A few months (?) ago, Discord updated on my computer and promptly stopped working. [It would technically launch, but the program window was just a blank rectangle.) Subsequent updates (which happen pretty much every time I relaunch my browser) installed cheerfully enough and made no difference. I grumpily chalked it up to not having updated my OS in ages (I'm very resistant, but usually enough things eventually get creaky or stop working that I give in and get scruloose to update the system), and since Discord was still working on my phone, I figured that was that for the foreseeable future.
Then a couple of days ago, I let Discord install its newest update...and suddenly everything worked again. o_o I certainly wasn't going to complain, but it surprised me enough that I mentioned it to Kas on the weekend, and having just dealt with some Discord shenaniganry himself, he had an answer: Discord has decided it doesn't play nicely with some VPN locations, and I had happened to change my location setting to one it liked.
I mostly lurk on Discord, but there are a couple where I make tentative attempts at being social, and my dislike of typing more than a sentence or two at a time on my phone meant I was even quieter than usual for a while there, so this is a good development. But also, WTF, Discord. Did I forget to mention the new-to-me Christmas ice cream here? It looks like I did.
A local ice creamery (Dee Dee's) does Advent calendars, which I had largely forgotten about until I saw mention of it on Bluesky, at which point I was safe from ordering one (too late!), but it got me to look at their seasonal flavors. Next thing I knew, I was asking scruloose to stop at a local-groceries shop that carries their ice creams, because I had to know what the chicken bones* flavor was like.( more about that, plus a cheese stash )
Had not been seeing these lately, but over the past few days have been spotting several out of the back windows.
Which is one cheering thing among various niggles and peeves -
Yesterday I was informed that my order from Boots was being delivered, and then got two texts saying they had tried to deliver it but no-one answered. WOT. There was somebody here all the time.
Also a text that my other package (fresh yeast via eBay) had been delivered (this comes through the letterbox) - no sign of this so presume it has gone to the wrong door, and so far nobody has come round to pop it through ours.*
However, at least the Boots parcel turned up today: address label had street number blurred so reasons for mistaking, usual postperson recognised name, possibly yesterday was a seasonal worker?
Other annoyance: Kobo ereader running very sluggish - though this does not seem to apply across all books, which is weird?? Anyway, I connected to wifi in order to update the software, as possibly bearing on the matter, and dash it, it synced a whole load of things I had already downloaded and I have been obliged to clean up the duplicates.
I am, though, grateful that Christmas grocery orders have been nothing missing and no substitutions except for 1 thing which was not at all critical. Also oops, the pudding I ordered was rather smaller than I anticipated, but I feel one can have too much Xmas pud, and there are mince pies, brandy butter, etc.
We have a tradition on Athena’s birthday that we would wake her up with a cake and candles, going back to the days when she had no idea when her birthday was, so it would be a total surprise to her. This year there was a complication to that tradition: she has her own house now. That said, the house is only about a mile from ours, and it was hinted that early morning cake would not be looked amiss, so, yet again the tradition was upheld. I can’t say how long this will go on, but we’ll enjoy it while it does.
Also a tradition: Me saying here how great I think my kid is, and how of all the kids I could have been a parent of, she’s the best of all possible kids for me. This continues to be true! I know she has a lot of cool stuff planned for 2026 and I’m glad to get to be part of some of them. In the meantime: She’s great and I love her. If you want to wish her a happy birthday in the comments, that would be swell.
High-level stats for week of 2025-12-09 - 2025-12-15
Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 9906 (-145 from last week)
Works I classified F/F: 5442 (-128 from last week) (2335 new, 3107 continued)
0.56% of all 968749 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week
A few callouts this week:
Web series The Amazing Digital Circus returns to the chart after a couple of months away, replacing Honkai: Star Rail.
Hazbin Hotel celebrates 100 consecutive weeks on the chart. Owl House reaches 280 consecutive weeks.
