holli | Reading

oursin

Happy birthday,

arkessian and

ironed_orchid!

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: Gen. Teyla Emmagan & Sam Carter, Evan Lorne
Rating: Teen
Length: 8824
Content Notes: canon-typical violence, minor character death
Creator Links: Rachel500 on AO3, ArwenLune on AO3, ArwenLune on Audiofic Archive
Themes: Female relationships, Action/adventure, Friendship, Women being awesome

Summary: When a diplomatic mission is interrupted by the Wraith, Sam and Teyla wrestle their personal demons to work together and find a way back to Atlantis.

Reccer's Notes:
This is set soon after Sam Carter comes to Atlantis to replace Elizabeth, and both she and Teyla initially grapple with her new role. Teyla, unlike John and Rodney, had no prior knowledge of Sam Carter and can't help missing Elizabeth and not fully trusting Carter. Then a mission goes badly wrong and they're thrown together, and have to find a way through their feelings as they deal with the dangerous situation. It's a gripping read with interesting character explorations and a satisfying ending. There's also a podfic version, excellently read by ArwenLune.

Fanwork Links: Walk Beside Me on AO3
And the Podfic, read by ArwenLune

hannah

In trying to find a new pair of closed-toed sandals that use a buckle instead of Velcro, I'm learning that's basically a product no longer being made. I'm also learning shoe websites don't like people searching for things like closed-toed, or the clasp mechanism. Sometimes what I want is classified as a sandal, sometimes a shoe. And this isn't even getting into considering things like heel height, and heel narrowness.

It's especially demoralizing to find there's very little made in the way of women's shoes with buckles these days. Something nice to wear to work and meeting up with friends that helps me feel like I'm a grown-up and costs less than $400 doesn't seem like it should be giving me such a headache, but then, it's shoe shopping. Nothing's at all pleasant about that. These seem promising, and I may risk buying sight unseen to avoid going into a physical shoe store.

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: nothing now

petra

After illegally ordering the National Guard and the Marines to violently end protests in California, 47 went to the theatre to see Les Misérables.

Can we please fire the people scripting this season of the United States of America? Some of these choices are so asinine I think they're consulting genAI for their scripts, and no one is editing them.

Oh, wait, that's what the politicians are doing to make fucking laws.

I'm going to go read amnesia fic now and think, "I wish that were me."

Current Mood: you gotta be kidding me
Current Music: À la volonté du peuple

settiai

Welp. This is certainly a day. The fire alarm went off again this afternoon. And this time? It was an actual fire. 🙃

They managed to get it put out fairly quickly at least, and from the time the fire alarm went off to the fire trucks arriving was, like, less than two minutes. So good on them for a great response time.

Long story short, the laundry room that the hotel staff uses to wash sheets, towels, etc. caught on fire. I'm guessing it was one of the industrial dryers in there based on what I saw. There's currently a hole in the wall leading into the laundry room, firemen still running around, and a shit ton of smoke in the hallways, but they've let everyone back inside. And my suite is about as far as you can get from where the fire was, so there's at least no smoke in here as long as I keep the door shut.

Garrus is already back to normal, but Keyleth has hidden herself under the bed and probably won't be coming back out for at least a few hours. Minimum.

June is, uh, certainly shaping up to be a month. That's for sure.

Current Mood: exhausted

oursin

Okay, am v depressed by all the ongoing hoohah around AI and the people using it rather than their own brains, quite aside from Evil Exploitation aspect -

- but on intellectual pollution, having been moaning inwardly, banging the floor with my ebony cane and beating my head on my antimacassar for a considerable while over the awful errors that appear in prose because the word is correctly spelt but it is THE WRONG BLOODY WORD.

That the person who created that text has not picked up on, sigh, groan.

Insert here a lament for the decline in copy-editing and proof-reading, which might have spotted this sort of thing and corrected it.

I am a little worried that we are now have generations who do not know what words actually mean, because spell-check has not said anything .

