daemonluna

Shed freak and organ hats

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 06:40:14 GMT

LJ icons came up recently in conversation in another fannish space, which had me digging up the Tumblr post I made a few years ago about the shed freak icons, and I thought I'd preserve it here for posterity as well.

A million years ago on the internet (or maybe circa 2003-2005) icons for your Livejournal account were a THING. You could have multiple icons for your account (how many varied, and at one point became a paid thing). There were whole conversations had by icon in the comments. In-jokes thrived and flourished. You could pack a whole lot in a 100x100 pixel square.

A million years ago off the internet, my lovely wife and our good friendzulu were critiquing stories for their writers’ group. And there was a story by a newbie writer with a whole lotta attitude that was just… bad. The kind of badness that verges on incomprehensible.

“What does this even mean, ‘don’t tell so-and-so, shed freak?’“ Barb said plaintively. “What’s a shed freak?”

It was, of course, just a case of a missing apostrophe. She’d freak, not shed freak. But by then, it was too late. Shed freak had become a Thing.

All this goes to explain why I have just found an entire folder of shed freak icons buried in the depths of my hard drive, in a microcosm of fandoms we were part of at the moment.

Due South

Grey’s Anatomy

Hard Core Logo

Stargate: Atlantis

This Is Wonderland

X-Files

There’s a whole other series about the organ hat party, but that’s a story for another time.

*
And now, the organ hat story, as relayed on the fanbinding server a few nights ago.

It has the same genesis as Zulu's "Five Times The Big Game Hunters Were Really Gay" Boa vs Python fic, aka, something shouted and misheard from the kitchen to the living room in our small but inconveniently laid out apartment at the time. Only this time, it wasn't movie characters, and Big Gay Hunters for Big Game Hunters. No, it was more mundane, at least to start.

It was December, and we'd been invited to a holiday party by one of my (not yet) wife's coworkers. "What are you wearing to Barb and Pat's party?" I called out into the living room.

"... to what?"

"Tomorrow night? The Christmas party?"

"I thought you said ORGAN HAT party!"

Ridiculousness ensued, and Zulu and Barb riffed off each other until Barb was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe, and gasped out "I hurt my pancreas! Now what will I wear to the organ hat party?"

So we immortalized it in LJ icons. Which I wonder if I can find...

GUESS WHAT.

I found a folder. Labelled shed freaks and organ hats.

And that is the tale of the organ hats.

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Bandwagon jumping, or, Heated Rivalry and me

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 03:36:14 GMT

I have succumbed. They got me too, the gay hockey boys. I mini-binged Heated Rivalry mid-January. I was planning on eventually watching it, but it hit a tipping point of recommendations from friends with wildly disparate tastes, just all of a sudden exploding in an unprecedented way into the mainstream media, and me just being in the mood to watch it.

Also, one of my friends had fallen hard early on, and had been sending me a steady steam of Instagram posts ever since, and suddenly my Instagram feed decided I must want to see ALL the videos of libraries re-enacting the cottage scene with storytime puppets. ("Don't go to Amazon... come to my library!") In this case, the algorithm was not wrong.

I texted said friend a picture of my laptop screen with the opening scene on it. Her response: "Should... I drive down and watch it with you??" Me: YES. Except that it's 8:30 pm on a Wed night, and you're five hours away.

One of my coworkers was also hooked (is still hooked) and started trying to get as many of the rest of us to watch it as possible, with about a 2/3 success rate. Other coworker was on the fence, and having trouble getting past eps 1-2 because the sounds in the sex scenes embarrassed her too much. (Me: you could watch it on mute with closed captioned on. Her: That is much better than my current solution of fast-forwarding and getting my sister to tell me what I missed.) She texted me a week later, "I WENT TO THE COTTAGE!!!" I kept recommending it to friends, only to discover that they'd already watched it.

The news continued to expand in weird and wonderful ways. The two leads were suddenly Olympic torch bearers. The Prime Minister was posing sexily with one of them at a Canadian media awards show, wearing the iconic Team Canada fleece from the show. The other lead was announced to be hosting an ep of SNL. The number of tourism sites, brands, and organizations name-dropping it on social media to varying degrees of awareness and success continues to amaze me.

I made Barb watch it. She humoured me but was lukewarm on it. (She wanted a b-plot where something happened besides the characters struggling with coming out.) I read the whole series of romance novels the show is based on, and consumed them like potato chips. (They are... fine. The first half of the series is obviously her first few books, but the heart is there, and she hits her stride around book 5, IMHO.) We both do agree though that Zulu would think that the TV series didn't have enough hockey in it. I have heard the show described as "It's the hockey scenes that fade to black," and that is not wrong.

And now I'm reading a ridiculous amount of fanfic, and marvelling in the right-time right-place lightning strike of the gay hockey show, and having some Feelings about the whole thing.

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Morning glories

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 04:43:10 GMT

The morning glories are blooming. It's just past the Labour Day long weekend, and they started a few days ago. I got them planted late again this year, well into June. I'm hoping for a slow, gentle fall so they all get a chance to flower.

Last year, right around this time, zulu was dying. We knew, over the long weekend, when the group chat went quiet, that it wasn't a good sign. I'd kept up a a steady stream of pet pictures and other small bits of news. As the summer went on, we had fewer responses from her, and were more likely to just get an emoji back. Morning glory flowers only bloom for a day. I started sending a picture of that morning's flowers to the group chat each day. (And cat pictures. Of course.) I don't know if anyone but me really cared about the morning glories, but it felt like something tangible to hold onto.

We knew things weren't good when bell mailed to set up a time for a video chat. A few days after the long weekend, we talked to them face to face, to get the news that they were moving zulu into hospice care the next day. It would be the last time we'd hear her voice. We knew it was coming, it just all went so much more quickly than expected. She died less than three weeks later.

And now the morning glories are blooming again, and even though they're my favourite flower and not hers, I'm still going to think of her every year.

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Spontaneous book review hour: The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 05:23:30 GMT

So! I have finished The Tomb of Dragons, third in the Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy by Katherine Addison. I continue to love the series immensely, and it was definitely a satisfying conclusion to the series, even though I would have loved more denouement and just a chance to roll around in the world and this particular series' vibes some more.

