A few things

[regshoe]

Today is my five-year Dreamwidth anniversary! What a good five fannish years they've been. :)

NTS Kidnapped people who aren't on Tumblr: look, look, we have fanart! And very cute fanart. Thank you, chiropteracupola :D

RL is still busy and stressful, but happily fic is being a good thing amongst the difficulties. I've not quite been keeping up with comments, but nevertheless, a few recent recs:

• Behind a Closed Door by thrillingdetectivetales: Absolutely adorable NTS Kidnapped missing scene/smut fic, with especially lovely character voices.
• Shadow March by verecunda: The fort in Frontier Wolf is, historically-geographically, in almost exactly the same place as the House of Shaws, and this fic makes the most of the crossover opportunity!
• They Can Nearly Talk by chestnut_pod: James Herriot as an elf vet in Valinor. Inspired idea, brilliant execution. The f!elf!Siegfried Farnon character is amazing.
• A Disease of So Peculiar a Nature by chiroptera_in_the_cupola: A team of eighteenth-century characters get inoculated against smallpox together. I don't know the fandom, Team Fortress 2, at all, but I gather this is very AU anyway, and it may be of interest to other 18th century history fans.

I've also been playing lots of Birdie, a daily guessing game introduced to me by sanguinity a while ago. You're shown cropped close-up pictures of different parts of a bird, and you have to guess the species in as few pictures as possible, with the game indicating when an incorrect guess shares part of its name with the correct species. They're all North American birds, which makes it more of an enjoyable challenge for me; I suspect it'd be too easy with British birds, but this way I have to do a bit of detective work to figure out unfamiliar species. And it introduces me to so many new, beautiful birds! Today's (which I got in three guesses) is very lovely.

And I've been watching 'The Life of Birds' on iPlayer, which is a lovely de-stressing thing (and has provided an excellent new icon). I'm vaguely considering watching the new Doctor Who specials at some point, but not in this context—the fast-paced sensory intensity of modern TV does not work for calmingness like wildlife documentaries from the 90s.

Speaking of birds, there is a new biography of W. H. Hudson out, by Conor Mark Jameson (whose name I recognise, though I can't remember what else of his I've read). That looks very interesting, I may give it a read at some point. I'm reading another of Hudson's books at the moment and he really does write about birds very well.

I have very nearly finished the beta-ready draft of my Yuletide fic! I have been enjoying writing it :) I've got too many ideas for treats, but in the time between now and reveals I hope to be able to write one or two of them... if they stay short...?

Comments

[muccamukk]

Thanks for the art link! Justice for Short!Alan!

I love Behind a Closed Door so much! It's basically the sequel for the one I did, but like better than I would've written, so I've kind of been rolling around in it.

Did not do well with the bird game. I really only know birds west of the Rockies.

[regshoe]

I am delighted by the reinstated height difference :D

My general bird knowledge is enough to get to the right family reasonably often, but getting the species usually requires some Wikipedia digging. And today's fooled me by sneakily looking nothing like the only species of the same family found here!

[muccamukk]

Yeah, I got as far as "that's an owl" (from the first picture), guessed the four owls we get here, and gave up.

[regshoe]

Wait, I think we may not be on the same day—was that the hawk owl from a couple of days ago? If so, I'm impressed by you getting 'owl' from the first picture—I was fooled by the resemblance for which it's named and got three or four pictures in before realising it wasn't a hawk :D

[muccamukk]

Oh that's what it was! The owl was from the very distinctive wing bars. I have several owl feathers left by a great horned owl that was hanging out eating grass snakes one summer, and recognised them right away. Hawk wing barring is different. Also, the second picture showed that its feet had feathers on them, which most owls have, but very few hawks around here do (I think golden eagles do? Unsure?).

[regshoe]

Ah, neat! I probably should have got the feathered feet but did not know about the differences in wing bar patterns.

[luzula]

Today is my five-year Dreamwidth anniversary! What a good five fannish years they've been. :)
Congratulations. : ) I searched my email to see when we first got to know each other, and my first comment from you is March 2019, which is not all that long after you got on DW. Hmm, but your DW archive seems to say that your first DW post is in 2016, though--did you backdate some posts?

[regshoe]

Aww! And six months after that I read and posted about Flight of the Heron... :)

Hmm, but your DW archive seems to say that your first DW post is in 2016, though--did you backdate some posts?

Yes, I crossposted some of my old Tumblr posts and backdated them.

[adore]

speaking of birds, there's a lovely online restoration of ornithological work on hummingbirds by john gould (via oursin)

[regshoe]

Oh yes, I saw oursin's post about that! Really lovely—I love 19th-century bird illustrations and those are some especially impressive ones.

[lirazel]

Congrats on five years!

[regshoe]

Thank you! :)