Network

Tagging and crossovers

A friendly reminder that on Ao3, a fandom really shouldn't be tagged as a crossover if the characters only make brief cameo appearances.

I've noticed a few fics where my fandoms will be tagged as crossovers, only for one or two of the characters to show up very briefly. In a few cases, they were gifts for people, so I think what happened is that they wanted to gift their recipient with a cute cameo from another thing they liked. Which is lovely. The trouble is that other people are also going to read it, and it's a better use of their time if they know whether or not the other fandom actually features.

I actually wrote a fic where I featured a character from Heartstopper, Nathan Ajayi. Nathan (a teen in the fic, not Mr. Ajayi yet) really only shows up in two scenes. So I tagged it "Heartstopper reference" and "Heartstopper cameo". I probably could have gotten away with tagging the character, though, since he does play an actual role and there are ties to HS. So I might have been overly cautious.

Now suppose I wrote a fic where two characters from another fandom went to Paris, and several pages in, they pass two teachers leading a group of students, and they share a brief exchange with Nathan Ajayi and Yussef Farouk before moving on. They never turn up again in the fic. That wouldn't really be a crossover. It's a cute wink and nod to anyone in the HS fandom, but the characters from my fandom aren't going to mean much to anyone in the HS fandom, and the mention of Mr. Farouk and Mr. Ajayi is so brief, they could be anyone. There's really no need to tag them.

I'm sure it's sometimes just clickbait, especially when I see 100 fandoms mentioned. But I'll give people the benefit of the doubt and assume at least half of the time, it's a tagging issue. (And again, when they're gifts, get it. They're trying to do a nice thing.)

I really hope I'm not being a Fandom Karen by posting this...

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picspam

have a daffodil(s)

a frenzy of daffodils, with ridiculous doubled frills; the one in the foreground has a green streak

About twenty metres up the road is a front garden that is, at this time of year, full of ridiculous daffodils. It is an Annual Delight. I took this photo yesterday, and then I dragged A out to visit it at lunchtime today, in glorious weather. It has been a good day.

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dahlia day!

I removed the dahlia tubers from their cool spot by the back door over the weekend, but didn't get to putting them in dirt until today.

Last year I put them straight into large containers that they lived in all summer. They grew taller than me and had to have supports constructed around them so they wouldn't fall over. I put a freeze cloth over them to keep them blooming late into the fall, and between them and a few pots of cannas they transformed our back deck into an amazing jungle.

This year I have too many overwintering plants already, plus more dahila tubers than last year, and I do not have space for giant containers indoors, let alone indoors under high-powered grow lights. So the dahlias went into little containers from which they will be transplanted to a garden in... two months. Which surely will not be enough time for them to turn into beanstalks that I regret starting early!

( pictures )

Current Mood: busy

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Nature

Spending time in nature triggers a calming chain reaction in the brain

People often say a walk in nature clears the mind. Scientists have long suspected the effect is real, but exactly what happens inside the brain has been harder to pin down.

A sweeping synthesis of 108 brain-imaging experiments now shows that natural environments consistently quiet neural stress circuits and shift the brain toward a calmer, more integrated state.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Falling - Florence + the Machine

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When I'm falling I'm at peace

Work has been intensely busy these past few days, and tomorrow I have to go into the office because Assistant J is getting a pin for being with the organization for 5 years (even though it's more like six and a half at this point, but no one wants to hear my rant about how anniversaries work again), and I never get much done when I'm in, so we'll see what happens. I do have to take all my tax paperwork and scan it for my accountant. This is much later than usual, eep.

*

Shrinking: Dereks Don't Die
( spoiler )

*

Lost Recipes was a really good read "about the legal and logistical barriers arrayed against people trying to archive rap media." to quote the email from Defector that included the link. It made me think about how despite its many, many issues (about which I have heard no news of progress at all, btw), the OTW is doing that work for this section of media fandom, and how important that work is (and how no one else was gonna do it). There's already so much that's gone, and that impacts how our stories get contextualized and passed on (thinking of all the thinkpieces on Heated Rivalry that only reference yaoi and animanga fandom and not Western media fandom, for example) and whatever place in the larger history of media and fandom this corner of it might have. Idk. I do recommend reading that post though, even if you're not a rap fan.

*

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apple,
tech

Home System 2026

A major storage change necessitated an update to my Home Computing Environment Diagram:

Home Computing Environment • March 2026
Click above picture for larger image

A minor change is that I removed the CalDigit TS3 Plus hub that had hosted memory card readers. I found that the memory card readers got warm while they were always plugged in, so I decided I’d just plug them in as needed. And the USB-C ports on Belldandy’s front panel made it convenient for plugging in all USB-C cables. The hub was no longer needed.

