wagnetic

thisaintbc posting in

The 2025 due South/Canadian Six Degrees Big Bang collection is now revealed! Go and check out the fanworks on AO3, and leave comments and kudos for the creators \o/

Congratulations to all our lovely primary and complementary creators, and thanks to everyone who chatted and beta'ed along the way. And thanks to everyone for waiting an extra month to see what wonderful works our fandom has produced this year!

A special shout-out to our creators who submitted their works by an earlier deadline than they had to, who we decided to recognize with little digital merit badges. Keep an eye out for the Dief pawprint of proper preparation approval!

ride_4ever

My local AHL team -- the Chicago Wolves -- has again this year as previously provided and served a Thanksgiving meal of turkey and other treats to the shelter dogs of Border Tails Rescue in Northbrook, Illinois, a no-kill shelter with a spay-and-neuter program that specializes in rescuing and rehoming stray dogs from Mexico (they also take in owner surrenders from Chicagoland).

Harleigh Garcia, founder of Border Tails Rescue, said “We are so excited to have the Wolves again this year to help us celebrate the holidays and bring something special to the dogs. It’s not ideal for these dogs to be spending their holidays in the shelter. We’d love for them to all find homes, but that’s just not possible right now, so it’s nice to bring them a little something special, and we love partnering with the Wolves.”

To learn more about Border Tails Rescue, click here. They have many volunteer opportunities and especially are looking for tourists returning from Mexico who are willing to be "flight volunteers" at no cost to themselves for escorting Mexican stray dogs to the U.S.

The picture below is Chicago Wolves Hockey players Nikita Pavlychev, Braden Doyle, Blake Biondi, Skyler Brind’Amour, Bryce Montgomery and Yanick Turcotte with some of the dogs they treated to this special Thanksgiving meal.

Chicago Wolves Hockey Team serves Thanksgiving Dinner to the dogs at Border Tails Rescue

Chicago Wolves Hockey Team serves Thanksgiving Dinner to the dogs at Border Tails Rescue

Current Mood: festive
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing. As you can tell, the past few weeks have really been Surprise Medical Problem Time, and while I have my brain back most of the time, I am not really having a lot of energy for sustained focus.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( X-Vengers #2 )

What I'm Reading Next

I just started reading a f/f tennis rivals-to-lovers name-on-wrist soulmate romance novel because I guess this is just what Real Books are like now.

Current Mood: tired

luzula

Poll #33879 Proper lifting technique

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33

Did you, or did you not, learn the proper technique for how to lift heavy objects with minimal injury/strain in school?

View Answers

Yes
7 (21.2%)

No
26 (78.8%)

When in life did you learn this?

View Answers

0-20 years old
15 (45.5%)

20-40 years old
10 (30.3%)

40-60 years old
0 (0.0%)

60-80 years old
0 (0.0%)

80-100 years old
0 (0.0%)

I still don't know it
3 (9.1%)

I might know it, but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right?
6 (18.2%)

I did not learn it in school. When I check the current PE curriculum, it sure looks like it's included. So either 1) it was not in the curriculum when I was in school, or 2) it was in the curriculum but my teacher did not cover it, or 3) they covered it but I did not learn it. I've known for a long time that you should not lift by bending your back and done my best to avoid this, but I only learned now that this is not all there is to it! You should not lift with your knees. You should lift by keeping your back and stomach braced and your spine straight (but hinged forward) and lift mainly with your butt (your knees can also bend if they need to, but the main bending should be at your hips). I am practicing it now, but it takes time to ingrain something like that.

I also did not learn, and am only beginning to learn now at the age of 47, the proper position/technique for doing common workout things like pushups, squats, etc. *facepalm* How can you go so long without learning such things, and without realizing that there is indeed a hole in your knowledge??

sineala

I feel like I should post something. I have a bunch of half-finished video game review posts, but instead you get me half-assing a brand new game review. The review's brand new, I mean. The game's not. This is the PS5 remake of Dead Space, a sci-fi horror action-adventure game from... uh... some time ago. I'm not actually going to look anything up to write this. This is going great already.

You may have noticed that I can't actually really play action games. I can't! Nor do I own a PS5! But I do enjoy watching other people play video games, a pastime that is much easier to engage in now that Twitch and Discord exist, and my internet friend

phoenixmetaphor likes to stream games and is kind enough to stream them while I am on voice chat and can help solve the puzzles. So I feel like I played the game even though technically I did not press the buttons. I have witnessed a lot of games in this manner, and it's just that my thoughts on Dead Space are shorter than my thoughts on Clair Obscur, any Dragon Age game (I have a half-finished massive review of Veilguard), the Silent Hill 2 remake, or, like, thirteen different Resident Evil games.

