Reading

Current Mood: happy

Entry tags:

fandom,
writing

Fandom when I love it best

I'm having a really happy fandom time at the moment. It's the whole virtuous cycle of being in sync with a couple of fellow ~~gremlins~~ fans who are into the same thing I am, in similar ways, where we cheer for canon, we cheer for our shared interpretation, and we cheer and enable each other.

That means at the moment, when I'm writing, I often have one reader's specific reactions in mind and it is glorious. I don't really need more, or it helps me not count on it at least. I have a good chance of connecting with a fellow fan, brain-to-brain, heart-to-heart and that is JOYFUL!

So I wrote last night's drabble like that, which was also fun because I want to write more shorter things, too. More yeeting into the void. Sometimes being so slow gnaws a bit at my confidence, when it takes SO! DAMN! LONG! to finish anything haha, and then it's hard not to build up expectations.

Having said that I returned to editing my long poly Kaijuu No. 8 fic this morning, which I'm having such a grand time with :D I knew the first half didn't work well and wasn't sure how to fix it originally, thought I might have to go the whole enchilida and reverse-outline it. Anchoring ~~healed me~~ fixed it, though! :D And yesterday I reached the turning point scene in the middle, which STILL makes me laugh out loud after *checks spreadsheet* 3 months since I wrote it, and I'm still cackling. This is the scene from which I found my feet so I've been cooing and giggling and awww-ing in my editing this morning XD

Incidentally, I think this is one of my failures with the cursed witch, and many of my original projects. I tend to go in serious mode, when I believe that integrating humour in stories is a strength of mine. There's a couple of lighthearted and funny moments in the witch story, but I didn't leave a lot of space for that.

But also my main enabling friend went 👀👀👀 at me about the kn8 turning point scene yesterday so I got to share it early, and they laughed too, and I'm happy. I can write stories and have fun doing it, I can fix most/many problems in my writing once I noticed them, I can share with at least one or two people who appreciate whatever it is I'm trying to do, at least some of the time.

Wishing you all an amazing week!!!!!!!!!

Entry tags:

my writing: fics: wind breaker

New Wind Breaker fic: Don't pass out (Sakura/Endou)

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Entry tags:

type: review

Book review: Martyr!

Title: Martyr!
Author: Kaveh Akbar
Genre: Fiction, literary

It took over a month for my hold on this book to come up, but Friday night I finished Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. If you look into online book recommendations like on New York Times or NPR, you've probably seen this title come up. This book is about a young poet who sobers up after years of severe addiction and is now looking for meaning and purpose.

Martyr! is a beautiful book about the very human search for meaning in our lives, but it also is not afraid to shy away from the ugliness of that search. It juxtaposes eloquently-worded paragraphs of generational grief with Cyrus waking up having pissed the bed because he went to sleep so drunk the night before. Neither of these things cancels the other out.

Everyone in Martyr! is flawed, often deeply, but they're all also very real, and they're trying their best; they aren't trying to hurt anyone, but they cause hurt anyway, and then they and those around them just have to deal with that. Martyr! weighs the search for personal meaning against the duty owed to others and doesn't come up with a clean answer. What responsibility did Orkideh have to her family as opposed to herself? What responsibility did Ali have to Cyrus as opposed to himself? What responsibility does Cyrus have to Zee, as opposed to his search for a meaningful death?

Cyrus' story is mainly the post-sobriety story: He's doing what he's supposed to, he's not drinking or doing drugs, he's going to his AA meetings, he's working (after a fashion)...and what's the reward? He still can't sleep at night and he feels directionless and alone and now he doesn't even have the ecstasy of a good high to look forward to. This is the "so what now?" part of the sobriety journey.

It's also in many ways a family story. Cyrus lost his mother when he was young and his father shortly after he left for college, and he spends the book trying to reckon with these things and with the people his parents were. Roya is the mother Cyrus never knew, whose shape he could only vaguely sketch out from his father's grief and his unstable uncle's recollections. Ali is the father who supported Cyrus in all practical ways, and sacrificed mightily to do it, but did not really have the emotional bandwidth to be there for his son. And there are parallels between Cyrus and Roya arising later in the book that tugged quite hard on my heartstrings, but I won't spoil anything here.

