flashexchanges | Member Posts

Akane-banashi #191: Ooh, I loved the art there, it was almost like a Junji Ito pageturn jumpscare, that one panel with the eyes. I don't know what Akane grasped, but I'm excited to see how it influences her version of the Shinigami rakugo story.

Harukaze Mound #30 [final]: Aw. I was so ??? when I started it and it started fast forwarding and timeskipping like crazy. I was like, ah fuck, it got cancelled, didn't it? Yup. Last chapter. I'm sad, I thought it was decent!

Hima-Ten! #75: It feels like things are heading towards a climax of some kind! I really hope it's not a series ending climax, though. I still have no idea how this series is going to get to Himari/Iemori as the endgame as signposted by the title tbh. But it's a nice fun little series I'm still enjoying!

Kagurabachi #109: Oooohhhhhhhh okay, this was such a good chapter. This one definitely feels like a series ending climax, but it's getting so good that I almost don't mind that it's going to finish off the series. At least it had a nice little run? I don't know how to discuss it more without some pretty big potential spoilers... I wonder if what happened is going to stick, or if it's going to get undone with an asspull. I don't think I'd mind either conclusion, but if it sticks, that's pretty gutsy of the mangaka. Excited to see how this continues to unfold!

Under Doctor #1: Potentially interesting concept, but the art is not great and I'm getting the vibe that it's either not going to be very serious, or if it tries serious it's going to be really bad at it. Comes off as kind of half baked. I won't be surprised if it gets cancelled soon; I will be surprised if it gets more than 50 chapters.

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knave_of_swords

Freezing temps have officially hit my area, but I'm safe at home. I called in to work; they don't pay me nearly well enough to risk driving on ice to get there, so I'm using a PTO sick day. On the one hand, at least I'm getting that paltry PTO money, but on the other, I kind of wish that I could waive it and just take an attendance point instead, because I overheard one of the managers say that they're waiving all attendance points for today. The best part about PTO is that because of the union, they can't ever deny it or get you in trouble for using it. That's way more important to me than the what, ~$56 per shift? that ends up in my paycheck. But it is what it is. I haven't called out frivolously since May of last year, and I think my attendance points total is like, 1, which is nowhere near even a warning. And it's not like I plan on taking another vacation after I went on a trip in December and spent sooo much money lol. I can't afford another vacation yet! But yeah, I'm doing fine in the weather so far. I've neither lost power nor had any pipes break yet, as far as I know (apartment complex). I did get a heated blanket to prepare, and it's very warm and cozy! I love it (and so does my cat lol).

Speaking of work, though, the union is apparently very close to bringing up our wages. $2/hour no more! They've asked that employees show up to the next negotiation session, which is luckily on one of my off days, so I think that I'm definitely going to go. The weather should be warm enough by then that it'll be safe to drive down. The raises they're fighting for would give me $200 more to take home a week after taxes. I don't even care about the other stuff they're fighting for, like more PTO and free shift meals and free parking-- that would all be nice, but I'd sacrifice them all in an instant for the raises. I don't know what help I'll actually be at negotiations, especially since I'm a people pleaser who likes to suck up to the bosses, but if the union is asking for employees to show up, I'll show up. They just better not make me do the talking lol.

In completely unrelated news, I started making a list of all of the books and comics and games that I owned but haven't finished yet, thinking that it could help motivate me to finish them. But seeing the big lists is having the opposite effect... I don't like having stuff that I've bought just sit on a shelf (digital or physical), but hmm, treating it as a checklist isn't being very helpful either. Especially since video games make up the lengthiest sublists, but since I've been on a Naruto kick, I haven't really been playing video games-- instead I've been watching anime. I don't want to feel guilty for not playing these games or reading these comics or books, so I don't think the checklist approach is helping. But I do want to actually pick them up! The eternal struggle, I suppose.

Maybe I should make a shorter checklist? Like pick out a few pieces of media per month, and make it my goal that month to read those or play those or whatever. It's a little late for January, but I could pick like one unplayed video game, one unread book, and one or two unopened comic books for February and make it a goal to finish those over the course of the month. I don't think that would be too much.