This is brought to you by having encountered the term 'itinerary' deployed for something that is not, as far as I can see, a journey, but the programme/timetable for a meeting. Perhaps there is some sense of a progression to be made???

(The mermaids signing, each to each: that is why I cannot hear them.)

oursin

Happy birthday,

ase!

cofax7

Well I watched the Apple+ show Time Bandits, and it was hella fun! I particularly liked Bittelig and Penelope. But now I'm sad because it's been cancelled.

I am desperately trying not to get stressed out about The Omnishambles, but it's kind of hard.

Be safe, y'all!

china_shop

Haha, I just signed up for a free online Harvard course on a whim,[1] and having spent the last few months in the Three Billion Comments Club on

sid_guardian, naturally I'm diligently replying to people's comments in the discussion sections of the course, too. What could possibly go wrong?

(You don't have to reply to everyone, china! This is not your circus! /o\)

[1] Someone on my flist pointed out a while ago that there are a bunch of free online courses.

hannah

In chatting about arbitrary divisions into two groups and applying that to the internet, we came up with the binaries of good internet and bad internet, and young internet and old internet. I then suggested algorithmic internet and end-user internet, and I stand by that. I often say I only use social media on my computer where I have a full keyboard, big screen, mouse, and browser extensions, all of which help me curate my experience - while it's not perfect, I'm still largely in control of things. I haven't ceded ground to an app or control to a set of suggestions. I'll often see complaints but rarely what's being complained about, which gives me both a skewed view of what's going on and satisfaction in being so well-curated I barely glimpse what's being touted as a widespread problem.

Keeping the internet on a computer, where it belongs, fixes a lot of problems before they start.

Also of note today was someone on my floor moving out and I got some fancy imported Korean sea salt they weren't going to bother hauling around with them. I don't know how fancy it is, but it tastes quite nice. I'm thinking I'll use it in soup.

Current Mood: sympathetic
Current Music: Brian Wilson (live) - Barenaked Ladies

petra

Make an ass out of u and me (1431 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Depa Billaba/Obi-Wan Kenobi/Shaak Ti/Quinlan Vos, Aayla Secura & Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Aayla Secura, Quinlan Vos, Shaak Ti, Depa Billaba
Additional Tags: A+ Jedi Pedagogy, Polyamory, POV Outsider
Summary:

Anakin has the most boringly perfect master in the entire Jedi Order. Some masters go on interesting missions; Obi-Wan does diplomatic missions where he sits at a table and says, "Hm, well…" a lot till he gets his way. Some masters have showy, dangerous lightsaber styles; Obi-Wan does Soresu, which is as purely defensive as anything anyone has ever devised. Some masters are fully-rounded people who drink and laugh and dance; Obi-Wan stays in with his three best friends and talks about philosophy all night, because he is a perfect Jedi, and so are they.

Current Mood: Alive, Dead, & Bloody Furious
Current Music: And your friends are my friends

full_metal_ox posting in

fancake

Fandom: Hilda the Plus-size Pinup; Fixing a Flat (Norman Rockwell illustration)
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Hilda; three Norman Rockwell characters, two female and one male.
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 2,356
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, women solving their own problems
Creator Tags: magazine illustrations, Norman Rockwell - Freeform, Fluff, Plot
Creator Links: (AO3)

moon_custafer; (DeviantArt)

mooncustafer; (Dreamwidth)

moon_custafer; (Instagram)

mooncustafer; (LiveJournal)

moon_custafer; (Tumblr)

mooncustafer
Theme: Female Relationships, Crossovers/Fusions, Female Friendship, Gen, Heists & Capers, Old Fandoms, Small Fandoms, Stranded

Summary: Hilda’s fishing trip is struck by rain and then by two new acquaintances in need of assistance.

Author’s Notes: For moonlight69.

I needed to introduce a few additional characters to Hilda’s mainly single-panel world, so I did a mash-up with Norman Rockwell’s “Fixing a Flat.” Think of it as the Illustrationverse.