Cyrus wants to find meaning, but seems only able to grasp it in the idea of a meaningful death--hence his obsession with martyrs. The idea of a life with meaning seems beyond him. He struggles throughout the book with this and with the people trying to suggest that dying is not the only way to have lived.

I really enjoyed this book and I think it deserves the praise it's gotten. I've tried to sum up here what the book is "about," but it's a story driven by emotion more than plot. It's Cyrus' journey and his steps and stumbles along the way, and I think Akbar did a wonderful job with it.

Current Mood: it's not easy being silly

(no subject)

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that people enthusing about The Pitt (medical drama?) were not actually talking about Pit Babe (omegaverse race car drivers?) despite my brain apparently hastily storing both in the same mental bucket.

I haven't seen either (yet) (probably) (I'm not watching much TV beyond anime these ~~days~~ years), but very happy to see everyone having fun :D

~~Can a crossover be contemplated? XD~~

Entry tags:

Short ghost/horror stories

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Current Mood: happy

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Get Your Words Out 2026: Pledging open

GetYourWordsOut: Year Eighteen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net

Get Your Words Out pledging is open for 2026! I am well on track to not meet my pledge again this year (lol), but I'm planning to sign up with the same pledge again, and as a volunteer again too! The GYWO challenge style works well for me (even if I haven't managed to meet my goal even once yet) and I love the advice, essays, and support from the community. There are lots of challenges and prompts, etc, shared throughout the year too for those who enjoy!

Probably see a few of you there, again or for the first time :D

If you're curious but unsure, feel free to ask. Happy to answer to the best of my knowledge (and enthusiasm XD)

Entry tags:

movies: 2021-2025

White Christmas

Continuing my Christmas quest with a rewatch of White Christmas! This is one of my all-time favorite movies. I wrote Yuletide fic for it (Bob/Phil ofc), I’ve seen it on the big screen with the whole theater singing along at the end, seen it in general more times than I can count. (Despite this, I still have to check Wikipedia for the character names. I know who the characters are and how they pair off! I just can’t remember which name goes with which!)

So yesterday when I was taking a sick day, I figured another rewatch could only be good for my health, and of course I was right. Just such a fun movie. I love the song and dance numbers, and pine for the day when Hollywood would just straight-up stop a movie for a musical interlude. Why must everything “advance the plot” or “further character arcs”? Is it not enough sometimes just to watch Vera-Ellen taptaptaptaptap her toe real fast?

Also pour one out for Mary Wickes, who steals the show as General Waverly’s housekeeper Emma. I think my favorite single bit in the movie is the part where Emma overhears (because of course she’s listening in on the extension) that Bob and Phil are bringing their show to the empty ski lodge to rehearse (thus bringing in some much-needed income). She tells Phil and Bob that that’s just the nicest thing she ever heard and then kisses them both, and Bob is like “wowza” and is just about to go in for more when Phil drags him off.

I still love Bob and Phil’s chemistry, and I do kind of ship it but in a way where it also doesn’t bother me that the movie’s whole plot revolves around getting them together with girls. Phil and Judy have fantastic chemistry too, although possibly more shenanigans chemistry than romantic chemistry. (They might be able to work as a marriage, though.)

I don’t love Bob and Betty as a couple, mostly because their big misunderstanding is so movie-contrived. This really is a case where Betty could just say what’s bothering her and Bob could explain and they could sort it all out without Betty running off in a huff to the Carousel Club in New York! Since this is a big part of the story you’d think it would sink the movie, but everything else works so well for me that when we get to this bit I always sigh “ho hum” and wait patiently for the big “White Christmas” finale. Simply a perfect ending tableau.

Entry tags:

Recent reading

A Murder of Quality by John le Carré (1962). The second Smiley novel is a murder mystery rather than a spy story—the spy thing is only directly relevant because Smiley is dragged into the murder mystery by a former spy colleague—and I like murder mysteries better than spy novels on the whole, so I liked this. It's set at a public school and is very interesting as a portrayal of that setting in the post-war period, though it's not at all a school story, the major characters being mostly teachers and their wives. It's also very much About Class: the murder victim is the wife of a teacher from an unusually lowly background, and much of the dramatic backstory revealed as the murder is investigated involves the tension around the husband having done his best to forget his origins and integrate into the public-schoolmaster class while the wife did not (religion is part of this: they were both originally Nonconformists, but he converted to the CoE while she continued to attend the local chapel until her death). I was annoyed by how everyone, including characters from the Midlands, kept referring to the Midlands as the North, and disappointed by the lack of Mendel (does he reappear in any later books?), and also what's with saying at the start that the action takes place 'as the Lent Half (as the Easter term was called) drew to its close' and then it later becomes clear from various seasonal references that it's actually not only (the equivalent of) Lent term but fairly early on in Lent term, what term/half system is this place using?, but otherwise enjoyed this one very much as a well-constructed twisty mystery with interesting setting and themes.

