bironic

Current Music: Rina Sawayama, "This Hell"

I had a miserable day and the night has not been an improvement, but

rushthatspeaks sent me Rina Sawayama's anthemically queer "This Hell" (2022) and

spatch stuck his head around the door of my office with an upside-down Peep in his mouth like something out of Bosch, so I think we're all set for Good Friday. Previously I had been cheering myself up with the 1984 BBC Titus Groan and Gormenghast and a 1945 photo of Donald Swann.

mific

A few things I recently posted to AO3:

a long SGA podfic for the Podfic Big Bang: Sihaya Black's And Hope (John/Rodney, AU, drama and romance, 03:35:12)

an HR fanart for Easter Ilya's Easter Treat (featuring Shane in bunny ears) (not quite SFW: bare torsos)

and just now, Ecology, a meta poem about the rise and complexities of HR as a speedrun megafandom, basically me processing my last post. Also it's National Poetry Month in the US.

And now, time for a nice cup of tea.

china_shop

Article 48 [Restriction on Acceptance of Engagement] (7647 words) by china_shop [Teen and Up]
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 당신이 잠든 사이에 | While You Were Sleeping (TV)
Relationships: Han Woo Tak/Jung Jae Chan/Nam Hong Joo
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Threesome - F/M/M, Getting Together, Prophetic Dreams, Found Family
Summary:
“Woo Tak, you haven’t left home yet, right?” Hong Joo’s voice comes down the line with the familiar confidence of long-standing friendship. “Don’t drive. You’ll get stuck in traffic, and you’ll miss your test.”
Woo Tak momentarily forgets his place in her life. His crush is usually manageable, but this morning, taken off-guard, he can’t suppress a kindling warmth, nor the smile that accompanies it. “Nam Hong Joo, have you been dreaming about me from all the way over in Australia?”

This request came up for pinch hit around the time I defaulted on Yuletide, and I thought, well, if I can't manage my assignment, I'll at least do a treat. Especially since I'd nominated While You Were Sleeping (one of my long-standing tiny Kdrama fandoms). But in the end, this foundered too. Turns out partners having operations is not great for my writing productivity.

So since mid-February (I think?!), I've been finishing the draft, re-writing, and re-re-writing. I came up against successive problems, and I want to document them here, because I know these issues are cropping up in my writing generally, of late.

Internal/external consistency: one of the big problems with my first few drafts was: Character A decides to do X and continues to believe they're doing X while actually doing Y. In other words, the external dialogue and actions contradict the internal monologue in a way that is not deliberate and just comes across as confusing and nonsensical. ("I've decided not to tell them how I feel... except that I keep hinting without acknowledging that.") I'm sure there are deliberate ways to do this that can be very effective. This was not that.

Solution: step outside the POV and look at what the character is actually doing. Then signpost reversals and the reasons for them.

Cue words/flow: one of Matt Bell's newsletters a while back quoted Robert McKee talking about cue words:
[E]very reaction[...] needs an action to prompt it.

Therefore, ideally, the last word or phrase of each speech is the core word that seals meaning and cues a reaction from the other side of the scene. [...] A miscue happens when a core word is placed too early in Character A’s line and prompts a reaction from Character B, but because Character A has more words to recite, Actor B must swallow her response and wait while Actor A finishes performing his speech.

In prose, this isn't just about external reaction, but internal reaction too. If the POV character's internal monologue isn't reacting to the last thing that happened/was said, then the reader is left scrambling to make connections with something that might have happened lines or paragraphs back, or which might not be there at all. I find I'm particularly prone to this when I have a lot of meta thoughts I'm trying to include in the POV's internal monologue.

Solution: restructure so that the reactions directly follow on from the thing that caused them, and make sure that meta thoughts flow naturally, each one prompted by the last, in a way that fits the overall arc/direction of the scene (keeping in mind that it's perfectly fine to have reversals).

