Reading

Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: The Ghost in You - Counting Crows

Entry tags:

and all the papers lie tonight

got some good news at work I can't talk about yet, and then got more good news that we should be able to meet payroll through the end of the year (and hopefully get our SNAP and WIC funding to make us whole when it is finally released), and then got a $200 check from the State of New York for ~reasons~ (inflation refund? idek). all in all, a pretty good day.

I also had a dream last night where maybe I was Tim Drake? And I wanted a Robin-themed birthday party that I never got until I actually became Robin? idk, but it was very sweet.

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Entry tags:

so I wrote a fic

one of my d&d campaigns, Arvandor, is wrapping up around March. T's been homebrewing a new campaign about fucked up fairy tales and I've been revamping a character I played in previous oneshots on a different server, an oath of redemption paladin named Dalton. as I sometimes do, I accidentally created a minor obsession and ended up writing fic about his backstory. I'm not putting it on AO3 yet, I don't think, but I'm going to put it here because why not:

( cut for self-indulgent backstory exploration of my own OC from 6 years before the campaign starts )

Entry tags:

One of Us

1) I enjoyed watching Emma Thompson's arrival on Colbert's show, and also her rant about how AI keeps trying to change her writing. "“And so I end up just going, ‘I don’t need you to f**king rewrite what I’ve just written! Will you f*** off? Just f*** off" "Colbert then jokingly suggested that Thompson show her computer the Academy Award she won for her screenwriting on the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility, which made her the only person to ever win an Oscar for both acting and writing."

2) Watched a Donna Summers' documentary, which was pretty uninformative. I knew little about her career so some of the info was new, but hardly anything was explored. ( Read more... )

3) Also saw the new 2025 documentary about LiveAid. I already knew a fair amount about it but given there were new interviews there were still some new bits. ( Read more... )

4) Had an afternoon with everything higgledy piggeldy. Got a call mid-afternoon from the leasing office that the utility company needed to make repairs to a transformer by our building. It would mean a 2-hour electricity cut off. So I got off the computer and decided to run the TV and finish exercises while I was waiting. But despite being told the power would be off in about 15 minutes, we still had power an hour later. My partner wasn't sure whether to stay late at work or come home. And if he did, we'd have to either eat snacks or wait for power to come back since we wouldn't want to open the fridge or freezer. ( Read more... )

5) A bit of hope that major money can be gotten out of politics, via a legal case. "Corporations exist with the express permission of the state in which they are incorporated. They are legal inventions, statutorily-created entities. They only have as much power as the states grant them.

That means the answer to Citizens United may be staring everyone straight in the face. After all, the states—and this Supreme Court majority is for “states’ rights” after all—by definition have the final say over what corporations may do in their states. As noted by the Center for American Progress, which backs campaign finance law reforms, “Corporations are pure creatures of state law. And for more than two centuries, the Supreme Court has affirmed that states have virtually unlimited authority to modify and withdraw the powers they grant to their corporations.”

Why couldn’t that authority include never granting corporations the power to spend money on political contributions in the first place?"

Poll #33772 Kudos Footer-547

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8 (100.0%)

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Terrible Love - the National

Entry tags:

it takes an ocean not to break

I really enjoyed this season of Slow Horses, though 6 episodes is too short. I don't need a full 22-episode season, but like 8 or 10 would be better. ( spoilers for all of this season )

I keep thinking about reading the books, but I haven't worked up the energy to do that yet.

There's still so much other TV I need to catch up on, but probably not until the World Series is done. I've been enjoying it a lot, though I went to bed on Monday night in the 12th inning, not really thinking they'd play 6 more! And when I woke up, I was like, as I expected Freddie Fucking Freeman walked it off, because that is what that guy does. Ugh.

Tangentially, I thought this was a really good read: Matt Berninger traded his notebook for a baseball. And the words kept coming. I'm not a huge fan of The National but I do like some of their songs and this was interesting.

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Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Ship to Wreck - Florence + the Machine

Entry tags:

The chair is an island, darling, you can't touch the floor

Holy forking shirtballs, The Good Place isn't on Netflix anymore! And when I tried to cue it up on Prime, it wouldn't play - I got an error. So I ordered the dvds. I can't be having with this bs anymore. I also need to buy Leverage at some point, and The Expanse. Maybe I will for Christmas this year, as long as I'm not furloughed or anything.

