donutsweeper

About a week or so ago livejournal seems to have cut access to its platform from certain locations, the US included. By using firefox's free VPN I can access it depending on the country I set it to (France seems to work best for some reason) but thankfully I had basically grabbed everything I wanted to keep from it a bit back and I don't use it much so it just means I'm not perusing my flist there much anymore which doesn't matter much since most folks are here as well. Still though. End of an era. sigh.

The less said about the weather this summer the better. Ugh. Very glad I finished working on that blanket when I did.

For months now there's been accusations of AI usage and pushback (against the usage and the accusations) in different fandoms, particularly swirling around certain Heated Rivalry authors. There were a lot of AI "tells" but recently it was discovered that Claude (and others I think) left specific html code in a work if it was C&Ped directly from the AI to AO3 and there's been ao3 skins created to find it (for example this one that combines the reversi skin and the detection things), a lot of info about all this has been compiled into a googledoc "Fandom has a Hidden Generative AI Problem" (backed up on the internet archive here) and there's an AO3 user, i_hate_ai_fics, bookmarking all discovered AI works (both by using the html finder and fics that left AI prompts in and other basic tells) that can be found here.

Have a ton of recthething recs. A bunch of art recs from tumblr (and one vid) and also quite a lot of art recs from doodle4doodle

doodle4doodle is still in anon phase but artists will be revealed tomorrow I think (there's lots more great things than what I recced, over 200 actually, peruse the rest of the collection here):

Object and Concept Anthropomorphism:
- Forced Vacation. Summary: Art of Clippy and Coppy at the beach! (very cute and clever)

Original Work:
- [Art] At the Weyr. Summary: It's said that the bond between a dragon and their rider is the most powerful in the world. (beautifully detailed dragon and rider)
- Delinquent Penguins. Summary: Dyeing their hair and making a racket. (Or maybe they're just regular crested penguins.) (absolutely delightful trio of penguins)
- [art] Snide and Snejudice Summary: A snake takes a break from working on her snake magnum opus, or snagnum snopus. (amazingly detailed, love this sleepy snake)
- [art] White-Breasted Nuthatch (wonderfully detailed rendition of a nuthatch)
- [art] Space Whale (whale constellation, very cool)
- [ART] The Subroboticon Summary: The thrilling conclusion to Roboctopus versus Warlocktocon!! A fake cover of two octopuses with no chill for Spring 2026 Doodle4Doodle. (incredibly detailed, really an amazing fake cover for a comic)
- tiny snake says "i love you <3" Summary: pet tiny snake. hold tiny snake. cherish tiny snake. forfeit all mortal possessions to tiny snake. (adorable)

Tetris (Video Games)
- [art] Tetris Museum of Modern Art. Summary: Tetriminos in iconic paintings. (really clever tetris-ish recreations of the paintings)

Tumblr Lore:
- [Art] Neil banging out the tunes. Summary: Neil banging out the tunes April 13, 2006 (great sketch of Neil and his piano)
- Piano Rat. (cute Neil and his little piano)
- [ART] Bang It, Neil. Summary: Neil banging out the tunes, as he does. (adorable art and animated gif)

tumblr recs:

Daredevil
- A World on Fire (amazing tapestry project)

Merlin
- Merlin and Arthur (gorgeous)

Nirvana in Fire
- mei changsu (love the way Lin Shu is shown on the strips of the bandages as they unfurl)

Rivers of Lonson
- Leyendecker Styled PC Peter Grant and DCI Thomas Nightingale (really excellent Leyendecker rendition of these two and The Folly)

Massive fandom video:
- Only the Horses: A fanvid about horses. On tumblr here and AO3 here

(fandoms are: Xena Warrior Princess, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, The Walking Dead, Hot Fuzz, John Wick 3, True Lies, Leverage, Doctor Who, The Fellowship of the Ring, Hidalgo, The Witcher, Due South, The Lighthorsemen, The Man from Snowy River, The Return of the King, Mulan, Ladyhawke, Bob's Burgers, Brave, The Princess Bride, Sleepy Hollow, Black Beauty, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dances With Wolves, The Black Stallion, Centaurworld, The Neverending Story, Tangled, The Postman)

Hope everyone's doing well and staying comfortable whatever weather issues you're facing!