Because I removed the CalDigit hub from Belldandy, that opened up a Thunderbolt 5 port, and I direct-connected Homura II to the newly opened port instead of going through the TB5 hub.

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Star Wars Fic and Meta - From All The Spaces Between Times - Chapter 74

Title: From All The Spaces Between Times
Chapter: Chapter 74 — The Winds Blowing Now Are the Winds That Blew Then Too
Author:

elrhiarhodan /

elrhiarhodan
Fandom: Star Wars, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars — Obi Wan Kenobi (TV), Star Wars — Jedi Apprentice Books
Characters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Shmi Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, The Force as a Sentient Character, Watto, Quinlan Vos, Padmé Amidala, Sabé, Darth Maul, Yoda, Mace Windu, Adi Gallia, Quinlan Vos, Professor Huyang, The Force, Plo Koon, Vokara Che, Siri Tachi, Aayla Secura, Bant Eerin, Bruck Chun, Xanatos du Crion, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Hego Damask II | Darth Plagueis, Komari Vosa, Bail Prestor Organa, Breha Organa, Bail Antilles Prestor, Rael Averross, Nim Piana, Ahsoka Tano, Sifo-Dyas, Reva Sevander, Lene Kostana (mentioned), Savage Opress, Pong Krell, The Traitor, Original Characters, Other Characters To Be Added
Pairings: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Shmi Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon Jinn (yes, we’re arrived). Bail Prestor Organa/Breha Organa
Word Count: ~ 4000 this chapter
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None

Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi has never known it, but he has always been the Force’s Champion, destined to suffer infinite sadness in defense of the Light. On his last turn on the wheel, responsibility for The Chosen One, the false child of prophecy, had been thrust upon him with no warning, and Darkness held the upper hand.

But this time, the Force has marshaled its power and will protect its Champion until the time is right, no matter how long Obi-Wan has to wait and how much he has to suffer.

Or,

Obi-Wan is reborn as a twelve-year old.

He wakes up on a slavers’ ship, with all of his prior life’s memories intact, and he’s bound for Tatooine with a Force-inhibitor collar around his neck, a bomb implanted in his spine, and no way of knowing what state of the Galaxy is in.

Just another day in the life of the Force’s Champion.

Chapter Summary:

Quinlan Vos returns to the Temple with the Tython-One and the High Council can confirm that it was a Temple Guard who planted the transmitter, and that the Guard is Fallen and thinks of himself as a Sith.

And so the search for the Traitor begins.

From All The Spaces Between Times: Chapter 74 — The Winds Blowing Now Are the Winds That Blew Then Too (On AO3)

( Meta — The Winds Blowing Now Are the Winds That Blew Then Too )

(no subject)

Things that are making me happy at this current time. I want to talk about them.

Things are still very not OK, I'm still barely keeping it together most days. Everything is Very Bad. But. I want to talk about happy things.

*

( books and tv shows )

passing me by

I'm just not managing to stay on top of any of the fandom trends.

Still haven't watched K-Pop Demon Hunters, or Heated Rivalry, or even Bridgerton S4...

I'm not bothering with Marvel (they're dead to me, like all the best characters in the franchise) and there's not much else that particularly interests me.

As usual, I mostly lack someone to watch things with. I'll watch movies that I'm only marginally interested in with friends, but I've never been a 'rewatch' kind of person - even in the background. Too many things to do.

--

Actually, I'm just not managing to stay on top of ANYTHING right now.

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Well, That’s Not Good...

My OWC ThunderBlade X12 24TB RAID SSD

What do you do when all your photos, stored and managed in Adobe Lightroom, disappear in a flash? (Besides cry, of course.)

My Lightroom Photo Library has 211,500+ photos from 2008 to 2026. It takes up 5.83TB. Yeah, it’s a lot. And it’s a shock when those numbers drop to zero.

( The Crisis )

( The Scramble )

( Technical Support Fail )

( The D’Oh! Moment )

( Fingers Crossed )

( A New Start )

[ SECRET POST #6999 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6999 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 08 secrets from Secret Submission Post #999.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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what are you playing wednesday

What Are You Playing (Thursday)

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Like buses in a bunch

So, I may have mentioned I would be giving a paper in one of the Fellows' Symposia of the Institution with which I am now affiliated, coming up over the horizon very soon. And I had originally intended to revisit some research I did Before Events Intervened and Do Something with that, but it has not been coming together as I should like, needs more percolating I think. So I am instead returning to a project I put aside when other things supervened and demanded my attention, for which I did a preliminary paper or two, and can spruce up and get, I hope, some feedback on, and maybe kickstart this back into action.

Meanwhile....

I think I mentioned being solicited to give an entertaining and instructive talk on the history of johnnies/baudruches some months hence, which I have a fair amount of material already on hand for. However, what the organisers would like is An Image for publicity purposes, fairly soonish, and REALLY. One is tempted to go with the Dudley Hoard which require a good deal of imagination to reconstruct for their original purpose.