In a non-human world of goblins and elves, our protagonist, Thara Celehar, is a member of the clergy for one of the world's gods, and has the ability to read the thoughts of the dead for a short period after death. This has put him in a bureaucratic role as the Witness for the Dead in the city of Amalo (following the events of The Goblin Emperor, where he has a secondary role, but you don't need to have read it to follow this essentially spin-off series.)

He has pre-book trauma that still affects him very much and part of the appeal of the emotional arc of the whole series is watching him gradually make connections with other people. His day job, however, lends itself to a series of large and small mysteries popping up throughout the books. If someone you know dies in this world, you can go to the office of the Witness of The Dead and petition them to witness for the deceased, which might mean solving their murder, or answering a question of inheritance, or finding a crucial scone recipe. (Yes, that's right, this is functionally magic casefic, my favourite!)

Don't let my scone reference lead you astray though, this is not a cozy genre fantasy. Way too much trauma and death and realistic poverty going on here for that, but not in a grimdark way, because there is also humanity, and hope, and tea houses and opera. One of the things I really love about Katherine Addison's worldbuilding is how she creates the sense of a depth of history, trends, and living culture. (See aforementioned opera and tea.) Also, none of the different regions, religions, or cultures feel like something from our world with the serial numbers filed off--in some ways, it reminds me of how Becky Chambers manages to create alien species that are genuinely alien.

The third book picks up where The Grief of Stones left off, after Celehar has (spoiler! cliffhanger!) lost his ability to speak to the dead due to a run-in with a particularly nasty ancient spirit, and proceeds to political intrigue, an immense clerical task that definitely hits some competence kink notes, and a relationship arc that has people writing fix-its I don't personally feel the need for, but YMMV.

I will say that there are a lot of honourifics, names, and job titles in the world that just don't want to stick in my head, but I had the same stumbling block with The Goblin Emperor, and am glad I persisted, and also Addison does not really give you recaps when people from the previous books pop up again, but it usually comes out in context. I am glad I reread the first two books before starting the third one, but I'm a frequent rereader overall.

In terms of the relationship stuff, we know our main character is queer from the get-go (also: part of aforementioned past trauma), and I can see why people were expecting an endgame romance with Iäna Pel-Thenhior, but I really like the way it valued an intense, non-romantic realationship, and though I do wish guard captain Hanu Olgarezh had been introduced earlier, and we got more development of their relationship.

But I'm not sad at where the book ended, although I do want more now. It's been marketed as a trilogy, but I do hope she's going to do more with the world and characters, so fingers crossed! Anyhow, I did not intend to write an essay on the subject tonight, but it looks like it's spontaneous book review hour over here regardless.

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Binderary Let's Gooo...

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 05:55:30 GMT

It's February, and that means Binderary for Renegade Bookbinding Guild! Binderary is a month focusing on binding books and participating in workshops and lectures, where you set your own goals and challenge level. My goal this year is to reduce my textblock pile. (But... those are my emotional support textblocks!)

I started the month with the pile above, plus some more typesets that were either not folded, or not yet printed. Before the month started, I got the big sheets of decorative paper in my stash for endpapers all cut down, and I've got some new fancy silk thread for endbands this year.(More pics on Tumblr, I'm just too lazy to embed tonight.)

My goal is to finish off several books promised to other people, and to end the month with, at very least, a different set of emotional support textblocks than I started with. And yes, we're halfway through the month already, not quite sure how that happened, but at least I can promise you that pile has a slightly different composition than two weeks ago.

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New year, more soup

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 22:54:17 GMT

A quiet New Year's Eve here this year, but honestly, that's the usual. bell came down to visit, and we got back into watching Nirvana in Fire, and made hotpot for supper. I think the last time we had it was a couple years ago on vacation in the mountains when she and zulu came out to join us for a few days. We set an extra spot at the table for Zulu that night. It's easy to forget how physically exhausting grief is... the night after Bell went home, I think I slept for more than ten hours.

I had a good long stretch off work, but am back tomorrow. This is the first time in a couple years when I haven't set myself a major project while on vacation at home (get the basement cleared out for construction! ... deep-clean the main floor of the house post-construction! ... assemble a floor loom with no instructions!) and I still feel like I would have no trouble just hanging out at home for another week. But! A regular work week tomorrow means it's time to make! more! soup!

White Bean, Ham, and Greens Soup

2-3 carrots
an onion (and a couple cloves of garlic wouldn't be the worst)
2-3 stalks of celery
4-5 cups of chicken or ham stock
1 cup pre-cooked dried white beans or black-eyed beans, or a can of beans, or lentils
2-3 cups of greens (I used bok choy but kale or cabbage would be good too)
1 1/2 cups diced ham (sausage would be good too)
4-5 cups of chicken stock. Would also be good with a can of beer or cider, just add less stock.
Optional: a slog of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice (maybe a tablespoon?), bay leaf
Black pepper

Dice your onion (and possibly garlic), and start it browning in a bit of oil or if you're feeling ambitious, a bit of ham fat. Chop and add the carrot, and then the celery, and the ham. Add the beans and chicken stock, and a bay leaf if you have it. Simmer for about 15-20 min. Add the greens, cook for another 5 minutes or until they're done. Take out the bay leaf, add a bit of vinegar or lemon, add pepper and measure with your heart. Leave out the ham and use veggie stock if you want to go vegetarian, just be prepared to tinker with the recipe a bit for taste (I'd add a big scoop of miso and extra acid to add more flavour.)

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Liminal Zone Chicken Vegetable Soup and other recipes

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:16:58 GMT

Most Sundays, I'll rummage through the fridge and freezer and throw together a pot of soup for weekday lunches. I'll mention whatever I'm making in the fanbinding discord server sometimes, and someone inevitably asks for the recipe, so I've started occasionally writing things down. Here's this week's soup, and a few from the past month or so, mostly for easy linking reference later.