Location of conversation/theory of mind: I've been finding lately that my POV characters often conduct a huge amount of the story just inside their heads, even when there's someone else there. They have all these thoughts and feelings to process! It's a lot! And then occasionally the other person says something, setting off a new cascade of thoughts and feelings. But most people have theories about what the people they're talking with are thinking, how they're feeling, what they're trying to achieve. Conversations, especially romantic ones, usually work better when the focus is shared between the POV character's internal thoughts, and their assessment of what is happening externally.

Solution: make the other party to the conversation more active. And make the POV character react to them, as well as their own internal stuff.

Direction/progress of scenes: I touched on this above, but it deserves its own point. Because I discovery write, I find it easy to take a very meandery path from the start of the scene to where I want to end up. In fanfic, this isn't fatal because we all enjoy spending time with our characters. But it can undercut tension and test readers' comprehension. It's something I want to work on.

Solution: structure scenes so that there's a sense of progress, with only one or two reversals, not flip-flopping every few paragraphs.

Anyway, things to think about. Things to work on. I'm super grateful to

teaotter for multiple beta rounds, helping me figure some of this stuff out. And I'm looking forward to applying these lessons to my current WIP, which oh dear, really needs it. ;-)

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the Favourites poll, 63% of respondents have a favourite colour, 23.9% said sort of, and 8.7% said no. In ticky-boxes, rainbows came second to hugs, 68.8% to 87.5%. Raccoon chefs came third with 43.8%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Still listening to The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley, read by Sid Sagar. At this stage, I'm enjoying the worldbuilding most of all. (Why is ancient xenophobia, eg, Thebians hating on Athenians, amusing, when its modern counterpart is the worst?)

Still dipping into Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell. I'm still in the drafting part, which has lots of strategies and good things to think about, but doesn't seem like it will get you a clean first draft. Like, that is not at all his goal.

Kdramas
I've nearly finished my immediate rewatch of One Spring Night. Will I manage not to go straight back to the beginning, or will it be like that time I had Maroon Five's Songs About Jane in my car tape deck for maybe three years straight? (Note to self: potential Yuletide fandom; I would love future fic about teenage Eun-u and his relationship with his new mother (and cousin(s) and possible younger siblings), and also his sort-of-outsider POV on his parents' relationship.)

Finished Undercover Miss Hong, which was sweet and fun. Not a favourite for me, but enjoyable, and I'm glad I watched.

I'm in the market for something new. I started Phantom Lawyer (about a fledging lawyer who sees ghosts and takes them on as clients; yes, it's a shaky business model), but Andrew's watching it with me, so that's an evening thing. I need something else to lure me onto my exercise machine.

I tried episode 1 of The Practical Guide to Love, for Han Ji-Min, but am not convinced. (Is anyone else watching it? Does it pick up?) Also, a little more of While You Were Sleeping, but either VIKI or I have forgotten where I'm up to. No Love Scout this week or last, due to illness.

Other TV
The Pitt. Ahhhh, my favourite weekly stressbomb.

A few more episodes of The Madison, which continues to be pretty; continues to push the message that cities are trash, versus country living, which is wholesome and full of community, and inspires personal growth. Somehow, the appearance of a love interest has turned me off the whole thing, and I don't even know why. Genre shift? Also, (can I be spoilery? does anyone care?)

not even really spoilers

there are all these flashbacks to Conversations from a Marriage between Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, and every single one of these takes place in New York while Michelle Pfeiffer is in the bath. After a while, I concluded that actually these conversations had happened all over the place (at brunch, in the street, in Central Park, in bed), but Michelle Pfeiffer's character's bereavement/grief means she can only conceptualise them as bath conversations. And then Andrew said that soon there'd be flashbacks of her friends in the bath with her, too, and now I can't take them seriously at all. (Also, she must have been so pruney after shooting all those bath scenes!)

Rooster, Cheers, and Scrubs season 1. A little bit of SurrealEstate. Paper Girls with Ed. Fringe and Bluey with my sister.