Reccer's Notes: A rec posted in honor of the U.S. Full Strawberry Moon, for reasons that will be apparent in the fic.

Moon Custafer constructs a story from several Hilda panels (plus a special guest Norman Rockwell work), in which Duane Bryers’ zaftig hillbilly wood nymph comes to the aid of two travelers stranded in the boondocks—a predicament complicated by a less friendly local. (A temporary problem-solving alliance (particularly against a common enemy) can count as a relationship, right?)

Hilda as portrayed in Bryers’ artworks seems to embrace solitude, and the scant fanfic I’ve seen doesn’t tend to show her interacting face-to-face with much of anyone but her animal friends and the odd Authorial Proxy; it’s fun to watch her socializing, and to see her given family, friends, enemies, and a history. (As well as actual clothing that she presumably wears now and then to pick up her crackers, trashy novels, and repurposable-as-clothing floursacks.)

Fanwork Links: Fixing a Flat by

moon_custafer for

moonlight69, for Yuletide 2018.

musesfool

ZOMG what a day!!!

I was in a training this morning when around 10:30 am, my internet went out and didn't come back in 30 seconds the way it usually does. And my cable was out also. But Spectrum said there was no outage in my area, so it was a me problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And so I was in the middle of texting with a Spectrum chatbot (or maybe it was a real person?) when the cleaning ladies showed up but the bell wasn't working and then they called me and I didn't respond because I was in the middle of chatting with Spectrum (doing all the things I had already done, i.e., unplugging and re-plugging in the modem and router) with no success, but luckily I realized who was calling so I went and opened the door and they began their work and I went back to chatting with Spectrum.

The CSR/bot told me they would schedule the next open appointment and I was like sure, while thinking, "am I going to have to into the office for my meetings tomorrow? I need to be here when the tech comes but it probably won't be until Friday or Monday?" and then they texted me the appointment and it was for TODAY at NOON so of course I was like, YES, I WILL. TAKE IT. And then he showed up at 11:55 am!!! And told me there was a major outage in my area, so it was unlikely that he could do anything, but I was getting texts saying that the outage should be fixed by 1 pm. No, we mean 1:30 pm. No, we mean 2 pm. (It came back for me around 1 pm.) And finally at 4:05 pm a text saying the outage was over.

Meanwhile, yesterday, we were supposed to be sending materials out for a meeting tomorrow, but I hadn't received them by 5 pm yesterday, and I hadn't received them by 9 am this morning, and while I was in training and then offline, my boss was poking the CFO who was like, "we don't have them, should we cancel?" so my boss was texting me like, "We should cancel!!!" and I was like, that's fine but we can't reschedule for next week since the board members are not available, and then the board meeting is the week after, so we would need to get approval by unanimous written consent. But then the CFO is like, "I'm calling you!" and I'm like, "I have no internet, I can't get into any files, please don't!" But she was already calling, so I spoke with her and she was like, "We got the documents! I'm reviewing them! I will let you know when it's ok to send!" and I was like ok.

A little while after that, my service had returned and I discovered another committee member had sent out an invite to a meeting on Friday with incorrect information while trying to accept the correct invite for Friday's meeting? I don't even know, but it didn't replace the correct invite on anyone's calendars, so I just declined it. Then she emailed saying she was now getting all these RSVPs and I was like, "can you cancel it? It shouldn't affect the correct invitation, which I will then forward to you." So she cancelled it, but it looked to other people like the meeting was cancelled, even though the correct invitation remained on their calendars. So I had to send a teams message internally and an email externally to explain to everyone that the meeting was not cancelled, it was just a technological glitch of some sort. Idek.

I ate breakfast after the cable guy left, so I didn't eat lunch, and at around 3:30 I was like, "the CFO still hasn't given me the go-ahead to send this out - they are going to complain about getting a complicated set of documents less than 24 hours ahead of the meeting!" to my boss and then the email telling me the materials were good to go dropped into my inbox, so I was able to send them out.

