brokenmnemonic

Icon Meme

2026-04-30T18:29:23Z

Snagged from aurumcalendula:

Reply to this post saying 'icon', and I will tell you my favorite icon of yours. Then post this to your own journal using your own favorite icon if you're one of those inhuman things that are actually capable of choosing between ~~YOUR PRECIOUS BABIES!~~ userpics.

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Snowflake Challenge 2026: Day 7

2026-01-23T22:45:31Z

Top 10 Challenge.

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Expand as much or as little as you want.

I'm lagging behind with these, partly because I have busy evenings Mon-Fri, but it's nice to have a bit of time to think about the more difficult challenges, like this one.

So, three things I like about myself:

1. I've been told by several people at work that I'm very good at supporting, encouraging and training other people in that environment, that I'm a calming influence, and two different people told me over the last year that I'm responsible for them both choosing to stay in our team and actually enjoying their work.

2. I apparently have a nice speaking voice; I struggle a lot with accepting compliments, but I even got told this once at a convention by an actor I've seen in a fair number of tv shows. That didn't stop me apparently going very red when I met up with a couple of old friends for lunch recently, one of whom proudly told me that someone they had told to ring me for advice got in touch with them afterwards to say "you warned me that he'd make time to help even if it meant working ridiculously late, but you didn't warn me he has a voice like liquid caramel!"

3. Something I'm in the habit of doing when I go out is taking the time to chat with the people I interact with - which is why half the local bus drivers and posties know me, and why someone had to come and retrieve me from a conversation I was having with the print shop doing the VidUKon printing one year after I lost track of time catching up with the front of house manager there. It's something I try to do in part because I hated the way when I worked in a supermarket that the staff were largely treated as being fixtures rather than people by the customers. One of my closest friends took me back a little a couple of years ago when he remarked that I was the friendliest person he'd ever met, not just because I was happy chatting with bus drivers, checkout operators, random strangers in the Entertainer and the like, but because I gave the distinct impression that I'm actually interested in what they have to say.

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Snowflake Challenge 2026: Day 5 Challenge

2026-01-17T22:24:00Z

Top 10 Challenge.

The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favourite show, top 10 characters in your favourite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.

Can't think of 10 of anything? That's okay, 10 is just an abstract. It's totally up to you.

So... ( Top 10 Boardgames )

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Snowflake Challenge 2026 Day 5

2026-01-12T21:23:03Z

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts

1. I could do with some recs for new tv series to watch, that are (preferably) available on Disney+ or Netflix. Preferably something upbeat, or at least optimistic...
2. To echo goodbyebird, it'd be really nice to see other people here sharing things that bring them joy and/or delight.
3. One of the things I quietly enjoy listening to while I'm working is people who're smarter or better informed than I am watching and commenting on things I enjoy. There's a vicarious thrill in seeing someone enjoy something that I like as well. If anyone has any suggestions for things to that effect - podcasts, people who do reaction videos to films and tv on youtube, etc, I'd love to hear about them.

As a kind of mini-rec, here's a link to my favourite movie reviewers on Youtube to date - the Media Knights. I love how much they enjoy watching movies, and the way they're always keen to talk about the aspects of a movie they enjoyed or thought were done well even while acknowledging things they think didn't work or could've worked better. I've watched almost all their videos so far, and I'm always finding new things to enjoy about movies that I hadn't picked up myself.

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Snowflake Challenge 2026 Day 4

2026-01-07T21:57:54Z

Challenge #4: Rec Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

For today's Snowflake challenge entry, I thought I'd flag up Rebrickable. Anyone who's had to take part in the VidUKon quiz in the last few years (or is in my Welsh class) knows I'm a big Lego fan, and I think Rebrickable is a great site for the community. I started visiting the site because I wanted a way to track which sets and spare parts I had, and got hooked almost immediately.

Rebrickable goes well beyond tracking sets and parts; it's a big part of the Lego MOC world (MOC being shorthand for "My Own Creation") where people post up models they've designed, either based on the parts from existing sets completely from scratch, with both free MOC plans available and MOCs you can buy. The site's also regularly updated with both upcoming new official sets and a steadily-growing record of past Lego sets going back to the very first ones. It has a build engine that takes your part lists and set lists and suggests other sets and MOCs you can build with the parts you have.