Okay, then, January media goals:

Finish the story mode of Rift of the Necodancer (I'm almost there! On the last chapter)
Finish that baihe novel I stalled out on, The Beauty's Blade
Catch up again with the Absolute Universe DC titles that I'm interested in (Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, maybe Superman)

And February media goals:

Play The Dark Queen of Mortholme
Get back to The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy and finish some more routes
Start playing Minecraft again (I'm feeling the itch, and it's not part of my backlog but there's no good reason to put it off)
Read my omnibus of George Perez's Wonder Woman
Finish reading the fifth volume of the 7th Time Loop LN series

Of course, I hope I'm able to get through more of my backlog than just these, but I don't want to make my goals list too large and intimidating. A few video games, a few comic books, one or two novels. And of course I'm going to continue to watch the Naruto anime and play Hollow Knight Silksong, but those are more on my "currently doing" list and not really part of any backlogs I have.

Oh, and thinking about February reminds me that my birthday is coming up! I love my birthday. I should start planning what I want to do. Luckily it's on one of my off days, so no PTO will need to be used. But I definitely need at least a dinner plan of some sort, and maybe a lunch with friends or something.

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shadaras

(I have recalled that one can title posts and that once upon a time I did that more frequently xD should get into the habit again, it's fun)

1.
The storm will be rolling in today (probably snowfall starting late morning/noontime), with projected snowfall of over a foot, heaviest in the late evening/early night.

It is unlikely that I will be working tomorrow, based on this. It was one of the big things folk were talking about on Friday! "Do you think you'll make it in on Monday?" on everyone's lips, and the answer was usually "idk, depends on the plows/roads" with a side of "it'd be cool if the work site shut down though, then we could just relax and not think about it". [ETA: Foreman sent out a text saying that we indeed are not working tomorrow "Stay safe, enjoy the weekend, GO PATRIOTS", because obvs everyone also needs to care about Patriots vs uh I think Broncos...? tbh I'd be cheering for the Broncos but really I simply do not care about football enough for that. xD]

New England is pretty good about dealing with snow, so I'm not particularly worried about the storm. Got grocery shopping done ahead of time, I live in an apartment that's fairly well insulated, etc. Shouldn't need to go anywhere until the snow has stopped and the streets are clear.

(A police car just drove slowly down the street, siren on, for the purpose of annoying the people who left their cars on the wrong side of the street into moving said cars to places that abide by the parking ban. I expect that in another hour I might see tow trucks if they haven't. This doesn't happen for normal snow bans—the plows just go around them and leave them a bit buried in snow—but, well, this storm is RATHER BIG and I see why the city would rather that not happen.)

2.
At work on Friday, end of the day, I was about to wrap up when the back door for one of the elevators opened (this is the one that we Do Not Use) and the woman who operates it stuck her head out and was like "I haven't seen you at all today! How're you doing?" at me.

I proceeded to have a Very Normal Conversation with her and then, after she left, my coworker/cohortmate was like "were you FLIRTING with her?" and I was like "No??? Just because you (probably) do doesn't mean I am?"

however upon further review I'm like "yeah no the way I interact with her absolutely could be read as flirting" and also a bit "huh she did not need to start that conversation at ALL", so, you know. (I am not opposed to flirting with her, she's cute, I'm just. too aro for this. xD in a "flirting is fun but it's not going to be serious" way.)

(also there's a bit of me going "god if I'm gonna have cute women flirt with me I want them to be queer, and I present as a dude at work in a way that means I do not expect people to realise I'm not cis/that a woman flirting with me should be a queer act" with this. like. I pass. I do not really care to and in some ways do not wish to, but it sure is useful/safe to know that to most people I'm just another dude working at a construction site.)

3.
At class on Wednesday night (I do not like evening classes! never have!) I was bored for like... all of class... because I already understood what we were going to be doing (I knew this from the week before). Which meant I was drawing, because Why Not. Pencil and paper, that day, because it was a practical class and having a sketchbook out was simpler than having a tablet out.

The teacher, when he came over to be like "so you're bored", was like "nice art", and then one of my classmates was like "wait, is this what you do during class all the time? I thought you were taking notes. you're good!" and another was like "dang, why didn't you go to art school?"

It's... odd. I do not think about my art as particularly good, due to having friends who do art at a (semi)pro level and following a lot of pro artists' work. But yes, objectively I am a Skilled Hobbyist? I can generally draw things that look like what I want to draw? If I focused on practice (especially doing life drawing studies) I'd get better faster but... I'm still pretty good at this, yeah.

Anyway during class yesterday I took the design I was working out on Wednesday ("that looks like Nami from League of Legends", one classmate said, which I do not think is true except for the "looks like a water-person" aspects, but that's sweet anyway.) and drew him out in color to see the design better.