Whoops, fell off posting.

In sad news, Anthony Head has died at age 72. RIP to this legend, may his memory be a blessing. I wonder what of his many roles he'll be remembered most for. Uther Pendragon, Rupert Giles, or his Ted Lasso, or one of his many Doctor Who roles or something else?

For those whole liked the 45 in 45 sorting game (that I posted about a bit back) it has inspired an adjustable version where you can choose to play a 10x10, 15x15 or 20x20 version. And what's neat is they're not static games! "In this version, there are 150+ total categories, a subset of which will be randomly selected upon generating a puzzle. Most of the categories have more than 20 items (and some categories, many more!), so even if you get the same category across multiple games, you are likely to encounter new items." So you can replay several times and it will be different each time (or at least somewhat different, certain topics do seem to pop up frequently, it's very enamored with Shakespeare's plays for example from what I've seen).

Have three weeks of recthething recs (a whole heap of tumblr artwork)

9-1-1
- Bloodied Buck Cross Stitch (73k stitches, incredible)

Discworld (some of the glorious 25th of May art that stood out to me)
- Every year he forgot (the faceless style of this really spoke to me)
- The Glorious 25th of May! (lovely embroidery)
- Very minimalistic this year (I thought the minimalism really works for this piece, adding a longingness and remembrance to it)
- Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably Priced Love! And a Hard Boiled Egg! (amazing details in the battle painting)

Heated Rivalry
- kinusaiga fabric art (absolutely gorgeous rendition of the beach scene)

Merlin
- Sir Leon the Long Suffering (he looks so hilariously *done*)

Muppets/Star Trek:Deep Space Nine crossover
- fashion and gossip, what more could a gal want? (Miss Piggy and Garak, utterly perfect)

Sherlock Holmes
- Rest in peace David Burke (gorgeous rendition of David Burke as Watson)
- Rest well, Mr. Burke (loved this collage of digital art showing David Burke as Dr Watson)
- A Scandal in Bohemia (beautiful painted collage of various scenes from Granada's Scandal in Bohemia)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- we love a mismatched in size couple actually (hilarious Worf and Jadzia comic)

Star Trek: The Next Generation
- A Fistful of Datas (amazing retro style movie poster)

Star Trek: Voyager
- Does Janeway have an angel and devil on her shoulder, and are they both Tuvok? (hilarious comic)

Supernatural
- Angel on his shoulder how sweet I’m crying (hilarious)

Under the Skin
- Under The Skin | Human (gorgeous Du Cheng-centric video, youtube link here)

Word of Honor
- Green mountains drift with the clouds; the earth follows the flow of the river. This deep, boundless affection—who awaits to take it in? {translated title}(gorgeous Wen Kexing piece)

After a light dusting of snow on the 19th spring has finally sprung and sprung with a vengeance here (to be fair it was unseasonably hot before that snow and now again after, 20+ degrees (f) warmer than usual which is making my least favorite time of year even worse due to a combo of Blargh-Pollen-Everywhere allergies and encroaching ants (dudes, the outside is where you should be! You do not pay rent, do not be in my house). Sigh. Usual tactics to get them gone aren't working either, it might be exterminator time which I hate to do, but oh well.

This is neat: NASA's Your Name in Landsat (see your name spelled out in landsat imagery of the Earth)

Nothing much else interesting is happening in my neck of the woods, I've been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing (a cute self-care/tracking app I use, Finch, had a challenge last month where it suggested little tasks to do each day/every few days and I found it a great way to do things without being overwhelmed - like dust a shelf, go through one drawer, etc - so I've been trying to keep it up and do something most days.) And craftwise, I'm nearly finished with a blanket. Not sure what project I'll do next, something will come to me, though I'm sure.