Then while I was trying to catch up on email, a nasty looking bee (hornet? wasp?) started hovering around my window, and as you may recall, I had problems with them somehow getting into my apartment last summer, so I immediately slammed down the window and put the AC on, even though it was comfortable enough with the fan with the window open. I appreciate bees, but not in my living room! Especially not ones that look mean.

And then I read that Brian Wilson died. And Sly Stone died earlier this week. And I thought that was sad. #legends only #RIP

*

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Mets vs Nats on tv

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the hair, there, and everywhair poll, 78% of respondents said they air dry, 35.6% towel dry roughly, 30.5% towel dry carefully / squeezingly, and 22% use a hair dryer or other device. (I towel dry carefully / squeezingly, then air dry. But I have thick, slow-drying hair, and I can’t sleep with it wet, so I use a hair dryer occasionally.)

In ticky-boxes, “a yawning cat broadcasting calm and satisfaction into the world” beat hugs, 71.2% to 67.8%! The power of ~~toxiplasmosis~~ cats on the internet! Thirty-six point two percent of respondents agreed that other people are, generally speaking, quite mysterious. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander (The Chronicles of Prydain) -- Welsh children’s fantasy, and the first book in the trilogy that Disney’s The Black Cauldron is loosely based on. I’m not far into this yet, I haven’t read it before, and I've misplaced my kindle. But it starts well.

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers, narrated by Robert Bathurst -- This ripped along very engagingly. I like that Whimsy isn’t falling over bodies left, right and centre à la Jessica Fletcher; he has to actually seek out cases, and I appreciated his sporting enthusiasm at the outset, and also that he feels it when his actions have consequences. Also, I loved the spinster assistant, Katharine Climpson -- I hope for more of her. (And I just spoiled myself for that on wikipedia, oops, but anyway, good to know she’ll be back.) Is it the Bellona Club next, or am I missing one?

Guardian by priest -- The readalong continues, along with its sixty million comments each week. :D

Argh, I got distracted and still haven’t finished or commented on the rest of the 520 Day collection. Note to self!!

Kdramas
Nada.

Other TV
Department Q -- We finished off the 9-episode season earlier this week. It’s rather messy (not all the mysteries and loose ends get tied up), and there are a few different flavours of police violence (messed-up cop losing control; very controlled cop “extracting” information; but not group or institutionalised/authorised violence that I recall), as well as the bad guys torturing the victim. If the season had been longer, I might have bailed. But it is very compelling, and Morck (Matthew Goode) is extremely watchable.

Doctor Who -- I think I’m just not the target audience for RTD’s style of story-telling. I’m really going to miss Gatwa on my screen, though.

Stick -- the first episode of Owen Wilson’s new Apple+ golf dramedy. It was okay. Good cast, but the problem with a show about golf is the lack of ~team~. I’m reserving judgement.

El Eternauta -- we’ve finished episode 2 now. It’s fascinatingly creepy. Has a pretty bleak view of human nature, but I’m intrigued to see where it goes. (I was advised to start it with as few spoilers as possible, so I know nothing. Please don’t tell me anything!)

Also, more Murderbot, Poker Face, and Turning Point: The Vietnam War.

Guardian/Fandom
Mostly I’ve just been doing the Guardian novel readalong, the Guardian drama polls, and allllll the discussion that goes along with them. ♥ ♥ ♥

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, and several episodes of Coherent, a podcast focusing on our Deputy Prime Minister's move to set up a sort-of equivalent of DOGE and turn us into a libertarian hellhole. Gah! (Locals, submissions on the Regulatory Standards Bill close on 1pm, Monday 23rd June.)