At some point I will name him (his baby name is Sunshine, I think, but that's not his name) and he only exists as a baby/child during the timeline as currently established, though I drew him as an adult, and I still need to write the story about his parents (and when they accidentally conceive him) but hey, here's my pretty boy who's even quarters of dragon/orc/triton/elf. xD (mild nsfw? no clothes but also no detailed genitals and no intended sexiness.)

( two images under cut )

4.
My friend and I have started watching The Story of Yanxi Palace, one of

tavina's recs, and we are delighted by it. Mostly we're pointing at Our Protagonist (Wei Yingluo) going "THE AUTISM OF IT ALL" (occasionally going "haha she and Maomao [The Apothecary Diaries] would be so fun to watch interact"). We're also going "look at this bitch! (positive)" about Noble Consort Gao, wanting good things for Empress Fuca, and contemplating how bored Emperor Qianlong seems while bemoaning Qing Dynasty Men's Hair. (He has a very nice smile! He looks good bald! Except then we see his hair and sigh loudly.)

We're only three episodes in and Yingluo has already caused so much chaos and trouble. It's great. This is such a wildly different vibe from the last show we watched (The Story of Minglan), but both shows are gorgeous and care so much about MATERIAL GOODS and this one in particular is set in a SPECIFIC TIME in such a way that one could in fact look up more about the styles of dress and meaning of earrings/hairstyles/etc.

5.
I thought I had another thing xD uhhhhh some rapid-fire stuff since apparently I don't want single-paragraph sections otherwise:

a.
Still slowly watching ST:DSC. xD s3e4 was a meditation on how Trill work now and how Adira is a very cute character but also very much A Teen and meant to be relatable to teens more than me, an adult. More interested by how Discovery has a personality and watching the bridge crew (plus Georgiou) have a dinner party that goes bad and then make up with each other. And Michael not following strict Starfleet protocol.

b.
Reminded myself, this week, of the difference between talking on the phone for "migraine means I can't look at screens but I am BORED and I wanna talk to you" reasons vs "I am awake and wanna hang out with you but there's stuff I gotta do that requires my body but hey I can talk on the phone while I do that" reasons. It's a lot nicer when one's a person and not a lump, oddly! One feels a lot more like they're participating equally in the conversation that way! Wow! Such surprise!

c.
The remix event (

seasonalremix) that

hafnia and I are running got SEVEN WHOLE SIGNUPS (including the two of us), which is tbh pretty good for the first time we're doing the event and how it's a rather atypical sign-up/event structure (and that we weren't promoing it particularly hard). It's a good number for hand-matching, too, since there's variety but not an overwhelming amount of data to sift through. Excited to see how it'll shake out!

d.
I wanna work more on writing Rhei and Ames' story (since, y'know, I now know what their son is gonna look like :P), and as part of that have started writing down my mental outline/figuring out a timeline. Might post excerpts here as I write, once I get to actually writing? It's fun sharing things as I go! And also with dw I do not need to worry about character limits the way I sharing bits with friends on discord. xD

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lucymonster

The Ring (2002) was a reckless stretching of my "no child-related horror" boundary that fortunately did not backfire, mostly because I spoiled myself very thoroughly for the entire plot of the movie before watching a single minute. But with ample forewarning for the bad bits, not only did it not backfire but I actually enjoyed it more than I can remember enjoying a movie in years. This is phenomenally sad and scary paranormal horror about a cursed VHS tape that kills you seven days after you watch it, and a journalist fighting to solve the mystery of the tape before she and her young son succumb to its murderous power. Aesthetically it was exquisite: everything is wretchedly grey and rainy and minimalist, but somehow never dull. The visual horror was like the distilled essence of what the word "horror" means inside my head. The suspense and fear were great, but really the heart of this story is about motherhood, and the beautiful, terrible power mothers have to save or destroy their children.

( Spoilers )

I haven't decided yet if I will watch the sequel, but I almost definitely will watch the original Japanese film that spawned this adaptation.

