Me just screaming NO as Armand claims a song for himself.
Jan. 22nd, 2026 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goodbyebirdAlso, a fun game some yt channels play is picking a deck for each of the characters in a show they love, and to me Mio Im's Tarot screams Armand. It's got something to do with the sparse nature of it, the limited bone/dust gray palette, obviously all the bones hehe.
Reading notes
Jan. 22nd, 2026 09:31 pmfred_mouseaiii, I have gone back through my posts, and the most recent of these that I've found is from last august. I am not going to attempt to work out what I have started or progressed; I will start with 'what I've finished' and if I still have any oomph (and it is not bed time) I'll go poke at what I've abandoned. In reverse chronological order. I'm putting the list in, and then maaaaybe I'll have the cope to put a commentary. (finished today but not yet reviewed: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie)... oh, and if I notice that it is a short story, I've left it out, because I think I captured that before.
- Bound by the Blood - Cecilia Tan. 4.5 stars. review - BDSM speculative erotica that is just so clever, but also very emotionally hard going.
- The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography - A.J.A. Symons. 4 stars. review - presented as a biography, but it reads as a story of an obsession, and the biographical details are highlights.
- The Siege of Burning Grass - Premee Mohamed. 3 stars. review - despite being well written, fantastic world building, good characterisation, passable plot I felt like I just missed the point.
- The House that Horror Built - Christina Henry. 2.5 stars review - I usually love Henry's work, and yet this one just never quite gelled for me. (content note: pandemic) 5.Nest - Inga Simpson. 5 stars. review - recommended for those who like slow moving slice of life stories; each chapter is a tiny lightly sketched moment that adds to a nuanced and complicated story of getting old, making mistakes, and reconciling with your past.
- Building a second brain: a proven method to organise your digital life and unlock your creative potential - Tiago Forte. 4. stars. review - some really good ideas, but dry and easy to put down and forget about it. I feel that 'less annoying than the majority of self-help books' is a low bar, but it cleared it.
- Digital Sociology - Deborah Lupton. 4 stars. review - There is a lot going on with this book, looking both at how sociology as a process / research field is changed by using digital tools, and how sociology of the digital world works.
- Angel of the Overpass - Seanan McGuire. 4 stars. review - very satisfying set of conclusions; well worth reading if you liked the previous ones. Possibly slightly darker horror than the last one.
- The Viy - Nikolai Gogol. 3.5 stars. review - This was well written, and individual scenes are great, but I don't think I understand how the story fits together.
- The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting - KJ Charles. 4.5 stars. review - I really enjoyed this, and finished it in an afternoon.
- Vertigo - Karen Herbert. 3 stars. review - I noted this as "a little thriller in a literary public service story"; I found it really hard to engage with
- The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman. 3.5 stars. review - excessively contrived plot, adversarial workplace relationships verging on farce, well written, complex full of interesting characters.
- The Coffee House Witch and the Grumpy Cat - Ariana Jade. 2 stars. review - The writing is good, but the entire thing is set up and no payoff. And for something marketed as a romance, it really isn't.
- A Sorceress Comes to Call - T. Kingfisher. 4 stars. review - solidly written fantasy / horror / regency romance with a heavy emphasis on body horror and loss of control, and I don't recommend it to people who have trauma over dangerous and controlling parents
- Bad Actors - Mick Herron. 2 stars. review - I listened to an interview by the author, this was the Slough House book I found in the library. Author loves their characters, but I found them so badly written.
- The Sea Mystery - Freeman Wills Crofts. 4 stars. review - perfectly readable murder mystery, more thinky and less personality driven in comparison to Agatha Christie.
- Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller - Oliver Darkshire. 3.5 stars. review - lots of short, self-contained anecdotes. Dry and gets a bit same-old and repetitive.
Abandoned
- Fly with Me by Andie Burke reason - not for me
- Doing research: A new researcher's guide by Jinfa Cai, Stephen Hwang, James Hiebert, Charles Hohensee, reason - out of scope
- The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt reason - came across as disingenuous
- The Pleasure of Drowning by Jean Bürlesk reason - do not share the author's sense of humour.
- Unmasked: The Ultimate Guide to ADHD, Autism and Neurodivergence by Ellie Middleton reason - I kept finding myself contrasting it with Matilda Boseley's The Year I Met My Brain and finding it lacking.
