Week 4 had a creative theme, so I wrote a tanka:

Counting garden birds
Filling up the water bowls
Walking through the woods
Small steps to gentle progress
Building a lifetime's habit

And I downloaded a knitting pattern from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, to knit a bittern - a 'knittern' for making later.

In addition, I downloaded 14 spotter sheets for use during different seasons (and therefore encouraging me to go out), plus masks and colouring sheets for our after school club.

Finally, I made a bumblebee felt craft brooch from a kit I'd myself a while ago.




Looking back on the 30 Days Wild challenge, it's been fun and hopefully will encourage me to do more - I always feel it would be a good idea, but finding the necessary motivation is important.  I've become a member of the British Trust for Ornithology (it's not very expensive) and have submitted two weeks' worth of garden bird sightings.  And I'm currently watching the house martins flying around catching flies.

I made 2 Korean dishes both from Maangchi recipes for dinner last night. One is fairly familiar & easy, garlic green beans, but the other was new and a bit more complicated.  Spicy Braised chicken . 
I made some adjustments, as usual. I used boneless skinless chicken thighs instead of breasts & I used applesauce instead of sliced apple. I also used American style red pepper flakes instead of Korean since that is what I had at home.  For the garlic green beans I used frozen instead of fresh and I thawed/cooked them very briefly in the microwave before adding them to the cooked garlic and oil in the hot pan. You finish it with sesame oil, off the heat which was the main difference from how I normally make garlic green beans. 

I served them together over rice in a bowl and they were good. Next time I make this I will make enough for leftovers & used sliced apple. If you want to try out Korean home cooking Maangchi has been making YouTube videos for years. She is a Korean immigration who lives in NYC(I think) so she has knowledge of traditional Korean cooking & how to adapt it to available ingredients in the US.

With Canada Day rudely falling on a Tuesday, scruloose and I both booked today off. I haven't managed a whole lot of manga work yet, but hopefully between today (as soon as I finish this post) and tomorrow I'll get a reasonable amount done. While I'm doing at-my-desk things, scruloose is working on the next step(s) in getting a dedicated hose set up for our individual townhouse.

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Last night we finally got around to switching the desk chairs in our offices, ( cut for the uninterested )

It occurred to me very late in the game that I might do better at spending non-work time at my desk (where, y'know, most of my writing used to happen) if I didn't hate my chair; I've been attributing the fact that I spend 95% of my evenings down in the living room these days to the fact that Sinha's such a lapcat, and that's definitely a huge factor, but...being able to sit comfortably in here would sure help.

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Another pleasing tech-related development has to do with my phone keyboard. ( again, cut for the uninterested )

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Speaking of things that feel so much better now, Saturday also involved Ginny chopping my hair off for me. I've been leaving it alone (other than the undercut) since whenever the last time we buzz cut it was, and maybe a month ago I found that it was long enough to easily ponytail. That was pleasantly novel for about a week, even though the front bits weren't long enough to get into the ponytail and quickly started to need clips or something when it got hot. By last weekend, I was very, very done with the whole thing, and this weekend Ginny was able to deal with it. Such a relief.

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My younger nibling and their spouse of eight months or so stopped by a few days ago to pick up a few years' worth of my spare comp copies from Seven Seas. Only one box, since I've technically scaled back my freelance workload (and I think there's also a backlog of comps that I should be getting sooner rather than later), but a hefty box that was bulging a bit at the seams, so it's nice to have that all sent off to a new home. It was lovely to see my nibling and meet their spouse, however briefly. (They politely rolled with the "we're going to stand in our driveway and chat while masked and overheat more than a little" element.)

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A final thing before calling this a post and getting to work: last weekend scruloose and I gave the Sensation lilac a long-overdue aggressive pruning (and it should probably get the same amount cut out of it in a year). The poor thing was all spindly limbs and mostly-high-up blooms, so hopefully this will help it for next year.( But what to do with the mutant hybrid? )

The past few days have been so… ugh.

The heat has kept up and on Thursday night it made my head feel even worse than before. It meant I couldn’t sleep until about 4 that night and the next few days have been largely restless. I’ve spent much of my time up in bed, zoning in and out and not having much focus or will to do anything at all. I just hate it I wish this weather would go away.

But it’s not just the weather there’s also been some issue with my mouth that I can’t quite figure out. There’s been a slight swelling (which has gone done) and an annoying slight pain above my front teeth but I can’t figure out what’s causing it. Bleh.

Other than that? I dunno. Cause my focus has been so off I’ve not done much of anything. I did listen to some audio things when I could manage it (laying down with my eyes closed mostly) but that’s about it really

(I am annoyed at the timing cause I’m close to finishing the Dredge main story but ugh my focus and eyes.)

