Network

Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans

It occurs to me that some folks might want to know about CAIABB (Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans) and even, you know, join. But I keep forgetting to bump it here.

In the wake of US Supreme Court reinforcement of the ban on children's books that discuss LGBTQ+ and racialized experiences, my pals Kari Jones and Robin Stevenson founded Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans.

Robin's book about an adorable puppy at a pride parade was the target of a particularly nasty spew of vitriol. Robin is perhaps the kindest, most generous person in the world, and she gets incredible amounts of hate for making affirming books for queer kids and families.

There's a Linktree here, but most of the action is on Instagram.

Note: CAIABB is not directly affiliated with the American organization Authors Against Book Bans, but they cooperate with similar orgs, like PEN.

§rf§

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The Jewish War: First half of Book 1

I am super not promising to always have this on Saturday, but yay long weekend!

Last week: I know some of you reading this study Talmud -- Josephus asserts at the very beginning that the "sufferings of the Jews" (presumably, in context of Josephus' writing, Titus destroying the temple, etc. though we won't get there for a while) are their own fault: "no foreign power is to blame." It was pointed out that the Talmud may (?) have its own opinion(s) as to whether the destruction of the Temple and the resulting diaspora was divine punishment? And regardless of the former, may also blame Titus? (I also don't know yet, because we haven't gotten there yet and won't for a while, whether Josephus himself thinks it's divine punishment or just plain old temporal consequences. My vague recollection of Feuchtwanger's Josephus is that he was thinking more of the latter, which is also very much borne out by this week's reading.)

This week: First half of Book 1 (Ch 22 / Par 444):

Okay, I must say the first part of this was a slog for me -- flitting between a lot of people I didn't know. Good thing we have this reading group or I might not have got through it. As it was, I had to take copious notes to even make a stab at writing up a summary (I won't promise I'll do this every week, but I had a little extra time and quite frankly I knew I wouldn't remember who any of these people were next week if I didn't), and I'm going to put them in comments so this post doesn't get super long. At least Josephus felt it was "inappropriate to go into the early history of the Jews," which would have made it really long. Anyway, it got substantially more interesting once Herod showed up!

Next week: Finish book 1.

Current Mood: loved
Current Music: i know that's a strange way to tell you that i know we belong

Entry tags:

i know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls that brought me here

Twenty-plus years of loving each other, cooking together, and building upon our mutual disdain of dealing with crowds and reservations for Valentine's Day means

hyounpark and I made a dinner worth remembering tonight.

By default, when we have pork belly around in the winter, we usually braise it in apple cider, along with a chopped onion, garlic, a little soy sauce, fish sauce, and fivespice. But we didn't have apple cider in the fridge, so I thought about what else we could use for a braising liquid, and while pondering, found a recipe on the McCormick website for a Thai Tea-Spiced Pork Belly with Condensed Milk Sauce, and my eyes lit up, because I knew we had Thai tea packets on hand.

We riffed heavily off that recipe, mostly treating it as taste profile suggestions. I started steeping a liter of Thai tea while H chopped an onion, then I sauteed the onions with garlic and ginger paste (an incredible convenience courtesy the Indian grocery store in our neighborhood), and then added some fivespice powder. H crosshatched the pork belly skin, then cut it into small enough slabs to fit in our Instant Pot. I added a few tablespoons of soy sauce and fish sauce to the stuff in the skillet, then dumped that in the bottom of the Instant Pot; laid the pork belly slabs on top of the rack in the IP, and poured the tea over everything, and then closed it up and let it go on high for 20 minutes.

While that went, H tried to turn our rice into the suggested rice cakes, but we should've used sushi rice instead of brown rice which was what we had ready. Even using the musubi mold didn't get it to stick together enough, alas. Everything still tasted delicious in the end, though, so no fuss.

Meanwhile, I made the condensed milk sauce in the recipe - we had condensed coconut milk on hand, I subbed in peanut butter for the tahini and chile crisp for the sambal - and then turned my attention to the salad. What did we have in the fridge? Half a head of butter lettuce, some shiso leaves, scallions; enough for at least a little greenery on the plate. Chopped the leafy greens and scallion up, and then, inspired, ran an apple through the mandolin. Whisked together a dressing of peanut oil, lime juice, fish sauce, a little galangal and garlic. Topped it off with peanuts.

