Worldbuilding: stories and myths

Dec. 22nd, 2025 04:55 pm
[syndicated profile] babylon5_feed

Posted by veronika_seneca

by

Myths and cultural backstories I created for my fics set in the Babylon 5 universe. Some are more elaborate than others.

Words: 1965, Chapters: 3/?, Language: English

Series: Part 5 of To Follow the River’s Path

Check-In Post - Dec 22nd 2025

Dec. 22nd, 2025 07:03 pm
badly_knitted: (Get Knitted)
[personal profile] badly_knitted posting in [community profile] get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.


This Week's Question: Does anyone have any plans for making Christmas gifts or cards?


If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!



Meme Cat

Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:57 am
halfshellvenus: (Default)
[personal profile] halfshellvenus
I can't believe it. SIX cats have managed to co-exist with a Christmas tree, and the worst we've had is one who kept drinking the tree water and another who fanged the curly ribbons on presents.

But here we are:

LastThingAnOrnamentSees.jpg

We've only ever had a table tree with this cat before, and who knows what he encountered in the years before he was ours. But now that we have a full-sized tree... it might as well be covered with toys. :(

Just one thing: 22 December 2025

Dec. 22nd, 2025 12:46 pm
[personal profile] jazzyjj posting in [community profile] awesomeers
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Smashing success

Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:03 am
offcntr: (advisor)
[personal profile] offcntr
We had our annual Pottery Smash on Sunday, before the Market opened. It's a charity auction to benefit Market's Kareng/Caring Fund, an emergency relief fund for artists in need. Four long tables of donations, mostly pottery, but also some glass, prayer flags, duck and beaver and frog flappy kids toys, canned albacore. We always bring a few completely unsalable pieces, for the joy of smashing. When the bidders starting getting drowsy, a little Crash! wakes 'em right up. And then there's the vendor who bids on pots specifically to break them. When Nome is bidding against someone, it tends to run up the price.

I took last year off from auctioneering, didn't have the energy, so they recruited Kevin, the partner of one of the clothing artists, who brings a lot of manic energy to the mix. Potter Jon and I were both back this year, though Alex was just recovering from a hospital trip, so Fiona did his shifts. Between the four of us, we managed to clear the tables with two minutes to go before opening. Just time to sweep up the shards and tally the sales--over $5000.


The future of art

Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:53 am
offcntr: (maggie)
[personal profile] offcntr
A mom and eight or nine-year-old daughter stopped in my booth Sunday, asking if I had a yarn bowl for grandma? I had exactly one, in the bottom box of the stack. I don't usually put them out until I've run out of something else--there isn't room--but I do like to have them. As I'm digging it out, I ask, Can you guess what animal is on it? Daughter has no guess, but Mom says Cat! With a ta-daa! I show that it is indeed a cat, tuxedo kitty leaping at the yarn hole. They're both delighted, but Dad has the card, so Mom has to track him down. Does daughter want to come with? No, she'll stay in the booth, holding the bowl.

So we talk a bit. Her name is Clara, and she makes art too. Drawings, mostly, though she'd recently started playing with watercolors, so I show her our watercolor cards. Her Grandma is an artist too, and gets her whatever art supplies she wants to try next; they're doing watercolors together. And this past summer, she and a friend set up an art sale table on their front lawn, and made $20! Which they split evenly. I tell her I'd love to see her art someday; she says maybe she'll get a booth here next year! In the meantime, I suggested she take a few pictures and email them to me, to which she agrees.

If she follows through, I'll definitely share them here.

For science!

Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:50 am
offcntr: (Default)
[personal profile] offcntr
I sold a tyrannosaurus bank to a paleontologist on Saturday.

Best. Day. Ever.

In bloom

Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:47 am
offcntr: (blossoms)
[personal profile] offcntr
I love the fact that, in the darkest days of the year, camellia bushes say, F**k this. We're gonna bloom!

Love you guys.


An update

Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:40 am
offcntr: (cookie)
[personal profile] offcntr
I've always complained about how long my poticas take to rise. Four, five hours, sitting on a heating pad, or in a post-firing warm studio; my house doesn't feel that cold!

Finally, this time, I remembered reading in James Beard's Beard on Bread where he recommends using a tablespoon of instant yeast rather than the 2-1/4 teaspoons that come in the standard packet. Since this is a half-recipe of the dough, I bumped my yeast from 1-1/8 tsp. up to 1-1/2--half a tablespoon.

It worked! Dough was visibly puffy in half an hour, nicely risen by hour two. I've gone ahead and updated the potica recipe at my website to reflect the change.

sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey: passion)
[personal profile] sovay
Since the light is officially supposed to have returned in my hemisphere, it is pleasing that my morning has been filled with the quartz-flood of winter sun. I could not get any kind of identifying look at the weird ducks clustered on their mirror-blue thread of the Mystic as I drove past, but I saw black, blue, buff, white, russet, green, and one upturned tail with traffic-cone feet.

On the front of ghost stories for winter, Afterlives: The Year's Best Death Fiction 2024, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, is now digitally available from Psychopomp. Nephthys of the kite-winged darkness presides over its contents, which include my queer maritime ice-dream "Twice Every Day Returning." It's free to subscribers of The Deadlands and worth a coin or two on the eyes of the rest.

