mishaday | Reading

Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling
Pairings/Characters: M/M; Song Lan | Song Zichen/Xiao Zingchen; Song Lan | Song Zichen, Xiao Xingchen
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 3,632 words
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, determinedly Taiwanese cuisine, Food Porn because the author inexplicably omitted that tag, racist microaggression (a character recounts getting renamed by his exchange host family.)
Creator Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Taiwan, Street food, chinese diaspora feelings and food as love language, SongXiao Feast
Creator Links: (AO3)

Irrelevancy; (Tumblr)

touchmycoat
Theme: Food & Cooking, Cultural Differences, Fluff, Identity, Modern AU, Slice of Life

Summary: Flirting and cultural reclamation via Taiwanese street food. Songxiao modern meet-cute.

Author’s Notes:
For the #songxiaofeast on twitter, thanks for organizing the event~!!!! There's so much great art in the hashtag *~* love me some food love....

Chinese glossary at end lolol, and is this all a shameless marketing ploy for Taiwan night markets? yes.

…The menu (a twitter thread w pictures) (Unfortunately no longer accessible—FMO.)

大腸包小腸 (dà cháng bāo xiǎo cháng): "little sausage wrapped around a big sausage" lol
蚵仔煎 (ó-à-tsiān): oyster pancake. I'm using the Taiwanese romanization here because it better captures that Hokkien pronunciation. Ningxia Night Market seriously has the best ones.
臭豆腐 (chò dò fǔ): stinky tofu!! I think it smells delicious; don't be like SL eat it normally without that crazy amount of sauce nkfsjdfds
肉圓麵線 (bà wán miàn xiàn): meatball & rice noodles. Two separate things but they're typically sold together. Meatball is always pronounced in Hokkien and sometimes rice noodle is too (mǐ suǎ)
豆花 (dòu huā): tofu pudding. It's not too sweet and it's sooooo refreshing to have on a hot taiwan evening with ice!
雞蛋糕 (jī dàn gāo): egg cake! They're seriously very good but a hit-or-miss from street vendors lmfao.

Drop a comment~! Happy feastings!!!!!!!

Reccer’s Notes: Taiwanese bartender Song Zichen, taking both pity on and a fancy to diasporic American tourist Xiao Xingchen, proceeds to initiate him into the ways of local street food (as both a welcome into his heritage and a courtship overture.) This fic, stuffed with delicious Unresolved Sexual Tension, serves as a reminder that the Sinosphere is a very big and diverse place, and brought an outpouring of nostalgic yearning for the Taste Of Home from diasporic commenters.

(And Ningxia Night Market needs to hire Irrelevancy as a publicist, dammit; I was fervently wishing my neighborhood had something like that up the alley!)

Fanwork links: Comfort Food / 有可能的夜晚 (AO3-locked.)

james

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james

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kickair8p

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Current Mood: touched

dine

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pegkerr

I have been steeped in everything science fiction and fantasy for decades, but there is one thing I've had no experience with whatsoever:

I have never tried Dungeons and Dragons gaming.

I'm not quite sure why. Heaven knows I have dozens of long-time friends who have been gaming for years, and I've heard peripheral conversations on the topic at many a science fiction convention. Even around my own dinner table, as Fiona has long enjoyed gaming.

So when I sent out my call for ideas for Year of Adventure things to do, one friend,

lydamorehouse, hit upon the obvious: why not join her group for a gaming session?

I went over to Lyda's house to consult, and she walked me through the process of pulling together a character to play. I was pretty lucky with my rolls, and Lydra graciously set me up at Level Four. After an hour and a half of questions and answers, I had a new character, a ranger, with a respectable level of skills to test out.

And that's what I did last Saturday over Zoom: I was invited to join the troupe of motley characters by a rather glittery dragon and came upon the assembled company at a windmill, where they were regrouping after their last adventure. I had to follow Lyda's prompts and ask a lot of questions, but I had a general idea of what to do. I spent a fun three hours playing with the others. We stashed some magical pastries, examined a magical rune book in a Bag of Holding, and tangled with a vampire. I took out my bow and quiver, stuck a garlic roll onto the end of the arrow, and shot it into his chest. This gave me the satisfaction of staggering him a bit--although I didn't have much of a chance to savor my victory since he promptly turned me into a frog.