Thankfully the bad feelings started to ease yesterday and I was able to get a better sleep but ugh. I just hate this.

I’m gonna just flop uselessly and wish the weather would shoo.

Weekly Score: 61.1% (22/36)

Goal 1: Declutter house and take care of family. 55% (16/29)

Review: I think I tried to do too much. And my sleep schedule has been off, so that hasn't helped, and neither has the foot.

Goal 2: Catch up on Fannish50. 83% (5/6)

Review: I wrote the three posts I wanted to, and posted two of the three for the week. I'm looking forward to this, actually. It's been a lot of fun.

Goal 3: Prep for writing retreat. 100% (1/1)

Review: This seems to be going so easily that I can't believe it's going to be this easy. But the letter went out, I got two of four emails back. I'm really excited about this! I hope it works well.

Intentions for the future: G1 - we're going on a trip, so I'm going to get at least one load of laundry done before we go, and do five minutes cleaning in living room and family room on Monday, and five minutes cleaning in Entry, front porch, and dining room on Tuesday. I also want to make sure the sink is clean, even if the dishwasher sits with clean dishes when we leave. G2 - I want to put up one more post, and hopefully write one or two of them before we go. G3 - I don't have anything planned for this week - I didn't expect to do anything.

Women are evil and christianity is cool. Or so Flesh and the Devil tells me.

Typival American 1920s self-righteousness aside, one can see where each and every characters are coming from.

Spoilers for an almost one-hundred-year-old movie

I am forever angry at Leo trying to strangle Felicitas, though. That bit was brutal.

One thing you'll see in hardcore Veidt girlies is that, once you experience Die Veidt (TM), you are pratically immune to everything that is remotely sensual. Nothing can top him (this sentence is hilarious). And yes, that man is made of sensuality and bones. If you've been here long enough, you know how I feel about him.

Anyway, I howled at the screen every time Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were doing whatever this. (Not seen here, that cigarette scene)


(gif by ironmaidenhead)

(Also not seen here, the homoeroticism between Leo (that would be Gilbert) and Ulrich (Lars Hanson). They're bi4bi.)

Another film that could be solved with polyamory.

EDIT: Last Night in Soho. First half is ace. Great representations of the horrors of being a woman and the romanticisation of the past. Second part threw it all away for psycho-biddy shtick. The eleventh Doctor and Emma were there.

Films Watched

• Body and Soul (1925)


• Everything Everywhere All at Once (2020)


• The Last Warning (1928)


• The Constant Nymph (1933)


• Last Night in Soho (2021)


• Dune: Part Two (2024)


• Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Books (for leisure)

• Gay Berlin by Robert Beachy (as always smh)


• Continental Strangers: German Exile Cinema, 1933-1951 by Gerd Gemünden

Arts

• 1 finished full piece (Above Suspicion)


• 1 unfinished piece (FP1)


• Lots of dumb doodles

Words Written

• That One Oberaertz Thing: 221 words (total 5024 words)


• Barbara's Great Wine Search: 0 words, ugh


• Pre-canon AadA fic: 292 words


• Unfinished miscellaneous short fics: one fic (total 63 words)

Total: 576 words

Recently, and very coincidentally, I read two books about Video Games That Brainwash The Youth. One of them was End of Watch, the final book in Stephen King’s Bill Hodges trilogy. I started the series because one of the supporting characters is the star of a later book that I enjoyed a lot, even though I don’t usually gravitate toward crime fiction. End of Watch – in ways that I suspect might alienate fans of that genre – leans much harder into speculative fiction than its predecessors. I’m not sure whether it’s a good book, but I can tell you that I devoured all nearly-500 pages of it within a few days, because it gave me exactly what I needed from a story about possession and mind control. (Possibly, it appealed to my inner 13-year-old, who would totally have written a story about a handheld video game that brainwashes people.)

The other book was Collin Armstrong’s Polybius, which is based on an urban legend about an arcade game that appeared in the 1980s and had a sinister effect on its players before vanishing just as quickly. In Armstrong’s novel, the game mesmerizes anybody who plays or even looks at it too long, reducing them to their most violent and/or paranoid impulses. Andi, an engineering nerd who is largely immune due to her colorblindness, and her classmate and love interest, Ro, have to figure out how to destroy the game and reverse its effects before it destroys their small town entirely.

I picked up this book because the urban legend at its center fascinates me, and although some of the marketing referenced The Walking Dead as well as Stranger Things – so I can’t pretend that I didn’t know what I was getting into – I hoped that the story would be as much about the mythology around the game as what it does to players in this fictional world. Since I’m not a fan of zombie media or other stories that consist mostly of human beings going feral and trying to attack each other, I am probably not the target audience for the story that we actually did get. I was much more interested in the revelation about why the game was created. ( (Which I suppose is a spoiler.) )

If you’re interested in the Polybius myth as a myth, this video essay delves into the rumors about the game and the videographer’s attempts to discover whether there was any truth to them.

