The First One of the New Cycle - January 02022

Let's start with some color (or lack thereof) in Fictional characters arranged by their primary colors, so you would see, for example, all of the characters with blue skin tones or primarily blue-colored armor together in a group portrait.

Ninety-nine global good news stories from 2021, and one bit about pasta. Many of those stories have targets still in the future, but it's one of those situations where things may look bad now, but it could be an extinction burst rather than actual sustainable pushback. An optimistic look at how things went politically in the U.S. in 2021, many of the predictions I would like to see happen in 2022.

Betty White, known for variety, for hosting, for being a comedic old woman, and so, so many other things, died just short of her one hundredth birthday. Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win an Academy Award, died at 94 years of age.

( The first one of this cycle )

Last for this entry, a solid take on how JRR Tolkein might have reacted to CS Lewis describing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Also, the many works entering the public domain in the United States, finally, that were originally published in the early 1920s. Additionally, other entities are entering the public domain in other countries, which includes a massive, more than 400,000 song collection of recordings entering the public domain. Here's a highlight reel from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections.

(Materials via cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, firecat, jadelennox, jjhunter, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, thewayne, vass, and anyone else that's I've neglected to mention. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Snowflake Challenge #8: Victory Fanfare

Challenge #8 asks us to remember the parts of the last year where victory was achieved.

In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year: it can be a list of fanworks you're especially proud of, a gift of your time to the community, a quality or skill you cultivated in yourself, something you generally feel went well.

The additional text from today's leader has some suggestions on where a win might be found.

[…]the general idea is to look back on the year (I know, even 2021) and think, "Hey, I'm actually glad for/happy about/proud of/pleased with how that one thing/list of things went." But more or less grammatically, as suits your needs.

Some starter ideas might be: "a list of three or more fanworks I'm especially proud of!" (the definition of fanworks including: meta, fic, icons, podfic, knitting projects, vids, graphics, AO3 skins, finger paintings, and anything else that strikes your fancy), or "I participated in the community in these ways!" (e.g.: left comments, helped mod, beta read, picked up pinch hits, et cetera), or "I worked on this skill, and am pleased with how it went!" (like: drawing hands that finally look like hands, improving pacing of soggy middle acts, making sharper vid cuts, organising meta more clearly).

It could also be a quality that you like about yourself that you felt got to really shine this year, like compassion and friendship, or fortitude, or problem solving, or just letting go (more difficult than you'd think!). What can you look back on with satisfaction and think, "I was the right person, in the right place, at the right time, and that went well"?

( The background ramble )

( Actual Accomplishments of 2021 )