Online life
520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange modding behind the scenes, yay! Part 2 of sign-ups closes tomorrow, then it's matching, and then things will quieten down for a bit. | A lot of beta. :-) | My computer went into a crashing spiral a couple of days ago, and I started worrying (DNW to upgrade from Windows 11 to a subscription model!), but the culprit appears to have been a faulty flashdrive. Now I've removed that, things have calmed down. *knocks on wood, makes a backup*

Writing/making things
I finished a fic in March (by the skin of my teeth)! Hooray! So happy about that. I'll post about it separately.

I'm still having thoughts about my other started-for-Yuletide WIP, but I've fallen into the "I'll just ~quickly~ get this done before switching to my exchange assignment" trap before, and that way lies desperate last-minute scrambles up against the deadline, especially when I'm going so slowly. So I'm putting WIP #2 on hold until I at least have a 520 Day draft... which is why I'm writing this update, rather than racing to finish a fic that simply cannot be completed in two busy days.

Life/health/mental state things
Things are good. A bit hamster-wheel-esque, but at least my arms are hanging in there. | I'm looking forward to next week when Writers' Hour goes to 8am NZ time, and I can find a new rhythm for my day that somehow includes exercise. (Summers are great because I exercise first thing and then it's done.) | It's a long weekend, with a bunch of family stuff going on. My other-city-based brother (not to be confused with my US-based brother) is coming to dinner tonight for the first time in roughly a decade.

Cat
Halle really likes burrowing; I think she may be part mole. Sometimes I go into the bedroom, and a lump in the bedclothes starts letting out little warning "don't sit on me" meeps.

Car
I stopped driving on about 6 March because, you know, petrol prices. Which meant of course that when I tried to drive to lunch on Wednesday, my battery was completely flat, and I had to call NZAA and go for a long drive to recharge my battery. This seems like a terrible, inefficient system. Why can't my car just sit there, primed, until I (rarely) want it? Bah! I've considered getting rid of it entirely, but we're heading into winter, so idk.

Good things
So many hot cross buns, srsly! I finished a fic, after many many rewrites, yay!!!!! Family stuff will probably be good and will definitely come with delicious food!

Poll #34439 The whooshing sound as they go past

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

View Respondents

Deadlines, generally speaking

View Answers

yay! motivating!
8 (34.8%)

meep! *hides*
7 (30.4%)

manageable in moderation / under specific circumstances
14 (60.9%)

depends on the time of year
3 (13.0%)

other
2 (8.7%)

ticky-box full of pirate treasure, and the pirates are labradors and border collies
12 (52.2%)

ticky-box of finding a rhythm
8 (34.8%)

ticky-box of sunbeams dancing brightly on leaves in the breeze
16 (69.6%)

ticky-box of lemur vs sloth poetry slam
9 (39.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
21 (91.3%)

sholio

Apparently Warner Brothers decided that they are not, in fact, putting B5 on Youtube, and pulled it a few episodes in.

https://cordcuttersnews.com/warner-bros-discovery-removes-babylon-5-from-youtube-after-brief-free-run/

I discovered this because I was curious how many episodes they were up to, and found the old links were dead. So I was curious what was up with that, and did a bit of googling. Evidently the messaging on this was basically terrible; they just yanked it without warning.

It looks like it's permanently off Tubi, despite having not gone ahead with the Youtube plan, but the article says that it is streaming free with ads on Roku's website, which I checked and it does seem to be true. FOR NOW. (They also have the movies, which I still haven't seen other than "In the Beginning." I don't think Tubi had those.)

roga

Seder ended up being really nice! There were only two alarms around 5PM for us, after all of us had already made our way home so none were caught on the road or in traffic. The rest of the evening we had no alarms in our area, so were able to get through a whole (admittedly rushed) seder and excellent food. There were lots of flowers, and all of the important foods, and my aunt's rice was a little burnt* but it actually made it taste better - it's this really good recipe of oven-baked rice with mushrooms and chestnuts that I really have to try sometime.

(*one of many downsides to alarms is figuring out how to handle anything cooking while you're going in the shelter for an unknown amount of time. Do you turn off the oven? Do you keep it on and hope for the best? Tough decisions must be made.)