Hit Man (2023): Philosophy teacher Gary loves his cats, his pot plants, his job, and birdwatching. He is amicably divorced from his ex-wife, who left him because she found him too steady and yearned for a more passionate lover. Good with tech, he works part time for the New Orleans police in a surveillance van attached to undercover missions. One day, the undercover cop he works with gets pulled off duty right before a planned sting, and Gary reluctantly takes over his role as a fake "hit man" whom their would-be murderer target is attempting to hire. He surprises everyone (himself included) by putting on such a stellar performance that he's asked to become the team's permanent undercover guy. He falls into a highly successful routine: drawing on his longstanding interest in human psychology, he researches his targets and creates a tailored persona to cater to each individual's fantasy of what a mythical hit man should be. But when Gary catches feelings for one of his intended targets - Madison, a beautiful housewife who in desperation to escape is considering having her abusive husband killed - his professionalism starts to slip, and his immersion in the tough, suave persona he designed for her starts to escape the bounds of his mission in ways that change his life forever.

This was fun! I don't have a huge amount to say beyond that. It was fun, gleefully silly, and well acted on Gary/Glen Powell's side. (Madison was played by Adria Arjona from Andor, and I can't tell if she genuinely can't act or has just been typecast as a flat, misogyny-tinged "sexy vulnerable girlfriend" whose roles give her nothing to work with.) They took the John Wick approach of making the victims such repulsive humans that you don't feel bad when they bite it. (Note, that is this film's only overlap with John Wick. Despite the title, it is not a murderfest!) It didn't have much by way of substance but was a very enjoyable way to pass two hours.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) was also fun and also has not inspired me with many deep thoughts. Chinese-American economics professor Rachel Chu accompanies her boyfriend Nick Young on a trip home to Singapore to meet his family, about whom he has thus far in their relationship told her nothing. It turns out that the Young family are Singapore's foremost developers and property owners, a family of obscenely wealthy celebrities; Nick is the presumed heir to the family business and fortune, and his relatives are not impressed by his choice to involve himself with an Americanised nobody. Romcom tropes and high-stakes familial (melo)drama ensue.

Parts of the film felt like a travel ad for Singapore. One very gratuitous hawker centre scene in particular made me ravenous for Singaporean street food; there is also much ooh-ing and aah-ing over the city's architecture, and lavish displays of traditional culture in the family matriarch's mansion. The portrayal of the Young family's wealth played hopscotch along the border between lifestyle porn and existential horror; it's honestly kind of ghastly how rich they are. Like, unthinkably rich. Like, suck-all-the-joy-out-of-life rich. There's a very sad subplot where ( spoilers ) After all the luxury, I also really enjoyed the final scene where ( more spoilers ) Michelle Yeoh was also amazing as the disapproving mother - plot-wise she is firmly the antagonist striving to keep the happy couple apart, but she brought so much heart and nuance to the role that I was honestly half-cheering for her even as I hoped that Nick and Rachel would work things out.

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media: movies

thisbluespirit

Some things that I have had stashed away for a little while:

1.

sovay very kindly sent me a copy of Exit Through the Fireplace by Kate Dunn, which was waiting for me at the new house when I got here. It is about repertory theatre with lots of accounts on every aspect from actors and others involved, including a lot of people I have watched in old telly, so I enjoyed it a lot.

But having only recently before tried to make a post explaining what I loved about Terence Rattigan's plays, including floundering about trying to say how effective his dialogue is, I was v pleased to find this quote:

John Moffatt: (On being in rep, and the difficulty of remembering the lines, doing a new play every week): "You got to know who the good writers were. With Rattigan you barely had to learn it at all, even after just blocking it you almost knew it because it is so beautifully written. The only way to reply to something that has just been said is what he's written."

2. Talking of people being kind,

swordznsorcery wrote me a lovely Sapphire & Steel story with a new Element and a stealth crossover very RTMI here, and if you also like S&S, I recommend taking a look, as it's great! <3

3. The book I was reading introduced me to the utterly untrue but very S&S like urban myth/ghost story of the Zanetti Train. Sounds like an Assignment to me, or a film I would watch, anyway. (It seems to have been taken from a Ukrainian work of fiction, most likely - certainly not one detail of it has any truth in it).

4. Making personalised bingo cards proved to be exactly in my wheelhouse right now, so I had fun with that. If anyone missed it the other day and would like one, feel free to still ask! (Here or there, whatever).

5. Random AO3 tag found while wrangling that is currently amusing me: It is literally just Twelfth Night but with Moomins.

Otherwise still slowly progressing and all that etc etc etc.

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kalloway

Wrote 600 words of the 2003 NaNo re-write. This means I have started and that is possibly the most important part? It's a complete overhaul so far but I suspect as I go along, I'll be able to keep full chunks and quite a bit of dialogue. I also see other fine lines to walk as I go; hopefully I won't fuck them up too badly.