I'm tracking a lot of exchanges that reveal on Christmas, and I'll try to flag any that have a reasonable number of F/F works in my post next week. If there are any exchanges you particularly recommend, let me know about them and I'll make sure to mention them!
My second ficinabox story! This one is Grimm, because how could I resist when someone (*cough* miss_ingno *cough*) requests my tiny OT3? :D
The prompt was, "canon divergence where Juliette copes better with her transformation into a Hexenbiest" - and when I thought about where to branch off and rewatched some episodes, I realised I could start right at the beginning, with her very first woge. Derail it all before it gains any ground! No secrecy to come between Nick and Juliette, no losing control, no shocking reveal in the aftermath of violence ... and if Nick was there for her first woge, she'd see his Grimm eyes, too!
Of course Nick still has issues, and Juliette is still struggling - but that's where Renard comes in, because when the two of them turn to him together, magic happens. *g*
(And so much happens in that one night that I managed to derail some other plot as well, just from having Juliette woge in front of everyone! I had so much fun with that. :D)
**
Farewell to the Monsters (10,183 words) Fandom:Grimm (TV) Rating: Mature Relationship: Nick Burkhardt/Sean Renard/Juliette Silverton Characters: Juliette Silverton, Nick Burkhardt, Sean Renard, Rosalee Calvert, Monroe, Hank Griffin Content Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Related, s04e08 Chupacabra, Hexenbiest reveal, Hexenbiest Psychology, Hexenbiest Sexuality, UST, Developing Relationship
Summary:
Juliette almost wished Nick didn't know what was happening to her. She could quietly deal with it on her own, get rid of it, go back to normal before anyone found out.
That would have been so much easier. Instead, she'd woged in front of everyone. And there was no turning back.
It's probably because I'm not used to this kind of fandom space, and also because I've mostly never really cared about top/bottom ship dynamics, but I saw some people with "❌🔄" in their bio and thought that meant I wasn't not allowed to retweet their stuff.
I'm an impulsive retweeter, like my hands are quicker than my brain kinda deal, and I get real panicked when I retweet something from someone who has "❌🔄" in their bio.
Apparently, it actually means they won't do reverse pairings! So my panicking was unwarranted!
Did a lil doodle earlier, hehe. In my mind, I was like, "I need to draw the Todobakudeku I want to see in this world."
Alternate version w/ dialogue + 100px icons that I might use later on once I get more icon slots...
🍰: え？撮影？動画だと思った… (huh? a picture? i thought it was a video...) 🥦: あれ？何だよ、これ… (eh? what's this...?) 💥: お前ら暇すぎじゃん！？ (you guys have too much free time, huh?!
Art commentary
It was supposed to be a simple doodle but it took me longer than it should have because I truly have no workflow and did not plan for the composition properly (as I usually do)... I kept on messing the coloring up, too.
I was pretty happy with how it came out, though! I don't draw chibi very often, AND I find it very hard to draw male characters with short hair because of how precise it has to be compared to long hair. Yay for creating things that make us happy <3
I'm thinking of uploading my stuff onto Pixiv. I also considered backing up my old art from dA onto Pixiv, but I'd have to painstakingly upload them in order since there's no backdate option haha.
The FDA nutritional panel is a marvel of visual design. Turn a food package over and the panel will pop out at you, you can hardly miss it. And while it doesn't tell you all the vitamins or minerals you might want, it does do saturated fat, fiber, and added sugar.
Fandom: Game Changers series (Heated Rivalry) Characters/Pairings: Hayden Pike & Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike/Jackie Pike, Montreal team ensemble Rating: Mature Length: 5450 Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply Creator Links:gurlsrool on AO3 Themes: Friendship, Five things, Humor, Outsider pov, Established relationship, Canon LGBTQ+ characters
Summary: “I don’t hate him!” Hayden says, which is only true because hate doesn’t quite capture it. No, he despises Rozanov. In his defense, everyone with a pulse and without the last name Hollander does.