Beyond this, one of the big reasons I love the site is that it hosts instructions for past sets, including a lot that aren't available on the Lego website, and has links to other sites that also host instructions, helping you build old sets you may have collected the parts for. I'm currently slowly collecting the classic Lego Space sets from my childhood that I wanted but could never afford, and there's a member on Rebrickable who's finding, scanning and uploading hi-quality PDF files for the instructions for these sets, which were on sale from ca. 1979-1988.

I also really appreciate that people involved with the site are digging into really niche areas of Lego history. For example, how many colours do you think Lego parts have been produced in? Have a guess, and then go and look at this Rebrickable Colours page and see how close you were. One of the site admins has a personal project running in which he's hunting down and buying sealed Lego sets of varying degrees of age from long out of production themes in an attempt to identify, catalogue and photograph every shade of pink Lego brick that's ever been produced.

Rebrickable also has regular review articles, essays about bits of Lego history, and a lot of people post workbench posts detailing the things they're doing with Lego. It's a great community hub, and I visit there basically every day.

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Snowflake Challenge 2026 Day 2

2026-01-05T22:21:23Z

Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

So this was a bit harder than I expected. I mean, some things are obvious - Scratch the dog from Baldur's Gate 3 is clearly the best boy, but I think it'd be hard to find anyone who'd dispute that. So, I'll say it's great that the developers of Baldur's Gate 3 acknowledged that no matter how good the plot is, or how important the world is that needs saving, what a percentage of the players most want to do is talk to every possible animal or animal companion in the game.

I haven't had a pet in meatspace in a long time, but I have aspirations over the next few years as I finish paying off my mortgage and fixing all the things around the house that need fixing, I'll be able to make it pet-safe, because what I'd like to do is be able to give a home to a couple of cats that are happy to live indoors full-time. I know that pet shelters here often struggle to rehome cats that aren't kittens, and while there's a certain cultural bias towards the belief that all cats need to be able to go outside and roam around, cats with conditions like FIV/FLV need to stay indoors. I think it'd be nice to be able to keep a couple of older cats company as they identify their favourite places in the house to relax, and with rooms that are 9'6" high with 6' tall windows, you just know how much they'd enjoy staring down at people in the street from perches set up towards the top of the upstairs windows...

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Snowflake Challenge 2026: Day 1

2026-01-04T21:04:28Z

After thinking about it over the weekend and reading a few posts about it, I've decided to see if I can manage to complete...

Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I've noticed over the last few years that I've been slowly withdrawing from communities and fandoms I was active/interested in, and I've not really had the enthusiasm to do anything creative that I had even 2-3 years ago. I took part in the #MusicAdvent on Bluesky this year, and just about managed to post up each day of my Lego calendar, and that was quietly satisfying; I'm hoping that taking part in the Snowflake challenge as a month-long activity will help get me moving again.

The active fandoms I've been involved with the longest that are still active are BattleTech and vidding - I'm an admin on Sarna.net, the biggest BattleTech wiki out there, and I've been involved helping run the vidding convention VidUKon for every convention from 2011 onwards, although I only make perhaps one vid a year.

The tv shows I've been most interested in over the last few years have largely all been cancelled now; Ted Lasso, Lady Jame, Renegade Nell, Doctor Odyssey, the Wheel of Time, Dead Boy Detectives, The Residence... I'm starting to wonder if I'm the common denominator!

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Thinking About the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2025-02-27T20:49:59Z

goodbyebird gave me F:

Something I hate: Fascists.

Something I love: Felines and fudge.

Somewhere I have been: Flanders, twice as fleeting shopping visits en-route to Germany.

Somewhere I would like to go: Fort William. My gran and grandad on my mum's side of the family used to go on walking holidays there very year, and apparently I visited once when I was tiny!brokenmnemonic and too small to remember it.

Someone I know: I know two people at work named Frankie.

Best Movie: Flash Gordon! The second movie I ever saw in a cinema.