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless by Eliza Haywood (1751). A solid eighteenth-century brick following the adventures in London society and courtship of the young protagonist, who is kind, generous, good-hearted and not at all vicious but who is nevertheless rather—you'll never guess what Betsy's central character flaw is. (There is a lot of extremely unsubtle character naming in this book.) It's one of those books that I found interesting rather than liking exactly. Much of it is an illustration of a contemporary sexual morality which can accurately be described as victim-blaming and double standards and not much else; the early part of the book seems to shy away from portraying controversial subjects (one character attempts abortion but fails; another sets in motion legal proceedings to divorce his wife, but dies before the divorce can be completed), and later on there's a sequence which is kind of a shockingly bold repudiation of conventional morality and also kind of really isn't, which was a bit frustrating. Betsy is really a very likeable character, though, and there's a lot of enjoyable overwrought drama and fun eighteenth-century language. (Haywood consistently spells the possessive 'its' with an apostrophe, among other things.)

The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys by Forrest Reid (1906). A strange, dreamy, virtually-textually queer book that isn't a school story at all despite being about the relationship between two boys at school and very little else. (We see almost nothing of other boys, teachers, lessons, painstakingly-detailed cricket matches or school affairs in general; the one time the book acknowledges the wider world it's to comment 'democracy, how ghastly' and then move straight on.) The writing style is strikingly modern. I enjoyed it, although neither the style nor the relationship development is the sort of thing I really get attached to. Also, a gay relationship beginning with one character confessing to the other that they've already met them in a dream as a child is a weird thing for a book like this to have in common with Carmilla.

Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest (1984). I had to know what this lesbian detective genre was all about, but this book—in which lesbian police detective Kate Delafield solves the mystery of who murdered the world's worst boss in a big corporate office building, and also isn't the main witness in the case cute?—was a bit of a disappointment. I don't get on with Forrest's writing, I think; then police procedurals are not the kind of detective story I like, and the characters and relationships in this one were not appealing to me. (I can't say I was contrary enough to like Ellen's horrible girlfriend, who does treat her pretty badly, but I was annoyed on her behalf because Forrest was so clearly writing her as a cardboard villain and Ellen just blithely cheats on her and still hasn't come clean and/or broken up with her by the end of the book. That's not a happy ending!)

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

followfriday

Follow Friday 12-12-25

Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

Current Mood: exhausted

Entry tags:

dreamwidth: community thursdays

Community Thursday

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Posted & commented on bnha_fans.

Commented on little_details.

Commented on endings.

Commented on goals_on_dw.

Signal boosts:

moodthemeinayear is chugging along, and now has free points to offer for folks who complete part of a mood theme for Dreamwidth :D Even more motivation to learn!! Haha. See this post for more information.
Via dray, a new comm focusing on original characters is starting over at ocrealm, if you have characters you'd like to chat about!
Via shipperslist, there's a new comm to enthuse about any kind of audio-based narrative entertainment, see voiceinmyear!

Resignation of OTW Directors, December 2025

Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/resignation-of-otw-directors-december-2025/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=273724

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board of Directors is saddened to announce that Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm have resigned from their roles as Board Directors for personal reasons. Their resignations are effective as of December 11, 2025.

Erica was elected to her seat in 2024, and her term was set to end in 2027; her seat will be filled in the upcoming election as a one-year term. Kathryn was elected to her seat in 2023, and was already scheduled to be replaced in the upcoming election. In the meantime, both of their seats will remain vacant.

We would like to thank Erica and Kathryn for their service as members of the Board and for their years as OTW volunteers. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/resignation-of-otw-directors-december-2025/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=273724

Get That AI Outta Here!