Posted to

inspiredby, posted the event info for the

small_fandoms Drabblethon coming in February, posted the

no_true_pair annual schedule...

Got the email inbox down to 240 messages, got the DW inbox down to 47 pages. (On a fuzzy goal of 240/54. I'll take it!)

While I was looking for the 2003 NaNo on the Wayback Machine, I kind of died a little at some of my old website front pages. So sparse, so simple! The one with like four! fandoms, original fic, and a links page was definitely my favorite, lol.

Back to archiving. I'm not going to 'catch up' this weekend, but if I can get down to ~a week behind, I'll be really happy.

As usual, if there's a section you'd like me to wake up, let me know and I'll do it.

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a reckoning of swords

snickfic

Every time I think about making a post, it just makes me tired. This is how fic writing is going also. Anyway, some things I would post about if I had the energy:

- Heated Rivalry
- movies I've seen (Impromptu, Testament of Ann Lee)
- my recent hip hop binge and especially why I like Glorilla so much
- the Oscars
- like five different

snowflake_challenge posts

maevedarcy

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maevedarcy: update

bedes

Challenge #12

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

Is it silly to say that reading today's challenge actually kind of filled me with a genuine sense of dread? Imagine my internal sense of self running around my mind palace in circles, screaming, "NOOOO, BEING BAD AT THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I HAVEN'T STARTED RESPONDING TO COMMENTS ON MY WRITING AND ART UNTIL RECENTLY AAAAHHHHHHH"

But! I think it's important to make fancreators feel appreciated. There's been an issue worsening with the online climate, where people just want to consume, consume, consume, and then just... leave. Comments on fanfics are down significantly compared to the early days and, although I don't have any proof of this, in my experience, it certainly feels like fanart is being shared less. On Tumblr, this issue is especially bad, where likes don't even really do anything to help with reach. I don't like it. I don't like that the fandom community is feeling less like a community.

That's exactly why my New Year's resolution this year is to comment on fanworks (and general art) more. Specifically, I want to comment on at least one piece of art or writing, every two days. I've kept this up so far, and, you know, it's easier than I thought it would be! I spend most of my time on Tumblr where there's a very quick and easy reply feature, so I've just been replying to the art that I've come across that I think is especially impactful in some way. And that's the sort of thing that I like to do! Instead of writing thank-yous (and making myself throw up in the process, probably), I like to show that I'm thankful for somebody's contributions to fandom by supporting them in other ways (that don't make me want to throw up).

Does this response even really meet the letter of this challenge...? I dunno, but it's true to myself and how I interact with artists online, at least, hahaha!

Current Mood: nervous

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sonofgodzilla

Title: Long Long Ago, 20th Century
Universe: Kamen Rider Black RX, Kamen Rider Ryuki
Character(s): Morita Yousuke, Kanzaki Shiro, Kishida Tomoko
Series: The Unspeakable Oath | Between To-day and To-morrorow | Pagliacci | The Ghost of a Flea | Dangerous Days | dérive | In Accordance to Natural Law | Shadow Moon | Wake Up the Hero! | Rêve | Channelling the Power of Souls | Evanescent Quietude | Pearls Before Swine | One Day Closer to the End of the World | The Nobodies | Breath, Held | Collectors | International | Vice-Versa | Lonely, Lonely Heart | Life Eternal
Rating: U
Warnings:
Summary: “I read your paper on Crisis technology,” the younger man continued. “I was especially interested in your personal experience with the Crossover Mirror Technique.”
Length: 974 words
Author's Notes: I have so many things I haven't posted yet and I'm desperately trying to force myself into sharing them. also: external link.

401

( Long Long Ago, 20th Century )

Current Mood: bitchy
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Queensrÿche - Spreading the Disease

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chanter1944

I would very much like to attend a local rally in solidarity with Minnesota today - there are events planned nationwide - but it's currently -24C, which is -11F, and it feels like -32C, which is -26F. The wind is making my wind chimes do the intermittent mambo. Schools have closed all over the area, because it's not safe for kids to wait for buses in this. BRRRR! And not only BRRRR! It would be unsafe, in a very real way, for me to be outside for any length of time, even if I layered up.

... Do I head for a rally anyway, despite the horrible weather, or not? A large chunk of me is willing to risk it. I mean, the ICEDamns* aren't taking time off from intimidating and brutalizing people, are they?