Since I was put in charge of the seder itself, I went over the hagaddah in advance and made a cheat sheet of which parts we'd read/sing/skip in advance, printed out a few copies and placed them on the table, just to have everyone on the same page. It ended up going really well, adults were appreciative, we basically sped through the reading and singing in like 20 minutes before getting to the food.

Sisters and I spent the night there; there were some tensions at some point but situation's got people on edge; overall had a really nice time. My sister and I drove back to Tel Aviv this evening; it was the first time an alert caught me on the road (technically, two). Drove till I found a part of the road with a wide enough shoulder to pull over, got a blanket from the trunk and spread it on the ground by the road to sit on, took a coat since it was drizzling a little. The air was misty and bizarre and apocalyptic just because it happened to be a day with really weird weather, every streetlight enveloped by an enormous halo, and pretty soon we heard the booms, saw some dim lights, saw one interceptor on its way through the mist. My sister had a much more visceral reaction than I did to the sounds and the sights, but then unlike her, I didn't spend the first few months after October 7th constantly going in and out of a war zone on reserve duty :( We sat there, munching on some cucumber-flavored Lays chips my dad brought from a recent trip to China, on the ground with a coat pulled over out heads and yellow flares in the sky, just a surreal little moment. When we got back in the car after, Graceland was playing on the radio.

(There was a second alert about 10 minutes later, but at that point we were already in the city; we just found parking and went inside a nearby building to use their shelter if we'd need to, but it ended up being one of those times where the "heads up" alert never converts into a real alarm.)

When I got home, logged on to participate as a beta in a virtual lecture about the science of BtVS (in preparation for the now-virtual local SFF con taking place next week), which was super fun, and then watched Shrinking, which, my heart, I can't believe next week will be the last episode of the season boo.

This weekend I am planning on:
-visiting grandma
-meeting friends
-IDK, XO Kitty season 3 perhaps?
-writing?? finally?? will it happen?? maybe mentioning it will make it so.

musesfool

Current Mood: confused

I made my appointment to return my old modem and router for 2:15 pm today before I decided to take today off, because 2:15 put it right in the middle of my lunch hour. However, having taken the day off, 2:15 became the worst possible time to do it. But it's done! Not without a slight misadventure. I put the address in for a Lyft and doublechecked the confirmation text and was like, okay, 74-10 Austin Street. But when we arrived at 74-10 Austin Street, it was a residential building. And I'm like, I know it's just up the block there and the guy is like, but this is the address you requested. So I get out and start walking and I'm like, I know it's here, I've been here before, where the fuck is it??? So I recheck my phone and the address is...71-40. I would have sworn on a stack of bibles everything said 74-10, but it did not. Brain, why are you like this???

Anyway, the equipment return was quick and smooth, and Shake Shack was 2 doors down, so I had Shake Shack for lunch and it was all good.

Here's today's poem:

Five passages between uncertain territories

1
The wind has got trapped in the chimney;
its plaintive howls crash, slash and rumble
all the way to the backbone and back again.
Walrus angels ride their ancient motorbikes
on the Wall of Death.

2
I burrow deep into heretic soil, lie quietly
close to roots and corms, listen to the sounds
of critters in the field, beasties by the roadside:
their adventure songs of rescue, revelation,
revival and sunrise.

3
Because you travel the undiscovered country,
carrying the black flag, mallet and stake,
I offer you heartware – I stay tuned in all right;
but you know I don't trust you any farther
than to the rim of the map.

4
I lost my little mittens and my hands are cold.
All around, purple pearls and snailshells lie
scattered like random pebbles; I pick them up
gingerly, clovefully. I count them three times,
then once more for luck.

5
Cloaked in furs and feathers I shall sojourn
in abandoned observatories, hurdy-gurdy
power stations, mills by mystic lakesides,
stitching tales of hope and hardship, breaking
every bone in the book.

--Jane Røken

***

shati

I got really overwhelmed with life and forgot how to post. It will happen again, etc. I enjoy

osprey_archer's Wednesday Reading Meme posts so I'm stealing the headers, even though it's now Thursday.