Or: 5 times Hayden doesn’t get Shane and Ilya’s relationship, +1 time he does.
Reccer's Notes: This is set just after the end of the Heated Rivalry book so I guess mild spoilers for ep 6 follow (it's really not very spoilery). In the fic, Shane and Ilya have acknowledged their feelings and are exclusive, and Shane's told Hayden, his best friend on the Montreal team. The story focuses on Hayden's incredulity and his conviction that Ilya Rozanov is a giant dick (which Ilya delightedly feeds into). The more Hayden learns about Shane's relationship with Ilya, the more horrified he gets (the bottoming, their mild D/s dynamic). Then, in the sixth part, he sees another side of Ilya entirely. The story's very well written and extremely funny, with brilliant characterization of Hayden, Ilya, and Shane. A ton of fun!
I was watching/reading a bunch of CoC IV-related content in the lead-up, and I’m going to post about it before posting about the episode itself, though I’ve obviously watched it as soon as that was an option. ( Askmaster and interviews )
Which reminded me that I should revisit my quantitative ranking of the series, because I’d fallen a couple behind, and some of the more recent ones were worth re-scoring.
Tasmkaster CoC 4 – So, I did end up going and spoiling myself for the winner and the scores before sitting down to watch, which was the correct decision. ( SPOILERS )
I’m just really sad we don’t get more than one episode with this group. This was a really good line-up (even if one of them is someone whose comedy I don’t enjoy that much).
*
There’s some kind of weird thing with me and the Penric books, where I’ll read a bunch in a row, then not read any of the new ones coming out for a couple of years, until I have a bunch in a row to read again, repeat. So, like, the last time I read Penric, it was to read 6 in quick succession in late 2022, and meanwhile she’s released 4 more, that I’m finally getting around to reading. (I think it’s that the novella length is not quite long enough to be worth re-immersing myself in the world and the growing cast for just one of them.)
7. Lois McMaster Bujold, Demon Daughter (Pen & Des #12) – I was intrigued by the premise of this one, and enjoyed it, even though it was very, very domestic – much more so than I expected from the dramatic cover. ( More, with spoilers )
8. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (Pen & Des #14) – I skipped Penric and the Bandit semi-accidentally – by which I mean that I finished Demon Daughter on the plane to Oregon, went to see what else was openable on my Kindle, and it was the ox one, so I figured it had to be the next one. Then when I realized it was not, because there was a significant time-skip and it referenced an incident with bandits, I figured I’d just keep reading. (And later it turned out I did have ‘Bandit’ on my Kindle, I just couldn’t call it up for some reason, in offline mode.)
This was a weird one… I found the first half of it slow and fairly boring, and found myself skimming, which I pretty much never do with LMB’s books. ( But then it picked up some (spoilers) )
I’m presently catching up on reading Penric and the Bandit, so we’ll see if I make it through all of the currently-out Penrics (that one + one more) before I run out of reading steam…
Challenge 200 The new theme is... Icon Pass It On 6: ✨ Holidays Edition ✨ For this challenge we can play next picture icon "pass-it-on". Make an icon using the previous person's screen capture or picture, and post your icon and then provide a new image of your own. Holidays edition, means this round there will be no voting on the icons. But, as always, anyone may leave people comments & compliments on their icons. At the end of the challenge, I'll make a show case/icon collection post. If are not familiar with next picture pass-it-on, see how it works the other times we played it, tagged here.
So, a story. More than a decade ago, I was having lunch with Tom Hanks, because he read my work and was a fan, and since I was in town on tour, he asked if he could meet me and I said, sure (actually, what was said, to me from my manager as I was getting off a plane at LAX, was, “You’re going to the Chateau Marmont. You’re having lunch with Tom Hanks. Don’t fuck this up”).