A Very Mid Attempt To Incorporate More Protein Into My Dinner
Jan. 22nd, 2026 01:00 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
scalziwhatever_feedI have never been one to care too much about the amount of protein a meal has, but sometimes I see a recipe on Instagram that boasts low calories and high protein and actually looks good, and I find myself tempted to try them out. I mean, if I can eat something healthy-ish and it tastes good, then it’s a win-win, right?
So, after seeing this Buffalo Chicken Hot Pocket recipe, I decided to give it a shot. It seemed like as good a place as any to start with higher protein meals.
Even though the recipe looks long, it’s all pretty simple ingredients, though I did have to go buy quite a few.
So let’s talk about how “quick and easy” it was to make this, how much I had to buy to make it, the time it took, how many dishes it made, and if it actually tasted good.
Diving right in, the first thing was acquiring the ingredients. I shopped at Kroger.
First up, I had to buy a pack of chicken, which ended up being Simple Truth Natural Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast Family Pack for $16.52. I used all this chicken even though it was a big ol’ family pack. Next was Sweet Baby Ray’s Mild Buffalo Wing Sauce for $4.29. I used almost the entire bottle. A block of Philadelphia Reduced Fat Cream Cheese was $3.49. The recipe only needed about a fourth of the block. The recipe calls for a 0% fat Greek yogurt, so I picked Oikos Triple Zero Plain Greek Yogurt, which has zero added sugar, zero artificial sweeteners, and is zero percent fat with eighteen grams of protein (per 6oz serving). I used most of the 32oz container, which was $6.79.
Though I have all-purpose flour, bread flour, and gluten-free flour, I did not have self-rising flour, so I bought King Arthur Unbleached Self-Rising Flour in a five pound bag for $6.29. For the mozzarella, I usually like Sargento’s shredded mozzarella because it’s the only whole milk one I tend to find, but since the recipe specifies a fat free mozzarella, I just went with Kroger Low-Moisture Part Skim shredded mozzarella in the 4-cup size bag for $3.99. I picked Jack’s Special Mild Salsa for my “tomato salsa” which was $4.99 but I have most of the container left over. I also bought Simple Truth Organic Chives for $2.49. And last but not least I bought a Hidden Valley Ranch Seasoning 1oz packet for a whopping $2.39.
I had Daisy brand cottage cheese on hand already, both the whole milk version and the low-fat version, but for this recipe I used the whole milk type since it didn’t specify. Oh, and I used actual whole milk for the quarter cup of fat-free milk it calls for. You’ll just have to live with my substitution.
So, in total, I spent $51.24 on stuff for just this one recipe. I always say you can’t cook dinner without spending fifty bucks, and boy oh boy does that remain true. I swear it’s a literal constant in my life.
Moving on from cost, the first thing to do was to add a bunch of stuff into the Crockpot and let it get cooking. That part was really easy, you just throw the chicken in and add all the spices and whatnot on top, give it a mix and let it cook on high for a couple hours. The only dishes I used for this portion were measuring spoons and a measuring cup. Disclaimer: I did not add the white onion, therefore I saved myself from using a knife and cutting board.
While that was cooking, I blended all the ingredients for the sauce together. I only have a very tiny portable blender meant for protein shakes and smoothies on the go (don’t ask why because I don’t even know), so I had to do it in three or four batches, which meant I mixed everything together in a bowl and then put a couple ladles worth into the blender, blended it and dumped the blended mixture into a separate bowl. Due to my unnecessary steps, you probably will not make as many dirty dishes as I did here. Or as much of a mess on your countertop.
After the sauce was completed, I got to work on the dough. This part was definitely the most time consuming, partially because I decided to be precise and weigh out my ten dough balls to make sure they were perfectly equal. The dough took some work to come together, but after enough kneading, it got there. This portion of the recipe really only took a measuring cup and a bowl, plus the rolling pin to roll out the dough. I set my dough discs aside.
Finally, when the chicken was cooked through, I was very surprised by how much liquid there was in the Crockpot. In the video, when he goes to shred the chicken after its time in the Crockpot, it’s completely dry. I was perplexed why there was liquid in mine, especially when I actually used 100g more chicken breast than the recipe called for. I didn’t want to add my creamy sauce to it while there was so much watery liquid, but I also didn’t want to dump the liquid out of the Crockpot and waste all the flavor that was probably in there.
