Adult Spaghetti-Os (basically)
Oct. 17th, 2025 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

1 c. water
.5 c. pearl couscous (or other small pasta)
2 T butter
1 can chickpeas, drained
1T to 1.5T tomato paste (didn't measure)
1 tsp-ish stock paste
Spices
Add water, couscous, stock paste, and tomato paste to a skillet. Stir carefully. Add spices.
Once the couscous looks mostly cooked, add butter. Once the butter is nearly or fully melted, add chickpeas.
Cook until the couscous is done and the chickpeas are warm.
You'll get a lovely dish well-coated in sauce. All the yums.
You can also choose to add veg (frozen peas work well).
Note: I now only cook pasta in skillets. When the water is gone, the pasta is done. And if you add the sauce just before the water's gone, you get a perfect coating on the pasta. PLUS no straining needed. SO much easier and far more delicious.
(Learned this from a Korean drama. Learned it works so well because the starch in the pasta goes into the water, which then mixes with the sauce, and that's why the sauce ends up coating the pasta so well).
Yuletide Letter posted
Oct. 17th, 2025 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I am contemplating cross-listing The Expanse TV and Slough House the books, as I have also experienced those. Thoughts, anyone in either set of fandoms?
Wandering Thoughts
Oct. 17th, 2025 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
(It does, however, make me feel a bit better about my own writing.)
((But Kalloway, you like a lot of incredibly racy stuff- Sure do! And I support every author's right to write with their hand down their pants but it can still also be not what I want/I can still hate it in a long-running series that's been mostly tame otherwise.))
Weekend is going to be all over the place, rather literally. I'm not quite sure what I'll manage other than clawing my way through, but that's okay. (I'm picking up an overtime dayshift in the middle, so some of it is 100% on me. Actually everything is about 80% on me. And that's also fine.)
Last harvest before the frost!
Oct. 17th, 2025 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
That is only one representative of the large quantity of white pattypan squash we have left! They do keep quite well though. Alas, the butternut squashes did not have time to fully ripen. Nor did the acorn squashes on the table, but there were five mature ones we already harvested, so I'll get to taste them how they properly should be, at least (I've never had acorn squash before!). Still in the garden is the frost-hardy stuff: leeks, parsnips, swedes, salsify, brussel sprouts, kale, etc. ALTHOUGH I just thought to double-check how frost-hardy swedes are, and hmm, not actually so much, so this post was interrupted by going out to put fabric over them. I suppose we should harvest them tomorrow.
Yuletide Letter 2025
Oct. 17th, 2025 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Dear Yulemouse,
Thank you for offering to write in at least one of these fandoms. You are totally awesome for doing this. I can only hope you enjoy writing about it as much as I will reading it — for certainly, squees will ring off the mountains and echo down the canyons when it arrives given, yanno, it’s in a fandom I want yet find so rarely.
The best way to please me is to have fun. Wit, sex, dramatic irony, and cracktastic silly rom-com are all possibilities, but go with whatever floats your boats. Gen, het, slash, femslash, multi, and poly are all great, as clean or smutty as you want (so yes, Yuleporn and Three Turtle Doves both fine). As a partial guide to the sort of things I like, my stories from past Yuletides are as good as anything. Turn-offs (Do Not Want!) are humiliation-based humor, sadism, explicit torture, and A/B/O, plus a couple DNWs specific to two fandoms (listed below). Find something and make it your own, the thing you love writing, and it’s easy odds I’ll like it.
And to make it explicit: poetry, either in whole or in part, is gleefully accepted — I mean, these fandoms are all related to poetry in some way — but not in the least required. Also, again to be explicit, I welcome treats, which get double the thanks for going above and beyond.
The rest of this is basically expansion on my Optional Details Are Optionals, with notes on resources.
( 赠答诗 - 金车美人 (弘农) | Poems Composed in Reply - Beautiful Woman in a Golden Carriage (Hong Nong) )
( Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came )
( Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker )
( “Her strong enchantments failing” - A.E. Housman )
( Mesopotamian RPF )
( Puck of Pook’s Hill Series - Rudyard Kipling )
New Worlds: Are You Insured?
Oct. 17th, 2025 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/N18vHc)
Friday open thread: long-held aspirations, fulfilled
Oct. 17th, 2025 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Today's prompt is brought to you due to the fact I'm attending a ceramics taster class tomorrow: three hours in a pottery studio, learning the basics, to see if I want to attend more classes in the future. This was one of my goals for the year — to do more concrete things outside my house, with other people, that involved creating something with my hands, and I'm glad to have made it happen at last.