And for the main reason for this post... here, have three weeks of recthething recs (lots of tumblr art and one MDZS/Untamed fic):

Doctor Who (Classic)
- More Four Stuff (A whole bunch of adorable Four doodles)

Discworld
- its a heavy burden, having a heart as big as a city. and heavier still when it loves you back (love the way the Ankh Morpork is silhouetted in the background with Vetinari and Sybil looking down at Vimes)

MDZS/The Untamed
- my baby my baby (gorgeous LWJ holding a bunny sketch)

Merlin
- The Favour (love the dreaminess of this)

Nirvana in Fire
- Consort Jing (gorgeous)

Sherlock Holmes
- "Labours of Love" English paper piecing: Doodles and Research (fascinating read and wonderful art)

Supernatural
- Happy Easter!! ✨🐝 "Thought the boys deserved at least one nice, happy Easter egg hunt and in my mind Bobby did so too :)" (adorable comic)

X-Files
- awoo (hilarious Mulder and Scully comic)

MDZS/Untamed fic:
A Fork in the Road by Bodldops (142k)
Summary: With a small change, Wei Wuxian has a chance to reconsider his stance. That change leads to others. The most important words you can say, after all, are thank you, and I am sorry. It is better to say them earlier, than later through tears. ( an interesting turn-left AU where canon events shift post WWX punching JZN in Cloud Recessess. FYI contains some Jiang, especially Madam Yu, bashing)

Weather here's been interesting- a storm started Saturday afternoon and pretty much continued until late Sunday/early Monday and the temp plummeted. We'd had a few weeks of 30s and 40s and basically all the snow melted and stuff started to green up and then BAM 12-15" of the stuff followed by Monday being in the negatives. It was so fun shoveling then :( we've had another dusting since but then temps started climbing and it's supposed to be in the 70s on Saturday. Mother Nature is definitely having some fun with my area.

Tumblr has also been all over the place. It pushed through an update on the 16th that was *very* unpopular (radically altering how notifs of reblogs/adding comments work) and they first tried a 'we understand you have strong feeling about this but it is what it is' response about 9 hours later (their reply to their original post) but then early on the 17th they completely walked it back although it sounds like they're still thinking of implementing something?) But as a result it got me to take a dive into the stupidly high number tumblr posts I'd favorited with the intent to read/watch/research later when I had more time. Behold:

The 'Make 45 groups of 45!' sorting game, a great game for anyone who likes lists or sorting or desires to lose numerous hours of their day(s) in a fugue logic puzzle clicking state.

For those of you who use Firefox it recently rolled out an AI kill switch and here's an article about it and how to turn it off (basically, go to settings and look for AI controls in the sidebar, it should already be toggled to off but it's good to check)

Are normal looking links too boring for you? Try Creepy Link, the URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible.

A bunch of the posts were also things I wanted to check out to add to my resource posts so between what was there and links I was already behind in adding I'm going to probably be adding about 100 new links. Since it's so many, even though it's a little early I am also attempting a full click through for all the links to check to make sure they're still good. As requested, I'll also be adding a 'last updated' date to each post as I get to them.

And, as always, last but not least, 2 weeks of recthething recs (tumblr art for Addams Family, Leverage, MDZS/Untamed, Merlin, Murderbot, and ST:TOS and a fic for MDZS/Untamed):

The Addams Family
- Addamses (absolutely gorgeous Gomez and Morticia)

Leverage
- the rundown job aka the episode that just kept on giving (gorgeous Parker, Hardison and Eliot)

MDZS/The Untamed
- same grumpy face, no matter how old he gets (baby and teen jin ling, so well done)

Merlin
- Merthur and a unicorn (love this)
- Arthur (gorgeous blue-tones digital art)
- once and future (love the framing of this with them on either side of excalibur and just their looks in general)

Murderbot
- A mini papercraft commission of Murderbot (I love these papercrafts and this Murderbot is great)

ST:TOS
- Best tos episode (Uhura and tribbles, hilarious!)