So, I got to work shredding the chicken to see if it would absorb more as I went. Sure enough, the liquid did reduce quite a bit after the shredding, which took forever and gave my arms a workout. I decided to let the chicken and liquid keep cooking with the lid off for a little bit to see if some of the liquid would cook off or evaporate, and when it finally got decently reduced, I went ahead and added the creamy sauce mixture and all the mozzarella cheese.
It ended up shaping up nicely, and looked like the mixture in the video. All in all, it worked out, it just took extra time. To be fair, the video said cook on high for 2-3 hours and I only did two since the chicken was up to temp.
For the dough discs, I definitely overstuffed the first one, and some of the filling spilled out into the skillet while cooking it. After the hot pocket had been thoroughly browned on both sides, I figured it was done, but when I cut into it, the dough hadn’t cooked all the way through. Though the outside was brown and crispy, the inside was pretty much raw dough. If it had been cooked any longer, though, the outside would’ve burned. I wasn’t sure how to get the inside fully cooked without burning the outside, so this was certainly a predicament.
Plus, my hot pockets were much more oddly shaped than the ones in the video. I couldn’t get a consistent shape and kept second guessing how much filling to put in. It also was pretty time consuming trying to form the hot pockets, and I ended up tearing like two of them. I was definitely frustrated by now, it felt like nothing was working out and I was messing everything up.
After taking a breather and finally eating one of the hot pockets that was cooked through mostly well enough, I am sad to report it was pretty mid. It was fine, but definitely not as good as I had hoped, and definitely not worth fifty dollars and a few hours of work. Though if you consider the fact you get ten hot pockets out of this recipe, it’s only five dollars per hot pocket if you spend fifty on ingredients. I guess that’s not too bad, but I think my feelings of disappointment overshadowed the value of being able to freeze the majority for later.
I will say that there was a pretty decent amount of the chicken filling leftover, whether it’s because I filled the hot pockets the wrong amount or not remains to be seen, but I did like putting the leftover chicken mixture in a tortilla instead. Honestly my main issue with this recipe was the dough. Having the chicken mixture by itself or in a different carb vehicle actually improved my eating experience, I think.
So I would say if you make this recipe, don’t make the dough, and just find something else to put the chicken in, or eat it by itself. Though, there will be less protein in the recipe since the dough was made with protein yogurt. I think that’s worth the trade, though.
Overall, I don’t think I’ll be making this recipe again, but it wasn’t terrible or anything.
Do you like Buffalo chicken? Have you tried Oikos protein yogurt in any of their sweeter/fruitier flavors? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
3 Sentence Ficathon, part three (all B5 fixit edition)
Jan. 21st, 2026 11:44 pmsholioI ended up doing a number of additional prompt fills from the same universe as this fill (#4 in the previous post, major series spoilers).
( 1000 words or so of fixit snippets from the same post-canon AU )
10. And while I'm keeping the spoiler stuff confined to its own post, another B5 spoiler fixit AU based off "War Without End."
( Under this cut here )
New BNHA fic: Grounding (Dabi/Hawks)
Jan. 22nd, 2026 07:02 amvriddyObviously a sense of grounding also adds to the angst considering Hawks can fly and what Dabi does to his wings later in canon, but! The baked-in angst is part of their charm and appeal ;)
Grounding | Boku no Hero Academia | Dabi/Hawks | 500 words | rated T
Part of the Hugging series
Summary: The clock on their time together may be rushing towards its last few ticks, but that doesn't mean they don't get to make every moment count.
Read it on Dreamwidth on AO3.
Occasional Poem by Jacqueline Woodson
Jan. 27th, 2026 01:03 amconulywritten about something
important
or special
that's gonna happen
or already did.
Think of a specific occasion, she says—and write about it.
Like what?! Lamont asks.
He's all slouched down in his seat.
I don't feel like writing about no occasion.
How about your birthday? Ms. Marcus says.
What about it? Just a birthday. Comes in June and it ain't
June, Lamont says. As a matter of fact,
he says, it's January and it's snowing.