Due to this context, my prompt is as follows: what is a long-term goal you've held that you've recently fulfilled? It can be as small-scale as mine (trying a new hobby), or as large-scale and ambitious as you'd like.
King of Ashes, by S. A. Cosby: DNF
Oct. 16th, 2025 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Roman left the family business, a crematory, and its town to become an accountant to the rich and famous. His sister now runs the crematory with their father, while their younger brother Dante stays on the rolls but his actual profession is being a drug addict and ne'er do well. When the kids were teenagers, their mother vanished. Their father is widely suspected of having murdered his wife and cremated his body, but no proof was ever found. When the book opens, Roman hears that his father is in the hospital, victim of a suspicious accident. He heads home to visit his father and help out his sister. Naturally, he immediately gets embroiled in trouble.
I've loved or liked all of Cosby's previous books and was very excited for this one - especially given the crematory setting. (Cosby himself ran a funeral home with his wife.) Unfortunately, I did not like or feel connected to any of the characters in this one, and so I didn't care what happened to them. Cosby's characters are typically criminals who do bad things, but in his other books, I understand the reasons they are who they are and like them even if I wouldn't want to meet them in real life. But in this one, fairly early on, Roman - who I already didn't feel connected to - commits an act of horrifying cruelty that seems completely unmotivated.
( Read more... )
It's possible that this is explained later, and my guess is that the explanation is "Roman is actually a sadistic sociopath," but I lost all interest in him at that point, and DNF'd the book as I no longer wanted to read about him, none of the other characters interested me either, and the sadistic sociopath explanation doesn't help. I heard an interview with Cosby where he talks about wanting to write a classic tragedy with a very bad protagonist a la Macbeth, which makes his intention make more sense to me, but it doesn't make me want to return to the book.
Cosby is a great author but this book was a miss for me. I HIGHLY recommend Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears for very well-written books where bad people do bad things that are very motivated, and you can't help rooting for them to succeed. I recommend All Sinners Bleed for a well-written book about a good guy fighting both crime and legal bad things. I recommend My Darkest Prayer for a fun, OTT thriller with a very Marty Stu protagonist. I don't recommend this.
what next is the question?
Oct. 16th, 2025 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Slightly to my surprise, I have written about 10,000 words of not-fanfic. A bunch more to go.
Dear Yuletide 2025 author
Oct. 16th, 2025 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I'm pretty easygoing about what type of fic you want to write for me. I read fic of any rating, and would be equally happy with plotty genfic or something very shippy. I read gen, f/f, m/f, m/m and multi-ship fic, although I have a slight preference towards f/f, m/f, and gen that focuses on female characters. I mainly read fic to find out what happens to characters after the final page has turned or the credits have rolled, so I would particularly love to have futurefic of some kind. Don't feel you have to limit yourself to the characters I specifically mention — I'm happy with others being included if they fit with the story you want to tell.
Feel free to have a look around my Ao3 profile, as it should give you a good idea of the types of things I like to read. You can also look at my Yuletide tag, which includes past letters, and recs posts of my previous gifts and other fic I've enjoyed in previous Yuletide colletions.
I have treating enabled on Ao3 and would be delighted to receive treats for any of my requests.
( General likes )
( DNWs )
Fandom-specific prompts:
( The Pagan Chronicles - Catherine Jinks )
( Romanitas trilogy — Sophia McDougall )
( Space Demons trilogy )
Don't feel you have to stick rigidly within the bounds of my prompts. As long as your fic is focused on the characters I requested, I will be thrilled to receive anything you write for me, as these really are some of my most beloved fandoms of the heart, and the existence of any fic for them will make me extremely happy.
I cannot possibly be sitting down harder than I have been sitting down for several hours already
Oct. 15th, 2025 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I figured out how to hack simchas torah and the needing to eat lunch at a reasonable time problem: pack a lunch and eat it during, after, and on the way home.
Anyway anyone want anything? Drabble, dvd commentary, meta, etc?
These posts don't expire.
I also just typed "these posts don't exist", so good night, night vale, good night.
Yuletide 2025 Letter
Oct. 16th, 2025 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Hello, person who is assigned to me or considering making a treat! No matter what you make, I'm probably going to really like it, but I know it's much easier to come up with an idea if you've got some guidance.
Length of prompts is not related to how much I like any character or group, and more related to how much I can ramble about them off the top of my head. Also, feel free to do whatever you want. If for example, I mention wanting fluff for a character, but you have an angsty idea you really want to do, go for it!
My ao3 account and my tumblr are both wolffyluna, if you want to have a look at them to get ideas.
