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I did not end up accompanying ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) rushthatspeaks and his child to the zoo this morning because I crashed so hard last night that I slept ten to eleven hours and am having difficulty remembering the day of the week, but he just dropped by with a nineweaving in the car and brought me my Christmas present of a sweater in the pattern of the Minoan octopus flask from Palaikastro and the cup with the scale motif from Archanes: it's spectacular. I was able to give him the collected cartoons and comics and poems of Le Guin's Book of Cats (2025). I got to see photographs of Artic and fennec foxes, flamingos and peccaries, sloth and snow leopard, porcupine and poison dart frog. Having spent the prior portion of my afternoon in the excitement of calling doctors and paying bills, my evening's plans involve couch and books.Current Music: The Pack a.d., "Sirens"
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Posted by Elintiriel https://www.transformativeworks.org/thanks-for-participating-in-ifd2026/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=279765 For International Fanworks Day (IFD) 2026, we once again came together from all corners of the fandom cosmos, and celebrated an Alternate Universe-themed IFD! First, we ran our annual Feedback Fest, where we asked you all to recommend to each other fanworks around your favorite AUs. Fanlore hosted their annual IFD editing event from February 14-20, and we signal boosted several community events along with our own. Some of these are still on-going, so make sure to check out the post!
We also hosted chatrooms and games on our once-a-year IFD Discord server for 30 hours. Thanks to everyone who came by! You can check out the fruits of our collective labor–several fandom-themed poems, song lyrics, and stories–by visiting our collected IFD works on AO3.
We’d like to thank everyone who participated in our IFD activities and events, and give a huge shoutout to our OTW volunteers who modded chats and games! We hope to see you all again for IFD 2027! https://www.transformativeworks.org/thanks-for-participating-in-ifd2026/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=279765
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What hope has 10th century Icelandic culture against an armed and moderately educated 20th century American?
The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson
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SNEWS
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Feb. 16th, 2026 @ 05:00 am
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Downcrawl and Skycrawl, twin toolkits from designer Aaron A. Reed that help you create spontaneous tabletop roleplaying adventures in the Deep, Deep Down and the Azure Etern.
Bundle of Holding: Downcrawl-Skycrawl
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I have not slept in two nights as opposed to brief random hours elsewhere on the clock, but the sunlight this afternoon was gorgeous.
( I'm a little hungover and I may have to steal your soul. )
Like just about the rest of this weekend, any plans I had to attend even part of this year's sci-fi marathon at the Somerville did not survive contact with my stamina. Hestia has now broken four slats out of my blinds for a better view on Bird Theater and having tired herself out chattering at their delicious players sleeps innocently against my mermaid lamp, softly and a little snufflily breathing out a purr.Current Music: Houndmouth, "Sedona"
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https://www.scenemag.co.uk/lancaster-university-launches-national-consultation-to-shape-future-of-adult-gender-healthcare/
https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/transadultspsp/
The focus is identifying priorities for future research, specifically related to "non-surgical, transition-related healthcare for people aged 18 and over", and they're starting with a survey.
Funded by Gendered Intelligence, led by a steering group which is half people with lived experience (in fact more than half, as some of the healthcare professional members also ID as trans), one of the two co-leads is a trans woman, and they're partnered with TransActual and GIRES, so this looks like real genuine co-production.
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Ben Reich plans a perfect murder in a world where getting away with murder is impossible.
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
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I spent the first half of Valentine's Day unromantically fulfilling some medical errands and then trying to sleep off a migraine, but in the evening I made keyn-ahora plans with rushthatspeaks and spatch and I ordered an accidentally four-person quantity of dinner from Chivo and watched Tales of the Tinkerdee (1962), an early fractured fairy tale of a Muppet curio whose relentlessly older-than-vaudeville gags we frequently missed from still laughing at a line about three jokes earlier. "A solid ruby gold-panning inlaid electric-fried antique!" After that I fell asleep on the couch.Current Music: Rose Betts, "Alderidge Creek"
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Posted by Elintiriel https://www.transformativeworks.org/its-international-fanworks-day-2026/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=279491 For anyone who’s missed our earlier posts, you can find all of our activities for this year’s International Fanworks Day in our “What We’re Doing For #IFD2026” post.