MDZS/Untamed fic:
Madam Gentian and the Fugitive by azure_enechelon (185k)
Summary: Wei Wuxian befriends a mysterious woman in a hidden corner of the Cloud Recesses. Lan Wangji has a mother to confide in. Madam Lan does her best to make up for a lot of bad parenting. It isn't going to change everything, but maybe it can change just enough. (Recently completed very long, but wonderfully detailed and interesting AU)

I am curious what people think about this (and will explain why I am asking this under the cut but please answer the poll before looking)

Okay, so recently I was doing a survey and it asked "Who was the primary drummer for The Beatles?" and while I am not a Beatles fan, via osmosis I knew that there were four of them (George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr) and that Ringo was the drummer but then scrolled down only to find it offered the following three choices: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Pete Best.

I had never heard of Pete Best but knew the other options were incorrect so clicked him and was told I got the answer correct. After googling I learned Pete Best was the first 'official' drummer for The Beatles ('official' in the sense that it seems like they'd played with random drummers here and there but he was the first to actually join the band and *was* a Beatle from 1960-mid 1962 when they fired him and hired Ringo just before recording the record that catapulted them to fame and remained with them until the band broke up).

All the dictionaries I looked at gave multiple definitions for "primary." Amongst the definitions were always something to the effect of 'first in order of events/sequence' as well as 'most important or well known' although where those two were placed in the list of definitions wasn't always the same.

So, technically, Pete Best was the primary drummer for The Beatles using the 'first in order' definition but probably not if using the 'most important' since I think most people would consider Ringo Starr the better known Beatles drummer.

So that leads to poll #2:

Poll #34282 Primary, take two

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

Who would you consider the primary drummer for The Beatles? (either by previous knowledge or as their history is described above)

View Answers

Pete Best
0 (0.0%)

Ringo Starr
11 (100.0%)

Don't Know/Unsure
0 (0.0%)

and then poll #3

Poll #34283 Primary, take 3

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

How did your response to #2 compare to #1?

View Answers

Most important or well known + Pete Best
0 (0.0%)

Most important or well known + Ringo Starr
10 (90.9%)

Most important or well known + Don't Know/Unsure
1 (9.1%)

First (timeline-wise) + Pete Best
0 (0.0%)

First (timeline-wise) + Ringo Starr
0 (0.0%)

First (timeline-wise) + Don't Know/Unsure
0 (0.0%)

Something else + Pete Best
0 (0.0%)

Something else + Ringo Starr
0 (0.0%)

Something else + Don't Know/Unsure
0 (0.0%)

I was honestly a bit thrown by their use of 'primary' in the poll. While, of course, it *can* mean first in a question like that I interpreted that they were asking for most well known instead and was curious about what others thought of this.

Anyway, thoughts?

EAD's delayed Birthday Bash just had reveals and (as I am sure you will all be shocked to read) I crocheted a lot for it. A LOT a lot. Like 12 things in total, 11 of which were decent sized amigurumi. Between the one I accidentally posted to my main and all the works I posted to my BBsock I now make up 13% of AO3's crochet tag :) I'm sure that will change soon, I'd dropped to just over 11% before all these revealed, but it's a neat stat for now. My favorite of the works was this cute little froggie "knitting"

who is actually not knitting because I tried but couldn't get the knitting to work on toothpicks so instead it's Tunisian crochet threaded onto the toothpicks.

Besides the frog, I made: a hat for it (as per the prompt), a bumblebee, a small doggie "with zero thoughts behind its eyes", a dachshund, two different small dragons, a groundhog, a mola mola sunfish, a fat kitty, a potion bottle, and a Moopsy from Star Trek: Lower Decks. Like I said, far too much to crochet in four or five days or whatever it was. Like usual, I did a group photo of them all:

We went from some of the coldest weather in years here (-40ish or below with windchill) to some serious warmth (relatively speaking) where it's been not only above freezing the last few days but saturday might hit 50f/10c! Which is insanely warm for mid-February.