1) In another sign of AI run amok, I do the AARP Trivia quiz each day. I swear they have delegated its creation to AI. There have often been errors in the past, usually spelling ones, though sometimes also offering the same answer twice (out of 4 choices) -- which if it happens to be the right answer means you have a 50/50 chance of being wrong even when you're right.

Last weekend there were two. An "explainer" or "further info" box usually pops up after you finish a question. One of them just said "nar."But my favorite was the question "What is the name of dish where beef is cooked in wine." The answer? Coq au Vin. To boot the explainer mentioned that though the name meant rooster it was often made with chicken. Which is, as we know, beef. ( Read more... )

2) This is the first I've heard that Friday Night Lights is getting a sequel, or maybe a reboot depending on how you look at it.

3) Back in October my Garmin tracker just stopped working as I was biking. It didn't do anything the rest of the day and I figured its (unchargeable) battery was dying, since it was guaranteed for a year and it was almost exactly that. Since Garmin seems to be moving away from selling trackers, I decided to try a Fitbit as my partner was satisfied with his. However the next day, the Garmin was working again, so I hadn't opened or set up the Fitbit yet.

Cut to last weekend when it went out again while I was exercising. The Garmin came back after an hour but I'm suspecting that the battery is dying and so it's particularly stressed during continuous activity. It's probably been cutting out for some time, as I've noticed odd differences in step reports during days that are functionally the same.

Skipping over all the things I already don't like about the Fitbit, I decided to start using it alongside the Garmin. The first morning, before I even started exercising, there was already a 200 step difference between what the Fitbit showed and what the Garmin reported. ( Read more... )

3) Saw the last Mission Impossible movie and have to say I was pretty unimpressed. Of course, they were never my favorites to start with. I thought I'd done a review of an earlier film but if so, I can't find it. So this will have to do. ( Read more... )

4) As if people who need groceries delivered (likely those with disabilities or lack of transport) weren't already paying more, now there's dynamic food pricing in action. "hundreds of volunteers shopped on Instacart for identical baskets of goods from Safeway and Target. Of the 437 participants, every single one was exposed to algorithmic price experiments, according to the report. The investigation also found evidence of price experimentation at Albertsons, Costco, Kroger and Sprouts Farmers Market." " All told, the price variations could cost families $1,200 a year, based on how much Instacart says the typical household of four spends on groceries."

"Customers were also shown different "original" prices, making some savings appear larger, the report found, a concept known as "fictitious pricing." Amazon was sued this October for allegedly using this tactic during its summer Prime Day sale."

Also a shout out to Consumer Reports for being one of the few sources that can be counted on in this time of media greed, kowtowing, and chasing squirrels.

5) While I've noticed my grocery has these errors all the time, perhaps they're just a new business practice. The attorney general's office said its investigation revealed that during 2019 and 2023, Dollar General failed more than 40 percent of pricing accuracy inspections.

"The settlement also requires Dollar General to modify its business practices to prevent future violations of Pennsylvania's consumer protection law, the attorney general's office said. The changes include training employees, maintaining enough staffing to update shelf tags weekly and posting notices at registers saying the lowest posted price will be honored." "We are hopeful the corporation takes this settlement very seriously as Pennsylvanians expect to pay the price that is on stickers and labels.""

Poll #33941 Kudos Footer-553

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type: meme

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

It's Wednesday in some localised linear timelines (more or less). What are you reading?

Entry tags:

Wednesday Reading Meme

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, which is actually a reread, which I realized fairly early on when the foppish country house owner explains that he’s staffed the place with murderers who have served their time. Just oncers, no more dangerous than the average man on the street, and anyway how else is he supposed to staff a country house given the servant problem in 1970s Britain? But I kept going, because Ngaio Marsh is always a good time, and also this book prominently features Troy who just happens to be at the country house to paint said foppish owner when the murder occurs… A Troy book is always especially a good time.

Maud Hart Lovelace’s The Trees Kneel at Christmas is set in Park Slope, where one of my friends lives, so every few pages I was shrieking “I know that place! I’ve crossed that street!” So naturally I loved the book, haha. Our heroine Afifi hears a story from her grandmother about how the trees kneel at Christmas back home in Lebanon, and becomes determined to walk to Prospect Park at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if the trees kneel in America, too.