Writing/making things
Plugging away. Yesterday I posted a flashfic that I started in March last year. The first draft didn’t work and was wildly misguided (thanks to my beta for helping me realise that!), but I dusted it off and rebuilt it over the weekend, and I like how it turned out. I have a couple of other things in the works, too, and one day I’ll actually finish this ridiculous 13k-so-far gen fic. At least I’ve worked out why it was losing momentum, to wit, the longer a “missing scene” is, the more it needs to have its own build and climax, rather than relying on canon or narrative irony for the payoff. Unfortunately, the upshot of that is that I need an actual plot development.

I spent Monday’s writers’ hour looking for two story titles, and came up with one I really liked that doesn’t fit either fic. So I guess I also need to write a story to fit that title.

Life/health/mental state things
Optometrist and GP (for a laundry list of minor questions) this week. Both went fine. The weather is bitterly cold. I’ve been a bit headachy, but I’m mostly putting that down to needing new glasses.

Goals
Huh. I wonder if I should make some.

Link dump
Operation Spiderweb (wikipedia link; Ukraine’s strategic drone strike on Russia’s air capability) | From cat urine to gunpowder: Exploring the peculiar smells of outer space | Dynasty's Gay Journey - Killer Dads, Shoulderpads, and the Kiss that Rocked Hollywood (Youtube, 33:25, via a comment at

tv_talk). I have too many tabs open to rootle out more right now.

Good things
Writing. Writers’ hour. Beta. Guaaaardian. Chocolate. Cat. Andrew.

Poll #33240 The Tower

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 43

View Respondents

What kind of princess is in the tower?

View Answers

goblin princess
10 (23.3%)

elf princess
8 (18.6%)

vampire princess
6 (14.0%)

mermaid princess
4 (9.3%)

minotaur princess
14 (32.6%)

dragon princess
21 (48.8%)

troll princess
4 (9.3%)

orc princess
6 (14.0%)

cat
27 (62.8%)

other
4 (9.3%)

actually it's another-gendered member of royalty
16 (37.2%)

ticky-box full of intending to bake but not getting around to it
19 (44.2%)

ticky-box full of still resisting multi-focal lenses
7 (16.3%)

ticky-box of a squadron of rescue dragons who can exhale fire or water, as required
27 (62.8%)

ticky-box of clumsy fledgling puppies, tumbling all over each other out of the nest
20 (46.5%)

ticky-box of spoiler fairies leaving them under your pillow
12 (27.9%)

ticky-box full of hugs
29 (67.4%)

gentlyepigrams

One of our little treats is ordering out every other Wednesday for lunch so we can avoid messing up the kitchen on the day the maid service is here. Usually we order from one of our staples in the area like Rodeo Goat, but today we tried The Empanada Cookhouse, which we've been thinking about for a while. (We miss Marini's Empanadas in Houston something fierce).

We got a six-pack of three different kinds: the Pork Tamarindo (sweet and spicy), the Pork Al Pastor, and the Beef Chimichurri. The beef was the weakest of the lot, which surprised me, but I just wasn't feeling the chimichurri, which wasn't the kind I like. I also ate it last and the Tamarindo and the Al Pastor were delicious. There were also some tots with cheese that didn't really survive the car trip and would have done better if we'd re-crisped them in an air fryer or something, and a Nutella sweet empanada for dessert that would have done better if I had warmed it. It was still really good though, and I don't think it needed a crisping, just a warming.

Verdict: it stays on the list, and I want to eat at the restaurant to get the empanadas warm and fresh. Based on my experience at Marini's back in the day, it does make a difference.

Current Music: Silence is golden.

oursin

What I read

Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A Meditation (2024) - rather slight, one for the completist, which I suppose I am.

Robert Rodi, Bitch Goddess (2014): 'told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions', the story of the star of a lot of dire B-movies who has a later-life move into soap-stardom. I hadn't read this one before and it was a lot of campy fun.

TC Parker, Tradwife (2024) - another of those mystery/thrillers which riffs off true-crime style investigation - somebody here I think mentioned it? - I thought it went a few narrative twists too far though was pretty readable up till then.