( Thursday Wednesday Reading Meme )

dolorosa_12

I think the fact that I'm only getting to this TV logging now reflects the kind of month I've had. It's been busy — in a good way, but still busy.

There was, of course, time for TV — five shows finished in the past two months. Those were:

Under Salt Marsh, a waterlogged Welsh noir set on a fictional island (under threat from climate change-induced rising sea levels, and periodically cut off from the mainland when the causeway road in and out is covered by tidal waters), in which the death of a child dredges up connections with the death of a child a few years previously. As with this kind of story about supposedly idyllic close-knit communities, various wounds and tensions lie under the surface, and are brought into light by the shocking crimes.

The latest season of Industry, a sort of British Succession-esque show about terrible, selfish people working in the finance industry. Every season picks a real-world political upheaval and shows how it affects global finance, the people who work in it, and the slow shifts in UK politics it provokes, even if those are not immediately obvious in the moment. This season focused on attempts to regulate tech companies (particularly the real age-verification legislation passed by the current UK government), through the window of a company that previously made its money as a payment processor for the seedier side of the internet and is now attempting to clean up its act and present itself as a poster child for the new Labour government's anxiously pro-business posturing. As always in Industry, there's more going on beneath the glossy surface, and the appeal — such as it is — is watching terrible people destroy the world, and destroy themselves in the process, all the while thinking that they are succeeding. By the end, everyone gets what they deserve, and has convinced themselves that it's what they wanted all along, and viewers will feel as if they need a thorough shower to rid themselves of all the accumulated moral grime.

High Country, an Australian mystery miniseries set in a small town in the Victorian mountains, in which (you guessed it) a series of deaths and disappearances dredge up long-buried secrets and injustices that make a mockery of the town's genteel facade and close-knit community. The police officer in charge of solving this string of crimes is Indigenous, but was adopted by a white mother and Indigenous father (the father subsequently died shortly after her adoption), and that longstanding trauma of being cut off from one's roots, identity and community, which is such a strong and horrific throughline of so many Australian Indigenous people's experiences is an important component of the show. The setting is striking (with that common Australian undercurrent of unease in a hostile landscape), the cast is solid, but I think the pacing is a bit uneven.

The latest season of Bridgerton, which presumably needs little introduction. This installment adapts Benedict's (the second Bridgerton sibling's) book, which is a Regency Cinderella retelling of an ill-used illegitimate daughter of a nobleman exploited by her stepmother after her father's death. As with all previous seasons of Bridgerton, there's a sort of half-hearted attempt to make some deeper points about social justice (in this case class and the huge army of servants whose unnoticed labour allows the show's aristocratic characters to live their charmed and untroubled lives), but this is at odds with the frothy tone and nothing much comes of it. I enjoyed the central romance (the charm and chemistry of the two actors, who were clearly having a great time, did a lot to help with this), and I thought Bridgerton sister Francesca's subplot was handled very well (presumably setting things up for the next season), although in general I think there are too many subplots per season and some are very superficially served.

Sandokan, a deeply silly Italian (but mainly in English) Netflix adaptation of some nineteenth-century adventure novels about the titular character, a pirate operating around what is now Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and various other southeast Asian countries, along with his ragtag international crew of misfits. The show's tone swings wildly between (if we're taking pirate examples) Pirates of the Caribbean without the supernatural elements and Black Sails — it can't decide if it wants to be a swashbuckling adventure story or a serious exploration of the iniquities of colonialism and empire, and none of the actors (least of all the one playing Sandokan, an Italian actor of Turkish background, whose acting ability is far exceeded by his looks) is particularly equal to the task. Add to that some eyebrow-raising moments of uncritical orientalism, and you can probably see why I can't really recommend the show, although I found it endearingly silly, and kind of ended up loving it quite a lot.

I'm not going to be around enough tomorrow to do an open thread post, so consider this your open thread prompt one day early: what TV have you been enjoying recently?

mific

I've been protected from HR fandom wank by only being active on DW and tumblr, but it's affecting AO3 as well now. As a megafandom doing a speedrun, I gather Heated Rivalry has attracted a fair number of idiots and trolls, and maybe just new fans ignorant of fandom etiquette, over on crap sites like twitter and instagram. I think hanging out in those places and on facebook can also ~~turn you to the dark side~~ teach you bad habits, maybe. Celestial_abyss who's podficcing OpalApparition's WIP Wolfbird, wrote an etiquette post about it.