I checked out Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1953 American Folksongs for Christmas purely because it was illustrated by Barbara Cooney, but found it unexpectedly fascinating. Seeger (stepmother of Pete Seeger) was, among other things, a collector of folk music, and this book is full of songs I’ve never even heard of, from the tradition of all-night Christmas Eve church singalongs, often in the South, where people would gather and sing till dawn.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started Tasha Tudor’s Take Joy, which is a compilation of Christmas stories/poems/carols etc illustrated by Tudor. The second story is Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the world’s saddest pine tree. In the woods, the pine is too entirely focused on growing bigger (big enough to be a Christmas tree!) to ever feel happy. Then it’s cut down to be a Christmas tree, and it’s taken to a house and covered with ornaments and candles, and it’s all very strange and confusing, but the pine tree thinks that it will be able to enjoy these celebrations once it gets used to them… except of course its life as a Christmas tree lasts for just one night, and then it’s tossed in the attic and dried out for firewood.

What I Plan to Read Next

As I feared, I’m already running low on Christmas chapter books. However, Christie has a Poirot Christmas book and a Miss Marple that’s set at Christmas (although not perhaps a Christmas Book), and I have been meaning to to a Miss Marple, so…

If you have any other classic mystery Christmas recs, let me know!

Entry tags:

movies: 2021-2025

The Man Who Invented Christmas

Naturally I’ve decided that this is the year to rewatch some best-beloved Christmas movies, so I kicked off the season with The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring Dan Stevens as a charming but moody Charles Dickens as he scrambles to write A Christmas Carol in time for the Christmas rush in order to save his tottering finances.

This is such a fun movie. I always love a period piece, and I love Dan Stevens, and I love movies about creating art of any kind (if it’s well done, which it isn’t always…), and this one has such a good balance of seriousness and humor.

On the serious side, we have the demons of Dickens’ childhood coming back to haunt him, especially in his difficult relationship with his father, to whom he is far too similar for comfort. He inherited his father’s charm, his taste for the high life, his gift for performance - and he’s afraid he’ll follow his father’s example by running his family into debtor’s prison with his extravagant spending. A new house! All remodeled! A crystal chandelier and a mantelpiece of Carrera marble!

Unlike his perpetually sunny father, Dickens also has darker moods, where the charm gives way to abrupt outbursts of rage. He stalks around his study in the middle of the night making a racket when composition isn’t going well, apparently unaware that he’s keeping the whole house up. He snaps at his wife, sends away a long-time friend, fires a servant girl - then in the morning demands to know why the servant girl is gone. “You have no idea,” Mrs. Dickens tells him, on the verge of tears but displaying all the self-control Charles lacks, “how hard it is to live with you.”

(I’m happy to report the servant girl shows up again, and is of course rehired. I sort of suspect that the housekeeper keeps these impetuously fired servants in an out of the way corner for a day or two just in case Dickens didn’t really mean it.)

But this is not a grim study of a historical figure’s dark side. There are so many wonderful funny bits, too. In his good moods, Dickens is incredibly charming and funny - you can see why all these people put up with his darker side, just because the lighter side is such a delight.

I love Trollope as the guy in the club who always comes over to commiserate (gloat) when someone receives a bad review. Those cruel reviewers, claiming that Martin Chuzzlewit was “dull, vapid, and vulgar” (which Trollope quotes from memory). “I didn’t think it was vulgar,” Trollope assures Dickens, who is looking for an exit, but fortunately Trollope sees someone else who just got a bad review and scuttles off to crow. I mean sympathize.

And I loved how the Christmas Carol characters start appearing to Dickens. As he gets deeper into composition of the book, they start following him around. There’s an especially funny bit where Dickens looks out a window - he’s trying to avoid the book because he’s struggling with the ending - and the characters are all standing in the street below. Mrs. Fezziwig waves a handkerchief at him.

Also, I covet Dickens’ book-lined study, with a little half-staircase up to a mezzanine level with more books. Why is the study built like that? Who can say? Possibly on purpose to be charming, and charming it absolutely is.

