Membership Volunteers: Kae Coolen, Maddie64, and Mako (Graphic Designers); Danielle G., jennybug, LizLeaf, and 2 other Development & Membership Volunteers
New Open Doors Volunteers: AuroraT, Kayla G, and vinnawis (Chair Assistants); and Julie Bozza (Senior FSHP Volunteer)
New Strategic Planning Volunteers: Harlan Lieberman-Berg (Cybersecurity Delegate)
New Systems Volunteers: E.V. Moebius (Systems Volunteer)
New TWC Volunteers: 1 Review Editor
Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Board Assistants Team Chair
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing BAT Volunteers: Harlan Lieberman-Berg (Cybersecurity Delegate)
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Julie Bozza (Chair Assistant) and 1 Import Assistant
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Strategic Planning Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: SlantedKnitting (Support Volunteer)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Mayrin, Yuechiang Luo, and 7 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Translation Volunteer Manager and 3 Translators
For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website. https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/33186
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