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Current Mood: caffeinated
Current Music: Giants losing to the Eagles

Entry tags:

to get out and find a tight end

As seen all around these parts, the AO3 alphabet meme:

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

A - Another Gravity (Firefly, Mal/Zoe)
B - The Boys of Summer (Hot Corner Rag) (SPN, Sam & Dean)
C - Courtship Rituals of the World's Most Awkward Superheroes (Avengers/Amazing Spider-Man, Steve/Peter)
D - the dream of flight persists (Star Wars/Firefly, Anakin/Kaylee)
E - Eight the Hard Way (Ocean's 8, Amita/Daphne)
F - The Forces Ranged Within Us and Against Us (SPN, Sam/Dean)
G - Girl, You're Like a Weird Vacation (Blue Beetle, Brenda/Paco)
H - The Hubbert Peak (Dark Angel, Max/Alec)
I - The Injurious Internet Meme Incursion (The Middleman, Wendy, MM, & Ida)
J - Joy has he whom she embraces (Amelia Peabody, Peabody/Emerson)
K - Katie, Bar the Door (DCU, Jason, ensemble)
L - A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action (Ocean's 11, Danny/Rusty)
M - Mother Is the Name for God (Star Wars, Leia & Padme)
N - No Exit (Star Wars; Darth Vader/Ahsoka)
O - Only where love and need are one (L'Engleverse, Adam/Joshua)
P - Paint a thank-you on my palm (Six of Crows, Inej, ensemble)
Q - Quality (LotR, Faramir)
R - Retail Therapy (DCU, Cass, ensemble)
S - Stuck in the Middle with You (Star Wars, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka)
T - There's Still Time to Change the Road You're On (Star Wars, Anakin, Luke, Leia)
U - Until the Sea Shall Free Them (The Iliad, Achilles/Patroclus)
V - Visiting Hours (DCU, Alfred & Jason)
W - with our way lit only by stars (Earthsea, Ged/Tenar)
X - Xue Bai, Xue Hong (Firefly, Mal/River/Simon)
Y - you and your high top sneakers and your sailor tattoos (Avengers, Steve/Darcy)
Z - The Zombie Love Bug Concatenation (SPN/The Middleman, Dean/Wendy)

26/26, out of 950 stories on AO3. I ignored the ones that start with parentheticals and numbers. I also went mostly on vibes, so it's not a real overview of my stuff, but it is one title for every letter of the alphabet.

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Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Brass Monkey - Beastie Boys

Entry tags:

We're offered Moët, we don't mind Chivas

I made this apple cider doughnut holes recipe today and meh. I didn't even like them enough plain to make the glaze. They just tasted so strongly of nutmeg to me and nothing of apple cider or even cinnamon.

I was also going to make char siu today and then pork buns with the leftovers tomorrow, but I forgot the meat has to marinate overnight so now I will make the ribs tomorrow, freeze the leftovers, and try to make the buns next weekend. Or maybe I'll just make pork fried rice. Idk. I used to always order pork buns but I don't see them on menus anymore (lemon chicken, another Chinese restaurant fave, has also seemed to disappear, at least from the places around here), so it would be fantastic if I could make them myself. It doesn't seem too hard. I mean, the hardest part for me will probably be rolling and sealing them. *hands* Eventually we'll see!

In other news, Baby Miss L has settled on being a witch for Halloween and her costume is ADORABLE. But she also has a secondary costume, as she has quite the busy social schedule, which is a cow, which doubles as pajamas, for those nights where she's out past bedtime. SO CUTE. I also got some pictures of her pumpkin picking while wearing a jack o'lantern t-shirt and she remains the cutest and best dressed kid around. 😍😍😍😍😍😍

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Database maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

Entry tags:

yuletide

Dear yuletide letter

Dear writer,

( Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), The Gilded Age (TV 2022), House of Guinness (TV) )

Dear Yuleauthor 2025

I am open to treats in all fandoms!

DNWs: Humiliation, non-con, mpreg, character-bashing (esp. bashing of lady characters), non-canonical death, daddy kink, fatshaming, infantilism, petplay, terminal illness, or unhappy endings.