Liminal Zone Chicken Vegetable Soup

Half an onion
2-3 carrots
3-4 stalks of celery
1/3 cup of lentils
1/2 cup of corn
1-2 chicken breasts or equivalent
4-5 cups of chicken stock
A bay leaf
1 tsp dried parsley
Black pepper
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

If your chicken isn't cooked, cut it into bite-sized pieces and brown it first. Take it out of the pot. Put a little bit of olive oil or butter in the pot on medium heat. Dice the onion and carrot and celery into whatever bite-sized pieces you prefer. Add the onion, let it brown for a minute or two, add the carrot, give it another couple minutes, add the celery. (I add them as I chop them, in that order. Toss in a bay leaf if you want. Add the lentils, corn, chicken stock, dried parsley, and simmer for 15-20 minutes until the lentils are done. Add some black pepper (3-4 twists of the pepper grinder, I didn't measure) and a splash of apple cider vinegar at the end after turning off the heat but before serving.

To live up to the name, sub three stalks of wilting green onion from the bottom of the crisper drawer for the half onion, whatever is salvageable from the browning celery you bought a week before Christmas for the finite quantity of 3-4 stalks, and eat at 3:30 pm after sleeping in past ten and only grazing on nuts, chocolate, and potato chips earlier in the day, accompanied by toast with cream cheese and leftover cranberry sauce, before emerging blinking into the last half hour of daylight to go for a walk with a winter jacket thrown over top of your pajamas.

Panang Curry Soup

Like most of my soups, this is a use what's in the fridge/freezer/cupboard meal, and does not necessarily require all the ingredients below. Use what you've got and what you like, it's soup! Quantities and directions are approximate and assume general comfort with cooking, if anyone needs more specifics, let me know and I'm happy to provide.

INGREDIENTS:
Half an onion
2-3 stalks of celery
A carrot
3-4 tablespoons of panang curry paste
Can of coconut milk
2 cups chicken/vegetable stock, possibly an extra cup because this turned out pretty thick and I'm going to need to add more to the leftovers.
Block of tofu (I used medium-firm), and/or chicken, or shrimp, or chickpeas, or whatever protein you've got
Half a can each of: bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, baby corn
Handful of mushrooms (fresh, dried, whatever you've got)
Additional vegetables of your choice, I put in some leftover pieces of sweet potato, and would have added peppers and zucchini if I had them
One or two tomatoes if you want
Optional slog of Vietnamese fish sauce
Optional spoonful of peanut butter
Squeeze of lemon or lime juice
Peanuts and/or green onion on top

Except for the curry paste, coconut milk, and stock, everything else is mix and match to your tastes and what you have.

Dice and saute the onion, celery, and carrot in a bit of oil on medium heat. Cut up everything else into bite-sized pieces. If your protein is raw and needs cooking, add it now and cook it, but this would be an awesome place to toss in some leftovers. Add the curry paste, stir it around a bit for a few minutes, then add the coconut milk, stock, and the rest of the veggies and the tofu. I left the tomatoes out until the very end because I wanted them to not get stewed. Simmer for ten to fifteen minutes, taste, add extra flavouring as needed (fish sauce, citrus, etc). Add peanuts and green onion to your bowl as optional toppings. Would be excellent with rice noodles, or the noodles of your choice, or a bowl of rice. (Cook the noodles separately according to the package, add to your bowl and pour soup over top.)

Italian sausage, kale and potato soup

One medium onion
A large carrot or two small ones
3-4 stalks of celery
2 large Italian sausages, or 3-4 smaller ones
3-4 large thin-skinned yellow potatoes
a third of a cup of red lentils (optional)
A bunch of kale (or spinach)
A cup of green beans, only because it is winter and I am craving green vegetables
A bay leaf
A tablespoon of dried oregano
Half a tablespoon of dried parsley
5-6 cups of chicken stock
A parmesan cheese rind (optional but very delicious)
A quarter cup of grated parmesan
Lemon juice and pepper to taste

Chop up the sausage, or pull it out of the casing and crumble it into the pot. Saute for a few minutes on medium heat. Dice the onion and carrot and celery into whatever bite-sized pieces you prefer. When it starts to hold its shape, drain off the grease if there's a lot of it, or add a little bit of olive oil if there's not much. Add the onion, let it brown for a minute or two, add the carrot, give it another couple minutes, add the celery. Chop up your potatoes. If the bottom of the pot starts to get brown, add a spoonful of water and scrape all that delicious flavour back into the mix. Add a bay leaf, lentils if you want (they disappear into the soup, I add them for extra protein and to thicken things a little bit), add the potatoes and chicken stock, the dried herbs, the parmesan rind if you've got it (or a thumb-sized hunk of hard parmesan if you have a block without a rind, but don't worry if you don't). Simmer for about twenty minutes, until the potato's done. Chop up the beans if they need it, rinse the kale well, and add them both in the last five minutes. If you're using spinach instead, add it at the very end and just stir in before serving and let the residual heat wilt it. Stir in about a quarter cup of grated parmesan. Turn off the heat, add a splash of lemon juice and a bit of pepper, eat! Put a bit more parmesan in your bowl for extra cheesiness.

Cheddar-Potato-Chive Soup

2-3 carrots
an onion
2-3 stalks of celery
3-4 medium sized baked potatoes (maybe start with three)
a tablespoon of chopped chives
half a tablespoon of dried parsley
one or two bay leaves
a third of a cup of red lentils
I didn't add garlic, but a clove or two would be good
a cup of grated cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste
4-5 cups of chicken stock. Would also be good with a can of beer or cider, just add less stock.
Optional: a slog of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice (maybe a tablespoon?)
Optional: Vietnamese fish sauce

Dice and sautee the carrots, celery, and onion. Sautee in a bit of olive oil for 2-3 minutes. (I add onion, cook it while I dice the carrot, add the carrot, dice the celery, leave it a couple minutes, and that usually does it.) Add the lentils and bay leaves, stir in with the veggies, and add the chicken stock. Add the potatoes, chopped up into blendable pieces. I used leftover pre-baked potatoes, but from raw, you could just grate it into the soup. It is up to you if you leave the skin on or not. Add the chives now if they're dried, or wait until the last 5-10 minutes if they're fresh. Simmer for about twenty minutes. When the lentils are soft, take out the bay leaves, and blend with a stick immersion blender. If you don't have one, mash everything with a potato masher until the potato, at least, is blended in. Grate the cheese. Turn the heat down to low, and add your cheese a small handful at a time while stirring. Add lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and a slog of fish sauce if you have it and like it.

