Dracula

Jul. 26th, 2025 11:16 am
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Dracula by Bram Stoker

The original. An epistolary novel starting with a young man going on a lawyer's behalf to Transylvania and discovering much trouble there, followed by increasing horrors.

Pickle de Gallo

Jul. 26th, 2025 07:49 am
nverland: (Cooking)
[personal profile] nverland posting in [community profile] creative_cooks
image host

Pickle de Gallo
Prep Time 25 minutes Additional Time 30 minutes Total Time 55 minutes Servings 6 servings

Ingredients

6 dill pickles finely diced
1 bell pepper finely diced (choose red, orange, or yellow)
1 small red onion finely diced
1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
3 tablespoons fresh cilantro chopped
1 tablespoon pickle brine
salt and pepper to taste (optional)

Instructions

Add the dill pickles, bell pepper, and red onion to a mixing bowl.
Stir in the sriracha. Start with 1 teaspoon and adjust to taste if you like more heat.
Add the chopped cilantro and pickle brine.
Gently mix everything together.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to let the flavors come together.
Serve chilled! Use it as a topping for grilled meats, a zesty taco companion, or enjoy it with tortilla chips.

Notes

This Pickle de Gallo recipe makes 1½ to 2 cups
Serve it with chips, on burgers, tacos, wraps, or grilled meats
For a low-sodium version, rinse the pickles before chopping
Refrigerate any leftovers in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Do not freeze.

Speak Up Saturday

Jul. 26th, 2025 02:04 pm
feurioo: (Default)
[personal profile] feurioo posting in [community profile] tv_talk
Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?
liminalovertea: An overhead view of an open book next to a cup of tea. (book)
[personal profile] liminalovertea
"The movie/TV show is based on a book/comic!"

This has, historically, been an indication of quality for me when it comes to visual media. At first, it implies that the people who made it actually had to read the material, or had a meticulously-crafted storyboard already in the form of sequential art.

But time and time again, I find myself preferring the original book to the visual media.

Read more... )

Lore (Grey Falls): Isolation

Jul. 25th, 2025 05:22 pm
liminalovertea: pnw road (pnw road)
[personal profile] liminalovertea
The land that Grey Falls was built on exists in a pocket dimension with intermittent access to the rest of the world, heavily dependent on natural cycles and the will of an ancient entity that rules over the dimension, whom the denizens worship in exchange for power and supernatural ability.

Read more... )

Tasha Suri's Burning Kingdoms Trilogy

Jul. 25th, 2025 04:29 pm
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
[personal profile] chestnut_pod posting in [community profile] fffriday
The Jasmine Throne, The Oleander Sword, and The Lotus Empire

The Burning Kingdoms is an ambitious high-fantasy saga set in an India-inspired secondary world, in which an orphan priestess from an oppressed client state seeking personal and national independence, and the disgraced princess seeking support for her rebellion against her insane brother the emperor, must make common cause. This is a proper epic fantasy with court politics, battles, a doomed (or is it?) romance, dozens of side characters, multiple POVs, the lot.

There is much to like here, though I don’t think it all fully pays off in the end. In part, this is because, in my opinion, the most interesting, developed, and unique character is actually neither Priya (priestess) or Malini (princess), the nominal joint protagonists, but Bhumika, who was herself a priestess in Priya’s order, but during the final submission of their state, married into the new governing nobility. She has a kind of bone-deep pragmatism which expresses itself both in mercilessness and in mercy, and Suri maps her journey over the trilogy towards becoming a leader for a world in which all sides are able to live together with a precise, insightful hand. Meanwhile, as individuals, Priya and Malini have great moments, and their individual storylines (which spend a lot of time apart) are quite convincing as stories and as psychological portraits, but their relationship, which is nominally the core of the series, gets less persuasive with every book. Malini especially gets increasingly flattened as the series goes on, because she has to be a genius commander/coldhearted empress type while also hitting some pretty strained romance beats, and that doesn’t fit together well, particularly compared to Priya, who has more narrative space to grow without messing up the plot-engine, and Bhumika, who basically has the hero’s journey. The whole thing felt like it got a little less expansive with each book, like Suri had bitten off more than she could chew.