General likes: Codependence, characters who know each other really fucking well, people being weird about each other, competence, pining, hurt/comfort, messy emotions, unexpected relationships, people complementing each other in different ways, character studies, classic tropes like fake dating or woke up married, outside POV, multimedia, magical realism, funny stuff, serious stuff, angst with a happy ending, shenanigans and capers, ensemble dynamics.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Ghost - Indigo Girls

Entry tags:

the last truce we ever came to from our adolescent war

I'm off work today because I had to go get a tooth crowned. They've streamlined the process since early last year, when I had to go one week for the preparation and then back again a week later for the installation - they did it all in one day today, with about a 30 minute break between parts 1 and 2, where I just sat in the exam chair and read my book on my phone. This time I had to stop them a couple of times during the first part because they just spray water everywhere without sufficient suction so I felt like I was drowning a couple of times. The dentist warned me about it ahead of time and was apologetic about it, so I didn't feel like I was too much of a problem patient for stopping so I could, you know, breathe. One of the things I like about this particular dentist (there's a bunch of them at the practice and I've seen most of them over the last 5 years) is that he tells you what he's going to go ahead of time and answers questions, and then he tells you each thing he's going to do during the process right before he does it, and he gives you a heads up as to how far along in the process you are/how much more time it's going to take. Because it's unpleasant, at best. I mean, I was all numbed up for it (so numbed that my right EYE was feeling numb - the tooth being crowned is on the top right way in the back - which is a real fucking weird feeling), but ugh. I'm sure there are probably other crowns in the future - they want to get out all those old, old silver fillings, and he said this tooth did crack while he was removing it, so we caught it before it happened on its own.

I'm glad I didn't get new glasses this year - that left $950 in my FSA, which I had to supplement to pick up the rest of the cost, because I do not know what my insurance will cover as the dentist is out of network. I know I should find someone in network (and preferably near my apartment instead of in Manhattan), but as mentioned above, I like this guy and I think that is an important factor with any medical practitioner if you can get it.

So I came home and took a 3 hour nap because I didn't sleep much last night due to anxiety over all of this. Oh, and I mailed my ballot for Mamdani. I'm very curious to see if his lead in the polls translates to winning the election or if all the people who are scared because he's Muslim will turn out for Cuomo (or Sliwa, I guess, but I cannot take him seriously as a candidate). We have tended to pick terrible mayors recently, so it'll be interesting to see how this all turns out.

And I guess I mentioned reading up there, so yes, I am in the middle of a reread of Blue Lily, Lily Blue, which I am enjoying! ♥BLUE♥ remains my favorite.

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Entry tags:

Are Kids On Our Lawn?

1) Well, I guess we've come full circle in the commercialization of fandom. Lionsgate Hired TikTok Fan Editors to Market Movies

"Mendez says he realized the potential of fan edits a couple years ago, when “Suits” videos were garnering hundreds of millions of views on TikTok. He credits those clips with catapulting the 2010s legal drama to the most-streamed show of 2023 and spawning a spinoff.

While it’s difficult to measure the conversion rate of people who see a fan edit and then watch the movie or show it’s based on, Mendez says the proof is in the comments section...The week Areq’s edit was posted, viewership of the 2015 boxing drama increased 29% on Amazon Prime, according to Luminate data.”

2) Was watching High Potential and a recent episode was such a mess, all it revealed was that the show writers are clearly not in the same category as their main character. ( Read more... )

3) I don't want to ding High Potential for this specifically because this problem occurs in every show and movie I think I've ever seen. But it leaped out at me because the way CPR was done for a drowning victim was so crappy. The fact is that near-drowning can cause lifelong problems in a number of areas and is not something one just bounces back from in minutes (not to mention, there's hardly ever a scene of a victim doing prolonged puking). To me, this is a public health disservice. ( Read more... )

4) Even though I never used Deviant Art myself, it's fascinating to read about its history (and its deliberate destruction) given it's a contemporary period for my being online. It seems strange to have the ethos of the web then explained to people who have never known anything but today's impersonal and exploitative models.

"All of these various elements that might make up a page linked back to the tens, sometimes hundreds of other creators, alongside prominently displayed collections of favorited works from around the website, making every profile a constellation of user creation curated in a unique way that promoted not just the user themselves but the entire community." ( Read more... )

5) There was a recent article in the Hollywood Reporter about how movies are the lifeblood of streaming services. Though I find this disappointing, I don't find it surprising. Movies are (often) a one-shot sort of story, quick to get through, and usually getting a lot of expensive publicity before their release date, thus raising awareness in a big part of the potential viewing public. And people rewatch a good bit because, again, it's short and doesn't require a big commitment.