Just before Birthday Bash took off I finished a bag rug (50 refrigerator bagel bags, halved, for the main and 36 hamburger bags, thirded, as the runner. It's a decent sized one, 27"x18.5" or so:

Last but not least, have some recthething art recs (Bridgerton, DCU, Heated Rivalry, MDZS/The Untamed, Merlin from tumblr and on AO3 from BirthdayBash MCU/Groundhog's Day (the holiday, not the film) and Original Work):

Bridgerton
- happy benophie eve! (this is lovely)

DCU
- Hey Old Man, lose two sleepy superheroes? (Adorable Nightwing, Damian and Jon)

Heated Rivalry
- what do you guys think ilya and shane’s dad talked about while shane and yuna were outside (hilarious comic)

MDZS/The Untamed
- you can pry thicc LWJ from my cold dead hands (yes excellent)

Merlin
- healer Merlin tending to Arthur’s bruises/wounds (excellently done)

--AO3--

MCU/Groundhog's Day (the holiday, not the film):
- Winter is staying? by Odalyn. Summary: A bunch of interviews about the future of winter. Come meet this year's predictions from the paws of our beloved weather casters. (8 different traditional (and non-traditional) Groundhog's Day groundhogs and other creatures and their predictions, absolutely adorable comic)

Original Work:
- More than 8 Ducks by Odalyn. Summary: Duck! (adorable animation of 12 little duckies)
- A Beautiful Hen by Meatball42. Summary: A beautiful hen in a flower crown. (very pretty chicken)
- Ocean Sunfish by RynRose4. Summary: A sketch of an Ocean Sunfish who is up to no good. (excellent mola mola)
- [ART] Parade by ChezPillow (PillowLord). Summary: Animals parade. (3 cute little animals in a parade)

Hope everyone's doing well!

Ok, I am not going to lock this post. I will put it behind a cut though since I totally understand not wanting to read about any of this. ( Post about ICE in MN )

Stay safe out there, both to those affected by the current weather craziness and the general *waves hand at the world today* craziness.

yuletide had author reveals (and some earlier chaos) so usual ficlist of what I made and received under the cut along with some of the said-chaos related stuff

Despite random RL chaos I managed 5 main collection works and one drabble for Yuletide this year:
One Ultimate Note fic:
- Xiaoge's Memories. Summary: Unfortunately, it turned out the weren't going to be able to retrieve any of Xiaoge's memories from Banai; fortunately there was another way for Xiaoge to reclaim some. (1333 words)

One The First Shot fic:
- Cold Makes Warmth. Summary: It was a good plan but that didn't mean Zheng Bei had to like it. (3429 words, GYR/ZB)

Three Under the Skin fics:
- Carrying Your Lead. Summary: He Rongyue comes to Shen Yi for a favor. (1532 words, HRY&SY fic)
- Another Fine Mess. Summary: It had seemed like an open and shut case until Shen Yi wanted another look at the crime scene. (2096 words, DC/SY fic)
- Riding Herd. Summary: Since Shen Yi was incapable of taking care of himself it had somehow become Du Cheng's job. (2002 words, pre-DC/SY fic)

and a drabble for Without a Clue:
- A Deduction of One's Very Own. Summary: It might have been a simple deduction, but it was still a solid one.

I got a wonderful The First Shot fic: It Takes a Village. Summary: The question of who has the stronger willpower — himself or the chicken van, temperamental as an aging opera diva and with abandonment issues worse than his own — remains unanswered for the day. Before he can retrieve the car keys, one of the uncles who he recognizes as a restaurant regular calls out his name, and Gu Yiran obediently trots in his direction, wondering what kind of errand the community of Halan might want of him today, in the absence of their load-bearing pillar. (6957 words, GYR/ZB)

There was a big of 'excitement' this yuletide when, 20 minutes or so after the mods revealed the main collection AO3 decided to reveal the authors as well and the mods scrambled to work-by-work unclick and then reclick to re-anonymize everything. It's a bug that's happened before (several of the Battleship subcollections got caught by it this summer) so to see if they could get it to do it to a collection where the works could be kept unanon without issue the tagmods threw together a treating challenge and got a bunch of works posted to it and revealed it but AO3 behaved and it went normally (as did Madness, no clue why the main collection mucked itself up) but anyway, I posted a cute crocheted hippo, The Hardest Worker Of All to it and got a sweet double drabble for S.C.I. Mystery Pasta Making with Chef Bai.

