Please note that my primary journal is at Dreamwidth. While everything on LJ gets posted on DW, not everything on DW gets posted on LJ. Most notably, the majority of my posts about social justice issues and the majority of my book reviews are only posted on DW. If you are already reading me on Dreamwidth, there's no need to add me here!

I am trying not to add new people on LJ these days, as I'm working on phasing out my LJ participation to a few reading and craft communities.

I dropped some people from my LJ flist who either crosspost from DW or who haven't updated in over a year or who I don't really talk with anymore. I'm very very close to deleting my LJ; I only crosspost about half my entries these days, the majority of my community is on Dreamwidth, and I hate LJ's user relations attitude with a violent passion. It's going to happen eventually, it's just a matter of when. I am happy to grant access on DW to LJ OpenIDs, and I may request OpenID access here from some of you eventually.

So, as usual, if I've dropped you here and you really don't want me to, let me know.

NOTE: Comments may include spoilers for I Shall Wear Midnight, the fourth Tiffany book.

Terry Pratchett books I have not read:

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There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.

Some possibilities for a Sekrit Project! Approximately 1 zillion portraits below the cut, mostly 16th century. Stickied for future reference.

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There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.

...or in LJ's latest code push of instant privacy concerns, did they also remove the ticky box that allowed one to comment and log in at the same time? I sure can't find it anymore, although I CAN find the stupid x-post to Facebook and Twitter buttons they added.

It's as if they actively want their site to be harder to use, perhaps thinking that Facebook is user-unfriendly and popular, so user-unfriendliness is the route to popularity! (I like to imagine how much MORE popular Facebook would be if it were easy to use, but I'm a weirdo like that.)

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There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.

I am rereading Lloyd Alexander's Westmark (followed by The Kestrel and The Beggar Queen). They are honestly the only fantasy* novels I can think of which are about common people bringing down the monarchy. (They're short YA novels, and I recommend them if you haven't read them.)

*They are fantasy in that they are set in a fictional country; there's no magic or religion mentioned, so it's a pretty pragmatic kind of fantasy. They do in some ways resonate pretty strongly with the French Revolution, though I wouldn't call them historical fantasy by any stretch of the imagination.

Fantasy and monarchies seem to go together well, or at least comfortably. But some of you may have guessed by now that I'm kind of bored with comfortable fantasy that's always about the same generic worlds and characters and stories.

Have you read any non-urban fantasy novels--secondary world or historical that are not about monarchies or empires? Maybe about tribal people with chiefs (they could be non-hereditary!), or about republics, or even parliamentary monarchies, or societies run by councils, or about people's revolutions like Westmark. You name it. Just not the so-prevalent bog-standard monarchies.

There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.

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Tag-merging! Haven't tested yet, but very excited!

And in theory, both LJ and DW cross-posted entries should now link to each other, which is what I am testing now.

Dreamwidth codes if anyone wants them (no need to ask, and if one doesn't work, try another!):

Q9KGFXKDMN8Y7AAAJG2Z
E48G4Y7M2G27XAAAJG22
3PF4RBZEE2PP9AAAJG23
JMRK2YGWF795DAAAJG24
BDTEZCH7XG7FDAAAJG25e
WHYXC5MNW39VZAAAJG26
2DXW7WBGCRRM8AAAJG27
G4WW7A2Z6ECN2AAACZCB
CZPXY6GQX9YPBAAACZCC
CBBQV7WFGCK24AAADFK9
ZRNRMK6G76Z9MAAADFLA

Dreamwidth

There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.

steampunk_nusantara is a brilliant project. It is building a steampunk alternate-history Southeast Asia, at present framed as a catalogue of objects, with entries describing the objects from the point of view of either a cataloger or the creator of the object.

If you want to know more about how it works, there's the policies and guidelines post. Personally, I'm just lurking and reading--it is a wonderful thing if you like steampunk, history, languages, or catalog records (um, is my museum nerdiness showing?)

This sort of project--multicultural, thoughtful, creative, careful about cultural appropriation and -isms, not just another spinoff of Victorian romanticism and exoticism--is what I wish more steampunk were like.

(Also, I would pay good money for a novel in this world, just sayin'.)

Some recent posts:

Pickled & Poisoned Tongkat Ali
The Travel Qur'an
Pterandon bones
Clockwork Mouse
letter fragment

[I missed Friday, but oh well! Close enough for government work. Cross-posting because I'd imagine some LJ people might be interested in reading, too.]

There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.

I'm getting kind of tired of reading redundant posts, and I want to see how many people I'm actually reading on LJ, so I'm going to be removing people who cross-post from my LJ friendslist. If you really want to be able to continue reading me on LJ, let me know and I'll add you back in a non-default filter.

ETA: I'm also removing people who don't seem to use their journals anymore, so I can get a better idea of how many reasons I really have to stay on LJ.

ETA 2: If you don't have a DW account and you've posted more recently than years ago, I'm not planning on dropping you!

There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.

Take them. Use them.

G4WW7A2Z6ECN2AAACZCB

CZPXY6GQX9YPBAAACZCC

CBBQV7WFGCK24AAADFK9

ZRNRMK6G76Z9MAAADFLA

JQNQZS7XBKF7PAAADV5D

2XAFPNH8Z54PMAAAEDHX

http://www.dreamwidth.org

There are comments at Dreamwidth. Comments are welcome either place.