However, what she did manage was great. As its own thing, The Jasmine Throne is an enormously successful introductory novel for the trilogy. I loved the way religion exists in this world and in the story. You could say Malini is an atheist or anti-theist, even, while Priya and Bhumika have far more complicated relationships to their gods and the role religion can play as a tool of nationalism and in-group solidarity. Suri takes religious ritual and belief seriously in a way that is rare in SFF, and in that seriousness, she manages to use it to drive a fantastic set of emotional journeys and plot elements. You also get to see so many parts and aspects of this rich world, all described very beautifully, and while I can see how it would be confusing, I enjoy the multiple POVs scattered throughout the book which take us, sometimes very briefly, into the heads of many significant and insignificant individuals throughout the empire.

I am sad that it didn’t quite soar, but it was definitely worth the read.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 9

Jul. 25th, 2025 05:53 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 9 by Kanehito Yamada

Adventures continue. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes

Read more... )

2025 Candidate Q&A and Chat Round Up

Jul. 25th, 2025 03:27 pm
[syndicated profile] ao3_news_feed

Organization for Transformative Works: Election News

The election season is in full swing! As part of the election season, we have a chat with our candidates coming up soon. You can also find links to the candidates' answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.

Chats

There will be one public chat with all three candidates that will last 90 minutes. Chats will take place in our public chatroom (Discord).
It is scheduled for:

During this chat, chat attendees will have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted for the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to finish them all.

We hope that you can join us for this chat!

Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat begins.

Read on to learn more about using Discord.

  • On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name.
  • Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.
  • There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.
    • General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
    • Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
    • Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion.

Q&A

When we posted the Board candidates’ bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We have already posted candidate answers to Q&A questions.

To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:


The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Sunshine Revival Challenge #7

Jul. 25th, 2025 03:25 pm
pauraque: Scully smiling (xf scully)
[personal profile] pauraque
[community profile] sunshine_revival's final challenge is:
The Ferris Wheel
Journaling: Life in fandom goes through ups and downs. Reminisce about the "wild ride" of your time in fandom or in other online communities.
Creative: Create an image or a photo with the theme "let's go for a ride".

Hoo boy, that is a spicy journaling prompt! I'm sure I've talked about my fandom experiences many times, but newer friends may not have heard it, so we can go again.

My first fandom experience, for a loose definition of fandom, was when I used to gather with friends every week to watch and discuss the new episode of X-Files. We were 12, so our insights probably weren't that deep, but it was a start. It was through one of those friends that I found out about online fandom, which at the time was mostly conducted on mailing lists and Usenet (which, if you're not familiar, functioned much like Reddit, in that it was divided into user-created forums each centered on a topic, with atmospheres ranging from "pleasant discussion group" to "dumpster inferno").

Through most of my teen years I lurked in fandom spaces, primarily X-Files and Star Trek. I was about 18 when I actually started participating in discussions and posting fic. I made some great friends in X-Files fandom, but within a couple of years the show ended and many people started to move on, and the place a lot of them moved to was Harry Potter fandom, primarily on LiveJournal.

The early to mid 2000s on LJ were definitely the "wild ride" segment of my fandom life. The fandom community was extremely active and emotionally intense, and in trying to match that energy I ended up doing way too much, taking on more projects and moderation duties than I should have, and getting more invested in them than was rational or healthy. I know a lot of people have nostalgia for that era, but for me it was a time when my mental health was bad and fandom wasn't helping. I did make friends, but I was having a hard time telling the difference between real friends and people who were exploiting me or treating me like a fanworks vending machine. (People complain now about those who see fellow fans as "content creators," but I can assure you some fans developed that attitude well in advance of us having that label for it.) Unsurprisingly, I burned out and ended up dropping all my obligations and quitting fandom cold turkey for about three years.

Eventually I came back and learned to take a more thoughtful approach. Since then I've been able to come and go from different fandoms, participating only if I have the desire and the energy, and taking a break if it's not fun. That's summarizing in a sentence what was (and is) a years-long learning process that's not limited to fandom. Fandom is just one of the areas where I was doing and investing too much, but it's been a good place for me to practice not overcommitting because the temptation is always there.