The other two reasons are, I think, more recent in nature. ( Read more... )

Poll #33746 Kudos Footer-546

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7 (100.0%)

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Mariners vs Blue Jays on tv

Entry tags:

but that's not the case

I made some chicken thighs in the slow cooker today with hoisin sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and some tomato paste. The chicken shredded nicely, but mostly what I tasted was salt - it was low sodium soy sauce too, so I'm not sure why. Maybe the balsamic? But that was only 2 tsps. Kind of a disappointment, though now at least I have some room in my freezer for other things. *hands*

Finished my reread of The Dream Thieves and now it's onto Blue Lily, Lily Blue. Still enjoying myself. I guess at some point I'll read something new to me again, but not just yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In other news, man, the Giants looked good for 3 whole quarters before completely unravelling and losing. the fact that they led for so long, and even came back to retake the lead once they fell behind, and still lost just makes it worse. At least the Rangers finally won last night.

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Entry tags:

dear author letter

yuletide 2025!

dear yuletide author,

happy yuletide! thank you for writing for me, i’m excited for whatever you come up with! i've added some specifics below to hopefully give you some thoughts. a lot of the specific prompts are going to be geared toward a romance, but if that’s not your thing, it’s cool! i also love friendship! (i left in nsfw likes/dnws, but also do not feel pressured to write smut! they are just there in case they are helpful.)

also, i’m happy to receive treats! i’m addandsubtract over on ao3, and postoperation on tumblr, if you’re curious about what i’ve written or what i’m into.

general likes:

found family and friendship, specifically outside support systems.
relationship negotiation, especially when it requires work from both sides.
pining, particularly of the months-to-years variety.
fraught feelings — the sadder the better, as long as there is a happy (or at least hopeful) ending.
breakup/makeup and second chance romance.
future fic of all sorts, including post-retirement or career ending injury.
close-canon aus of the alternate timeline or divergent timeline variety.
aus where everything is the same except: magic, werewolves, ghosts, demons, bizarre rituals, one person is beset by monsters, one person is an alien, soulmates, soulbonds, whatever.
secret/accidental/arranged marriage.
enemies to friends to lovers.
friends-with-benefits to lovers.
road trips.
time loops.
possessive behavior and mutual obsession.
conflicts, arguments, and fighting. feel free to have some well-deserved punching!
put folks in uncomfortable emotional situations and make them deal with it!
in case it isn’t obvious, i like drama.

nsfw likes:

biting/bruises/marking.
desperation/urgency.
semi-clothed sex.
nipple play.
terms of endearment (when in character).
blood play/knife play (when in character).
sex pollen/aliens made them do it/winner’s room/other semi-coerced sex.
public sex or public use (not trying to be covert in public).
semi-public sex (trying to be covert in public).
gangbangs, especially if the gangbangee and one of the gangbangers are particularly in love.
overstimulation.
coming untouched.
multiple orgasms.
comeplay.
sex tears.
messy sex in general — let sex be gross!
tentacles and other non-human biology.
power imbalance (could be something like an age or experience gap, could be a purposeful or accidental d/s type relationship).
somnophilia/sleepy sex/waking up mid-fucking (consensual or on the dubcon to con pipeline, rather than full noncon).
kink discovery.
praise kink.

general dnws:

no infidelity or purposeful deception.
no animal death.
no non-canonical major character death.
no mpreg.
no unhappy endings.
no complete aus, especially mundane aus, unless otherwise specified.
no cisswap.
no bdsm aus.
no omegaverse or animal hybrids.
no romance/sex where anyone is extremely underage.
no epistolary fic.
no first person pov.
and please, no christmas!

nsfw dnws:

no scat, watersports, or vomit.
no bestiality.
no age play.
no pet play.
no rape/noncon. dubcon is fine, but i’d rather avoid full noncon.

prompts:

