forestofglory

Here's some more recent DecRecs!

Day 18
Today is one of those days where I really wish I was capable of napping. But since that isn't going to work I'm planning on spending some time curled up on the sofa with an ereader full of fic an hopefully a cat on my lap
So for today's #DecRecs I want to rec one of my favorite fics ever "on a long journey" by twigofwillow
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29819775/chapters/73366473

This is a Lan Sizhui centric post-canon CQL fic and It's really the best!

Things I love about "On a Long Journey":
*It's beautifully written
*The characterization is so perfect!
*The way the story is non-linear and includes. memories, stories and letters (Jiang Cheng's letter is so funny and pitch prefect)
*found family and good feelings while still letting people be complex and messy!


Day 19
For today's #DecRecs I have a really cool boardgame that I first played this year Vantage by Designer Jamey Stegmaier
basically your party crash lands on an alien planet and you are all in different locations, represented by illustrated cards. You can tell the other people about the cards but not show them the cards

It's very fail forward game, so you kinda wander around and interact with the environment and maybe complete some goals. There's lots of cool stuff to do! Once I have taken a child on an adventure, almost gotten eaten by a dragon, and stolen a flying vehicle!


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Here's the last several days of DecRecs!

Day 6
I am sick to day but I don't want to miss #DecRecs so you are getting an old favorite "Fandom for Robots" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad

It's a delightful short story featuring fandom, friendship and robot pals!

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/fandom-for-robots/

Day 7
I'm still not feeling great today so another old favorite for #decRecs "The Witches of Athens" by Lara Elena Donnelly is one of my comfort reads. It's everything that I want cozy SFF to be. Featuring sisterhood, coffee shops, and queer romance

http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fiction/the-witches-of-athens/

And since I mentioned cozy SFF this seems like a good time to link back to the piece I wrote about cozy SFF earlier this year -- "Domestic Labor and Community Building Rec List"

https://ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/2025/05/29/domestic-labor-and-community-building-rec-list.html

Day 8
Doing a little better today so I want to talk about my favorite drama I watched this year for #DecRecs
Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung! It's a historical kdrama about a young woman who becomes a historian -- one of the people charged with writing down everything that happens in court for the historical record. It's so so good!

Things I love about Rookie Historian:
*It's thematically about history and why it matters!
*Young women succeeding at traditionally masculine jobs
*female friendship!
*it depicts but doesn't endorse monarchy
*The ML is a princess coded chaos mupet and I love him

Day 9
Since I just posted and annotated bibliography todays #DecRecs has to be Zotero!
Zotero is a free citation manager! It's great! I'm not an academic and am not writing papers for publication but I love it!
I have a lot of PDFs and they aren't always easy to sort through, but Zotero make it easy for me to find things! I can tag them and search.
I also love that I can drag and drop and Zotero will pick up any meta data!

Zotero is a great tool for fic research. I've used it to create bibliographies for several fics now (including an annotated bibliography for my most recent fic)
I generally create tag for each fic as go along and it makes it easy to find stuff again.

Day 10
Today for #DecRecs I want to rec Intergalactic Mixtape! This a SFF newsletter that my friend Renay started this year! It's got links to interesting articles and reviews, smart thoughts and recs! It's joy to get it in my inbox every week!

https://buttondown.com/intergalacticmixtape

Hi I haven't been here as much as I'd like. We had some damage to the house that caused a major disruption, and even though it's been fixed for a while I'm having trouble getting back to my usual routines and projects.

But that's not what I want to talk about! It's December, and every year for the last several years I've been doing a project called DecRecs in December where I rec on thing everyday for the month and encourage other people to rec stuff too. Recs get posted on Mastodon and this year for the first time BlueSky then every once in a while I round them up and post several days worth here.

So here are the 1st five days of recs!

Day 1
It's the first day of December and that means its time for #decRecs !

This year I want to focus on reccing things I discovered this year, not things I've recced a ton of times before, though I'm sure I'll include some old favorites.