So, a few BNF HR writers (OpalApparition being one) have I gather been trolled and harassed in those places (but honestly, why be on instagram or twitter at all!) and have reacted in a hurt/angry way by going on hiatus or, now, with Evilharlowe, a writer I enjoy, by deleting their entire AO3 profile and all works. Crap! I mean, their main WIP was a bit worrying as the projected chapter count kept climbing from 50 to 100 to 200 (they made it to just over 100), which seemed either unrealistic or not great for the writer's wellbeing, but still. They wrote a lot of other excellent stuff but are presumably too pissed off or unhappy to keep posting. The works haven't been made anon or orphaned, either, which feels like an angry reaction. Jesus, all that work, all those excellent fics, just gone from AO3. Fuck.

I have a lot of their fics saved as I usually read longer stuff as ebooks and EH almost never wrote short, but I don't have the latest updates on their two main WIPs. However, if you want a copy of any their completed works, hit me up in a message as I should have most of them, and can convert to any format you like.

But yeah, bummer.

ETA: I've located 14 saved Evilharlowe fics, plus 1 extra from Wayback, so 15. Not 'Heated Designation', unfortunately, so if anyone has any of that one, hit me up! Here's a link to them all saved in gdrive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14Gh16_GJ7eN31XrkIzLKB0t4GaHIyBXC
(Oops, sorry, last link was wrong. Should be to the folder now)
ETA2: plus 13 chapters of Heated Designation from

slvrbld47

sholio

1. My snowy spring icons are generally an accurate image of how spring is going around here, but this year perhaps more than most. It isn't even supposed to be above freezing today. By the end of the week we may finally start getting some 40-ish temperatures. The entire month of March has been absolutely frigid - many low temperature records were set - and we still have 3 feet of snow. SPRING WHEN???

2. I realized how much I miss fandom bingo cards when I discovered a new one at

whatif_au, which is taking requests for cards. (Full list of AUs at the link; you can veto up to 3, and you can request a 3x3 or 5x5 card. Note that you WILL have to join the comm to post a request.)

So anyway I requested a card.

Sentinel/Guide	Treasure Hunter	Holiday Mythology
Robot	WILD CARD	Decade Specific
People with Disabilities	Fake Relationship	Cowboy

Will I do anything with this? who knows. But it's fun to have a bingo card again! (Biggles cowboy AU immediately came to mind because it would be hilarious.)

3.

unconventionalcourtship is back for another round. You pick a Harlequin/Mills & Boon book blurb and write a fic based on it. I don't recall that I've ever officially done this, but it's always fun to see what people come up with. List of blurbs here and also a plot generator which allows you to put in character names. (I recall having fun with this in the past.)

I'm not sure that this is something I actually want to write, but I can't help thinking how much Londo & G'Kar would loathe being in a Harlequin/Mills & Boon plot, and no one around them would be having any fun at all, either.

sovay

Current Music: Michael Flanders & Donald Swann, "Twice Shy"

Rabbit, rabbit! How is it Pesach already? Open the door to the stranger. The most important thing.

Not being a person who celebrates April Fool's, I found it unnecessary to spend more than an hour waiting in the office after my ophthalmologist's appointment in order to discover that the hold-up was my insurance refusing to cover every single relevant ointment in this country to which I am not allergic, but

spatch met me afterward with two boxes of matzah and a tiny surprise salt maple chess pie that we have until sunset to disappear and a postcard from

regshoe was waiting for me when I got home.

I really feel like last month just broke up in parts around me, or vice versa. Yesterday my afternoon was devoted to MGH. Hestia purred sleekly and a little excitably as therapy.

musesfool

Current Mood: better
Current Music: Mets vs Cardinals on tv

April is National Poetry Month in the US, so as I have done for the last...TWENTY YEARS!!!! I will be posting a poem a day here (and a different poem on tumblr). They will be tagged as "poetry" and "national poetry month 2026," so if you know how to block tags on DW, have at it!