The IP finished releasing pressure just as we finished the rest of the plating; we each pulled out a small slab of pork belly, drizzled the condensed milk sauce over it, and utterly freaking devoured our dinner. Everything just came together, building on decades of experience and familiarity with each others' taste, and we will absolutely do this again.

And it's not Valentine's for us without chocolate, so I pulled a log of our favorite chocolate toffee cookies out of the freezer, sliced and baked and ate. (Along with the last crumbs of the gargantuan king cake slice

ladyjax bestowed upon me yesterday! Many thanks to her A for the baking thereof :) )

Somehow we will both get up in the morning and go for a digestive run and continue appreciating how we grow together, even as things around us are so very different from how we imagined when we began.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: nothing now

Bronx trip.

The Orchid Show never disappoints. It's always a breath of air and a flash of bright light to remind you to hold on until springtime finally arrives. I went today with a friend, and while it was the reason we tromped up there, it was also excuse for the tromping at the same time - mostly to see each other. Spending time with another adult in a social setting is a welcome feeling.

Getting there wasn't hard, just time consuming. Walking around was made easier by sticking to paths that were already plowed, so while I missed going into the forest, we saw a lot of it just by looking over and taking in what we could from the outside. As for the exhibit, this year it was New York City themed, done by a regional artist with a charming sense of humor - in addition to the big installations, which were themselves things like a pizza parlor, a fire escape, a brownstone covered in flowers, there were smaller constructions scattered throughout, like a steam vent that was accompanied by a bit of how-to on orchid care.

There were a fair number of small birds, a decent murder of crows, and no small number of all-black stealth mode squirrels. I kept having to point out the squirrels and birds to people, who were perpetually delighted to see them - so I can't be that upset they didn't notice, since they got to see them just the same.

Entry tags:

Heated Rivalry rec

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[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #998 ]

[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #998 ]

The first secret from this batch will be posted on February 21st.

RULES:
1. One secret link per comment.
2. 750x750 px or smaller.
3. Link directly to the image.

More details on how to send a secret in!

Optional: If you would like your secret's fandom to be noted in the main post along with the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. If your secret makes the fandom obvious, there's no need to do this. If your fandom is obscure, you should probably tell me what it is.

Optional #2: If you would like WARNINGS (such as spoilers or common triggers -- list of some common ones here) to be noted in the main post before the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret.

Optional #3: If you would like a transcript to be posted along with your secret, put it along with the link in the comment!

[ SECRET POST #6980 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6980 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 37 secrets from Secret Submission Post #997.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Saturday 14 February 2026

Do you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist (

doctor_watch).

Editor's note: Because of the high posting volume and the quantity of information linked in each newsletter, doctor_who_sonic will no longer link fanfiction that does not have a header. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-DW News
Doctor Who News looks at the bookazine Chronicles 1984
Blogtor Who's Friday Video of the Day is a clip from The Three Doctors
Blogtor Who's Saturday Video of the Day is the trailer from Big Finish's Ride or Die (Thirteenth Doctor)

(News from

blogtorwho_feed and

doctorwhonews_feed, among others.)

Communities and Challenges

dw100: Challenge #1079: cryptography

Discussion and Miscellany

purplecat with the cover of and a review of from Warlock

Fanfiction
Completed
Vehicle repairs by

astrogirl [TARDIS | no rating]
Canon is the fix-it by

astrogirl [Guardians, Eternals | no rating]
So Much To See by

badly_knitted [Ten, OC | G]

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.

for this was on seynt Valentynes day

Nenya's summary of an early account of St Valentine's Day as a romantic festival: "So it was RPF written during lockdown, which contained endless jousting sprinkled with #relatable? Whomst among us?"

Wild tonal shift to follow:

It's also the day that Frederick Douglass chose as his birthday, which is very sweetly illustrated here: What, to a Country, Is a Child’s Birthday? | Talk & Draw with Liza Donnelly & Heather Cox Richardson (video: 3 minutes).