Then his voice gets real low and he says
And when it's January and all cold like this
feels like June's a long, long ways away.
The whole class looks at Ms. Marcus.
Some of the kids are nodding.
Outside the sky looks like it's made out of metal
and the cold, cold air is rattling the windowpanes
and coming underneath them too.
I seen Lamont's coat.
It's gray and the sleeves are too short.
It's down but it looks like a lot of the feathers fell out
a long time ago.
Ms. Marcus got a nice coat.
It's down too but real puffy so
maybe when she's inside it
she can't even tell January from June.
Then write about January, Ms. Marcus says, that's
an occasion.
But she looks a little bit sad when she says it
Like she's sorry she ever brought the whole
occasional poem thing up.
I was gonna write about Mama's funeral
but Lamont and Ms. Marcus going back and forth
zapped all the ideas from my head.
I guess them arguing
on a Tuesday in January's an occasion
So I guess this is an occasional poem.
Link
I wonder if, despite my best efforts, I've managed to come down with a mild cold
Jan. 26th, 2026 06:00 pmconuly( Read more... )
Community Thursday
Jan. 22nd, 2026 05:57 amvriddyCommunity Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.
Posted and commented on ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
bnha_fans.
Commented on common_nature.
Commented with a prompt on threesentenceficathon (one guess as to which fandom ;D)
Promoted malagraphic, followfriday.
Signal boosts:
- A new round of threesentenceficathon started, open till February 15th :D Prompt and fill, and have fun!!
3 Sentence Ficathon fill: Miami Vice
Jan. 21st, 2026 09:58 pmmxcatmoonthreesentenceficathon. It got such a lovely response, I decided to share it here first, although I'll be posting more later. For the prompt: any, any, "Strange, the way it felt like home – to wander through the dark, alone."
DARK AND LIGHT
The night was a familiar companion, dark and comforting, like the only home he’d ever known, but at the same time empty and cold now that he’d let the only light in his life walk away.
Sleep was elusive as always, fractured by nightmares of the worst times and taunting visions of what might have been, still, the 3:00 am knock at the door was as startling as a gunshot… especially since he felt who was on the other side with every fiber of his being.
When Sonny opened the door, Rico stood there with a bag slung over one shoulder and a sheepish but hopeful expression on his face; underneath that, though, was the echo of the same desperation, loneliness, and love that had swamped Sonny ever since they’d said goodbye… he let the light in.
end
Wednesday Reading Meme Jan 21 2025
Jan. 21st, 2026 09:44 pmkitewithfishSunrise in the East by wroth_and_ruin – aka “that Hobbit/Pushing Daisies Sentinel/Guide AU crossover that nobody asked for and nobody wanted but you're getting anyway.” https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319923 – This is a fic where I really enjoyed each chapter on its own, but I feel like it did a better job setting up questions than answering them. I think the author got either bored or maybe intimidated One of the key ones is, why is Thranduil choosing Ned over an immortal life? A key element of this story is that elves are immortal, men are not, and sentinels do not outlive their guides. So, there’s a great chapter where Ned, transplanted from a world without elves, realizes the immortality that Thranduil is giving up and runs to tell him they can’t complete their bond (aka fuck) because Thranduil will literally die when Ned does. And well, instead they have a confrontation about how Thranduil is actually devastatingly horny for Ned, and the chapter ends. And yes, they do pick up the thread later, sort of, but without any of the actual weight behind it – Thranduil apologizes that Ned wasn’t told, Ned does not actually get into his concerns that he’s going to literally kill his immortal destined lover…. Like, I don’t necessarily want the trite answer that that Love Conquers Death or whatever – but I would like Ned, who lost both his parents while still a child, to point out – Thranduil would be leaving his son alone, and a king. Like. There are reasons why a person might do choose death over immortal life! But you should HAVE that conversation. Ultimately this fic, being a fanfic, works for me because it’s indulgent in several modes that I really enjoy, and I can forgive the plotty mistakes because of what it is.