If you want to play, ask for a letter and I'll give you one!

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Fannish Fifty #11: Anna and the Apocalypse

2023-06-18T18:34:43Z

I've fallen rather behind with the Fannish Fifty thing due to a couple of months of being distracted preparing for conventions, so I might try catching up a little via shorter posts than my first ten.

For today's post, I'd like to recommend a movie. I'd call it the best zombie apocalypse musical I've ever seen, but that would be a little disingenious because it's also the only zombie apocalypse musical I think I've ever seen. The movie in question is Anna and the Apocalypse, which I tracked down on Amazon Prime Video after seeing the author Seanan McGuire recommend it on twitter.

It's predominantly set in a secondary school somewhere in Scotland (possibly near Glasgow?) although a bowling arcade also appears for some fun scenes. It's tough being a teenager approaching the end of secondary school, what with worrying about exams, having disagreements with parents and tryng to escape from the walking dead. It's genuinely funny in a number of places (I guarantee you won't forget the plan for escaping from the bowling alley) and the musical numbers are excellent. It's still tragic in that way that most zombie apocalypse movies are, but there aren't many movies that can make me laugh in the middle of an apocalypse, and I defy you not to find the opening musical number on day 2 and its backdrop hilarious and really well done.

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VidUKon 2023 Premiere: The Crow - Dying Angels High

2023-06-13T11:53:28Z

Song: - Dreaming Wide Awake
Artist: - Poets of the Fall
Source: - The Crow
Vidder: - brokenmnemonic
Spoilers: - Extensive
Warnings: - Lots of canon violence, character death, implied sexual assault
Rating: - 18
Disclaimers: - Not mine, by a long shot. No infringements intended
AO3 Link: - https://archiveofourown.org/works/47753089

Short summary: My VidUKon 2023 Premieré.

( Youtube - Under the Cut (for as long as it lasts) )

( Lyrics )

( Notes )

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Fannish Fifty #10: Video Games to Chill Out With

2023-03-21T21:24:08Z

For this Fannish Fifty post, I thought I'd rec moddable games that I play to chill out. I don't play a wide variety of games because I tend to spend a lot of my time playing the smae few games I like over and over, but there are definitely games that I play when I want to chill out with.

( Video Game Recs )

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Fannish Fifty #9: Comic Recs

2023-03-09T18:50:22Z

I thought that for this week, I'd rec some comics I've liked in past years that I thought might appeal to people on my reading list here.

( Comic Recs )

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Fannish Fifty #8: Predator Comics

2023-03-06T18:47:45Z

Having watched Predators a couple of times recently, I thought for this Fannish Fifty I'd list some of my favourite Predator comics produced while Dark Horse held the license to produce tie-in comics. Dark Horse have produced a lot of Aliens, Predator, Aliens vs Predator and Aliens or Predators vs other comic crossovers, usually as either one-shots, 3-4 issue miniseries and an occasional longer run (Aliens: Colonial Marines was about 12 issues, IIRC). Some of the runs have sequels, and others don't, and the line's been rebooted at least once (there was a ten-year gap in the noughties).

( Comic Book Recs )

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Fannish Fifty #7: Purplefringe Vid Recs

2023-02-26T20:34:05Z

For this Fannish Fifty entry, I'd like to rec my two favourite vids made by purplefringe.

( Recs Under The Cut )

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Fannish Fifty #6: NuBattlestar Galactica Vid Recs

2023-02-15T19:02:49Z

I've been debating posting vid recs as part of Fannish Fifty, but I don't watch all that many, and I'm not sure I count as much of a vidder these days. However, after doing some digging around online, I thought I'd share some of the NuBSG vids that had a big impact on me when I was making my first attempts at vidding. I have a lot of feelings still about this show, and it turns out I also still have a lot of feelings about these vids, although sadly a number of those I wanted to rec seem to have vanished online.

A couple of the embeds below are from Vidders.net, and for some reason they generate a lot of white space after them when I preview the page - I don't know why, but I'm going to consider it some kind of internet mystery that would make me quake in fear if I understood it.