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Book series rec: Flavia deLuce mysteries by Alan Bradley

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 06:33:11 GMT

Okay, I guess I just needed to binge four mystery novels in a row today. Rereading needs happens when a new book comes out five years after the last one, though I didn't go all the way back to the beginning. The Flavia deLuce series by Alan Bradley takes place in early 1950's England, and is about an eleven year old girl obsessed with chemistry in general and poisons in particular. Fortunately, she lives in a crumbling family manor where one of her ancestors had a full chemistry lab in one of the abandoned wings.

Our heroine, Flavia, could easily have come off as annoyingly twee and precocious, but the author has captured her SO WELL as a deeply weird child, and her point of view is unerring about three-quarters of the time, and the other quarter comes from the fact that she is eleven and oblivious.

Her family consists of two older sisters who torment her in a very realistic older-sister way (they tried to convince her as a small child that she was a changeling goblin and the real Flavia was away with the fairies), a distant but well-meaning father who's still affected by his time in a POW camp, and his father's manservant, who was with him in said camp, and has stayed on with the family and keeps everything running despite his own trauma and scars.

Flavia is DELIGHTED every time she stumbles across a dead body, which happens regularly, because murder mystery series, and is fascinated by the forensic science of it all. This is a child who decides that she's going to try to trap Santa by concocting her own birdlime and smearing it around the top of the chimney. There's the expected cast of eccentric characters, and her prickly relationship with her sisters does evolve and grow a bit over the series. It's clear they do love each other even when they don't like each other.

I thought the series was over with book 10, but book 11 just came out, and there's another one coming in 2025. So, today I lay on the couch and read, and made a pot of hot and sour soup.I finally found dried lily buds at the Asian market, one of the less common ingredients. Not a bad way to spend a long weekend Sunday, all in all.

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Scenes from a marriage, October edition

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 17:53:40 GMT

Barb: Do... you want to go to Spirit of Halloween?

Me: Any reason in particular?

Barb: Well, I don't think we've ever been to one....

Me: So, like a field trip, since we were going to run other errands? Just to observe?

Barb: Yes! ... and also maybe to buy chains.

Me: Okay, but why chains? Are you going to cosplay as Wen Ning?

Barb: Just... to have! You know, put out on the ground. For spooky for the trick or treaters! Perhaps to suggest that things could still go badly.

Me: Okay, what time did you want to go?

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Technical skills

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:44:22 GMT

Sometimes knowing a craft means you can't unsee something. (Like that episode of Call The Midwife where they knit a blanket, but the finished product was VERY OBVIOUSLY crocheted.) And sometimes I just want to complain about something a little bit without doing it in an easily rebloggable forum.

This is a visually stunning piece of art. Except there's one tiny thing. It's backwards. The loom is backwards. The unwoven warp is what's pulled off the back and spooled out. The woven cloth collects at the front of the loom. You can tell from the beater bar. It is absolutely functionally flipped if you want the effect of someone undoing their work. Technically, you could keep on weaving on it right now, pulling those threads in. It is BACKWARDS.

That's it, that is all.

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Zulu

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 16:38:27 GMT

What do you say after losing a friend whose life's orbit has been entwined with yours for more than twenty years? To say zulu was smart, and funny, and down to earth and kind is a vast understatement. She was a writer and a storyteller with a huge love and talent for the written word (so much she got a PhD in creative writing). She had the best, dorkiest sense of humour, and a wicked sense of comedic and dramatic timing. She loved her wife and son, her whole family, and the outdoors immensely.

We met because Barb joined the speculative fiction writing group that Zulu and her mom both belonged to, and crossed into each others' lives at just the right time. She threw a coming-out party within the first six months we knew each other. "Guys," she said, "this isn't just a regular party, I invited you all over to tell you... I'm gay." "Yes," we said. "We know, and this is why we got you this card, and we all signed it." (Except for one friend, our token straight guy, who said helplessly, "I didn't know!") Zulu was not subtle. She gave a sex ed crash course to everyone at the back of the bus on a band trip in junior high by doing a dramatic reading from the Clan of the Cave Bear books, or so we were told. I have no trouble believing it. She had a shy streak too though. We went to Pride together, stood in the pouring rain to watch the parade, and the first year when Barb said, "Hey, that girl's checking you out!" Zulu immediately decided that the sidewalk was the most interesting thing she'd seen all day. She tagged her introspective Livejournal feelings posts "blueberry pie filling" for the soft gooey bits underneath.

We went to multiple cons together in our twenties, and Zulu could meander through a room party and emerge with enough snacks stashed about her person for breakfast AND lunch the next day. I wish I had recordings of her singing our friend's filk, especially "I'm Sorry, Larry Niven," inspired by the time she announced in the con suite, "And then, naked swimming!" not knowing that the Guest of Honour, venerable SF author Larry Niven, was RIGHT behind her. She once camped out in our living room for almost a week in an extended two-degree-of-SGA-actor-separation movie marathon and her mom called us to see if we'd heard from her lately, an hour after we finally dropped her off at home. ("I told her to email me if I wasn't answering the phone!" Zulu said aggrievedly.) She concoted elaborate dramas when we cooked together. At a dumpling making party, she started out depicting the woes of a poor, beleagured dumpling-making servant girl. By the time we finished folding the bowl of chopped shrimp into the wrappers, she'd overthrown the government and was controlling a whole nation.

We helped each other move. She was responsible for petting our small but vocal cat Minnow in her carrier the whole way from OldCity to NewCity, since every time she stopped, Minnow got louder and louder. She invented a whole series of sound effects for Betrayal at House on the Hill, a favourite board game, and I don't know how we can play it without her. (The event cards make the X-Files theme, the item cards make an eerie whistling sound, and the omen cards make a dramatic duuuh-duh-DUH! and I wish I could remember how the Star Trek fight music factored into things.) She drank from straws always out of the side of her mouth. She loved mango and shrimp and guacamole, and once called us to say "So, I'm having supper with my parents, and said no, I want my steak the way Barb cooks it, so my mom said I should cook it myself... how DO you cook it?" (The answer was, rare. Three and a half minutes per side, flip it twice per side.)