1. history boys (donald scripps, james lockwood) —

i’ve requested these two in past years, and my desires remain mostly the same! i'm putting a couple new prompts in, but if you're stuck, feel free to look at last year's letter.
scripps/lockwood is one of my long-lasting rare pairs, so if you're inclined toward writing romance, perhaps a bit of sneaking around while they were in school together? i love a covert relationship, and i think scripps's inclination to distance himself, plus his religious beliefs, could make that interesting!
i also would love a breakup/makeup narrative of any kind — what are the conflicts that caused them to break up? what situation would throw them back together and force them to confront those feelings? when did they date and why did they break up? what's changed that would make them work together this time? would happily read this as months after the breakup, or years, or even decades. love a future fic of any kind.
what about a time loop situation? perhaps scripps is trapped in loop revolving around lockwood's death, and whether he can avert it. or maybe it's a missed chance between the two of them that the universe wants to make right.
also, as a note, i know that this is a nomination for the movie specifically, but if you wanted to pick and choose between their futures in the play vs the movie, or mix them, or choose your own new future, i’m all for it. i know lockwood is killed while he’s in the military in the movie version, but i’d prefer the story either not engage with it, keep it from happening, or simply change that aspect of his military service.

2. masters of the air rfp (callum turner, austin butler) —

one of the things i’m most interested in with these two is character bleed — austin butler is known for letting elvis infiltrate his speech and mannerisms, so what would that kind of bleed-through look like here, on a war mini series? with callum and austin playing two guys who went through such horrifying shit and remained so close? maybe something set while they were filming the show, or even after, during the press tour. perhaps they can't leave those characters behind! you could even take it further into the present than that!
speaking of the press tour, i love the idea of something set when they were spending hours each day in each others’ company, on screen as themselves, answering the same questions over and over. what is that kind of exhaustion like? how is it different from the hours and hours they were together on set? there’s something about the potential claustrophobia that i’m into — there aren’t any other guys to distract them, just each other.
callum has mentioned multiple times that austin is into ceramics, and made him an ashtray. which — okay, sure, normal and fine, but i’d love anything that expands on that urge of austin’s. maybe he’s charmed by how much callum enjoyed getting a gift that austin made with his hands. maybe he wants to keep having that feeling.
callum has also mentioned that he’s tried to convince austin to move to london. i’d love a story navigating the two of them figuring out whether callum is really serious, if either of them would actually want it, if it’s logistically possible, etc.
austin also has a tendency to be kind of a chameleon — he picks up mannerisms, he mirrors his costars, he diverts attention away from himself. perhaps a story in which callum can't stop digging and trying to find out who austin really is, underneath a persona that austin might well believe is real. or perhaps callum is turned on by the things that austin has picked up from him. dealer's choice!
if it’s not obvious, i’d love for this story to be romantic, though don’t feel pressured if that’s not your thing! there’s just something about the idea of falling in love with a co-star and having to figure out how that works outside of the bubble you were ensconced in — if it is real, if it’ll last, and how to make lasting happen.

3. sinners (elias "stack" moore, elijah "smoke" moore, mary, annie) —

i would love to read about any of these characters in any combination, romantic, sexual, platonic, whatever you're into.
i have been dreaming of a time loop fic in which annie is reliving the day of the vampire attack over and over — this doesn't have to be a real fix-it fic, all or some of them could still die, but i'm wondering what outcome would be enough to get her out of the loop, if preparation would lead her to arm herself with more charms/magic/knowledge, and what repeated encounters with that night would look like. i think annie is a badass, and i would love to spend some time in her head!
how about a close canon au where both twins are turned, and stack, smoke, and mary have a sort of uncomfortable triad/poly-v situation through the ages (i am fine with incest! make the twins kiss, if you want, or don't. or let them have complicated feelings about only having each other for support their whole lives).
or maybe instead of getting himself killed, smoke lives to be haunted by stack and mary at night. would they simply turn him, or would they try to convince him to let them?
or what would have happened if mary had turned annie first and not stack? what would eternal life look like if it's just them? honestly, i'm down for basically any kind of close canon au you feel like writing.
mary's devastation at annie being killed instead of turned speaks to deep feelings between the two of them. maybe a story about them during the years after smoke and stack have left? would love a romance, but a deep platonic bond is fine too. any story about two people who understand deeply the wounds that have been left in each other is good enough for me.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: you should see me in a crown - billie eilish

Entry tags:

books: raven cycle

visions i vandalize

runpunkrun mentioned that there is now a graphic novel of The Raven Boys, which ignited in me a fierce urge to reread the series, so I've started that, and I still love it (♥BLUE♥! ♥RONAN♥! #the same impossible stuff), but I also kind of wish now that I didn't read the Dreamer trilogy (or that Stiefvater had written it differently), since it kind of recontextualizes (and potentially retcons) some stuff that I don't think really needed it.

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