I really appreciate DW as a place where fannish and non-fannish discussions can mingle, and people can talk about their interests and projects without pressure for everybody to focus on one thing or meet expectations of productivity. I see people having fun in fandom here, and that's great, and I see people just talking about their lives, and that's also great. I don't want a wild ride; a nice stroll in the park with friends is just fine with me.

(no subject)

Jul. 24th, 2025 08:34 pm
chocolatefrogs: (7 © Fawns)
[personal profile] chocolatefrogs posting in [community profile] addme_fandom
Name: Amber
Age group: 40's
Country: USA
Subscription/Access Policy: I'm fine with anyone one, just let me know before you add me. I'd prefer 18+ with same interests or a few.

Fannish Interests: Cosplay, conventions, charity work, fanfiction, drawing.
I like to post about: My health, photos I take, my daily life, fandoms, movie/show reviews, my church/God (I got back into religion not to long ago), my friends and what were up to, my fanclubs and what were up to.
About Me/Other Info: I'm a 8 open heart surgery patient and pacemaker surgery to my name along with other health issues. I'm introvert. I'm a Hufflepuff. Theme Park pass holder for Universal Hollywood and Disneyland. I collect popcorn buckets and fandom stuff. I love to cosplay and Disneybound. Also love doing Disney markets and game nights. I'm obsessed with reading/painting and doing movie/show binges. Love to attend conventions and sometimes work them. I also love being in my Star Trek clubs (2) and my Ghosbusters club. I'm a huge fan of Fall, Halloween. I hate the heat/summer.

Please no racism, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-science, fatphobia, Trump supports.

Other Fandoms: White Collar, Criminal Minds and NCIS.
OTPs and Ships: Way to many but to start: Kirk/Spock, Kirk/McCoy, Kirk/Uhura, Spock/Uhura, Number One/Pike, Picard/Q, Picard/Riker, Bashir/Garak, Janeway/Chakotay, Janeway/Paris, Paris/Torres, Chakotay/Paris, Paris/Kim, Archer/Tucker, Archer/T'Pol/Tucker, Archer/T'Pol, Archer/Shran, Trip/Reed, Ten/Donna, Ten/Rose, Amidala/Kenobi, Amidala/Skywalker, Kenobi/Skywalker, Kenobi/Sabé, Organa/Solo, Kent/Luthor, Kent/Lang, Queen/Kent, Barry/Queen, Barry/Snow, Snart/Barry, Barry/Oliver/Kara, Ramon/Lisa Snart, Eddie Thawne/Barry, Barry/Spivot, Queen/Merlyn, Harper/Thea Queen, Barry/Kara Danvers, Bonnie/Damon, Elena/Stefan, Elena/Damon, Klaus /Caroline, Elena /Elijah, Magnus/Alec, Simon/Raphael. SO many more.

Favorite Movies: Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of The Rings/Superman, Batman, Deadpool, X-Men, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Back to The Future, Fast and The Furious, Jurassic Park/World, Ghosbusters,
TV Shows: Star Trek, 9-1-1, 9-1-1 Lone Star, Shadowhunters, Teen Wolf, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Psych, Teen Wolf, Pokémon, Doctor Who, Arrow, The Flash, Superman & Lois, Angel, Buffy, Torchwood.
Books: Harry Potter, House of Night, The Vampire Diaries, Percy Jackson, The Mortal Instruments.
Music: Country, oldies, opera (some). Luke Bryan, Jelly Roll, Alan Jackson, George Straight, Garth Brooks, LeeAnn Rhimes, Shania Twain, Backstreet Boys, NSync, Linkin Park, Pentatoix, Evanescence, Josh Groban, Ed Sherran, P!nk, Eminem.
Games:
Comics/Anime/Misc: Pokemon, Digimon and Card Captor Sakura.
[syndicated profile] dakinkmeme_filled_feed

Posted by dragonage_kink

Since Tarquin has absolutely Abysmal luck, it goes without saying that keeping tabs on Magister Aloysius does not go at all to plan. Instead, Tarquin finds himself caught like a mouse in a trap... luckily, he has "friends" in high places.

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68007026

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