She decided to do a Master's in science fiction, went to the UK for a year, and met a girl. An online friend, not from the UK, who came to visit her. That was bell . Their wedding was less than fifteen people, their cake has emojis made with Skittles on it, and Barb and I were so happy to be with them, and share their joy. They got married in the wedding commissioner's living room, and then we all went out for Thai food, and it was beautiful. By which I also mean I have photos of the two of them wearing tiaras flipped down like Geordi's visor on ST:TNG, and of Zulu fake-restraining Bell as she stabbed the wedding cake with the cake knife.

Zulu always wanted to be a parent. When she and Bell told us they were planning to have a baby, I made an out of character high-pitched squeaking noise that risked alarming the cats. I knit them two mama bear and one baby bear hats for Christmas. A sleep-deprived new parent Zulu did say, "Guys... I realize that when I said I wanted a baby, I was actually picturing a preschooler I could take to the park and zoo. But he'll grow into it." Obviously, L did. They discovered at the height of the COVID shut downs (including the libraries) that he was ready for reading chapter books, and I was able to surprise them with some books because one of the local book stores was doing door-to-door deliveries.

She wrote prolifically and beautifully. (She wrote so much fanfic on our living room couch over the years. So much smut. Occasionally went into a research deep dive. Fandom means having your friend looking up sex toys for escalating purposes from your couch is a normal platonic situation.) She went through a phase early in her original fiction where she just wasn't sure how to end things, and Barb teased her that every story finished with the protagonist going insane, dying, or both. (She got over it.) Her PhD thesis was a multi-path branching novel using the text-based game software Twine about a poly society where children were genderless, and you picked your gender based on familial ties and obligations when you came of age. And then she pared it down to one story line, and got it published as a novel.

She wrote fanfic, so much fanfic. She modded the House big bang, and set out to comment on every story submitted to challenges, and embraced writing tiny crossovers, and drabbles and prompts and novel-length series. She let me throw prompts for obscure Canadian TV at her for about two years, and half of the fanfic for This is Wonderland exists because of things she wrote for me. I wish I could find the vid she made me, and I got a crossover fic from her for Christmas that year. She fell back into fandom hard with A League of Their Own, we marathoned the whole series with her one weekend when she and Bell came to visit (to be clear, I think this was her fourth viewing at least at that point?) I'm so glad she had a fandom community again. I felt it in my heart when she said this summer that one of her goals was to finish all her WIPS. She started a new social media AU (dammit Zulu, how do I typeset this?) posting from her hospice bed, writing up until a week before she died.

When I started fanbinding, I made her a pamphlet of her crackfic for Christmas. It was right around the time we found out she first had cancer. Surgery, chemo, and then we had another two years with her. I made her an anthology of her ALOTO fic--all that she'd written at the time, at least. ("Would... you make a book of my fic?" she said when she saw my first casebound books. I never want to forget the way she said my name when she was asking me for something that was a foregone conclusion. "That was already the plan for Christmas," I told her.) I bound her rarepair House mpreg crackfic this past year. I didn't finish it until the spring--and then we found out the cancer was back. She asked me for a favour over the summer. Anything, I said. She wanted a pamphlet of one of her ALOTO fic. I did three fic, and put them into her hands with her belated Christmas present. I wanted to do more, but was feeling overwhelmed and didn't know where to start. I wanted to bind more of her fic than I could possibly accomplish, and that if I tried to make this the only project I had, I would probably collapse under my own sadness. (I don't know if you all know this... but she has 350+ fic on AO3.) So I asked for help, and the Renegade fanbinding community responded in a way I should have expected--with immense enthusiasm and zero restraint. I've got some plans around sharing the results collectively at some point. Timelines got bumped up by a month. There was a rush for mailing. Sadly, only some of the books made it to her before her death. The group shipment box in particular showed up too late on the day that she died. Bell took it with her to supper with friends and family to open as a special treat. I think there will be thirty-some books of all sizes all told, and I have about four more in progress, though I'll never get to put them in her hands and see her grin and say "Aww, you GUYS..."

She was so clever, so curious about the world, and so damn funny. Being around her felt like family in the best, uncomplicated way. Small things that stick--the last time she and Bell came to visit this past winter, as they unloaded things from the car, she announced, "If by 'did I bring the snacks,' you mean, 'did I empty the snack shelf of all the partially-eaten bags of all the flavours of potato chips, put them in a box, and bring them here, then the answer is yes, yes I did." We watched Jupiter Ascending, hung out, and went out for ice cream in January. Two weeks later, we got the news that she needed to start chemo again. (Zulu, relaying this incident after the fact: "So, L really wanted me to go to a parent event at school, so I dragged myself out in a baseball cap and sweats, with my pump. The other moms were like... (fake polite pained smiles) 'and how are... you?' and I was like 'Baaaad. I am not good, and you should feel bad for me.'") Then in Jun, news that it hadn't worked. We thought we'd have a year if we were lucky. We saw her in August, a month before she died. They'd just adjusted her pain meds, she was having a good day, and was up and about, and there was a group hug when we left. She went downhill fast, and we did a short video chat the night before she moved into hospice three weeks later. We were supposed to go visit her this weekend, and instead we'll be going to a celebration of her life.

I was at work when I got the news from Bell, and grateful to the universe that it came in a quiet moment early on a busy day. When I got home at lunch, Barb pointed at the front door where I was standing, dissolved into tears, and said, "I can't stop thinking about how many times we hugged her hello and goodbye RIGHT THERE." She gave such good hugs. I can't think of anyone else I know whose reaction to their imminent death would essentially be "well, I had a good run!"

In a move that will surprise no-one who knew her, she wrote her own obituary. In the email about Zulu's death, and how to support the family, Bell goes on to say "Do not send us flowers. If you send me flowers, my cats will eat and convert them into barf. Please do not give me cat barf! I already have enough! :D" and followed that up with two charities to donate to instead (a local organization supporting trans folks, and an indigenous-led water protection organization). Trans rights! Water rights! But no cat barf.