Two weeks of recthething recs - one (very very long) MDZS/Untamed fic and tumblr art from Guardian, Merlin, The Mummy, ST:TOS and SPN :

When Plums are Ripe (There Must Be a Road) by somevariationofgay (105k)
Summary: When his army is defeated at the border, Wei Ying - a former General of Dazhi - is taken as a prize by the victor nation Beicui. He's resigned to a life of hard labor and an early death when a chance encounter alters his fate - he ends up in the manor of Prince Qing as a concubine instead.

Wanting nothing to do with the fights of an inner courtyard, he takes pains to avoid the attention of the prince's legal wife and the other concubines. But all his efforts go to waste as the petty struggles for favor that consume the inner courtyard overflow, leaving death in their wake.

Throwing himself headfirst into treacherous water, Wei Ying struggles against the current to create a future where he belongs and thrives, survive a present where danger hides in beauty, and tear down the powerful to get justice for the dead. (very interesting no cultivation harem AU with quite the different premise, intersex WWX is taken by the emperor's younger brother (NHS) as a concubine and has to navigate numerous plots and problems in the inner courtyard and beyond, this (vaguely) a NHS/WWX fic with a splash of NHS/JYL/WWX as well as Jiang Yanli is NHS' wife, LWJ does not appear)

Guardian
- If Guardian V1 by Priest were to ever get a hardcover edition (gorgeous novel take of Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei and Da Qing)

Merlin
- merthur (gorgeous triptych)

The Mummy
- Rick and Evie (love this)

Star Trek:TOS
- "Sometimes I draw ink/anime Spock, some others I paint blocky pastel Spock- Bottom line is: there’s always a good reason to draw Spock"(excellent spock)

Supernatural
- Castiel (love the B&W pencil style of this)

I've also done a bunch of crafting recently but haven't had a chance to take decent pics yet (hectic time of year made more hectic due to lots of snow and therefore shoveling). Oh well. I'll manage that in the new year, and on that note... Happy New Year everyone!!

Not a lot to post about but I want to make one before I forget again or get even more snowed under (I've shoveled every day since Wed and twice a few of those days; I am so so sore and so so tired) BUT I finished my newest crochet project (a blanket made from the last of my Black Friday 2023 sale yarn) it's huge, give or take 50"x68":

I was good and didn't buy much more yarn this Black Friday, only a single deal's worth that'll be a blanket for son at some point. I need to make many, many rugs before then because two separate sets of sheets ripped and now my 'to-be-rugged' storage drawer is overflowing. Luckily they ripped right before Black Friday so I was able to replace them with new sets on some very good sales. (Black Friday sales are so weird and you have to be so careful to futz around to get the best deal. Oddly, sometimes that means buying *more* and paying less. In one store I was ordering from the total was $72 and with shipping and tax it would have been $89 but because of deals- free shipping and $25 off if you ordered $100 of stuff- once I added a $28 item the total was $83 after taxes. So weird but worth spending the time futzing about) I also did some Small Business Saturday shopping to support small places and got some neat stuff (a hefty, hard carved spoon for one, I can't wait to use it)

Have two weeks of recthething recs (tumblr art from Dracula, MDZS, ACD Sherlock Holmes, and X-Files and assorted AO3 things from BtVS/Angel, MDZS and Under the Skin)

Dracula
- Howdy y'all, I'm Quincey Morris and this is my friend Jonathan Harker, welcome to our unboxing video (hilarious)

MDZS/The Untamed
- sun and moon themed set of portraits (gorgeous WWX and LWJ sketches)

Sherlock Holmes - ACD
- Forever, if you are amenable (wonderful expressions and colors on this)

X-Files
- a tiny space scully I drew before bed (love Scully's smile in this)

AO3 things:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel: The Series
[FANART] The Crochet Buffyverse! by girlpire
Summary: This post is for my crochet versions of the characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series. I'll be doing a bunch of them, so I'll add chapters as I make new dolls. Chapter 1: Illyria (and her pet), 2004; Chapter 2: punk!Spike, 1977; Chapter 3: wizard!Giles, 2000; Chapter 4: Randy Giles, 2001; Chapter 5: Life of the Party Lorne, 2003. (all are utterly amazingly done, there's also links to see each of the amigurumi dolls on tumblr)