I did the big 80-question meme thing I've been seeing all over my reading page. It's after midnight and my mind is buzzing and I need something to distract myself, so!

( Read more... )

As if I didn’t ALREADY have enough ships (thanks to all my OC x Canon ships xD), thanks to Persona 5X I now have a NEW ship to MELT over ISHCROFIROOROR

I’ve already (surprisingly) been enjoying P5X thus far, and already had a lot of love for the original P5 protag Ren Amamiya, but seeing him and the P5X protag Nagisa Kamishiro interact has for some reason altered my brain chemistry in such a way that I’ve been thinking about them NONSTOP xD

Unfortunately there’s little to nothing in terms of art and writing for them, so excuse me while I sit in my corner of the fog far away from the world to create it myself!! 😤

(I DID find one absolutely, positively beautiful fic for them called Unspoken, Understood that I won’t hesitate to recommend just in case you’d like to read it! It was short and sweet, and the words flowed so beautifully that I read it twice! xD)

Outside of my crazy babbling for a new ship, hope everybody’s been hanging in there ok. I’ve been really down and tired lately, but have been doing my best about putting one foot in front of the other. ❤️

I meant to post about this months ago, but I'm still somehow not really getting a handle on this year. Sometimes it's like that! Anyway, the sunshine_challenge was always a really fun landmark for the year on Dreamwidth, and a slightly different type of event, and I was delighted to learn that after a couple of years of dormancy (hoping all is okay!) it's being carried on by a new team as the sunshine_revival.

I did get as far as making a few banners for it that fit my journal, but I guess I'll have to see which one I pick.

( banner thumbnails )

As a side note though, maybe I'll have more success this year, since I have been writing more this last little while (cheers for fan_flashworks!), so we'll see!

Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: G
Series: Femchesters
Word Count: 110
Summary: Dean’s hair was unfairly soft.
Content Warning: can be read as gen or pre-relationship
AO3 | Writing Masterlist

( Read more... )

Year of Whump Tropes 2025 // Month 01, Week 1, Day 1 // Weapon Name
‘Verse: Veilverse
Story: muzzle boy
Rating: T | Word Count: 136
Summary: he wasn't supposed to be his own oerso.
Warnings: dehumanisation
AO3 | Writing Masterlist

( Read more... )

I got TWO utterly lovely stories for femgiftboxes! Both of them were for my original fiction prompt: Woman who reads in public/the monster who keeps men from interrupting her reading

Shared Time, by anagrrl

She waits, and she keeps herself to herself, tightly contained, as the time draws nearer.

And then she arrives. The Reader.

*flails* This was SO GOOD. A really very alien point of view character and just so much of what I love about books, all wrapped up together.


Ends and Beginnings, by kalloway

There was a wisp of shadow and a pressure around Allie's ankles as she stood at the tiny counter of her tiny kitchen, having just chopped vegetables to go with the rice in the little cooker she'd only just remembered to turn on.

*flails more* This one is cozy and mysterious and warm and still has that utter love of books and reading that draws me right in. SO GOOD.

I'm so glad my prompt resonated and got me such good stories!

Ok so I wake up this morning with like an inbox of 18 posts for dreamwidth, and I'm astonished. I haven't had that experience in a long time. So I posted about uc_xmen 's prompts request at fandom_on_dw  and fandomcalendar  and it seemed to have worked! Yay! Now hopefully more people will join in once the prompting is over as well. So if you have any X-Men unconventional pairings you've wanted to see for awhile, add prompts!

In other news, I joined seasons_of_fandom under the Winter Court because why not? I used to love the land communities at LJ so I figured I'd try it. Plus if it gets me active again with fandom, maybe it'll distract from RL shit? Plus I miss it. 

Also I'm signing up for 100ships (table) and 100fandoms (table) - because again, why not? Also I need something to inspire me to write again. I miss writing. It might take me 100 years, but I figured I could combine them with claims that I've had for awhile. I do still need to move my fanfiction to my community though from LJ, plus add stuff that's been on AO3 only.

Created tvfanfiction again here since there was only a bookfanfiction and moviefanfiction. I'm going to probably go through my other communities at LJ and add them here as well. Also imported posts from tv_fanfiction and alicehatter  from LJ. So I think I officially know how to do that which is good.

OOh and I created darcyland !! (Not a land community) - just darcylewis was being used and I completely forgot that I used chloe_otp as the formula for all the ships, but technically the Darcy Lewis fandom is called Darcyland.

Anyway I'm sure there are more to come!