I got better eventually and exited, following a wolf. But the experience was deemed a success for all concerned (and apparently I didn't grossly offend anyone), so I was invited to return for the next session.

I think I'm going to enjoy this.

Image description: Background, bottom layer: a Dungeons and Dragons character page. Overlaid over it: Center: an old-fashioned windmill building. Left: a darkly sinister male figure dressed in black, a wolf at his side. Right: a woman pulls back the string of bow loaded with an arrow aiming at the man, a bread roll (a garlic roll) affixed to the tip. At her feet: a frog. Upper half, semi-transparent: a screenshot of several people in Zoom conference. Hovering over the vanes of the windmill: a miniature dragon.

Gaming

37 Gaming

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

rhi

Quiet Breaks (1864 words) by Gryphonrhi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Numb3rs (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ian Edgerton, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Inkvent
Series: Part 1 of drowning in your doubts
Summary: Ian hasn't talked to either Eppes brother since they hunted down a black box together. He's been a little busy with this.

communal_creators is running!

spook_me
prompts are here. Fall is coming! More fic to write. In the meantime, I hope y'all enjoy this one.

Current Mood: cheerful

mecurtin

I have a set of baskets made to hold paper bags to collect paper for recycling. They're also a VERY useful for collecting cats!

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks up at the camera from inside a paper bag inside a basket. His eyes are wide, his whiskers spread.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks up at the camera from inside a paper bag inside a basket. His eyes are wide, his whiskers spread.

One of our very best friends from college lives close to us. Or rather, we all still (or again) live close to college--I say that "like the salmon, we came back to spawn." She's had breast cancer, was in remission, now it's back ... metastasized. Kind of a lot. I've been to see her, she looks pretty good so far, we had a good time talking about my kids' life changes and about books. But I have a crushing pain in my chest, y'know? And I woke up this morning with my shoulders aching, and I've been *gnawing* on my night guard in my sleep ...

Meanwhile over on Bluesky there's an ongoing multiday ... thing ... because we're asking people to register for the #NoKings protest on Oct.18th, and a BUNCH of high-profile accounts don't understand why & are going on about OPSEC ... and I *do* understand why, I can explain, but it would take so much energy ...

One of the good things in my life is that

sholio has been posting Murderbot recs! I will double her rec (if you can stand WIPs) for Robbing the Hood by

Rilleshka, a canon-divergence Space Pirate!AU where Murderbot teams up with a *different*, non-verbal bot pilot before it ever meets PresAux, and things spiral from there. It gets particular praise from me because

Rilleshka addresses with the *big* implausibility in canon (shut up), which is that human neural tissue is actually incredibly fussy, & keeping it functional must involve, at minimum, *nutrition*.

So, where can I get some Murderbot icons?

james

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the_shoshanna

We booked the aisle and window seats and even though they announced it was a full flight, no one has shown up for the middle! We would have offered them the window so that Geoff could have the aisle, but now we have the whooooooole row, and I'm pretty sure they've now secured the cabin doors! WIN.

dine

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sinesofinsanity posting in

fancake

Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender
Pairings/Characters: Zuko, Iroh, the GAang in the background
Rating: G
Length: 2,889 words, 19min 30s
Creator Links: Haicrescendo
Theme: Food & Cooking, character development, family, families of choice, going home, missing scenes,

Summary:

[Zuko’s greatest failing, not his only but just one that stands out the most in a very long list, is that he’s never known quite what he had until it’s gone. Or, on the opposite hand, he covets the things that don’t matter, that seem to matter so much at the time and turn out, in the end, to be something that Zuko’s made up in his head.

And then Zuko finds, of all things after it all, that he misses Uncle Iroh’s tea.]

Or,

Zuko screws up his life and in the process of fixing it, figures out some tea wisdom along the way.