Entry tags:

Clues By Sam (2025)

Life is hectic, so let's do a quick one!

phone screenshot shows a 4x5 grid of people represented by emojis, labeled with names and professions, stating logic clues such as row 3 is the only row with exactly 3 innocents

phone screenshot shows a 4x5 grid of people represented by emojis, labeled with names and professions, stating logic clues such as row 3 is the only row with exactly 3 innocents

Clues By Sam is a logic game where you have to deduce who is a criminal and who is innocent in a grid of 20 people. Everyone tells the truth (i.e. criminals don't lie) and people's professions aren't hints (i.e. "sleuths" and "cops" can be innocents or criminals). Random guessing is not allowed; the game will only let you convict or exonerate someone if the clues you've uncovered give enough information to be certain.

I am not super great at this kind of formal logic puzzle, but I'm trying to get better, and I think this is a good one for people who are learning. The daily puzzles get harder throughout the week (Monday is the easiest) and if you're stuck you can get hints that highlight which clues you should focus on. There are options for better colorblind visibility but I'm not sure if the game is compatible with screenreaders or not.

The game is free to play in your browser, but there are also two puzzle packs you can buy. If you sign up for the dev's email newsletter, there are also some free extra puzzles in there. Thanks to

sineala for the recommendation!

November 2025 Newsletter, Volume 206

Posted by callmeri

https://www.transformativeworks.org/november-2025-newsletter-volume-206/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=273657

I. SPOTLIGHT ON FANLORE

In November, Fanlore ran the Fanlore No Fault November challenge: a catch-up event for earlier badges editors missed! The challenge ran from November 16 to 30, with many editors participating and earning badges from previous months.

Curious about editing Fanlore? Check out the New Visitor Portal and Tutorial for getting started!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

On November 14, we celebrated AO3’s 16th anniversary! \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology continued to prepare emails for translation and improved how the download and chapter index menus behave with each other on smaller screens.

AO3 Documentation updated the Contacting the Staff FAQ.

Open Doors finished importing Oz Magi, an Oz annual gift exchange, and Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive, a Saint Seiya archive. They also shared an annual roundup of the fanzine collections created in the last year for fanworks imported through the Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) and announced the upcoming import of a Harry Potter archive, PhoenixSong.

In October, Policy & Abuse received 5,061 tickets, setting a record high for the third month in a row. Support received 3,043 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 600,000 tags, or over 1,380 tags per wrangling volunteer.

Tag Wrangling also continues to create new “No Fandom” canonical tags and announced a new batch of tags for November.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

TWC continues to prepare for the two upcoming 2026 special issues: “Disability and Fandom” and “Gaming Fandom”. The submission deadline for the two 2027 special issues, “Music Fandom” and “Latin American Fandoms”, is also quickly approaching on January 1.

In November, the OTW filed an Amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court should clarify the rules surrounding who can challenge a trademark registration application. In a case involving whether someone should own the trademark “Rapunzel” for dolls of the character Rapunzel, the OTW argued that the Trademark Office should consider the interests of the public—including fans—in deciding whether to award private ownership over a word or symbol that may be in the public domain.

Legal also worked with Communications on a news post about recent legislation and have responded to a number of comments and queries on this post and other issues.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board continued work on annual turnover and meeting with all committees. They made progress on the OTW Procurement Policy and expected to get it finalized soon. They, along with the Board Assistants Team, also continued to work with Volunteers & Recruiting and Organizational Culture Roadmap on the ongoing Code of Conduct review.

Development & Membership has been catching up on post-Drive tasks.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

December 5 was International Volunteers Day! As a volunteer-run organization, the OTW would not be possible without the support and diligence of our volunteers. We thank all our volunteers, past and present, for the work they’ve contributed to the OTW.

If you’re curious about volunteering for the OTW, we recruit for various positions on a regular basis, and recruitment will next open in January.

From October 25 to November 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 287 new requests, and completed 270, leaving them with 63 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of November 22, 2025, the OTW has 983 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Fanlore Volunteers: Luana and 2 other Chair-Track Volunteers
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Anderson, Araxie, corr, Aspenfire, Klm, Mothmantic, Nova Deca, vanishinghorizons, and 1 other Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 90Percent Human, Aeon, Alecander Seiler, ambystoma, Astrum, Atlas Oak, batoidea, Bette, Bottle, bowekatan, Bruno, Chaosxvi, Destiny, DogsAreTheBest312, Dream, elia faustus, Ellexamines, Elliott W, Gracey, jacksonwangparty, Jean W, Kalico, Keira Gong, Kiru, lamonnaie, Lavender, Loria, Lucia G, LWynn, Max, Nikki, Nioral, noctilucent, Our Hospitality, Primo, Rie, Salethia, Sapphira, sashene, Schnee, Scylle, sneakyowl, soymilk, Thaddeus, TheCrystalRing, thewritegrump, Water, Wintam, yucca, and 1 other Tag Wrangling Volunteer
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
New TWC Volunteers: Lys Benson (Copyeditor)
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Cesium (Translator)

Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Irina, Paula, and 2 other Import Assistants; 1 Administrative Volunteer, and 1 Fan Culture Preservation Project Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Communications News Post Moderation Liaison
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Julia Santos (Tag Wrangling Supervisor); blackelement7, pan2fel, and 7 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: weliuona and 2 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Alisande and 2 other Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/november-2025-newsletter-volume-206/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=273657

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Picture Book Advent, Week One

Picture book Advent is going strong! Since I usually don’t have a whole post worth to share about a single picture book, I’ve decided to do a wrap-up post each Monday with quick notes on each of the preceding week’s picture books.

Christmas, written and illustrated by Barbara Cooney: a retelling of the Nativity story, with excursions into the origins of various Christmas customs: Saturnalia as the source of the Lord of Misrule, Odin walking the world morphing into St. Nicholas giving gifts. (Hadn’t heard that one before!)

The Remarkable Christmas of the Cobbler’s Sons, written by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Barbara Cooney: an unexpected gem! Left alone on Christmas Eve, the three sons of a poor cobbler are visited by an incredibly grumpy elf/gnome-type creature who kicks them out of bed and makes them turn cartwheels - only for oranges and Christmas cookies and gold and silver coins to pour from their pockets! Delicious. A new story to me, and I’ve read so many Christmas stories that it’s always impressive to find something new.

I Saw Three Ships, by Elizabeth Goudge. Actually not a picture book, but a novella for children, a quick charming story about young Polly in a seaport who insists to her elderly aunts that they have to leave the doors unlocked on Christmas Eve for baby Jesus. The aunts refuse, but Polly manages to open a window regardless, and of course quasi-magical Christmas happenings follow.

An Angel in the Woods, written and illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop. Another banger in the vein of Lathrop’s The Fairy Circus. A toy angel, left on the windowsill with a candle on Christmas Eve, flies into the woods to bring presents to the animals.

The Animals’ Santa, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. More Christmas presents for the animals! One thing I love about Brett’s illustrations is that you often have the main story in the big illustrations, but also a little B-plot taking place in the borders. In this case, the main story is the animals discussing who might be the animal Santa (a bear? A moose? A wolf?), while the side story features adorable little mice in little red hats and green sweaters making little Christmas presents using forest goodies like acorns.

The Twelve Days of Christmas, illustrated by Jan Brett. The main illustrations are the various presents for the twelve days of Christmas (the seven swans a-singing etc.), while the borders show the tale of the singer and her true love heading into the forest to get a Christmas tree, then decorating it with her family. So charming. Each border has “Merry Christmas” in a different language, and then the illustrations reference that national theme, so for instance on “eleven pipers piping” the language is Scotch Gaelic and the pipers are bagpipers in kilts.

Christmas Folk, by Natalia Belting, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. Did you know that Christmas also used to be Halloween? Okay, not exactly, but Christmas used to be the holiday where people got dressed up in costumes, went door to door demanding sweets, and set off fireworks, all customs that Belting describes in this story. (Cooney’s firework illustration includes a little girl with her hands over her ears. What a great detail!)

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Book Review: Brahma's Dream

Title: Brahma's Dream
Author: Shree Ghatage
Genre: Fiction, historical fiction, family drama

Brahma's Dream by Shree Ghatage was a book I snatched out of a pile of stuff my sister was giving away last year, but she'd never gotten around to reading it herself, so she couldn't give me a preview. Brahma's Dream is set in India just before it gains self-rule, and concerns the family of Mohini, a child whose serious illness dominates her life.

This is one of those middle-of-the-road books that was neither amazingly good nor offensively bad, and therefore I struggle to come up with much to say about it. That makes it sound bad, but it isn't--I enjoyed my time with it. I thought Ghatage did a good job with exploring life on the precipice of great political change, although the history and politics of 1940s India is more backdrop to the family drama than central to the story. I liked Mohini and her family; because the nature of her illness necessitates a lot of rest and down time, Mohini is naturally a thoughtful child, as her thoughts are sometimes all she has to amuse herself. However, she never crosses the line into being precocious, which was a relief.