Younger scholar whom I have been somewhat informally mentoring has now submitted their PhD thesis and would like me to read it, and think of what might come up in viva.

The project which I was involved in for some considerable while which went very weird last year, with me being somewhat accidental being left out of the loop for some months due to error in email address, so I never really got the full story, is being revived in a smaller and more defined way as a journal special issue edited by Old Friend and Me.

Meanwhile I am in the process of getting the latest volume of the Interminable Saga prepped for publication.

Current Mood: busy

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Birdfeeding

Today is cloudy, mild, and wet. It rained on and off yesterday, then stormed last night. Everything is still soaked.

I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

More crocuses are blooming -- lavender, purple, white, and pale yellow. :D The grass, which in recent years has retained bits of green through the winter, is suddenly much more green with growing tips visible.

EDIT 3/5/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

It's mizzling rain again.

EDIT 3/5/26 -- I did a bit of work around the yard.

Many more flowers are blooming! :D There are buds of purple-and-white crocus in the rain garden and orange in the goddess garden. The first miniature irises are blooming periwinkle and red-violet in the tulip bed.

EDIT 3/5/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I've seen a female cardinal at the hopper feeder.

I am done for the night.

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finland

It's 9 pm, the ground is covered in sheets of ice,

and yet this ice cream truck has the fucking cheek to drive by playing its little tune.

It's not time for ice cream!!! The ground is frozen!!! Stop mocking me!!!

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Star Wars: Vaderkin Creative Exchange 2026

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current stitching, and

I've learned what I can from the heavily modified slipover that I knitted and re-knitted all through the past two months. Because the recent absence of a subcutaneous pain-mesh layer has coincided with thermoregulation's partial return to service, I no longer want a personally sized blanket layer in sport-weight wool/alpaca. I've bound it off, both to keep as a measurement reference and because the yarn wouldn't survive further reuse.

( non-knitting digression )

Thinking through some incidents has been aided considerably by working with yarn bought when my skin first felt oddly cold. I've used it recently as a memory prop, then undone the deliberately false start and restarted the project with different yarn. As part of the process, I've finally recovered the skeins that were reused to become about half of a Little Wave cardigan, then abandoned when I realized that the pattern's proportions and mine would never agree. Instead, I'm meditating upon Capsa.

Thanks, long-ago clearance-discounted yarn, oddly too heavy for past me to crochet, for taking good care of me.

I've tried the first few rows of a swatch for New Terrain in Lavold Hempathy yarn---old, if not as old as the yarn meant first for the blanket I couldn't crochet. Perhaps my 2019 hands could've managed it, but my current hands will need a bit of wool in the yarn blend to keep those slipped stitches even. Hempathy is cotton/hemp/rayon, with no bounce/spring to it.

Yamagara's New Terrain interests me because its shoulder-yoke is constructed similarly to that of the Sundial tee, except that Yamagara is actually competent at designing patterns with carefully considered details---all the finishing touches that Sundial's designer (Wool and Pine) tends to skip. As a fallback, I could make a version of New Terrain without the terrain, plain across the torso, if the slipped stitches and my hands can't agree at all.

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The Protomen: The Inevitable Fall of the Firstborn by ricefu

Fandom: The Protomen
Pairings/Characters: Protoman & Megaman, Protoman & Dr. Thomas Light, Protoman & Dr. Albert Wily
Rating: Unrated, estimated to be Teen and Up
Length: 3,178
Creator Links: ricefu on Ao3
Theme:
Siblings, Science Fiction, Apocalypse/Dystopia, Robots, Androids and AI, Trauma & Recovery, (Not Really) Character Death, Old Fandoms
Summary:
You have heard me tell this story many times before you sleep... This time listen carefully.
Reccer's Notes:
A beautiful and sad character study of Protoman, the older sibling of two tragic brothers in the Protomen universe. It connects his backstory and dives into psyche throughout the canon storyline, including his relationship with his younger brother, his father, and the main antagonist. Although I'm tagging the Not Really Character Death theme for a reason, this is a tragedy, so tread carefully.

Fanwork Links:
The Inevitable Fall of the Firstborn on Ao3

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TEEN WOLF: Make him submit: A sub!Derek Hale Fest

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Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

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The Fantastic Journey Fic: To Start Over

Title: To Start Over
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Jonathan Willaway, Varian, York, Rayat.
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Setting: Right after The Innocent Prey.
Summary: Leaving Rayat’s peaceful home, Willaway can’t help wondering whether regressing the violent murderer York to babyhood will fix the problem he represents.
Word Count: 1174
Written For: Challenge 504: Second Chances at

fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.

( To Start Over... )