Tom Hanks was lovely, the lunch was lovely, and when it was done, as he was waiting for the valet to retrieve his car, some absolutely random dude came up, pulled out a binder, and started pitching a movie idea to Tom Hanks. And Tom Hanks, because he is Tom Hanks, for all the values of being Tom Hanks that there are in this world, stood there being lovely and polite and endured this random person posting up in his space and trying to make him take a meeting.
I relate this anecdote not to impress you that I once had lunch with a famous person, but to make the point that famous people really are not like you and me, and more often than not, that’s because the world will not let them be people like you and me. People like you and me don’t get pitched business proposals waiting for our car. People like you and me are allowed not to be “on” when we step outside our door and into the world. People like you and me can go shopping at any random Safeway we want and not cause a scene simply by existing. People like you and me get to be people, and not celebrities all the time. Yes, celebrities get fame, and sometimes fortune, and occasionally nifty free goodie bags at award shows worth more than most households in the US make in a year. But it does come at a cost, which is, the ability to just be your own fucking self, at the times and places of your own choosing, and not have anyone who might recognize you wield veto power over that.
Notting Hill, in addition to being just a lovely little romantic comedy about two people from entirely mismatched stations in life, trying to negotiate a space in the world they might get to call their own, is one of the best films out there showing at least a little bit of what it’s like to be famous to everyone, everywhere, all the time, forever and ever, amen. The person in the film cursed with such a blessing is Anna Scott (Julia Roberts, who was in fact the most famous actress in the world at the time, so, typecasting), who has the sort of worldwide fame that means that every single thing she says, any thing she does, who she might date or who she might have a feud with, equals miles and miles of newsprint across six separate continents, and probably at least an email or two in Antarctica.
One day, while in London doing publicity for her latest film, she wanders into a Notting Hill travel bookshop owned by one William Thacker, who is meant to be a self-effacing everyman but who is played by Hugh Grant, also at the height of his fame at the time, so at least the self-effacing part is there. William tries to be helpful to Anna as she browses, and she is having none of it, because she knows he knows who she is and thus her shields are up. Then later in the street there is an incident with an orange drink, William offers his flat, directly across the street, as a place for Anna to clean up, and the first spark is lit.
To say that there are going to be complications because Anna is famous on a level that is nearly beyond comprehension is not a spoiler; likewise that there will be complications because William underestimates, more than once, what a burden being that level of famous can be and how it can warp and distort friendships and relationships, even as the people involved try to compensate for them. Any relationship is hard, but being with a celebrity is like being in a throuple where the third partner is fame. And fame, well, it’s a fickle, fickle beast.
Nevertheless, it’s a delight to see everyone in the film give it a go. The film is scene after scene of either William trying to comprehend all of the everything that comes with the girl he likes being The Most Famous Person In The World, or Anna trying to be a normal person and not quite being able to do it because no matter what she does, her celebrity hangs all about her. This leads to delightful scenes like William trying to meet up with Anna at her request and unwittingly being dragooned into a press junket (a scene which I, as a former film writer who had been to dozens of such junkets, found deeply hilarious), or, one of my favorites, William taking Anna to his sister’s birthday party without telling a single one of his friends who the “new girl” he’s dating is, and watching them deal with it, with varying shades of success.
The dinner party scene is actually the heart of the film because it does so many things at once: It establishes Anna’s level of fame while at the same time giving her a little bit of time to escape it and be off the clock. It gives context to William by showing his friends and relations, and lets them all have the easy back and forth that comes from a lifetime of knowing each other. It also shows Anna watching it all, and, while not envying it, still noticing it and being able to compare it to her relatively lonely life.
And it shows that everyone in this scene is kind, and that others are noticing this kindness. This is the scene where we stop enjoying the utter mismatch of William and Anna, and start hoping the mismatch doesn’t keep them apart. Lord knows the film gives the two of them plenty of opportunities to mess things up, and they manage to do just that at least a couple of times.