Reccer's Notes: This story is so beautiful and gentle. I absolutely love seeing how Zuko's growth and character development is mirrored with his finally learning to make a decent cup of tea. Plus the neat detail of how he despite learning from and trying to emulate his uncle, he makes it his own way. Zuko and Iroh's relationship is lovely in this too. Just an all around lovely story. klainelynch does a beautiful job with the podfic as well

Fanwork Links:
Heat, Wait, Steep, Repeat
and the Podfic both on AO3

dine

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full_metal_ox posting in

fancake

Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling
Pairings/Characters: Gen; M/M; Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian; Jin Zixuan, Wen Qing, Wen Ning, Nie Mingjue, Nie Huaisang, Jiang Fengmian, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, Jiang Yanli, Lan Xichen, Lan An, Lan Wangji
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 1,209 words
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, arrant pedantry, Author Showed Her Work, Food Porn, gastrotravelogue, tea nerdery, Tumblr work
Creator Tags:
headcanon, the untamed 陈情令, cql, mo dao zu shi, mdzs, wei wuxian, lan wangji, nie huaisang, jin zixuan, wen qing, nie mingjue, wangxian headcanon at the very end because that's what i'm here for, tea, i really like tea, heicha, oolong, white tea, green tea, dragonwell, my ramblings, qi is a thing for some tea drinkers

Creator Links: (AO3)

Haoppopotamus; (Instagram)

haoppopotamus; (Tumblr)

watch-grok-brainrot (formerly ~~wangxianbunnydoodles~~)
Theme: Food & Cooking, Cultural Differences, Meta, Research, Worldbuilding

Summary: Since watching ep 3 for the first time (i.e. january), this has been knocking around in my brain. In ep 3, we see JZXuan waltzing into the same inn as the Yunmeng Trio, booting them, and then rejecting “bad tea”. Ever since, I’ve watched a lot of tea being poured in CQL. It got me thinking, what kind of tea would different sects prefer and what would different characters drink?

Reccer’s Notes: In which Haoppo uses her tea connoisseurship as a vehicle for characterization and worldbuilding (and invites her imaginary friends to illustrate and share her interest.) For the likes of me (with no claim to Asian cred by birth or upbringing, and whose blunted sensory range reduces almost all tea to hot leaf juice), this serves as a window into an unfamiliar area of interest and body of cultural reference frames (the idea that tea might possess qi, not necessarily related to its flavor, was a new one on me—but of obvious importance to cultivators.)

Fanwork Links: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon

(The original post, preserved on the Wayback Machine, includes a beautiful and apropos GIF header: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon (~~wangxianbunnydoodles~~)

Current Music: “Cha Ge”

james

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the_shoshanna

our last real days in Wales

Yesterday was forecast to have much better weather than today, and yesterday and today were our last days in Wales, so yesterday we did our last big hike! We caught a bus to Borth, on the coast about twenty minutes north of here, and spent four hours walking back home along that section of the Wales Coast Path. (We'd considered going south, but the description we found of the path south from Aberystwyth basically said "you immediately start by going steeply upward for a six-hundred-meter rise without a break" and that was it for that option, buh-bye.) It was a lovely day! No rain except for a brief misting just as we started, a strong breeze that kept us cool even on the steep upslopes where we were working hard, and it was always coming off the ocean so we didn't, you know, get blown over the cliff to our deaths. (I did get almost blown off my feet landward once or twice, and I always kept my hiking pole on the cliff side, so that it would always be pushing me toward safety.)

I mean, it's not that dangerous! People hike it constantly, including the trail runners who passed us over a different section a few days ago, and we met another runner on the path yesterday! But I can get a bit freaked out, and I'm always a little nervous about bad footing even when I'm not on a cliff edge, so I (we) take it slow.

We also take it slow because we want to admire the amazing views! Here's Geoff on the trail about half an hour after we started, still kitted up for rain although it had stopped by then:

We had started from the near/right end of the beach that's just over his head, so you can see we'd already climbed a fair bit. The day involved a lot of ups and downs; check this out:

Wales Coast Path between Borth and Aberystwyth

If you open the actual picture rather than this thumbnail and zoom in, you can see the path, just on the outside of the main fence (for pretty much the whole way, we were walking with a fence on our left and a cliff edge on our right). Unusually, there's a fence between the path and the cliff edge for a little way here as well, where the cliff edge has eroded even closer to the path than usual. Then the path descends very steeply to sea level, where there's a track from a field out to the water; there's a little footbridge over a small stream (and also a bunch of rubbish someone dumped there, which was upsetting to see but thankfully was also unique in our experience), and then the path climbs equally steeply up the facing cliff, which you can't see but you can see a bit of it right at the top (bottom left of the picture), where it's contouring around the rise so that the dropoff is briefly on the left (as you walk southward toward the camera) instead of on the right.