And what else is there to say? Zulu, I love you and I miss you. That's all.

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Seekrit Project!

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 04:26:47 GMT

I'm posting this here and locking it down to everyone BUT Zulu and Bell (filter codename: shh-zulu-sekrit) because I want to share the full saga with them when all is known, and I will forget things in the meantime. (Zulu and Bell, if my filter did not work and you see this, look away now!!) So...

I am awash in feelings this weekend. So, as I think those few of you still here know, we're losing zulu to cancer. This sucks so, so much. She is one of my friends-like-family. But, here we are.

I think you all know about my latest hobby. My first fanbind was a pamphlet fic of her crackfic. I've bound her an anthology of some of her recent fic, and presented her with her rarepair mpreg from a decade ago for Christmas last year. Last week she asked me, "Soooo... could you do something for me? Could you do another pamphlet, of this particular fic?" Yes, I said, yes I will. I will make you a pamphlet. I will make you TWELVE pamphlets. A HUNDRED AND TWENTY pamphlets, and more. (Spoiler alert, I did not make a hundred and twenty pamphlets. I haven't made it to twelve QUITE yet, but I'm up to three to print.)

Last week, I said to a good fanbinding friend, I want to bind more of Zulu's fic, I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. Her response: "Can I help? Do you want me to typeset something?" Me: (ALL THE EMOTION) "... yes. But also, I was thinking of asking the Renegade guild if anyone else would be bind a few of her fic, too, maybe a few quick pamphlets?" Her: YES, do it.

I did it. I posted. She immediately started a spreadsheet organizing what I'd already bound, and to let other people sign up for things, and put herself first on the list. The fact that someone else was organizing for me made me a bit weepy. By the time I went to bed an hour later, I think we had half a dozen people signed up to participate.

And then the next morning came. And a few more people signed up. I tentatively suggested that if anyone wanted to include a card or note and maybe some stickers for bell and their kiddo L, it would be welcome. And people started asking me questions. Like, what fic does she like best? Where should we start? Can we make a care package? What does her wife need? Can I send her a prayer shawl I knitted? She was doing chemo, what about knitted caps? Can I knit socks or booties? (We have a decent fibre arts contingent.)

I started asking some surreptitious questions of Bell and Zulu. I'd asked Zulu a few weeks before about granting blanket permission for anyone to bind her fic, and for the typesets to be shared. I casually said, "Sooo I mentioned this to the fanbinding group. If someone does want to send you something, can I share your address? And can I suggest they send cards/stickers to L?" (Yes, and yes.)

And then I emailed Bell, because I thought she could use a nice secret to look forward to. An excerpt:

... Which is to say, there is a spreadsheet now (and other people have stepped up to organize which just about made ME cry) and there will likely be a few book-shaped packages in your mail in the next couple months. Also, some cards for L with stickers. They're just all being really lovely, and have made me teary with it today, so I thought I'd share a few snippets of things I have had in response:

One person says she would be bringing over casseroles and filling your freezer if she could
My good friend R. would absolutely be showing up to cook for you. (She offered to typeset things for me before I even asked.)
In terms of shipping and mailing things, one of the people in the rural midwest US has a horse she often talks about. The current "plan" is that she'll collect everything, load it into Epona's saddle bags, and show up on your doorstep like the Pony Express.
Several people are in awe that Zulu has so much fic and that her AO3 user number is in the double digits!
At least three people so far have asked me to send love to Zulu's wife too. So here I am doing that. All the love!

Now. What I did not share is the full SCOPE of the enabling server. "A few people," ha. Renegade LOVES a project. I underestimated the sheer force of goodwill. Oh yes, there's a spreadsheet.

Now, Zulu has 351 fic on AO3 at last count. Lots of short fic for prompts and exchanges! Lots of drabbles! Right now, if you include the bits I've already bound for her and the fact that one person is doing a full-fandom collection of 46 drabbles, there are over a hundred of Zulu's fic on their way to being captured in some form of physical print media and mailed to her. Almost twenty people are participating right now, and I think my last rough count of number of pamphlets/tiny books/full-sized books being made was in the twenties. A few people are doing two! Some people are pairing up with one person typesetting, and someone else doing the binding! We've got international participation from four continents right now.

There is an organized effort to ship to one person for mass mailing from the US, and assorted other people mailing on their own. A couple people have donated to mailing costs. (I offered to cover the US to Canada postage for the mass mailing. They would not let me.) We are not actually going to have the person with the horse ride over the border to deliver it, though the mental image is highly entertaining. A couple person reached out and asked me if I'd like them to make me a copy of what she's binding as well, and that definitely made me cry.

The general planning and chatter is such that it's required its own thread to be created in the Discord server, to keep from overwhelming the main general one. Knowing the people in the server, and their general kindness and enthusiasm, I should not be surprised, I really shouldn't. It just hits differently when you're the one who's the recipient, you know?

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Recent reading - new Peter S Beagle

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 05:29:11 GMT

Okay, so. I just finished I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, by Peter S. Beagle. (Yes, The Last Unicorn author Peter S. Beagle.)

The premise, in someone else's hands, could have turned into something light-hearted and twee. A dragon exterminator who wants to be a prince's valet! A beautiful princess who wants the only prince who isn't madly in love with her! A well-intentioned but naive prince whose father wants him to prove himself!

But, this is Peter Beagle. He takes these characters and gives them immense humanity and turns it into a story about expectations and circumventing them, and something a little bit darker than I expected. The last part of the book felt a little bit oblique to me, and the ending was emotionally satisfying, but not as neat and tidy as some people might like. (I kind of wanted a liiiitle bit more denouement?) And I'm supremely glad to see it published, seeing as the author was in a legal battle with his former manager, who was charged with both fraud and elder abuse)

My favourite Peter Beagle book is still Tamsin, a ghost story set in the contemporary English countryside, and this one was firmly a "liked a lot but didn't fall in love with," but I still rec it.