I'm starting out with "This is it" a mulifandom Go /Baduk / Weiqi vid. This so much fun! I've been rewatching this everytime I scroll past it in my ao3 bookmarks and its a delight every time!

I love the variety of source material and the perfect timing!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/51767752

2:57 min, only music, subtitles available

Day 2
Today for #DecRecs I want to talk about barley tea! I used to get this all the time at my favorite Korean restaurant but I recently realized that I can make it at home! It's so good, cozy, a bit of nutty flavor, very warming in the cold!


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For the first time I'm offering to create something for the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction! I'm offering to create an annotated bibliography related to Chinese history. If you ever wished I would go down a research rabbit hole and tell you about it now is your chance!

See more here

I had a lot of fun doing fandomtrees last year so I decided to sign up again this year. My tree is here

Yesterday was katzenfabrik's birthday and in celebration ve did a fic commentary meme and asked vir friends to play too.

The meme is
Let's play a game: pick one of my fics (or a chapter/paragraph/line of one of my fics, as you like) and I'll write you a dvd commentary on what I was thinking when I wrote it

So far I've been asked about two fics and I wanted to save what I wrote somewhere more permanent feeling than Mastodon

( To Live without Regrets )

( End Racism in the OTW | Desk Tour: Dr. Jiang Yanli )

If you'd like to ask me about another fic of mine I'd be happy to rammble on for a bit.

This year I've actually been taking part in the Snowflake Challenge but most over on Mastodon. But I started writing up this wish list and it got a bit long so I'm posting it here.

My sign up for fandomtrees covers most of the fanworks I'd like to receive

Other than that:

I would love to receive fanart or graphics for any of my fic, not just the ones in fandoms I requested for fandom trees!

I want more people to watch The Long Ballad and yell at me about their feelings

I would love some sources (in English) about the material culture of the First Turkic Khaganate. I've found basically nothing and it would be really helpful for the fic I'm writing!

I want advice on which stories in the Taiping Guangji I should try reading with my Classical Chinese tutor

I'd like more time and energy and less hand pain so I can write more

I'm heading to WisCon latter this week!

I'll be on two online panels on Friday:

The Social life of Recs
Online Zoom Room 1 • Fandom as a Way of Life • Fri 1:00 PM–2:15 PM
Recs (short for recommendations) play an important social role. Recs can be a way to share joy and build community. Talking about the things you love can help connect with other people who have similar taste. However recs can sometimes be a problem as well. What happens when you don't like the thing your friend recced? Let's talk about the social role of recs.

Imaginary Book Club
Online Zoom Room 2 • Fandom as a Way of Life • Fri 7:30 PM–8:45 PM
Five panelists discuss books they've read in the last year—even though those books (technically) do not exist—and improvise commentary with each other. This year's subjects may include: a newly discovered eighteenth-century robot romance, the Complete Animorphs as annotated by Thomas Pynchon, and an office-worker horror anthology called "Break Room".

And I'm also moding one the new Roundtables on Monday.

Epistolary Fiction
Conference 4 • Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction • Mon 10:00 AM–11:15 AM
Roundtable discussion. Epistolary Fiction, or stories that consist of letters and other artifacts, have a long history. In an age where distance seems smaller every day, why does epistolary fiction still have an appeal, whether it's emails, text messages, social media, or book reviews? Is there something unique about the format that allows for a different type of storytelling? Are we just powerless to resist the implicit intimacy reading others' correspondence implies? Come join a discussion of the appeal, and challenges, of reading and writing epistolary fiction.

If you are going to be there and want to meet up let me know!

2022 was a year where I struggled to focus on reading and watching things. The pandemic and my own health issues both contributed. Even though tendentious is physical ailment, I found dealing with it very stressful and that affected my ability to focus

I'm going to discuss first the books I read and then the shows I watched.

( Books )
( Shows )

My main goal going forward is to enjoy media when I have the time and energy to do so. I hope I'm more able to focus in the coming year.

Whatever you choose to read and watch in 2023 I hope it brings you joy

Here's the last week or so of DecRecs form me!
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