Notes for Pinch Hitters
Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel that takes about 6 hours to play through all the routes. Sha Po Lang is a novel, that in print takes up five volumes to give a sense of the size of it. Oathsworn is a podcast that is about 80 hours long, but also has free transcripts.
Contents
Likes:
Fandoms:
( Likes and DNWS )
( Oathsworn )
wednesday reads and things
Oct. 15th, 2025 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
But I have been consuming media!
What I recently finished reading:
Chaos Vector and Catalyst Gate, the second and third books in the space-opera Protectorate series by Megan E. O'Keefe. I enjoyed the series overall, though I feel like O'Keefe slowed things down and lost momentum after the sequence of clever twists from the first book. The actual story behind the story turned out to be less novel and captivating than I was expecting, and although a few of the reveals were "a-HA!" great, some parts just felt as though the worldbuilding was being done on the fly, and the plot built around to justify it.
The writing occasionally felt a little fanficcy to me, like, "let's express found family sentiment here! Let's throw in an obstacle that turns out not to be one!" but overall it was easy to read and fairly entertaining.
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson, which like the first book of the previous series is a reread so I can read the rest of the books in the series. This one I first read in 2014, and as with the Protectorate books, I am stunned at how much I completely don't remember at all. Here's my review from 2014:
A whole lot of elements in this book hit my buttons perfectly. There is the alternate-history/near-future aspect, which centers on the interesting idea that the EU has not just fallen apart but splintered into dozens of tiny pocket states (and I have to say, there was a strange resonance to reading the bit about Scotland's explosive parting from the UK only a month after the real-world vote failed). There is the largely Eastern European setting, the Estonian and Polish and Hungarian characters, which read delightfully exotic to this American (though I wonder how it will read to my European friends!). The writing is strong, never getting in the way of the story but frequently delighting me with clever phrases and evocative images, exactly the style I love reading. And I adored the idea at the heart of the eventual reveal.I mostly still agree with this, though I now think the pacing works better for me, maybe because I missed some details before or failed to understand how a later section made use of information from an earlier one. Also - there was an offhand bit of building up the undergirdings of this near-future world, the why of Europe having splintered into micro-polities, involving a pandemic of the "Xian flu" which "had brought back quarantine checks and national borders as a means of controlling the spread of the disease..." and I was, holy shit, this was published in 2014. (This fictional pandemic was 10-20x more deadly than Covid-19, which was certainly bad enough.) Other contributors to European disunity were "Economic collapse, paranoia about asylum seekers – and, of course, GWOT, the ongoing Global War On Terror," and about there I started thinking damn, if it wasn't for the Great Uniter (of everyone else against him) this would be playing out right now...and maybe it will play out here, as the states attempt to sort themselves by political party.
But...there were problems. The pacing was a little odd, slow to get going, with scenes (or parts of scenes) that did not obviously contribute to the story. Some, granted, played a part later. But it didn't feel tight to me; yet at the same time, there were all these questions that were answered in oblique ways, or left hanging such that clearly the reader was supposed to connect invisible dots, which made me feel a bit too stupid for the clever author - not as bad as Ken MacLeod's books make me feel (and there were bits of this that were reminiscent of his The Execution Channel, but along those lines. And the cool reveal I mentioned above comes practically at the end of the book - but when I hit it, I felt, that is what I want the book to be about! Not all this preparation stuff! And there wasn't enough about the cool part!
I guess the point is, I enjoyed reading this both as an escape and also as a a warning. On to the second book, which according to my notes I read in 2016 and liked even more (because it was mostly about the cool thing at the end of the first book)!
What I recently finished watching:
Two episodes of Resident Alien which was too cringe for me. I liked the concept, in theory? But the execution was excruciating.
Foundation S3, which - well, another way that civilizations crumble, I guess. I enjoyed it, particularly watching the various Cleons diverge from their assigned paths, but alas the problem with a generation-spanning epic is that the characters you liked in a previous season are (mostly) long dead now. Probably my favorite part was Bayta (and Toran, I guess) who felt very much like Star Wars characters to me.
What I'm still playing but not for much longer:
I'm about to start the endgame sequence (at least, that's what the quest screen tells me) of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Time to kill those pesky gods!
My favorite winter holiday is upon us!
Oct. 15th, 2025 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Here's the tagset showing what's eligible to request and offer.
What intrigues you in the tag set? And who plans to participate this year?
en passant
Oct. 15th, 2025 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Resumed work on Candle Arc #2 (comic) pursuant to continued 2D animation preproduction, since the comics double as partial storyboards. I just processed the Ninefox Gambit: Prelude: Cheris #1 (comic) files for eventual print-on-demand as well, but it's on the website as well.