Neither did I feel like the book leaned too hard on Mohini's illness to elicit sentimentality from the reader. Obviously, an illness like hers is the biggest influence on her life, and on the lives of her immediate family, and there are many moments you sympathize with her because she can't just be a child the way she wants to be, but I didn't feel like Ghatage was plucking heartstrings just for the sake of it.

Reading the relationships between Mohini and her family was heartwarming, especially with her grandfather, who takes great joy in Mohini's intellect and is often there to discuss the import of various societal events with her.

Ghatage's descriptive writing really brings to life the India of the time, with the colors, smells, sounds, and sights that are a part of Mohini's every day.

It reminded me of another book I read about a significant event in Indian history (the separation of India and Pakistan) told through the perspective of a young ill girl, Cracking India.

On the whole, this was a sweet, heartfelt book. It's not heavy on plot, but if you enjoy watching the story of a family unfold and the little dramas that play out, it's enjoyable.

Current Mood: weary
Current Music: People II: the Reckoning, Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons

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cooking using up things around the house

Early this week I made a kind of turkey pot pie stew from leftover turkey, and served it with biscuit mix biscuits with celery seed added to them (to reflect the crust of my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook's pot pie recipe)

Cursory notes on the procedure

Cooked 1 medium onion, chopped, in roughly 2 T oil with a little salt and more generous black pepper, add 2 T flour and cook for a couple minutes, then added four (and eventually a fifth) cups of water, ultimately about 4 tsp Chicken Better than Bouillon, 2 medium carrots chopped, 2 smallish russet potatoes, diced, 6 oz frozen broccoli cuts (alas, some of the stems were a very bad texture due to being fibrous), and 6 oz frozen peas, and about 1.75c chopped cooked turkey.

I think I added 1/2tsp celery seed to a half batch of biscuit mix biscuits, which was not very strong but did come through somewhat.

Today we baked a cran-apple (walnut-less) cake as seen in *Heart of the Plate* (apparently also in Moosewood Cookbook though? I do not know it that well + have never paid a great deal of attention to the dessert section) and I made a couple Indian dishes for a late lunch since I had bought the mixes on a whim and they had recently passed their best by dates* (Plus I had some clearance mini naans that were getting old so needed eaten up).

Both were Rasoi Magic brand, and the Methi Mutter Malai (methi/fenugreek leaves and peas in a creamy sauce) turned out pretty well, although I think I would prefer to add slightly less sugar to the dish than it has (and am curious to perhaps try making Methi Mutter Malai with fresh methi at some point). I am less pleased with my tofu version of their Paneer Tikka Masala--even though the spicing and the tofu seem a promising combo, how I made it was more frustrating (involving shallow frying tofu cubes and experiencing some sticking), it was too spicy-hot for my mom to eat (which I failed to consider when I bought it), and it told me I should add a "cup" of water at the last step, which turned into a really liquid sauce that did not thicken up within anything like the recommended cooking time...

*anecdote: ...a month or so ago I stopped by the nearest Indian grocery and happened to pick up some sort of dried root that was in the spice section to look at the package, curious if I could glean any information about the unfamiliar item. I discovered, however, instead that it had expired by some earlier month in 2023 (maybe even 2022) so decided to bring that particular package to a staff member's attention. I was told that whatever it was was used medicinally, and that best by dates don't mean a lot (which is true!), but in my defense, I do feel that discovering you'd purchased something over 2 years past its best by date (without even being marked down) would be disappointing to most people. I was fine with using these mixes a month or three after their dates, although I wouldn't want to buy one that expired more than a month ago since I don't always get around to using them very quickly, and these contain nuts and milk powder, both of which tend to go strong. Otherwise I don't totally mind using somewhat older spices/spice mixes though yes, they do lose at least some flavor.

**I actually cooked by the mL quantities since my measuring cups have both and my Indian Saffola oats give a cup quantity of water that does not mesh with the mL recommendation at all. But I do think these were more reasonable approximations even if the mL (in like, centiliter accuracy) is probably what's strictly intended.