Do you like making icons, gifs, or art in general? Enjoy customizing your online space? Want a chance to earn Dreamwidth paid time, and maybe even contribute to the site while you're at it?

Come check out moodthemeinayear! If you make a mood theme, any mood theme at all, for personal or public use, you can earn Dreamwidth points, Dreamwidth's on-site currency—and you'll get bonus points if you make a mood theme theme that can be added to Dreamwidth as an official choice for everyone! Find out all the nitty-gritty details over here.

Don't know what a mood theme is? Check out this post for more information! (Shortest version: It's like a sticker you add to the end of a post to indicate the mood you're in.)

Worried that you're too late to join in this year? No need! In addition to the full 132 mood track that starts on January, Mood Theme in a Year runs several shorter tracks throughout the year, including an 18 mood track that lasts only six weeks—and which also just restarted on Thursday! That said, the community mood theme schedule is also just a suggestion for anyone who wants the extra structure; there area also bingo cards, Mood Theme in a Month calendars, or you can check the tags and create everything that's listed for the first week of a scheduled Part at a time. And that's just if you want to take a more scheduled approach!

Drop on by moodthemeinayear and join the fun!

goals_on_dw is a community for people who like goals and goal setting. A key focus is New Year's resolutions, that being among the most popular contexts for such activities. Although the most common time is January 1, "new year" can also refer to other calendars or cultures, whatever works for you. Alternatively, just pick a time that works for you and go for it. You can introduce yourself or make new friends here.

We talk about different goal systems, pros and cons of resolutions, arts and crafts for tracking goals, human psychology, and more. You can share your resolutions or other goals. There are weekly check-in posts in January, and monthly ones in the rest of the year, for folks to talk about their accomplishments. December-January is the most active period, and it starts ramping up in November as lots of people begin thinking about their goals for the next year.

2026 Free Printable Calendars, Planners, and More is the guide post for this years goal-setting activities. For more details on relevant topics, see "Things You Can Talk About Here."

( Read more... )

newcomers is a community for people who are just getting started on Dreamwidth, in the tradition of twitter_refugees and reddit_refugees. This community supports former users of other platforms who are moving to Dreamwidth because their previous platform has become untenable or has closed. As such, it will increase activity with each wave of new users, in hopes of helping them get settled in Dreamwidth so they want to stick around. It also serves previous users returning after a long hiatus, people who want to do more with a Dreamwidth blog that was only intermittent, or anyone else who wants help connecting and figuring out how to use this venue.

The community is highly active at present because Pillowfort is closing. Many posts are appearing to help Pillowfort users who are migrating to DW.

( Read more... )

I'm a newcomer to Dreamwidth and am still getting my footing, but I made a community for Solo TTRPGs - these are tabletop role-playing games that are made for one player, or solo-play rulesets for group play games like D&D and Pathfinder. If you don't have the time for a group ttrpg, solo play games can help scratch that itch. There's a huge variety of game styles and settings, and many are easily accessible via print & play.

Learn more by visiting the Solo TTRPG Community. :)

Ahoy there, adventure gamers! monkeyisland is a community for the beloved classic game series Monkey Island, featuring the comedic swashbuckling adventures of the improbably-named Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™. Anything about Monkey Island is fair game: your own fanworks (art, fic, videos, games, music, cosplay, memes/silliness, whatever), recs of others' fanworks, livestreams/let's-plays, discussions, news and articles, tips for messing about in the game resources or scripting, requests for hints, screenshots, all that good stuff. If Monkey Island is your jam rum rum and jam (it's an old pirate favorite, everybody knows that), then come on over and have a grog.

I noticed that there was no overarching community on Dreamwidth catered towards aspec users (that I know of—although there are a couple of neat ones focusing on different aspec identities) So I made one! It's aspec_community . Technically I created it as a continuation of the community I made on Pillowfort, but it's open to any Dreamwidth users who want to join :)

So, trying to find a way to make things more manageable I have set up my first community here on Dreamwidth:

Our Modern Times

This is so current events (politics, wars, scandals etc.) that I would have covered back on Pillowfort in a separate community to avoid causing anxiety or triggers for folks that are have issues can avoid such in my own personal journal.

As usual, I have a Liberal, LGBTQIA+ positive and anti-Republican anti-Fascist anti-genocide and Anti-AI Authoritarians tendency on what I cover, post and discuss. I welcome others with like interests that want to join the community (it's set to open at present) but you can also choose to not join if its likely to cause you anxiety, distress or you just want to ignore these things right now.

I mostly post links to Youtube videos, articles from legitimate sources (not the Trumpie controlled news outlets but respected professional journals, newspapers, and the occasional commentator that I consider reliable in their analysis of things).

I post to inform, discuss what is being said to the content, and what folks can share of their own views and other useful material they may have come across.