( NuBSG Vids )

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Fannish Fifty #5: Lego Streamers

2023-02-11T19:47:44Z

For various reasons, during the lockdowns I got into the Lego Friends line of Lego, and now my house is... well, rather full of Lego. I've found myself watching Lego-themed streamers and vloggers on youtube quite a bit; I'll never have the space or money to put into building things like a large basement-sized Lego city, but I enjoy the streams. I thought I'd share a few of my favourites as part of my Fannish Fifty list.

( Lego Streamers )

And that reminds me that I really should ask goodbyebird to recommend me a Lego icon or three...

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Fannish Fifty #4: Zombie-Themed Comics

2023-02-01T21:16:31Z

I got distracted and am running a bit late with this post - partly because I wasn't sure what to do for a Fannish Fifty post. So, I've gone with something simple: some of my favourite zombie-themed comic book series. I actually haven't read as many zombie comics as either my current or former comic dealer would have you beliveve, but it was one of these comics that got me back into reading comics after a long hiatus.

( Zombie Comics! )

So, those are my favourites so far, but I'm always open to reading more if you have any favourites...

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Fannish Fifty #3: Cooperative Boardgames

2023-01-21T22:37:02Z

For this week's Fannish Fifty post, I thought I'd post up details of three of my favourite cooperative boardgames. That then led to a couple of days of thinking about what might make up my favourite cooperative boardgames, and that was hard so instead I'm just going to post about three cooperative boardgames I like without ranking them or even declaring which if any are my favourites, because I wouldn't want any of them to feel bad. Especially if they're not on the list...

( Boardgames! )

I don't buy all that many new games recently, partly because of Lego, but there were a number of other games I wanted to add to this list but will probably save for the future, like Pandemic (and Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu), Zombicide, Aeon's End, Legends of Andor, Hanabi, Fuse, Yggdrasil, Mysterium, Forbidden Island, the Witches...)

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Fannish Fifty #2: Steampunk Romance Novel Series

2023-01-11T22:05:54Z

Fannish Fifty #2: Steampunk Novel Series

I've been having a bit of a difficult week, so I thought I'd try recommending something cheery for my second Fannish Fifty post.

( 3 Steampunk Novel Series I Really Enjoyed )

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Fannish Fifty #1: Star Wars Comics

2023-01-05T20:44:08Z

After debating with myself for a while, I decided to try the Fannish Fifty posting challenge colls posted up. I have no idea what I'm going to post up, but I'll feel less guilty about paying for a paid account each year if I post more than once or twice this year.

So, for my first post... recs for Star Wars comics published by Dark Horse. One of my brothers gifted me a Marvel Unlimited subscription last year and the year before, and after going through and reading runs of comics I'd wanted to read for years, I decided I should try reading up on the Star Wars comics published over the years. I've been enjoing the swbookclub over the last couple of years, which was the final nudge I think I needed to actually dive into the comics.

I'm reading the comics in in-universe chronological order, using this as my reading guide: Dark Horse Star Wars comic reading order and I've reached the point where I'm reading comics set in the period immediately after the events of Star Wars: A New Hope.

For this post, I thought I'd rec some of the story runs I've particularly enjoyed. These are in the order I remember them or spot them in my goodreads history, so I apologise if it's a bit chaotic!

( Here Be Recs )

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Dwarves

2022-07-24T12:46:16Z

For one reason or another, I've been thinking about dwarves a lot lately - specifically, dwarves infantasy novels. I know that a big part of it is because I've been chatting about Dragon Age: Origins recently; the part of the game involving Orzammar, the Deep Roads, and the choices made there was one of the most emotive parts of the game for me. Seeing bits of the trailer for the prequel-LOTR Tolkeinverse show has added to that. So, I realise that this is a bit of a random request, but does anyone have recs for fantasy novels in which dwarves play a prominant role, but where they aren't the remnants of a once-great culture/empire/series of kingdoms but are now fading/dying-out/a remnant of what they once were?

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Goodreads Changes

2022-07-03T19:18:28Z

So, Goodreads is making some changes, and my deep and insightful opinion of them so far is that a number of them are annoying me a lot.