Let's start with old favorite Billy Collins:

Lines Lost Among Trees
by Billy Collins

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place---
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of the syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem---
not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

***

celli

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

sanguinity

Hare, hare! (Does it work like that? We can but try...)

I wish you all joy, this Day of Fools! And to aid in that joy, I bring gifts! I took up a dare to write smut in words of just one sound:

'Sex' is a Word of One Sound

My Jet Now Air

Word Games, The Game Where Speech Must Be Kept Down to Words of One Sound, Smut

Doug and Car are both too good at the game of words of one sound. But Herc has a plan: if the two of them bonk their brains out, one of them might win the game at last…

Huge thanks to

phoenixfalls and

grrlpup —

grrlpup read the whole thing out loud from back to front, one word at a time, to find the spots where I messed up!

I've not read the whole fest yet, but let me rec some good tales:

It's not all about your corazón by Petra (Jane Who Has Not Had Sex, Ro/Xo) — a gift for meeeeeeeeee, yay!
Hear Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me by Iwantthatcoat (John/Sherl—)
Herc and Sir Sext with Words of One Sound by ChrisCalledMeSweetie (My Jet Now Air, Herc/Car)
Xenk and Ed in the Yard by phoenixfalls (what it says on the tin!)

Have a great Day of Fools, and stay safe out there!

roga

I really need to start looking at life in a way that isn't just counting! Growing tired of my own unoriginality, sheesh.

( Life, war, etc )

( Seder logistics )

SIDENOTE: politics and the rest of this country - a shitshow, everything is depressing and dispair inducing, well aware. There are still lots of people and groups and even politicians, doing amazing work. And many who are doing everything they can to lead to this country's downfall. So. Fun times! Hoping for the best. Not really writing about it.

( Pregnancy )

I was hoping to write fic for Passover but, as usual, writing without a mandatory yuletide deadline is hard. But maybe at some point during the holiday I will manage something! We shall see.

I have started watching Rooster, which is nice enough though not amazing, and also started Bait which so far I've really been enjoying.

Chag sameach to anyone celebrating! May this be a quiet, boring holiday, and may next year's just be normal.

topaz_eyes

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snickfic

Omegas are the glue that holds us all together, providing the essential social lubricant needed for our society to function—and yet they are often maligned and treated as lesser-than. This April, we are changing part of our logo to highlight omegas as part of our commitment to the inclusion and wellbeing of our omega volunteers and users.

Full post on Organization for Transformative Works website, here.

;)

musesfool

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: What Kind of Man - Florence + the Machine

I was going to say this week has been endless and somehow it's still only Tuesday! but that's especially hilarious because I logged off work yesterday at 3 pm to go back to bed, and I'm taking off Thursday and Friday (and Monday), so really I only have tomorrow left of the work week. But subjectively it has felt endless. I do feel better though - still congested and coughing like mad, but no more fever. So you know, marginally better. *wry*

Anyway, I've got a recs update for you:

unfitforsociety has been updated for March 2026 with 13 story recs and 2 vid recs in 5 fandoms:

* 10 Heated Rivalry
* 2 The Pitt
* 1 Batfamily
* 1 Leverage vid and 1 Star Wars vid

*

falkner posting in

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bironic

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Style: Simplicity for Compartmentalize by timeasmymeasure

Reading

We're burning up together, baby, that makes two

Three works

While You Were Sleeping fic, and writing meta

Me-and-media update

Well, that didn't last long

from all other nights

I burrow deep into heretic soil

(no subject)

Very belatedly: February and March TV shows

Goddamn it

April 1, no fooling

Go right on over to meet your doom

those six or eight exhalations

shit, it's April?

[fic] Smut in Words of One Sound

week 5 & 25

GYWO For March 2026

Spotlight on Omegas at AO3

so i reasoned i was drunk enough to deal with it

SVSSS: LiuShen Week 2026

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