Furosshu

I'm impatiently waiting for gdgdbaby's annual Holiday Love Meme (and yes I'm going to provide the directory - it's gonna be the sixth year in a row ♥ I just love making lists ok).

There's also holiday_wishes opening soon; I don't even know what I'd ask for but I am excited about finding wishes on people's lists that I can fulfill.

And of course a new round of snowflake_challenge coming soon - not sure I have the will or energy to participate, but it's often interesting to read other people's replies.

*hectically runs by to throw some flyers onto your desk*

📃 Twitter Exodus Friending Meme @ xancredible's

📃 The Sad Bastard Cookbook is out. I do believe there is a Sad Bastard in all of us, and "Food you can make so you don't die" is a tagline that sets the bar comfortingly low. This cookbook will not make you feel guilty. When you say you were too tired to buy anything but three packs of ramen noodles, this cookbook nods understandingly and literally opens with ramen noodle recipes right out of the gate. It knows that on some days we can at maximum Eat a Dill Pickle Out of the Jar While Standing in Front of the Fridge (p. 91). It's also very funny and actually helpful.

📃 fangirlishness wrote a Dreamwidth userscript that makes working with DW's image gallery a little easier, by grabbing all the image embed codes at once.

📃 sixbeforelunch is asking for disability blog recs.

📃 holiday_wishes has re-opened its gates on November 15th. Post a wishlist! It's super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Did you know that Dreamwidth has a Stats Page? You get a statistic, and you get a statistic, and you, and YOU!

The sign-ups for hannigramtropefest start on May 7th - see here for more details.

Random community I had no idea existed: podfic_calendar. So basically a fandomcalendar but for podfic.

Older question (back in February) about recs organization, asked by doranwen in fictional_fans: "If you're looking through a recs list for a fandom, one which is more than just a tiny handful of fics, how do you want to see the fics ordered?"

Two former LJ-only communities that I completely missed moving to Dreamwidth for good: fail_fandomanon (official move announcement dating back to 2014, wow) and therealljidol which moved this month. (I did feel tempted sometimes to sign up for an Idol contest, but let's be real: I can't finish things at my best of times, much less write on command. So I'll just wistfully stare at the participants being creative.)

We made it through another week! I'm proud of us. Now, let's get through this one.

3weeks4dreamwidth is celebrating Dreamwidth's anniversary!
Come join in for fun, memes, activities, and more ♥

Man, is that the cutest banner illustration or what.

A bit of background for people who haven't been around during previous rounds: Three Weeks For Dreamwidth (sometimes shortened to 3w4dw) is an annual activity fest where you post some or all of your content exclusively to Dreamwidth for three weeks, as a way to promote and enrich the Dreamwidth community and stimulate discussion and connection taking place on Dreamwidth. There are no rules for what the content must be, you're invited to come up with some fun activities on your own if you like, and after the three weeks you are allowed to repost that content elsewhere. Just, like, from April 25th to May 15th it's Dreamwidth Party Time, by DW users for DW users. :)

The initial community, three_weeks_for_dw, was created in 2010 but had activity drop off and the admin didn't respond to messages. As per Dreamwidth's TOS they only transfer community ownership (i.e. admin rights) to someone else if there's some dire circumstances requiring action, such as spamming, abuse, or other TOS violations. An admin simply vanishing into the ether does not qualify, so that's why we now have the new community 3weeks4dreamwidth, under new management. That community will be the info hub to let people know what you posted, invite them for activities, or check out what other users have done.

3w4dw also has its own feed on the Latest Things page (where new public posts show up), so you can take a gander to see people's creativity pour out more or less in real time! All you need to do to make your own entries show up is adding one or more of the recognised tags:
three weeks for dreamwidth
threeweeks
three_weeks_for_dw
3w4dw

Not due to any friending meme (tho I'll get to the current one soon-ish, I guess,) but people I have seen pop up a lot in comments on friends' posts / interesting meta entries / Snowflake Challenges and whatnot, and also people I remember from the LJ days of old (it's so nice to see that many of us are still here!) ... so yeah, a kind of nostalgia does play a part in this. And the feeling that I want to do more, have more, contribute more because DW is... it's home, but there's the acute sense of missing things, of not having what I used to have in ways of community or discussion. Some of you have talked about similar feelings, I think you'll understand.

I hope you'll forgive me that I'm not introducing myself to people individually, that task feels too much right now. I do have a sticky entry with info and recently updated interests and a "best of" portfolio, I think you'll find enough to decide whether you want to reciprocate. Anything else you need to know, leave a comment and I'll answer gladly.

I'm bringing back the flower-shaped bullet points, baby
(Because it's winter but Oscar the purple cape rain daisy decided not to give a shit and bloom all year round)

❀ By now I've whined a few times about missing the meta discussions that we had on Dreamwidth in ye olden tymes, so it's only fair when I also point out that a meta comm does exist that is still alive: meta_warehouse. I might have mentioned it before but this is the official PSA. This is a meta comm. You can submit your posts there, or link to them. You can link to other people's posts (if they don't mind that sort of thing, and I, for one, absolutely don't: you may submit my meta anywhere you see fit.) Do it. Be bold. Be absolutely shameless in your self-linkage. Do it for meta_warehouse. Do it for us. Do it for Dreamwidth. *trumpets are blaring in the distance, a flag with the Dreamwidth sheep symbol painted in glitter gets slowly hoisted into the air*

❀ Also, there's a multifandom meta newsletter on Tumblr, at an account called "fandomrandomfandom", and yourlibrarian created a DW feed for it that you can subscribe to: random_fandom_meta_feed. You can also send up to 3 links to the FRF mods through a convenient Google form (you need to give an email address though.)

