I finally got all the card readings done from the offer I put up... a couple of entries back. (Is me being blocked on - not even doing the readings, but posting them - the reason I've been so quiet on here lately? Maybe!!!) But when the first one I was going to post the weekend was all about getting moving on things you'd been blocked on I kinda had to keep going until I was done. (Super fun! Wish it didn't set of my brain issues every time.)

I also got my podcasts back in order! (Possibly I am the only person who makes this a major life goal but whatever, it's something to work toward that I can do.)



More similar to last time than I would have expected, but it's increasingly filling up with ones that are no longer updating but I don't want to have listened to the last episode ever. (as before, feel free to ask me about any of the podcasts on the list. We won't talk about the two additional screens of podcasts with 15+ episodes I haven't listened to.)

Shelly is still here and still being very good at catting! She has recently started walking all over me and even occasionally settling down on my lap (and always curls up with me at night) so I guess I have not irrevocably broken trust with things like "mopping the kitchen" and "going on a weekend camping trip."



Middle of this week I will definitely betray her trust, though, because we are going to stellar_dust's place for a week+ and coming back with... another cat. :( Shelly will stay downstairs and Bingley will stay upstairs, so it should be fine (Shelly is already not allowed upstairs and knows this, and Bingley has very rarely gone downstairs) but we are going to have to work out some kind of timeshare for the screened-in porch.

Anyway, now that I have done the thing I was blocking on, and am off work for awhile, maybe I will actually get around to posting some of the other things I've been wanting to post? Like
--How to enjoy a hot summer without air conditioning
--A post or two about the fandom I've been kind of obsessed with for six months and haven't mentioned here because I don't really know how to explain it but it's probably time
--The fandomy embroidery sampler I designed
--An analysis of my "Where fandom will be in a few years" post from a few years ago
--"What is the best fandom on AO3" voting tournament (will probably end up on fictional_fans if I do it)
--more cat pics
---etc.

If you are a podcast listener and looking for a way to feel like you're following Putin's war without doomscrolling, I want to recommend The Eastern Border podcast.

It's made by Latvian journalist Kristaps Andrejsons, and it's been going for over eight years with weekly episodes made for the purpose of educating Westerners about Soviet and post-Soviet history, politics and culture, from the perspective of people from former Soviet states. I actually started listening a year or so ago, because he guested on a paranormal podcast I was listening to when they did episodes about stuff in the region, and he was always interesting. I stopped listening not long thereafter because I use podcasts for escapism and Soviet politics did not feel quite as escapist as UFOs, but before that I had recommended them to a friend who deliberately seeks out podcasts on depressing political stuff, and she alerted me to start listening again.

He has shifted to 10-30 min daily war updates, trying to give English-speakers a local perspective, to combat disinfo, and to share information from Russian-language sources that aren't being widely/well translated in English media. He's currently operating out of the Polish border town of Chelm, working with refugees and trying to make up his mind whether to risk his life sneaking into Ukraine. He is also swearing as required, and has mastered the extremely expressively exhausted sigh, both of which help get through things.

It's good, and 10-30 minutes a day is enough to settle my need to follow events without tempting me into wallowing (and if I do feel the need to wallow, I can go to his twitter where he's posting links and ways to help all day, or I can listen to some of his 250+ back episodes to catch up on historical context, instead of chasing rumors.)

Also in one of the most 2022 things ever, he's posting a lot on Twitter because he is also active in BattleTech fandom, and just a few days before the invasion, a wank in Latvian BattleTech fandom over which faction is best led to a bunch of people being troll-reported to Facebook, so this journalist is banned from Facebook during the most important news event in his lifetime. For supporting the wrong BattleTech faction.

I don't know how to do normal DW posts anymore. :(

Everyone is posting their Spotify Wrapped, but mine is useless. Partly because I usually only use Spotify when playing with fanmixes, which means a lot of my frequently-played are like, this one obscure electronica song that happens to have a relevant title that I kept trying to listen to see if it would really fit and then getting distracted and having to start over.

Mostly though because my Spotify stats are always full of songs I've never listened to and never heard of. I think at some point my Spotify got on a list of mostly-inactive spotify accounts that could be hacked to fake plays of songs for money, and multiple password changes and/or the hackers getting smarter got to where it isn't showing up in my playlists or recently played anymore, but it still shows up in my end-of-year stats.

So basically don't trust any playback stats on Spotify, the really popular stuff is probably mostly bots.

BUT!

Podcast addict has stats now! So I can do a podcast wrapped! Also I recently got my podcasts back to being sequential, as below:


The podcasts on that there are still mostly the same as the last time I got there, but the order is pretty different! (I hid the thing that says I'm subscribed to 76 podcasts, 44 with unlistened episodes.)

They aren't necessarily the ones I listen to most - you can see some of them are in fact at the exact same episode count as last time- but lucky Podcast Addict can tell me how many I've listened to!

In the last year I have listened to 716 hours of podcasts and 724 episodes, or an average of about two hours and two episodes a day. On track to match last year's totals by the end of December, which is interesting because I didn't have two months off work doing nothing but listening to podcasts and reading fanfic this year!

( 2021 top ten by listening hours )

Oops that kind of ended up being a recs post anyway, didn't it.

I was going to work on an AO3 wrapup too, but the site that lets you download your AO3 history seems to have just gone down. :( Hopefully it's just for a revamp for the new year.

Anyway, in terms of wrapups for the 100 days of enemies stuff, I keep adding on the list of stuff I want to do instead of doing it? So, soon.

The Liberation of Night Vale (5080 words) by melannen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale, Les Misérables - All Media Types, Arm Joe
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cecil/Carlos
Characters: Cecil (Welcome to Night Vale), Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Combeferre (Les Misérables), Courfeyrac (Les Misérables), Jean Valjean, Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjorlas (Arm Joe), Trish Hidge
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Reincarnation, revolutionary rhetoric, The Dog Park, Cecil's Radio Show, embedded music, Crossover, character fusion, Friendship, Chief Guide Center, I'm the one who'd have to wrangle it so I'll be good and not tag this E/C/C even though I want to, Unreliable Narrator, Local Politics
Series: Part 5 of Les Mis Crossovers That Should Not Be
Summary:

Carlos's friend, who may or may not in fact be an angel, moves to Night Vale, and things start to get strange in a new and different way, even for Night Vale.

It's officially Part Five in the "Les Mis Crossovers That Should Not Be" series! Strong emphasis on the "Should Not Be" this time. Also possibly only makes sense to me, because the Unreliable Narrator and Dramatic Irony and Significant References are strong with this one.

(Also the story originally planned as the fifth crossover is still sitting there 2/3 finished. I should probably do something about that.)