The OTW’s chatrooms and games session is a 30-hour party that lasts from February 14th, 21:00 UTC until February 16th, 03:00 UTC. The game times listed below are all in UTC, but you can click the links to find out how that converts to your own timezone.
The games will be hosted on our dedicated Discord server and moderated by OTW volunteers throughout the day. Every two hours you will be able to participate in a different fandom-themed game! The timetable and game descriptions are posted below; join us on Discord for the games you’d like to play!
NOTE: The games will be played and moderated in English.
Games Schedule:
February 14th
February 15th
February 16th
Game Guidelines
5 Things
How to Play: During this game, the host will name a topic and players in the room will call out examples from their favorite fandoms. This will repeat for at least 5 rounds. Be prepared to explain why your answer counts (maybe you’ll recruit someone new to your fandom!)
20 Questions
How to Play: During this game, the host will think of a person, place, or object. Players have exactly 20 yes-or-no questions they can ask the host to determine what the correct answer is.
Storytime
How to Play: The host will paste a starting sentence into the chat. Players take turns coming up with the next sentence–the host calling out whose turn it is–until everyone has gone once, and the story is complete!
List Builder
How to Play: List Builder is a collaborative game in which players work together to come up with a list of fandom characters or items belonging to a particular genre, starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet. Start at A and work your way through to Z (you can be as flexible as required on the difficult letters!)
Lyrics Round Robin
How to Play: During this game, we’ll collectively write FANDOM lyrics to replace those of a familiar song. The host will choose the song and type out an alternate first two lines. Then those in the room will write the next lines until the song is finished.
Poetry Round Robin
How to Play: During this game, we’ll collectively write FANDOM poetry! The host posts a poem as an example of a specific poetic form (like sonnet, haiku, etc.), as well as a title. The players then write one (or more) original poems of that form together, one line at a time.
OTW Trivia
How to Play: Like most trivia games, the host will ask a question and the first person to answer correctly wins that round. Because we’re online and you’re free to do searches we’re going to add another factor, which is time — you must answer within 2 minutes. But you can call out your answer as soon as you think you know. If you’re the first to have the correct answer, the host will type your name and award you a point. At the end of the game, whoever has gotten the most points will be named the winner!
Two Truths and a Lie
How to Play: The host will paste into the chat 3 statements. Because we’re online and you’re free to do searches we’re going to add another factor, which is time — you must answer within 30 seconds after the third statement!
We also want to hear from you about other celebrations taking place today. Leave us a comment here to tell us about what your fandom communities are doing! https://www.transformativeworks.org/its-international-fanworks-day-2026/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=279491
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We have terrible platforming, shortcut porn, hostile shrubbery, BOXRATS!!!, extremely smashable vases, “amazing chest ahead” (male), “amazing chest ahead” (female), “amazing chest ahead” (mimic), weirdly sexualized moaning (male only), repeatedly falling down inside a giant hollow tree to your death, Moss Lady, a magic medieval snakeskin-covered gramophone, hidden areas hidden behind other hidden areas hidden behind illusory walls, combat skirts (unisex), giant snakes with horse teeth, pretending to be an egg, quite a lot of jank, a very angry elderly cat who scolds you in bad faux-Shakespearian and is also a faction leader, the secret lake underneath the bottom of the world, “jolly co-operation,” chibi mindflayers, clams full of skulls, a trident that lets you do a silly little dance, ridiculous ragdoll corpse physics, a really cool double helix staircase probably based on the Château de Chambord, ball/crab things that turn up unexpectedly in your game and try to magic missile you because somebody in another game lost some stuff, getting punched to death by mushrooms, and Gender.
This is such a weird game (complimentary).
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Nine books new to me: 3 horror, 4 mystery, 1 non-fiction, and 1 science fiction, although I am not sure about the proper categorization of some of those books. Only one is explicitly part of a series.
Books Received, February 7 to February 13
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41 Which of these look interesting?