An Eye For Fractals: A Graphic And Photographic Essay by Michael McGuire

Fractals. Pictures, mathematics, descriptions. The Sierpinski triangle and how you can make it a bit random to make it look very like a stony cliff. The infinite border to a finite area. Dimensions. And more.

Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a 2008 novel retelling the events of the Mahabharata* from the perspective of its central female character, Draupadi, who, in the novel, prefers her loconym, Panchaali. It feels like a YA/New Adult(ish) work designed to put a feminist spin on an intro to the Mahabharata, and it does that well. I think its target audience is young women of culturally Hindu descent. NB: as a middle-aged white woman, I am not the target audience.

I think this book’s greatest enemy is its length. Adapting one of the world’s longest epics in under 350 pages is not really doable. In this case, the first 100-plus pages read like a YA novel in which Panchaali is trying to find her place in the world. The rest mostly reads like a summary of the Mahabharata from Panchaali’s point of view. The novel loses a great deal of force in skimming over almost the whole story. But it also covers a lot of ground clearly, including some story beats I had never known before, so I’m grateful for that. Overall, for Mahabharata fans or newbies, it’s worth a read. It’s not mindblowing, but it stimulates thought about a venerable and massive philosophical work, and that’s very worthwhile.

Spoilers for the Mahabharata and the novel ( Read more... )

Halloween vampire classic! Today I finished Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu. This novella is posited as the “first vampire book.” I can’t actually confirm if that’s true or not. But there is a vampire.

Your exposure to Carmilla may be like mine, in that it’s the “old lesbian vampire novel.” While there is truth to this—Carmilla is undoubtedly attracted to the protagonist, Laura—if you go into expecting a torrid lesbian love story, you will be disappointed. On the whole, it’s a lot more “lesbian passionately into disinterested but lonely straight girl” than a romance. At various times, Laura is repulsed and “embarrassed” by Carmilla’s fawning, and although taken by Carmilla’s beauty, never desires more than friendship from her. This is a story of a predator preying on vulnerable and ignorant young women for her own ends. However, if we can romanticize Dracula, which I’m happy to do, we can of course romanticize Carmilla—I just want to be upfront about the actual text.

The story is told through Laura’s written recollection after the events take place. It does a solid job setting the scene of Laura and her father’s isolation and some of the strange goings-on in the area around them before the mysterious Carmilla makes her entry. The abandoned village three miles west, around the ruins of the defunct Karnstein castle, make for a delicious bit of foreshadowing.

It plays up Carmilla’s strangeness and the push/pull of her relationship with Laura as an unknown illness claims the lives of young women nearby. I enjoyed the slowly increasing fear and horror Laura experiences as these inexplicable events in her home and her mind start piling up.

The novel is paced well until the end, which felt jarringly abrupt. I think the book would have benefitted from being longer. I was disappointed not to learn more about Carmilla and the Karnsteins’ history, and that there’s not much room for Laura to consider her feelings about discovering the truth of Carmilla (How would it feel to find out your only friend had been slowly killing you, and had been planning to do so from the start?), or really a denouement at all.

Overall, there’s a lot of tasty gothic mystery and troubling, strange physical + psychological maladies here, and I can definitely see how Carmilla influenced later vampire novels. However, I did find the sudden wrap-up disappointing. I still liked the book though, and it was a very fun October read.

Warm greetings!

I am Omacha, a plural writer who adores the strange the alien and the kind. I will remark briefly on my goals for the day, but you are welcome to go into much greater detail if you desire regarding your own goals. I would be delighted to hear of your progress.

I will post in the morning at approximately 8:30 am utc, and in the evening at approximately 8:30 pm utc. You may participate as much or as little as you like. There will be no penalties for brief comments, irregular comments, or very detailed comments, because this community is for others to engage with as they please. You are welcome as you are.

You may find the community at daily_check_in :-)

I do hope you enjoy! And do also feel free to write posts regarding productivity and your methods for increasing it as well, not just reply to the daily check ins.

Warm regards,
Omacha

Yesterday I concluded Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein. This story was originally serialized in a paper, first published in the 1950s. It is structured as the covert diary entries of a dissatisfied housewife in Rome.

The book deals with various themes of generational conflict, the impact of both World Wars, and Italy’s economic downturn, but the heart of the book is the diarist, Valeria’s, fight to create and maintain a sense of self. Her struggle is contained so neatly in the fact that no one even calls her by her name—to her aging, aloof parents she is always and forever “bebe,” and to her grown children and even her husband she is “Mama.” She has no real friends to speak of.

Valeria keeps her diary hidden from everyone in their too-small apartment, terrified that her husband or adult children might find it. Frequently, she threatens to swear off writing in it and destroy it, emphatic that she’s only become more unhappy since she started it. This is because the more Valeria keeps track of her life, the less satisfying she finds it.

( Read more... )

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien edited by Humphrey Carpenter

Concentrated on the ones about his works, though with a few personal ones, such as his horrified reaction to the atom bomb. Some philosophical discussions about life and religion. A lot to ponder about Middle Earth.