For the solstice itself, I finally managed to write about a short and even seasonal film-object and made latkes with my parents. [personal profile] spatch and I lit the last night's candle for the future. All these last months have been a very rough turn toward winter. I have to believe that I will be able to believe in one.

Room At The Inn

Dec. 22nd, 2025 12:32 pm

A Christmas Carol

Dec. 22nd, 2025 12:31 pm
marycatelli: (Galahad)
[personal profile] marycatelli
Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Read more... )

Master of Doom by doom mastered

Dec. 22nd, 2025 12:26 pm
bloodygranuaile: (Default)
[personal profile] bloodygranuaile
When I was in Philadelphia over the summer I bought too many used books, one of which was J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Children of Húrin, part of the big run of HMH paperbacks that happened after they started becoming the main Tolkien publisher instead of Del Rey for reasons that I’ve never bothered to learn about. Anyway. It’s a very pretty book and it tells the story of Túrin Turambar, which was also told in The Silmarillion, much like the other books in this particular series. Unlike Beren and Lúthien, the other book in this run of publications that I read this year, this book is pretty much all one big prose story, almost like a regular novel. (Beren and Lúthien had like four different versions in different formats, showcasing how the story had changed over time.)

It turns out, the regular novel version of the story of Túrin Turambar is incredibly tragic, and it really hits harder when it’s being told in a way that’s got stuff like “dialogue” and “scenes.” It’s a deeply earnest and serious work, almost entirely devoid of the humor that pops up in the books about the hobbits. Nobody in the titular Húrin’s family can catch a single break–not Húrin, not his wife Morwen, not either of his daughters, and least of all his only son, Túrin. Morgoth, the big bad of the First Age, has laid some type of curse on all of Húrin’s family, and boy does it work. The general temperament of the house of Húrin also helps, as they are all proud, brave, kind of reckless, unwilling to take counsel that they deem as cowardly, and frequently misinformed, sometimes by the hypnosis of the dragon Glaurung but sometimes through the regular difficulties of getting accurate news around Arda in ancient times.

Túrin is a grim hero, naturally inclined to be quiet, a trait which is only reinforced after he manages to get himself in trouble nearly every time he does open his mouth. After his father is captured by Morgoth and his baby sister dies, young Túrin goes to foster with the elves and learn how to become a valiant warrior so he can fight Orcs and other servants of Morgoth. From there he has various adventures where he fights lots of different types of people, including a stint with a band of outlaws. He makes some friends, although more often than not those friendships go awry after somebody ends up in unrequited love. Túrin does eventually get married, in a subplot that hurtles the whole story toward its gothically tragic end.

While many of the plot points are stuff we’ve seen before in various adventure novels, including some fairly trashy ones–let’s go live in the woods and be outlaws! Oh no, this guy married his sister!–none of it ever comes off as even the tiniest bit silly or trashy or derivative, and that has a lot to do with how seriously Tolkien takes every single sentence of his own work. Every piece of this book is treated with the poetic gravitas due to an ancient and legendary history nearly lost in the mists of time. It’s what every other fantasy author for the last seventy years is trying to do when they write pretentious quests about elves with too many names. But Tolkien is the OG and he actually does it. The writing style is hardly naturalistic, but it is incredibly effective.

Christmas decorations, as demanded

Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:54 am
mount_oregano: portrait by Badassity (Default)
[personal profile] mount_oregano

a row of house plants with garlands and baubles 

I shouldn’t have been surprised that my living room plants had organized. There’s a lot of community-building going on these days, especially here in Chicago.

“I speak for all of us,” the dragon tree said. “You marched for No Kings, so why are you thinking about decorating us? This holiday is for Three Kings. That’s three times worse.”

It took me a moment to figure out what they were talking about. Every year, one of my houseplants impersonates a Christmas tree. This year, they were a little on edge, understandably. It’s been a rough year.

“Let me tell you the holiday story,” I said. Plants are attentive, and they listened quietly. “So you see, the Three Kings are wise men.”

“Wise. Completely different kings, then. If we’re decorated, we’re protesting in favor of joy to the world, right? In that case, we all want to be decorated. The living room will be a massive pro-holiday rally.”

Every year, the plants have opinions about holiday decorating, and I’ve learned that plants are stubborn. So, this year, everyone gets to celebrate. It’s the season of joy and community around here. Happy holidays to you, too.

haunted_cherries: A screenshot from the manga version of Jujutsu Kaisen of the character Toge Inumaki (toge scream)
[personal profile] haunted_cherries
Definitely didn’t think I’d be burying another friend before the year was out.

I’ll spare y’all the details for obvious reasons, but it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t at least say this: PLEASE take care of yourselves. If something about your body or overall health feels off, try to take care of it as soon as you can. I know this isn’t always feasible for everyone considering the current state of the healthcare system, and that’s ok. Just know that your health is important.

Thank y’all for being here. Take care and stay safe.
[syndicated profile] smbc_comics_feed

Posted by Zach Weinersmith



Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Accidentally drew Ricardo like an aging Superman. Will substantiate with backstory later.


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