Having just finished a book I actually wanted to rec to a few people, I discovered that while the field to let me flag up who recommended it to me auto-fills based on what I type, the field for recomemnding it to other people doesn't, because... sod you, I guess.

Apparently, recording where I bought a book/comic from and when is an unpopular feature, so I'm no longer able to do that, which is really annoying given that I like to actually track where I bought things in case I want to go back there and buy more things.

Also, because apparently too many people are creating new book entries and new editions with not enough detail in them, only librarians can now create new editions and new book entries. So, if you want to add a new edition of an existing thing or add a new thing, you have to post in the Librarians group and hope someone comes along and does it for you. Given that the three posts I made requesting those sorts of things a week ago haven't been actioned, I'm guessing that's not going well. This really bugs me, because I often find that the audiobooks I can borrow from the library (most of which are produced by part of Bolinda) aren't on goodreads, and my brain itches if I record books against the wrong edition. It's also annoying me because there are series of books pushed out by companies like Catalyst Game Labs as ebook-only that expand on their game lines that don't get consistently added to Goodreads. I use Goodreads to, amongst other things, track what I've bought and in which format for a lot of these game lines, particularly when I'm doing things like buying bundles from Bundle of Holding, and perhaps I'm being overly grumpy tonight, but it feels like I'm either going to have to stop doing that, or try and become a librarian so that I can keep on doing it myself.

Any way, now that I've ranted, Amari and the Night Brothers us a fun MG/YA read that's... sort of like Men In Black, but where the protagonist is a 13-year-old girl who ends up in training to join a supernatural ministry because her brother's disappeared. The magic system is interesting and I want a lot of the rich to get eaten by monsters.

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VidUKon 2022 Premiere: Mad Max Fury Road - We Fight Or We Die

2022-06-17T19:32:28Z

Song: - Confrontation
Artist: - Otep
Source: - Mad Max: Fury Road
Vidder: - brokenmnemonic
Betas: - just_a_k_really, aurumcalendula
Spoilers: - Extensive
Warnings: - Lots of canon violence
Rating: - 18
Disclaimers: - Not mine, by a long shot. No infringements intended
AO3 Link: - https://archiveofourown.org/works/39430551
Download - from angstnromance.net

Short summary: My VidUKon 2022 Premieré. The world would be better if we recyled the rich as post-apocalyptic compost.

( Youtube - Under the Cut (for as long as it lasts) )

( Lyrics )

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TV

2021-09-06T21:44:49Z

So, while Ted Lasso continues to be my favourite show currently airing (and I may have watched t through from the first episode half a dozen times), I've started watching Cobra Kai, and I'm finding it's got a lot of heart, and I like the way it hits a lot of the same notes as the original movie while changing motivations and showing how the older generation have evolved.

I'm also enjoying TWD more than I expected, although I the highlights for me have been things like learning what happened in the subways during the Fall; I'm not particularly interested in the Commonwealth, but I'm delighted that the story's continuing to include Princess, and the casting choice was absolutely excellent.

While I wait for the new season of Lucifer to start, I've rewatched the Good Place, watched Black Summer S2, Kingdom S2, and started watching the Nanny for the first time since it aired here. I don't think I saw that many episodes when it was first airing, but the wasabi joke is one of the things I still remember after all this time. I'm not sure some of the jokes have aged particularly well, but it's still an entertaining show that's made me cackle more than once...

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VidUKon 2021 Premiere: Star Trek - Go Boys, Go

2021-06-23T07:45:00Z

Song: - Go Boys, Go
Artist: - Great Big Sea
Source: - Star Trek (the original series), Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan
Vidder: - brokenmnemonic
Betas: - condnsdmlk
Spoilers: - None
Warnings: - Character deaths
Rating: - U
Disclaimers: - Not mine, by a long shot. No infringements intended
Downloads: at AngstNRomance.net (right-click and save as)
AO3 Link: AO3

Short summary: My VidUKon 2021 Premieré, which was an idea I'd been toying with for a couple of years, but only clicked this year. The Federation needs a better Health and Safety framework, and junior crew members should unionise.

( Youtube - Under the Cut (for as long as it lasts) )

( Lyrics )

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