What Manner of Man by St John Starling – What a fascinatingly strange book! Apparently this was written serially and with some plot points decided by polls on the author’s patreon – I think this explains some shifts in focus over the course of the book. There is much to recommend here – this book is erotica and mystery in the recovered letters and journal entries of a repressed gay Catholic priest who goes to a remote island to enact an exorcism at the request of … basically Dracula? The early book is full of sexual repression and yearning and erotic dreams that haunts and hound our dear young Father Victor Ardelian, and I really enjoyed the character’s internal tension between his sense of divine purpose and intense horniness. The first 70% of the book is great on this!
I found the ending did not live up to the promise of the early stages. Sadly, the book did not quite commit to making Creepy Island Dracula as terrible as original flavor, and the longing and the pining get wiped away as Father Ardelian undergoes a super speed conversion to secular humanism and rejects his religious up-bringing in favor of… a vampire? A strict accounting of the plot would probably make this book seem more coherent as a horror story but the erotic and religious focus of the first half of the book were most compelling to me, and they dropped off by the end of the book, where much of the plot of the book is carried forward in the point of view of characters who are perfectly nice but…, I didn’t spend a lot of time inside their minds as they unpick the tangled mess of their desires from their morals. I think this falls apart for me because the author (or perhaps the poll voters!) were not as compelled by process of slowly untwisting the knot of wanting to save the vampire’s soul from wanting to fuck him. Eh. It makes damn sense but it doesn’t compel me.
The Artist’s Way – Julie Cameron – finished it! Found it very helpful to build some self-care habits for my creative self, which has been quite good. As I stated in the past, I was doing this on Easy Mode on purpose, and I think I would like to revisit in a few months.
What I’m Reading
Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins – By god, this book is excellent to read immediately after the first one. About half of the book is just handling the fallout of the last book, and it’s awful and great.
Untamed – Anna Cowan – Came up in a Discord book group combo, I am about 10 pages in, Kit seems very rude and kind of fun, her sister’s marriage seems incomprehensible, the Duke is unclear!
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance – Foz Meadows. A re-read of a beloved book. I think that I had picked up Sunrise in the East after watching Hellboy II because I was finding the fanfic reminded me of a lot of “arranged marriage with cultural differences” fic that I had read in the Hobbit movie fandom. This book does some of that really really well, and grounds the stakes in personal relationships AND politics.
What I’ll Read Next
No Idea!
Daily Happiness
Jan. 21st, 2026 06:39 pmtorachan2. Our heat spell is over and it was chilly and overcast today. It might even rain tomorrow, though the forecast has gone down from 50% to like 25%, so maybe not.
3. I love when cats morph into their slug form.
Thursday ✎ Secrets & Mysteries [DW]
Jan. 22nd, 2026 12:15 amToday's theme is secrets and mysteries. All prompts and fills must involve answers (are the characters searching for them? do they find them by accident?) and questions (is someone full of them? avoiding them?). Will what's hidden be revealed, or will it be safely secured and potentially forgotten?
Feel free to add specifics to your prompts, like whether you'd prefer a gen fill over something shippy, or if you have a squick or trigger you hope to avoid. Original fiction, fanfiction, and fanfic crossovers are always welcome. ~_^
Just a few rules:
No more than five prompts in a row.
No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
Use the character's full names and the fandom's full name
No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here. Unfortunately, DW doesn’t have a cut tag, so use your best judgment when it comes to spoilers.
If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the above-mentioned spoiler cut.
Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt
Some examples to get things started...
+ Leverage(/Redemption) or The Librarian(s), any +/ any, so that's what that [thing] does
+ any fandom besides spy and crime fandoms, any +/ any, using invisible ink or (deciphering) a coded message
+ author's choice, any (+/ any), a secret entrance
We are on AO3! If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3, please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2026 collection. See further notes on this option here.
Not feeling any of today’s prompts? You can use LJ’s advanced search options to limit keyword results to only comments in this community. Fret not, DW members; we are working on a way to search through old entries for prompts for you! As of right now, the best way to search for a lonely prompt on DW is to search the community’s archive, which can be found [[HERE]].
While the use of LJ's advanced search and DW’s archive are options, bookmarking the links of prompts you like might work better for searching in the future.
As a friendly reminder about our schedule, Lonely Prompts and sharing completed fills are encouraged on Sundays, while new themes and prompts are posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day. We'll share our posts on DW and LJ for everyone's convenience. Keep an eye out for notifications!
If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word!
tag=secretsandmysteries