Yesterday, we went to a No More Stolen Sisters march, which was very touching, especially given how many women were their with pictures of missing and murdered relatives. A lot of red cloaks and traditional woven cedar hats.

It was organised by the student union, and I appreciated how much care they put into cultural safety and looking out for family members.

We listened to the DNTO podcast "The Story She Carries: Lorelei Williams and her fight for justice" for class, and my professor said she'd gone to residential school with Williams' mother. It's all very close here.

Current Mood: curious

The Irish spice bag

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Entry tags:

get a postcard to my year 11 self in her year 11 hell

Today was a very exciting landmark: I went to the TIP. Miss H agreed to take me, because she is a wonderful person. We are now I think fourteen months into our bin strike, and while various people have very kindly taken my recycling for me during that period, my usual volunteer has been busy lately and I've accumulated rather a lot (mostly cardboard - the packaging for the new IKEA bookcase was particularly bulky) since mid-November. I also keep a box of "things to take to the tip" that aren't the standard recycling - electrical cables, lightbulbs, hard plastic, etc, which are a bit unfair to dump on other people, so that was a year or more of accumulation. My spare room is so nice now!!

One of my university friends used to celebrate "Bins Clear Eve", which was the day before the first rubbish collection after New Year, and it feels rather like that.

Otherwise there seems to be rather a lot of terrible things happening to my acquaintances; in the last week, deaths include one friend's brother, a second friend's stepmother, and the very unexpected death of an distant internet acquaintance. Also a swimming friend has had a bad prognosis for a while but now sounds to be likely in his last few weeks. I would like it if someone I know had a sudden and unexpected nice thing happen next week, please.

I keep trying to play computer games and then getting bored and wandering off. On the other hand, I have read a lot of books (most of them very frivolous). Partly it may be because it's so much nicer in bed than anywhere else, what with the cold spells so far this year. I did manage twenty minutes of Dave the Diver today;

isis, I don't know if you ever did play it after you recced it to me, but so far it's both quite fun and making me feeling very concerned that he's being exploited by his "friend" Cobra *g* (the set-up is that he's on holiday when his friend calls him up with promises of fancy sushi that turn out to be an "opportunity" for him to spend his days diving for fish to turn into sushi and nights serving the sushi to customers... his "profits" go into repairing the bar, which appears to be co-owned by Cobra and the sushi chef). However, I am only one day in, so it could all change.

This has been a fantastically expensive month so far. Aside from purely frivolous expenditures (my 99p ebook habit does add up!! but not all that quickly) I renewed my passport on Thursday (they already sent me two emails to tell me to send the old one in! cool your beans, people, it was less than 24 hours! I posted it on Friday anyway!) and then bought a bunch of clothes today - hopefully replacements for things which are getting rather tatty. I wanted to get a hoodie from the Florence gig but I couldn't try it on and I wasn't sure it would fit, and £85 was too much to gamble on! So now I have ordered a less cool one from M&S but on the other hand it wasn't nearly as expensive. And if it's too small, I can return it.

Oh, but what is nice: I've been given the keys to my new garage! I should go and check I can actually open it (after first looking up the deeds to check which one it is, now I can't identify it by the combination of hardware around the lock...) before I get swept up in next week's choir-all-the-time and next weekend's exciting visit from

shreena and

quizcustodet. Today would have been a good time to do it, since it's actually not raining for once, but, well.

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Be Trans Kids' Valentine - Public comments on gender-affirmation bans

The public comment period is open until 2/17/26 on two regulations. One would prohibit use of public funds for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors, and the other would prohibit the use of Medicaid or CHIP funds for gender-affirming care for minors.

As people of conscience, we should speak out in defense of the young people who cannot vote against this.

Federal Register Comment Area 1 re: hospitals.

Federal Register Comment Area 2 re: Medicaid and CHIP.

I have a standing offer in my journal to write for people who make donations to food banks, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Stand With Minnesota. I am adding in a drabble or limerick per comment on these topics because it's urgent.