Roger Michell directed Notting Hill, but it takes nothing from him and his skill as a director here to note this film is primarily a Richard Curtis film. Curtis is probably the most successful writer of British film comedy in the last 40 years, and most of these comedies have some sort of romantic bent. In addition to this film he wrote Four Weddings and Funeral (the film which made Hugh Grant a star, and which got Curtis his sole Oscar nomination), Love Actually, which he also directed, and two of the three Bridget Jones films. (He also wrote the Blackadder television series, beloved by Brits and US nerds, and also The Tall Guy, which is where I first encountered him, the vaccination scene of which I ripped off wholesale for my novel The Kaiju Preservation Society. I will send you a check, Mr. Curtis).
Of all of these films, I think Notting Hill shows Curtis at the height of his screenwriting powers. It’s extremely funny, which is great (especially when Rhys Ifans, as William’s daft roommate, is anywhere onscreen), but it’s also empathetic. It’s hard to do a really good job of making an audience feel sympathy for someone who is so famous that by all rights all that we should feel about her is envy, but Curtis does it. It helps that by this time he had been around famous people enough to understand that celebrity is cage. Gilded, yes, and with staff who will get you everything you want and need, but still a cage. He writes a good cage.
It also helps that this role could be thinly-veiled autobiography for Julia Roberts, who at the height of her celebrity was a media presence on par with Taylor Swift, for all the good and bad that comes with that level of fame, achievement and scrutiny. In 1999, there was literally no one else who could have understood Anna Scott better than Roberts. I have to think there are some parts of this movie that had to be cathartic for her, like the scene where, after a media scandal erupts and William is caught up in it, he suggests it will all just blow over in days. Anna knows better, and so does Julia Roberts, and I think it’s pretty clear both are making the rebuttal to William’s misinformed take.
The gilded cage of celebrity life in 2025 is, if anything, more solid than it was when this film came out. Miles of newsprint have been replaced with hours of celebscrolling on Instagram and Tik Tok, where famous people have to actively manage their online personas, or cede the management of it to a mob of influencers and bored social media mavens who are not their friends, no matter how close they imagine their parasocial relationships are. More people have wide fame (there are YouTube and Tik Tok celebrities who I’ve never heard of, but millions of Gen Z and Gen Alpha people have), but it’s harder than ever to make the money that used to be associated with fame. So all a lot of these newly-famous get is a grind to stay top of mind, and a lack of privacy, and, eventually, a very profound burnout.
It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me. At least Notting Hill suggests that sometimes, if you’re lucky, and with the right people, you might get to slip out of that gilded cage, and, if only for a moment, be your own person again. Fame is nice. Love and community is nicer. May everyone, even the famous, get to have it.
Don't forget if you are having trouble filling some of the squares you are allowed two substitutions and two wild cards, substitutions are substituting one category for another, I'll post a substitution list below, wild cards can be any book you want, including fanfiction, the fanfiction should be over 50,000 words and fanfiction can only be used once for a wild card square. Substitution list: *Over 300 Pages *Book in Series *LGBTQ+ *Recommended *POC Author *Multiple POVs *Classic/Retelling *Sci-fi/Fantasy *Free Space *Anthology/Collection *Biography/Memoir *Friendship *Name in the Title *Movie/TV Tie-in *With a Woman Protagonist *From the Library *Thriller/Suspense *Set Somewhere You've Been *Non-Human POV *Fairy Tale or Fairy Tale Retelling *Under 100 Pages *Romance Plot or Sub-plot *Translated *With a Blue Cover *Horror or Paranormal *Colour in the Title *Seasonal Read *Number in title *Three word title *Craft, Hobby or Cookbook *Written by an author from your state or country *Animal on the cover *Disability or Mental health *Read a book from the year you were born *Mythology *Title begins with first letter of your name *Dystopian *Book mentioned in another book *Diverse reads *One word title *Award Winning/Bestseller *Disabled Author *Non-western Setting *Set in your state/country *Title is at Least Five Words Long *Indigenous author *Has illustrations (but not a comic or graphic novel) *Re-read
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