(Phoenix really likes the horror genre. I mostly hate horror movies/TV (my startle reflex is overactive and really painful, hooray for cerebral palsy) but I'm fine with games (provided someone tells me if there's spiders or eye injury) and mostly I just like watching my friends play games. And I like helping solve the puzzles, which rules out watching people I don't know, because they don't want you to do that.)

( Dead Space )

Current Mood: hungry

verushka70

Per The Verge, The original Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III games are now available under the MIT CC license.

I have such fond memories of the interactive fiction game Zork - or rather its predecessor, Adventure. And now you can see exactly how you got "eaten by a grue!" or stuck in "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike..." if you took a wrong turn somewhere in the game, heh!
( Playing Zork's predecessor, Adventure, with my sister on my brother's mainframe terminal decades ago )
We LOVED that game! I didn't know what Interactive Fiction or Text-based Adventure games were, at the time - I was just a kid. I just knew Adventure was super fun to play, even though it was also difficult for us. I remember us eventually drawing maps as we explored the underground cave system that you got to by going through the locked grate in the streambed, using the keys you got from the small brick building in the forest, where you begin the game.
( what I learned from Adventure/Zork, and the downside of vivid visual imagination )

Anyway - I'm so glad other people can legally see it now. (Zork I/II/III and many of their predecessors and imitators been available for years, though unofficially and in that gray area of "it's not really legal but no one is pursuing anyone who ports it to whatever OS"; more than 25 years ago, I installed an emulator on my Linux computer just so I could play Zork/Adventure again.) Now people can study the code... or just download the game and play it.

(I am not a programmer but I just might study the code myself - I took some basic programming classes as a high schooler - good lord, the punch cards! - and as a kid, taught myself BASIC so I could write stupid little programs on my Commodore 128 computer that my brother bought me and my little sister for Christmas one year. Why, Yes: I am geeky - and kinda proud of it, lol!)

ETA: You can also play Adventure/Colossal Cave Adventure online in a browser here! Yay!

ride_4ever

Ever since Marjorie Taylor Greene "informed" us that California wildfires were being caused by "Jewish Space Lasers" I have been obsessed with making a mockery of her. (Hey, I'm Jewish, and if I had control of some space lasers I would NOT be using them to set California on fire.)

Now I see that she is resigning from Congress after The Orange One called her "wacky"...which is the first time I've ever agreed with something he said.

At this juncture I would like to show what I have created with my Refrigerator Magnet "What Will Marjorie Taylor Green Say Next" Conspiracy Kit.

Marjorie Taylor Greene refrigerator magnet

Bonus Image:

Current Mood: mocking
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

ride_4ever

Note: if you don't get sound with this video, check for doing "unmute" in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

This link goes to Facebook: What Would the Founding Fathers Say about Trump

Current Mood: facepalm
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

It has been an unexpectedly stressful week and I have read nothing, alas.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Captain America #5, Nova Centurion #1, One World Under Doom #9, Spider-Man Holiday Spectacular #1, Ultimates #18 )

What I'm Reading Next

Still not sure yet. Working on having enough energy to read stuff.

Current Mood: exhausted

ride_4ever

Voted first place by the FWF participants for best use of prompt.

My FWF First Place Winner - Category: "Best Use of Prompt" - Shocktober Edition

Title: Things Counter, Original, Spare, Strange
Fandoms: due South, Wristcutters
Rating: Mature
Category: Gen, M/M
Pairing: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Characters: Robert "Bob" Fraser, Benton Fraser, Ray Kowalski, mention of Uncle Tiberius Fraser, mention of Diefenbaker (the half-wolf, not the former Canadian Prime Minister), mention of Nanuk (from Wristcutters), mention of Raife Kneller (from Wristcutters)
Word count: 400 (quadruple drabble)

Summary: Sergeant Robert Fraser -- dead Robert Fraser -- knows first-hand that All Hallow’s Eve is when The Veil between the living and the dead is at its most thin...but he doesn't know anything about Halloween-themed sex toys until Ray Kowalski has something to say about it.

Author's Notes: Written for the recurring Firewhiskey Fic Challenge, a 48-hour period during which fanworks creators drink "adult beverages" or "do the 420" and create their fanworks "under the influence" with no editing allowed. Participants then view all the fanworks and vote on them in the categories of Most Coherent Entry, Least Coherent Entry, Funniest Entry, Favorite Entry, Best Use of Prompt, and Best Smut.

Fic on AO3.

Current Mood: awarded
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

verushka70

Regina Keim created and posted a new due South word search over in the private Fraser/Kowalski Facebook group.