❀ I made some valuable progress on the fannish front:
a) I finally commented on a gift fic that I received for last year's holiday_wishes (and the gifter was really gracious about it, whew!)
b) I've become more proactive about commenting on AO3 fics in general
c) I polished the set-up entries on my reccing community and set them to public: what I like in fic (I call it "The Yays"), explanation of my tags system, and a quick intro. I also wrote an entry where I offer betareading services (mainly SPAG) and thanks to that I learned how to HTML-code mouseover text! That's several steps closer to opening the comm officially -- basically all I need is a template for the actual recs that I feel good with, and it's ready to go. The interesting part: apparently what held me back was the belief that I had to include a detailed list of my Do Not Wants/Pet Peeves/Squicks. Turns out I don't. I'm reccing my fanwork favourites, why would they include my squicks? And why would the person reading my recs need to know about Sir Not-Appearing-In-These-Recs? What bullshit.

❀ Might be of interest for people in Germany and some other European countries (Austria & Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg): there's a new streaming service called Sooner that got established in 2020 and is a German-French joint venture. It focuses on arthouse & independent cinema, as well as biographies, documentaries, and some European classics, and sees itself as a deliberate alternative to mainstream VOD services. They manage their portfolio through partnerships with film schools/universities and festivals. (And yes, they do have an LGBT section.) I signed up for the 14-day free trial, but I'm considering the switch to the standard subscription afterwards which, if you pay for a year in advance, would be 5 Euros per month. The reason I signed up was that I couldn't find Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone streaming anywhere else for a sensible price. The only disadvantage so far is that sometimes the german dub is hardcoded into the movie and subtitles aren't the default. But they definitely have stuff you won't get elsewhere, because they pick it up directly from film festivals like Cannes, Sundance, or Berlinale.

❀ Music!

• I've been on a bit of a Meat Beat Manifesto kick recently, mainly tracks from the 1996 double album "Subliminal Sandwich". I only knew them from the 1999 Blair Witch soundtrack which featured She's Unreal, but their paranoia-infused blend of Trip Hop, Downtempo and whatever else electronica they feel like including, really struck a chord with me in the times we live in. The best songs, I feel, are smooth and uneasy at the same time. The urban darkness of Phone Calls From The Dead, or the sinister ASMR of Transmission (which is fascinating on another level because you can experience the rhythmic structure of the song differently depending on whether you put the warbling sample on 3/4 or 4/4, and I've noticed that sometimes my brain switches in the middle.) The biggest asset is, of course, their truly excellent cover of the 1988 noise-punk anthem "Asbestos Lead Asbestos" by World Domination Enterprises, and those two versions are literally the reason that I created music_twins. Compare and enjoy!

• California-based solo artist AURAGRAPH put a new album out this month, and Metamerism is the best you could ask for when it comes to vaporwave-infused 80s pop/electronica instrumentals. Stylish as fuck. Did not have quite enough money for the LP but I did buy the tape.

• I've been absolutely intrigued by this special take of Boards of Canada's "Happy Cycling" from a 1998 Peel Session broadcast that was never included on the official session album. The unsettling choir is put more into the foreground, and it's just so beautifully eerie with an overlay of softness near the end. Love it.

• I know that Minutemen's acoustic track Cohesion (from their 1984 album "Double Nickels On The Dime") often gets made fun of as "the only punk song even your grandma would like," but it's simply really good.

• I've also listened to The Dead Texan a lot (by the band The Dead Texan), from 2004. It has string sections to die for. It's filled with the kind of sadness that you might feel on a very crisp winter morning. The first few minutes of "Glen's Goo" especially reach right for your solar plexus to squeeze the heart. The enigmatically named "When I See Scissors I Can't Help but Think of You" is a ghost story as abstract art installation. And "Beatrice Part 2" is a perfect aural sunrise. Sublime.

That's it from me today! I've successfully distracted my brain from screaming for a bit, and now I'm tired enough that I can hopefully fall asleep quickly. Loser fist bump! *weakly raises fist*

yessss holiday_wishes is opening soon (Nov 15th)

In less good news, fandomgiftbox is dead in the water, in the same year I first decided to sign up for it. (Nice.) No update since June and mods don't reply to comments. However, a few participants have taken to posting their fills in comments to the June update, and as there's no official hub to collect them, I hope more people will see it and find their gift or link to what they have created.

You guys, I just wanted to say that you make me happy. I like seeing you get excited about things, and sharing your woes, and figuring out difficult stuff, and posting pictures or poetry or linkspams or just dumping out some brain contents and calling it a day (it's a valid mood). And it's making me happy to see you update, period, because it means you're still there, and there enough to update, which is good even when the rest of the world is a dumpster fire. So yeah, thanks for being there. You're awesome.

Have sligthly updated my Distractions sticky with a few more songs, over 30 free movie screenplays courtesy of IndieWire, and a link to the Generation Kill rewatch that is going to happen during April at heavyartillery.

Legendary musician & producer Gudrun Gut created an all-female Spotify playlist featuring a wide variety of styles and ages. It should have something for everyone—give it a listen!

thrillingdetectivetales's Fuck Yeah Friday! entry is a recommendation of the 2005 Wes Craven horror movie Cursed, which will forever be remembered as That Movie Where A Werewolf Flips You Off Angrily. Even if you're not interested in werewolves, check out that screencap. It is glorious.