Down at the very bottom, by the footbridge, this sign was posted:

an isolated shoreline with a warning sign

saying, in Welsh and English, "CAUTION: There is no lifeguard service on this beach," and all I could think was "No kidding."

We'd read that there can be seals and dolphins in these waters, but we didn't see any: only sheep in the fields, and seagulls, and a kestrel hovering absolutely motionless in the air, almost even with us and far above the shoreline below, close enough that we could watch all the constant tiny motions and adjustments it was making to hover so perfectly motionlessly in one spot. It was like a bird of prey version of a hummingbird!

We had the usual cheerful exchanges with other walkers, and the usual rest stops to drink water and eat trail mix. I bought bags of mixed nuts and mixed dried fruit a few towns ago, and so we mix them together and that's our trail mix; but the mixed dried fruit I found was really meant for baking, not snacking, so it has raisins, sultanas, currants, and also bits of candied lemon and orange peel. It makes the trail mix feel rather posh!

The last bit into Aberystwyth was a hard climb up the hill at the north end of the bay we're on, but worth it for the views (and also the sense of accomplishment). We did see a seal on the beach as we walked along the promenade back to our hotel, but sadly it was dead.

We had a very tasty dinner at a hotel restaurant just up the beach that was recommended by one of the staff here, and then we had a great treat! When we were walking around town the day before, just looking around (and buying me new gear), we'd passed a bar/event venue called the Bank Vault, and the schedule posted outside said that the next night would be performances by members of the Aberystwyth Folk Music Society! Well, we couldn't miss that! So we skipped our usual local beer with dinner (we told the waitress we were going to a bar with live music after dinner, and she immediately said, "Oh, the Bank Vault? That's a great place."

There was no cover charge, but we shared four half-pints of three different beers, and when we ordered the last one we told the guy pulling them "and one for yourself as well," which the waitress at dinner had told us was an appropriate way to tip. (She said they wouldn't expect it but would be pleased, and his reaction bore that out. I saw someone else leaving a few coins on the bar when he picked up his drink.)

a few comments on masking

I forgot to say that, on the bus from Fishguard to Aberystwyth, we saw the first person masking, other than us, that we've seen on this entire trip! Just some guy, our age or a little older, he got on and rode for a few stops and got off again, but I almost did a doubletake.

And we've been eating indoors without masking because we don't have other good options, but we did mask in the Bank Vault, briefly lowering the mask to take a sip of beer and then replacing it before inhaling again. And we've masked in all the shops we've been in, and -- jumping ahead to today -- while we were looking around the National Library. And once again nobody blinked an eye, or did a doubletake, or acted weird about interacting with us, even though we are being, statistically, very weird. I've really appreciated that.

The music last night varied from "that was definitely a song, I'll say that for it" to really, really good. Nearly all the performers were older (or just plain old) men, but there were a couple of younger people and a couple of women in the mix. (Literally two women, in two make/female duos. Those duos had the best songs by far.) The first performer played an accordion, most of the rest had guitars, and here's a picture of a guy with a harmonium:

It was a pretty small space; what the picture shows is almost the whole ground floor. I took the photo with my back against the small bar, and then there was a stairway behind that going up to a second level, from which our waitress had said you could look down on the performance space, but we didn't go up there; we liked our seats at the bar, where we had a great view and also could keep trying local beers! They had fourteen options on tap, and the bartender was happy to let us sample anything before committing to it:

And then around ten pm we staggered home to bed.

Today was forecast to be much worse weather, meaning rain all day, but it turned out to be lovely! It did start out raining, and I made the unpleasant discovery that my new rain pants are slightly too short, and allow water to run off the bottom of the pant leg into the front of my boots. Fortunately, we had bought short rain gaiters for this trip, although we hadn't ever actually used them! But I put mine on and they fixed the problem perfectly, which is of course what they're meant to do. And then it turned into nice weather anyway.