You can access it here, if you can't see the group's posts because you're not a member.

verushka70

FYI, over the past few days I have had someone else requesting to change my AO3 password 3 times.

I don't know if this is happening to anyone else, but... I just thought I'd warn people.

I think it is a person rather than a bot, because it seems a bot would be more likely to just keep sending and sending requests (meaning, more than 3 in 5 days).

But you never know. If it is a bot, it could just be going down a long list of hundreds or thousands of usernames and coming back around to mine after going through the list.

Be careful out there!

luzula

I read some books!

What Fresh Hell Is This? by Heather Corinna (2021)
About perimenopause and menopause. Well, I guess I learned things? It did all feel like a huge and intimidating list of possible symptoms to get, and I don't know yet how it'll shake out for me. But I guess one advantage of knowing what's possible is that it will help me connect the dots when/if various things do happen.

A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K J Charles (2023)
Hmm, hm. Meh. I thought I'd try something that's supposed to be self-indulgent, and this was certainly page-turney enough, but did not really zing for me. I can't tell if it's just that my reading is still far from my previous baseline, or whether this would not have been my favorite Charles in any case. Somehow I could not keep from comparing this to others of her books and seeing commonalities in the types of characters and relationships she often writes, and thus not being entirely able to see the characters as people of their own.

Not a book, but I thought the blog series Life, Work, Death, and the Peasant by the historian Bret Deveraux was interesting. It models the life and labor of pre-modern peasants, using sources from ancient Rome and medieval Europe. And I do mean modeling, trying to estimate such things as the number of pregnancies a woman would have on average, and the number of hours worked on various tasks. It really hammers home that while yes, I do live on a farm now, and I do over time want to try to produce more of the food we eat, there is so much labor pre-modern peasants did that I don't have to do. The amount of time women spent on textile production (mostly spinning) is unbelievable. And I didn't know the medieval spinning wheel is about three times more productive than the spindle of antiquity! Carrying water (back-breaking work!), washing by hand, etc. Obviously I knew people did these things by hand, but it's so interesting seeing estimates of the time it took.

I do think modern civilization is hugely wasteful of energy and materials, but can we not find some appropriate level of energy use and technology? Pumping water for household use, and spinning thread with machines: yes, great use of energy and technology. \o/ Mining bitcoins: nope, terrible use of energy and technology. /o\

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

Every year, well over a hundred pinch hitters take on extra assignments. Many of these pinch hitters are signed up to Yuletide, with an assigned writer and recipient from the start. Some are not!

Though these supporting pinch hitters are not guaranteed a gift, we'd like to make it a possibility. On this post, we're collecting prompts from the pinch hitters who are not signed up to Yuletide, so that others may give them treats.

To writers
Please consider writing a treat for a pinch hitter! See instructions for how, where, and when to post a treat. Full-length gifts for pinch hitters are welcome in the Main collection.

To pinch hitters
If you are signed up to Yuletide this year, this post does not apply to you, but we still hope you enjoy your gift(s).

If you are not signed up to Yuletide this year but you have claimed or posted a pinch hit, please comment to this post with your requests! Please limit yourself to Yuletide-eligible fandoms, but you can ask for more than 8 different fandoms.

Yuletide 2025 tag set on AO3
Tag set as a browser app

You can treat your comment as a Dear Writer letter, with likes and prompts, or include a link to a letter. Either way, please include the following information when you comment:

-your AO3 name
-your requested fandoms [please format the fandoms exactly as they are in the tag set if possible]
-your requested characters

and, optionally, ideas for what you would like to receive, DNWs, and/or (a) link(s) to other places where you have written about what you would like. You're welcome to comment on mini-challenge posts!

Thank you, pinch hitters! And thank you to anyone on the lookout to pick up a pinch hit - we will post them at

yuletide_pinch_hits throughout the exchange.

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wagnetic

December 2018

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Reading

2025 dS/C6D Big Bang collection is live!

Fannish 50 Challenge 2025: Post # 40: Hockey Fandom and Dog Fandom

Wednesday Reading Meme

Life skills I ought to have learned earlier

Dead Space

Zork I/II/II now officially MIT CC/open-source! (or, You have been eaten by a grue...) (FF #56)

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Political: What Would the Founding Fathers Say about Trump

Wednesday Reading Meme

Fannish 50 Challenge 2025: Post # 39: My Firewhisky Fic First Place Winner - Shocktober Edition

new dS word search (Fannish Fifty #55)

AO3 password changes NOT requested by me/you (Fannish Fifty #54)

Recent reading

Pinch Hitter Prompts 2025

Profile

December 2018

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