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Post-Pride

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 18:29:20 GMT

I love you, excited teens in flag capes, and kids on roller blades with pride flags taped to their bike helmets who first came to Pride in strollers, and mountain of a guy with the Free Dad Hugs t-shirt and two toddlers.

I love you, gossiping university students in crocheted halter tops and beaded earrings, butches in tank tops and baseball caps, and queens in spiked boots complaining about heat but wearing the sequined gloves and gown regardless, kid in the fur mask and spiked collar with their mom hovering protectively, my co-worker's child in the t-shirt from their elementary school with the logo in rainbow pride colours, shy teen whose face lit up when they found a button with the right pronouns.

I love you, grandma with the t-shirt that said "be gentle, it's my first Pride," elderly gay man who says with unshakeable confidence that he and his friends put up up rainbow decorations at their seniors' lodge and it drives everyone else NUTS, person with nonbinary flag coloured streamers tied to their walker, moms trading an exhausted preschooler back and forth, friends reuniting and wishing each other "Happy Pride."

And every year, EVERY year, it's the kids in the flag capes with their giddy joy and bright faces that get me right in the heart, and I want this for each and every one of them, and I want it all year and everywhere.

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Squash

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 06:34:12 GMT

I have gotten out of the habit of posting again! I need to stop writing posts in my head and actually put them here.

Anyhow. A small thing. I went to an annual seed swap event, and came home with seeds for some annual flowers, Chinese yardlong beans, and an ancient squash. It will get bright orange squash, up to two feet long. I'm not even that huge of a squash fan, and Barb doesn't like it at all, but it just looks COOL. So we'll see how it grows!

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This is how it goes sometimes

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 07:00:50 GMT

There is a staff holiday potluck tomorrow. I was going to make mocha shortbread.

My coworkers are getting black bean and yogurt dip with corn chips and carrot sticks, because there is a sugar shortage (ongoing strike from one of the main producers), I DID not feel like baking after a contentious Pride board meeting, and also I had an excess of cooked black beans in the fridge after making some for tortilla soup on the weekend.

We have an excess of dried beans. I made a pot, used some in the soup, made enough dip for both branches and home, and still put beans in the freezer.

But my friend shared a GF snickerdoodle recipe with me, and now I want that.

I have another pot luck Tuesday with the weaver's guild, so we'll see if I can find sugar on the weekend. If not, maybe I can make mocha shortbread subbing in icing sugar instead??

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Hilda! And things

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 04:03:04 GMT

Making a couple of books for an exchange. Knitting at least one thing for Christmas. Almost through setting up a large floor loom in the basement! (There were a few missing pieces, and a trip to the aptly-named Bolt Supply House, but I am almost there!)

Ahhh, there is a third (and final) season of Hilda! It's a lovely little animated series about an adventurous eleven year old girl, in a world like ours but with a hefty dose of Nordic-inspired folklore and magic, and is just heartfelt and satisfying. Based on a kids' graphic novel series, but I enjoyed it a lot as a fantasy-watching grown-up for a gentle pick-me-up. Also a good pick for any kids in your life who like Owl House and Gravity Falls, or are a little bit too young for either of them. Netflix has the movie in between s2-3 as a separate entry, just FYI, but it picks up right where the s2 cliffhanger left off. We have yet to start S3. Maybe tomorrow!

I've got some good intentions of finishing off the aforementioned knitting project tonight, and cutting down at least some of the last batch of book cloth I bought. (Group orders "save" money...) Tomorrow, soup, and working on another project at the weavers' guild. I think this week's soup will be tortilla, based on the tomatoes and peppers in the freezer. We shall see.

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Soup weather

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:10:19 GMT

It's sunny and the temperature's above freezing, but the wind is wicked out there. The ground's clear, and the sun is out, I'll take it.

I need to get back into the habit of making weekend soup to clean out the fridge, use things up out of the freezer, and have easy lunches.

So. Today's soup. Leeks, celery, a tiny of bit of ham, and potato from the freezer. Carrots and onion from the bottom of the crisper drawer. I had a chunk of cheddar cheese that had dried out, so grated that up, and added it at the end, along with the last of a tub of feta. Lentils and half a package of onion soup mix out of the cupboard, along with a big scoop of Better Than Bouillon. Hot pepper flakes, white pepper, last summer's dried parsley, and a bit of apple cider vinegar at the end.

The construction clean up is finally done on our basement! I've spent the last three weekends moving and cleaning things, and this weekend, turned the small room we've gained at the back into a habitable space, thanks to a carpet remnant for the floor, and two large canvas drop-cloths I stapled over the unfinished walls. It probably would have sat longer, but I lucked into an old floor loom from someone at the weavers' guild, and wanted to start trying to figure out the assembly.

I also scored a folding table too, from one of the other guild members who's downsizing. Picture one of those dark brown laminate-topped tables from community centres and schools of thirty years ago. It is solid, and just what I needed for cutting paper and book cloth, and other projects that need not-insignificant surface area, and no intervention from the cats.

The loom... is large. And probably from the 50's or 60's. It's solid, big and heavy enough to weave rag rugs, has a few cracks and dings, no instructions, and is missing some bolts. I'm relatively confident I can get it working. For the low, low cost of free, I can buy a few more bolts.

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Fanbinding adventures in material assembly

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 06:29:25 GMT

I have some gift copies of books I'm trying finish up right now, and have no excuses not to make cases tomorrow for at least three of them. Five books are sewn and glued into textblocks with endpapers, four are trimmed and have endbands sewn on, as well as cover boards matched up from my reuse stash and spine boards measured and cut, and now three of them have book cloth made for spines and covers.

I now have a growing stash of fancier commercial book cloth (group orders "save" money, ask me how), but I'm going for a black and white spine and cover with these ones to match the first book in the set that I did, and that means backing cloth with paper, using iron-on fusible interfacing.