Today we stuck around town; my knee was bothering me a little and we didn't want to try another strenuous hike anyway. We wandered through town some more and then climbed the steep but short hill up to the National Library of Wales! They had a couple of exhibits on; I was particularly interested in the one documenting protests against the flooding of the Tryweryn Valley in 1965 for the sake of Liverpool's water supply, which meant destroying a Welsh village, but I was also curious to see whatever was included in the "treasures" on display. In the end, though, we mostly just wandered around the building, admiring old books on display in beautiful cabinets. The Tryweryn Valley exhibit was smaller (and the story less well documented, for those of us who knew nothing about it) than I'd hoped, and I completely forgot to look for the other ones! And then we wandered home along a new route, just to see some different things, and now are back in the hotel catching up on blogging before dinner.

So mostly today was a winding-down day. Tomorrow we take a train to the outskirts of London, so that we can easily get to Heathrow the next morning!

kickair8p

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Current Mood: sick

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Photograph of steel spoons and spices in a dramatic setting with added text that gives it the look of a gourmet magazine cover: September 2025. Food & Cooking, at Fancake. Steel teaspoons are arranged in an elogated oval to suggest a fish, with the bowls acting as scales and some of the handles left visible to create the fins and tail, giving the creature a spiky appearance. The concave bowls are dusted with a powdery orange spice for color and one spoon at the front of the fish is filled with a coarse black spice to create an eye. The fish is on a black surface with a rough texture and around it are three skinny green peppers, a mound of salt, a mound of orange spice, and a dipping bowl filled with a clear amber liquid.

dine

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mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Diefenbaker
Rating: Gen
Length: n/a (artwork)
Content Notes: may induce donut cravings!
Creator Links: Wagnetic on AO3
Theme: Food and cooking, Happy endings, Crafts, Textiles

Summary: A bag featuring Dief and the imminent demise of some donuts.

Reccer's Notes:
I will never stop reccing this! An excellently crafted bag with a felt appliqué of Dief about to enjoy a stack of donuts. It's so good, and a perfect likeness of Dief with a "donuts incoming" gleam in his eye!

Fanwork Links: Hungry Like the Wolf

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August 2024

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Page Summary

full_metal_ox in fancake - Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling: Comfort Food / 有可能的夜晚, by Irrelevancy
james - Holy Fanfic, Batman!
james - Good News/Bad News
kickair8p - Last episode of due South — Northwest Passage
dine - humans developed a wholeass internet just to share cat pictures
pegkerr - 2025 52 Card Project: Week 37: Gaming
rhi - Fic posting: Quiet Breaks, Numb3rs
mecurtin - Purrcy; grumbles; Murderbot
james - I am doing a thing!
the_shoshanna - I’m not sure that’s ever worked before!
dine - every normal man must be tempted at times ...
sinesofinsanity in fancake - ATLA: Heat, Wait, Steep, Repeat by Haicrescendo
dine - I've got some lifesavers in my pocket, and pineapple is next!
full_metal_ox in fancake - Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon, by watch-grok-brainrot
james - Weather thou goest
the_shoshanna - winding down
kickair8p - Flu Vax Yesterday . . .
runpunkrun in fancake - Theme Reminder: Food & Cooking
dine - glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever
mific in fancake - due South: Hungry Like the Wolf, by Wagnetic

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Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

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Wibbling Widgets

Reading

Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling: Comfort Food / 有可能的夜晚, by Irrelevancy

Holy Fanfic, Batman!

Good News/Bad News

Last episode of due South — Northwest Passage

humans developed a wholeass internet just to share cat pictures

2025 52 Card Project: Week 37: Gaming

Fic posting: Quiet Breaks, Numb3rs

Purrcy; grumbles; Murderbot

I am doing a thing!

I’m not sure that’s ever worked before!

every normal man must be tempted at times ...

ATLA: Heat, Wait, Steep, Repeat by Haicrescendo

I've got some lifesavers in my pocket, and pineapple is next!

Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling: Tea Preferences by CQL Sects - a Headcanon, by watch-grok-brainrot

Weather thou goest

winding down

Flu Vax Yesterday . . .

Theme Reminder: Food & Cooking

glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever

due South: Hungry Like the Wolf, by Wagnetic

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August 2024

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