On the go

Apart from those, still ticking on with Upton Sinclair, Wide Is The Gate (Lanny Budd, #4), boy I am glad that I am reading these in e-form, because they must be monstrous great bricks otherwise. In this one he actually ventures back to Germany, his marriage starts to crumble, he continues his delicate dance between all the various opposed interests in his life while managing to get support to the anti-Nazi/Fascist cause, Spain is now in the picture, and I have just seen a passing mention to Earl Russell being sent down for his Reno divorce (that wasn't quite the story, but one can quite imagine that was what gossip might have made of it 30 years down the line).

Up next

New Literary Review.

The three books for the essay review.

I think more Robert Rodi might be a nice change of pace from Lanny's ordeals.

pensnest

I did the cardio/toning class on Monday, and ventured back to Tough Yoga yesterday morning. I did everything (mostly on easy mode, but hey), and after lunch I was so exhausted I fell asleep.

My arms and inner thighs are still muttering at me, but today, I did useful work in the garden for a couple of hours. Something—I assume very hungry caterpillars—having eaten my lovingly cultivated kale and cauliflower plants, I bought defenses for them, and have planted the three extra kale plants I grew originally, plus seeds for kale, broccoli and Everlasting Spinach (we shall see), and the ~~four~~ ~~eight~~ ten red cabbage plants I picked up at the garden centre when purchasing the hoops and nets. Also a copious amount of hoeing, outright weeding, and put a couple more attempts at mange touts into the ground. There have been half a dozen or so peas on the m-t plants, but this is not a useful quantity.

Tonight, I go to the first evening of Drawing class!

oursin

Happy birthday,

angevin and

spaceoperadiva!

hannah

At some point in between sitting down to write and finishing the night's wordcount, something went nasty on the right side of my neck. Suddenly and without any seemingly inciting cause, too. Not even lifting more weight than I should've tried or falling and landing badly. The oddness of it doesn't help the pain, but at least it seems to point to an acute cause that should, ideally, clear up after a hot shower and some sleep.

Waking up to hail this morning was a surprise; getting out of the subway after the day's rains had all passed to leave the air in one of those hauntingly fragile summer afternoons was just as much a surprise, if a far more pleasant one.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: nothing now

china_shop

Title: Raw Nerves, Old Scars (5967 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei & Ye Zun, Da Qing & Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei, Chu Shuzhi, Da Qing
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, (sort of), (except Ye Zun), Anger, effects of past trauma, Complicated Relationships, Poly Relationships, Shen Wei misses his didi, Zhao Yunlan hates Ye Zun, Zhao Yunlan is triggered, Loyalty, Friendship, Sharing Clothes, Unreliable Narration
Series: Part 3 of Breakage and Repair 'verse (CSZ/SW/ZYL)

Summary: Feel the anger and do it anyway.

I started this for the Anger prompt last year, and finished it (15 minutes after the deadline /o\) for the Charity prompt. Ha!

Profile

holli

December 2018

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Page Summary

oursin - (no subject)
mific in fancake - SGA: Walk Beside Me by Rachel500
hannah - Special tortures.
petra - US Politics: Transcending parody
settiai - Today just keeps on giving...
oursin - Think the rot set in with spell-check, honestly
oursin - (no subject)
cofax7 - Time Bandits!
china_shop - (no subject)
hannah - What to think about.
petra - Make an ass out of u and me - Star Wars story on the theme of "Obi-Wan: Virgin and/or Whore"
full_metal_ox in fancake - Hilda the Plus-size Pinup; Norman Rockwell: Fixing a Flat, by moon_custafer.
musesfool - he's in the middle of taking off right now
china_shop - Me-and-media update
gentlyepigrams - We ate from: The Empanada Cookhouse
oursin - Wednesday somehow agitated the feelings of a small dog in the park
pensnest - a sanctuary safe and strong
oursin - (no subject)
hannah - Aches.
china_shop - Flashfic: Raw Nerves, Old Scars (Guardian, CSZ/SW/ZYL, ZYL & DQ, Teen)

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