MDZS/The Untamed
On Little Cat Feet by deliciousblizzardshark (29k, locked to archive)
Summary Snippet: Wei Wuxian accidentally turns into a cat. Lan Qiren unknowingly adopts him. (LWJ's POV of this is absolutely hilarious as his very proper, always hated pets and mess etc uncle adopts a cat)

Under the Skin
UTS Advent Calendar 2025 by michinarty
Summary: Christmas is coming so let's wait for it with a fanart a day! This is just a collection of small ideas and the advent calendar was a good excuse to turn them into little doodles. So enjoy the fluff (new chapter/work added daily, also being posted to tumblr via this tag, absolutely adorable)

Hope all of you are doing well! :)

While I will probably never be able to divest myself from google completely, I'm thinking of trying to start shifting some things off google (and also juno, I have an ancient juno email acct I really need to move away from) so I turn to my brilliant friends to ask what you all use. I had heard tons of good things about proton (both its mail and docs) but just read it is possibly wishy-washy on AI so am not as sure about it. I've also heard good things about thunderbird and one or two places suggested tuta.

Anyone use one of these or have opinions? Are there others I have missed? (GMX used to be suggested but I haven't seen it mentioned recently?) Besides google's well, everything, I am sick and tired of having to turn off its AI "features" every few weeks/months every time they push a new update/product. I loathe all things AI it is just an annoying scourge that is *everywhere*.

I mostly want just reliable email that can be accessed via a browser webpage without having to download anything. If I can also access it on my phone via an app or browser there, great, but that is less important. Free is ideal, although I guess I'll consider a one time purchase if it's not too bad and is for a well established, reliable company. I do like googledocs and plan on moving away from that eventually but for now just starting to establish a new email would be a good step.

Livejournal is down today when I use firefox but if I try in another browser it seems to load (I have Edge on this laptop but only because it came installed and I used it to DL firefox, I haven't signed into anything on it). I even tried turning off uBlockOrigin and it still wouldn't work on firefox. I wonder if firefox tweaked its settings or something, one of the things that kicked off my new email client search was juno being weird on firefox. SIGH. I did check and my firefox is up to date. (The 'is it down right now' sites seem mixed on if LJ is down for everyone or not so I guess there is an actual issue. I barely use LJ anymore but still, twas my fannish home for a bit, I hope it doesn't go down for good)

I managed to find things to post to recthething the past two weeks (behold! tumblr art for Batman, DMBJ/Lost Tomb, MDZS/Untamed, Sherlock, SPN, Superman, and X-Men):

Batman
- Yapping on a random rooftop until sunrise. (really great Dick and Tim art)

DMBJ/Lost Tomb:
- "Next time, can we not come to such a cold place?" (gorgeous artist interpretation of the finale scene in Mystery of The Abyss, the Heihua Russia adventure tease)
- Clair-Obscur also on AO3 here Summary: Summary: Xie Yuchen is kidnapped. Hei Xiazi comes to the rescue... As his lift. (wonderful, and wonderfully detailed, B&W wordless Heihua comic)

MDZS/The Untamed
- Happy radish family! (adorable WWX, WN and a-Yuan during the burial mounds settlement days)

Sherlock
- Bleak (sherlock in the rain, love it)

Superman
- Sunshine Boy (this is one of my favorite Clark fanarts I have ever seen)

X-Men
- Halloween at the x mansion but it’s just everyone wearing starfleet uniforms. Charles does Not think it’s funny. (absolutely hilarious but the bonus is just *chef's kiss*)

I've been seeing articles and comments about both a White Collar and Stargate reboot possibly happening. The White Collar one seems like it's mostly rumor and hopeful folks rehashing comments made a few years ago (or, there's nothing specific behind the chatter at least) but Amazon/MGM has actually greenlit a Stargate project with a showrunner who had been involved with SGA so that might be something. (I am not entirely sure stargate can work in today's world/climate considering the military push and 'ancient aliens' conspiracy theories but still, I loved SG1/SGA back in the day so I guess I am cautiously optimistic?)