View AnswersDive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong (October 2026)
14 (34.1%) Tyrant Lizard Queen: The Love, Life, and Terror of Earth’s Greatest Carnivore by Riley Black (October 2026)
18 (43.9%) Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe (October 2026)
7 (17.1%) Null Entity by Seth Haddon (July 2026)
5 (12.2%) Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm (September 2026)
10 (24.4%) Savvy Summers and the Po’boy Perils by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (July 2026)
8 (19.5%) Revenge of the Final Girl by Andrea Mosqueda (October 2026)
10 (24.4%) Lucy Kline, Necromancer by Tom O’Donnell (September 2026)
6 (14.6%) They Say a Girl Died Here by Sarah Pinborough (August 2026)
7 (17.1%) Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.4%) Cats!
32 (78.0%)
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Lila Macapagal's quest to keep her aunt's ailing restaurant afloat is greatly complicated when a pesky foodblogger dies mid-meal... with Lila as the most likely murder suspect.
Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery) by Mia P. Manansala
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A sample issue of New Edge Sword & Sorcery, whose 2026 funding drive goes live today.
New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 3, edited by Oliver Brackenbury
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My poem "The Principle of the Thing" has been accepted by Weird Fiction Quarterly. It is the ghost poem I wrote last spring for Werner Heisenberg: 2025 finally called it out. 2026 hasn't yet rendered it démodé.
Branching off The Perceptual Form of the City (1954–59), I am still tracking down the publications of György Kepes whose debt to Gestalt psychology my mother pegged instantly from his interdisciplinary interests in perception, but my local library system furnished me with Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) and What Time Is This Place? (1972) and even more than urban planning, they make me think of psychogeography. An entire chapter in the latter is entitled "Boston Time" and illustrates itself with layers of photographs of a walk down Washington Street in the present of the book's composition and its past, singling out not only buildings and former buildings but weathered milestones and ghost signs, commemorative plaques and graffiti, dates established, construction stamps, spray paint, initials in concrete. "The trees are seasonal clocks, very precise in spring and fall." "The street name refers to the edge of the ancient peninsula. (If you look closely at the ground, you can trace the outline of the former shore.)" "The railroad, which in its day was cut ruthlessly through the close-packed docks and sailing ships, is now buried in its turn." Five and a half decades behind me, the book itself is a slice of history, a snapshot in the middle of the urban renewal that Lynch evocatively and not inaccurately describes as "steamrolling." I recognize the image of the city formed by the eponymously accumulated interviews in the older book and it is a city of Theseus. Scollay Square disappeared between the two publications. Lynch's Charles River Dam isn't mine. Blankly industrial spaces on his map have gentrified in over my lifetime. Don't even ask about wayfinding by the landmarks of the skyline. I do think he would have liked the harborwalk, since it reinforces one of Boston's edges as sea. And whether I agree entirely or at all with his assertion:
If we examine the feelings that accompany daily life, we find that historic monuments occupy a small place. Our strongest emotions concern our own lives and the lives of our family or friends because we have known them personally. The crucial reminders of the past are therefore those connected with our own childhood, or with our parents' or perhaps our grandparents' lives. Remarkable things are directly associated with memorable events in those lives: births, deaths, marriages, partings, graduations. To live in the same surroundings that one recalls from earliest memories is a satisfaction denied to most Americans today. The continuity of kin lacks a corresponding continuity of place. We are interested in a street on which our father may have lived as a boy; it helps to explain him to us and strengthens our own sense of identity, But our grandfather or great-grandfather, whom we never knew, is already in the remote past; his house is "historical."
it is impossible for me not to read it and hear "Isn't the house you were born in the most interesting house in the world to you? Don't you want to know how your father lived, and his father? Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors." None of mine came from this city I walk.
The rest of my day has been a landfill on fire.Current Music: Clairo, "Bags"
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The revived May 2022 Neon City Overdrive Bundle featuring the fast-playing cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game Neon City Overdrive from Peril Planet.
Bundle of Holding: Neon City Overdrive (from 2022)
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