Things I did NOT do this time:

Set the iron too low and end up with half the glue still on the paper instead of the cloth
Burn myself on the iron
Iron adhesive onto my ironing board
Cut the fusible interfacing smaller than the cloth edges (good) but also smaller than the cover of my book (bad)
Wrinkle the cloth and stick it to itself as I try to put the paper on
Accidentally trap loose threads between the adhesive and the paper
Back the paper with a misprint not realizing the text will show through on this cloth
Put the cloth down on the ironing board, not realizing that the small cat has been napping there again, and accidentally end up with book cloth that looks like it's got fancy textured fibres (but really it's cat hair between the glue and paper)

Don't worry! There are always new and exciting mistakes to be made when making cases, though!

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Fandom moments

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 02:06:17 GMT

Got a new phone through work! I pay $10 a month to also use my work phone for personal use.

Our IT manager was getting everything set up and transferred over for me, opened my photos to make sure everything was transferring, then quickly turned the phone away and said "Oh, sorry, I'll let you do that!"

Me, out loud: That's fine, it's mostly a ridiculous amount of pictures of my cats.

Me, in my head: ... but my AO3 history is between me and the servers.

(Not that AO3 touches the phone. That's what my laptop and ancient iPad are for. Boundaries, people!)

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Fanbinding: Build Me No Shrines by Occultings

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 19:36:38 GMT

Oops, forgot to post this one over here.

Build Me No Shrines, by Occultings. Another Binderary project!

“A few months after the events of Guanyin Temple, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji take on a night hunt of an unusual sort: The Burial Mounds are spreading, quickly and with no apparent explanation.

In Wei Wuxian, it brings old, long-buried things bubbling to the surface.”

I love this fic. It has everything! Post-canon case fic, a gaggle of the juniors, pining, some seriously creepy goings-on, Yunmeng sibling feels and endgame Wangxian. (A friend said recently, oh, you know the fic! The one with the tooth! And I did indeed immediately know it was this one.)

And that last line of the summary hits totally differently once you’ve read the fic. Just sayin’.

I typeset this one last summer–I think it was only my third or fourth project. And then I printed it! And folded and sewed it! … and then it sat with half a dozen other text blocks in a large, ever-growing pile on the dining room table because I just could not get going on building cases and casing in. But! My Binderary goal was to overcome and finish All The Things, and fourteen books later, cases are no longer quite so intimidating.

Homemade bookcloth for the cover, with a strip of leftover chiyogami from the endpapers just because. Cover and spine are acrylic paint stencilled on, and yes, I am quite pleased with myself over that little mountain illustration on the spine.

I’d make some small tweaks to the typeset now (including justifying the text, ack) but I’m pretty happy with the overall look of it regardless!

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Three things make a list

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 06:47:04 GMT

1) I had to get up early this morning. Starting training at 8am is inhumane in my books. But my defensive driving is renewed for another four years, and the instructor's cut back on the number of gruesome and heartbreaking distracted driving PSA videos this time around. (The Australian ones are the hardest hitting, due to more passing public broadcast standards there than in North America.) I am once again/still able to drive the library vans if needed. First Aid's scheduled for April, and then I will have all the certification things renewed.

2) Our dishwasher started leaking through the basement floor on Monday night. Booo. It is extremely lucky I went down to swap the laundry over AS it was leaking and spotted it. It was the best possible solution as to "where is that water coming from?" and it is past time to replace it. I did not realize HOW much past time until I looked up the model and serial number. Twenty-nine years. Our dishwasher is from 1994. We'll probably go appliance shopping this weekend, so wish me luck...

3) Still on this ridiculousness with the book cloth microfandom fanfic. Might have written some self-indulgent smut for the first time in years. Behold, the first half of Better Than You Found Them or Five People Grape and Mudbath Practice Catch and Release With and One They Want to Keep. I have three of the six things left to write still.

And despite getting up early, it is now quarter to one, and I really should take myself off to bed...

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Seasonal cheer

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 17:39:20 GMT

It's Easter, which means it's time for the timeless... 1969 Easter Mass Incident The Bread Jesus is back.

Wishing chocolate to all who want it, time with friends and family to everyone regardless, and warmer weather for those of us where winter's been slow to leave.

And to everyone here and on Tumblr who's been posting poetry for April, keep it coming! I might not be organized enough or read enough poetry to do so myself, but I'm sure enjoying everyone else's selections.

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Most obscure fandom yet

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 04:40:32 GMT

(I feel like this requires some explanation.)

So, back in the fall some of the members of the fanbinding collective I belong to found out that one of the book cloth manufacturers was going out of business. They happen to be the ones who make a particular kind of fancy two-tone cloth called Duo, that shifts colour depending on the angle.

So first there was a group order. Then it got... unexpectedly large. (Like, close to forty people, almost 600 yards of cloth large.) Some other things happened. And a few days ago, there was a casual joke about writing fanfic about the cloth. That happened. And then it spiralled into an elaborate series of comments inventing personalities for all the colours.

So, I guess I have a new fandom now. Might have started a series. Oops?

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Fanbinding: Sportsball Lesbians!

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 05:03:23 GMT

More Binderary! This A League Of Their Own anthology has a copy for me and one for <user name="zulu">, longtime friend and fandom co-conspirator online and off. (She has written so much smut on our living room couch over the years, guys. SO MUCH.) Her reaction to seeing my first set of books, “Would… you do my fic?” Me: “Yes, that is what I already have planned for your Christmas present!”

The typesetting for this book went just fine. That was almost the only step that did. To start, I printed the wrong copy, and tried reprinting just the chapter headers but the pages were one line off. When I pressed the folded pages, I used a big wooden cutting board, conveniently forgetting that it was oiled wood, and had to reprint the top two signatures. I decided to lean into the vintage paperback vibe due to the Great Paper Fiasco of 2023 where I ended up with four reams of two-shades-more-yellow buff paper instead of cream, which meant my original cardstock endpaper plan didn’t match, and went through four different options to find the right one. I mismeasured the bookcloth for the back of the case, and had to make two more pieces, and there were some minor trimming issues. When I put the stencil on the spine and weeded it, I left it overnight before painting because it was getting late, and then discovered that it had fallen off by morning.

But I persevered! And I put @zulufic’s copy direct into her hands last night. WORTH IT. In the meantime, she has written exponentially more ALOTO fic, and I have some sportsball lesbian reading to catch up on. A few more pics in the post over on Tumblr.

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