( My comments, for reference )

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Fellowship (2025)

In this co-op ARPG, you and three friends battle your way through timed dungeon runs, collecting gear and gaining new abilities. As your power grows, you unlock higher difficulties that put new twists on what you've seen before. Enemies learn new attacks, bosses hit like trucks, and new mechanics like falling meteors and exploding ice will require you to adapt your strategies. The game doesn't end, it just keeps scaling up forever until you either reach the limit of your skills, get bored, or the game season resets and everyone goes back to square one.

four characters in combat with sentient plants in a colorful fantasy world with magic spell effects going off as a timer ticks down in the corner — *Wraithtide Vault, aka Freehold If You Squint*

In other words, this is the Mythic+ game mode from World of Warcraft, without the rest of the MMO. I think for people to whom that means something, the reaction tends to be pretty polarized, either "That sounds terrible" or "This is the game I've been wanting for ten years, TAKE MY MONEY!!" I definitely fall into the latter camp, and having now played the first season of early access, I am pleased to say that I'm having a great time.

( If the look and feel of the game were any closer to WoW, Blizzard would sue. )

Fellowship is on Steam for $24.99 USD. The second season of early access starts on February 19th, so that would be a convenient time to jump in since we'll all be starting from scratch again.

Get your news right here!

You asked, and we listened. You wanted more communication by email, instead of just the firehose that is social media. So we introduce to you our new CONfab Newsletter, the CONfab Confidential.

What will this newsletter be? It will bring you monthly updates on the calendar of events for the Discord server, important dates for the con, as well as a peek behind the curtain of what goes into making CONfab and some introductions to your concomm and a spotlight on our volunteers.

As the con gets closer, it'll include information on where to find roommates for the con, restaurants in the area, and tips for newcomers.

If all of this sounds like something you would like, the sign up link can be found right on our front page.

As always, we look forward to seeing you in Chicago, October 22-25th at the Springhill Suites, Chicago O'Hare!

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challenge reminder

Monopoly 26.01 - Challenge Reminder

We already have 8 participants in the regular challenge and 1 participant for Team Omega. But there are still about twenty hours until the end of week five. Jump into the game and earn some points!

Remember your Joker Card if you don't like your prompts. For two token you can roll the dice again!

If you have used your Joker Card to catch up with a previous week, you can still post up to two works for this week!

Post all your finished works at

fandom_empire_workplace until Sunday, February 15, 18.00 UTC, but I will allow belated works until I've made the closing post Countdown here.

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2026 Schedule

Greetings!

We are pleased to announce that Sufficiently Advanced will return for 2026. Because of the nature of this exchange -- focusing on print canons -- we are kicking off with a promo period before nominations begin, to give everyone time to pick up something new or reread something old. The canon promo post for this year can be found here.

As a reminder, here are the freely available canons and promo post for all years.

The Ao3 collection can be found here.

The Ao3 tagset can be found here.

2026 Schedule

Nominations: February 21-March 7

Signups: March 8-21

Assignments: No later than March 25

Creation Period: March 22-May 3

Works Due: May 3 at 10 PM EDT (UTC-4)

Work Reveals: May 10 at 10 PM EDT (UTC-4)

Creator Reveals: May 17 at 10 PM EDT (UTC-4)

Mod email: sufficiently.advanced.ex@gmail.com

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2026 Canon Promo Post

Use the comments of this post to promote your favorite canon(s). Please use one comment per canon. You can use the template provided here or whatever format you wish.

If it is freely available online, consider adding it to the Freely Available Canons spreadsheet.

Name:
Author:
Length (pages or words, whichever is more relevant):
Sub-genre:
Why it's awesome:
Any other important information to know about:

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"did I tell my friends how much they really mean to me" (kellie coffey)

Inspired by

marcicat's amazing Muderbot Valentines, I made some Mo Dao Zu Shi Valentines for all my friends and fam ♥ I love you. Thanks for accompanying me and bringing light to every day.

( 2 love notes in the style of MDZS )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

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Check-In Post - Feb 14th 2026

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: What is your favourite thing to make?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Entry tags:

First draft achieved!

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