*That's an admittedly clumsy play on ice dams i.e. what accumulate on a roof if there's heat escaping a house through the attic or similar, but I couldn't come up with anything better on short notice.

Current Mood: cold

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kalloway

A bit of archiving, a lot of something. I realized that despite it being two and a half years since I started the new site, I hadn't moved any of my FFVII fic. Not a bit. I have now moved my two Crisis Core fics and will work on the rest sooner than later. But then again, I also had no Kingdom Hearts until I was nudged. (I think some of it is the sheer size of those categories? And knowing this is still a multi-year effort. Even if I manage five fics (or chapters thereof) a day for an entire year, that's only 1825 items, which is nothing compared to the ~2500-not-counting-chaptered-stuff on AO3 + all the original fic I couldn't post there because AO3 sucks and everything I've written since mid-2023. So, like, catching up is a task for the bastard child of Hercules and Sisyphus.)

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned some of the everything about my 2003 NaNo novel, too. How I went to archive it, realized I'd always meant to finish editing and expanding it a bit, but actually re-write it - meant to do it last year and, uh, last year happened. Anyway, dead set on doing it this year! Except the main copy was on the website that's gone. Oh, well, surely it's on my journal! Nope! Okay, to the Wayback Machine! Nope! I dug out the old php files and dumped it into some private entries for my future use.

Main things to do with it:
- less padding smut
- remove friend's cameo character
- words we don't use anymore
- remove some of the real-world canons and substitute some fictional ones*
- tighten up the expies a bit
- yeah idek it just needs a lot and that's okay

*the main reason for this aside from unlimited plot potential with the fictional fandoms is the story is set in 2003 and had plenty of commentary on things like Guilty Gear which made sense in 2003 but are a little jarring in the Year of Our Dude 202X.

I don't know if it'll end up being 50k words still, or shorter or longer. My original thoughts on the story were that it was too short for NaNo, and it possibly was hence a lot of weird padding and things just being... weird.

I also have one KH fic and one FFVII fic that I didn't archive on AO3 for Reasons and I'll have to eventually make decisions with those, too...

Tags:

linky

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Current Mood: still waking up

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lucymonster

I've been "rereading" by way of the audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis. He's a brilliant narrator, with two caveats:

His singing is juuust bearable when he's doing a very low voice (like for Aragorn) but excruciating otherwise. I've had to skip past some of the poetry on these grounds.
Or really 1a: his singsong Tom Bombadil voice captured the character in his purest essence, which is to say, it's so smug and jolly that the first sound of it made me want to punch something. I'm not a habitual Bombadil skipper (though admittedly that's more due to stubborn pride than any real appreciation for Tolkien's vision in those chapters) but Serkis' Bombadil defeated me utterly.

As of writing this post I'm about an hour off the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, with the sundering of the fellowship poised to come crashing down on my head. Legolas has been my favourite character since before the movies made him hot, but this time I'm finding myself caught up in the story of Frodo like never before. His yearning for the Shire and desperately reluctant acceptance of his calling have really touched me this time through. I've been especially caught on the moment, small as it is, when having been incapacitated by the Nazgûl blade he endures his agony in silence as his friends carry him to safety, so mindful he is already of the burden and danger he's causing them. When I first read The Lord of the Rings I was too young to know what war was, and I've been reading it my whole life the way I first read it then, as first and foremost a fantasy adventure, full of elves and magic and great quests. For some reason this time it is finally coming home to me how much this is a story of the Great War, and how much Frodo embodies the ordinary conscript: terrified, untrained, barely able to comprehend the grand events unfolding around him but determined to do his duty and empowered through unthinkable ordeals by the deep love and loyalty he has for his friends.

LotR was my second foray into transformative fandom, after getting hooked on fic via Harry Potter and Mugglenet. I haven't been active in the fandom since I was fifteen or so, and fortunately my "contributions" were all published on dead or forgotten sites under a different username - I remember writing one or two "tenth fellowship member" self-inserts, and something godawful about Legolas having a doomed romance with a mortal OC, and something even more godawful about Haldir (for some reason???) battling anorexia nervosa. (Edit after a pause and some googling: Oh god, the whole site that hosted all my teenage dreck has been re-archived on AO3. It's all still out there! Some of it still getting kudos and comments! The internet truly is forever.) Most of the fic I was reading back then is probably of a kind and thus better forgotten, but I'd like to link a couple of old favourites that have stuck with me over the years.

While the Ring Went South... by Thundera Tiger is a scrupulously canonverse fic slotted into the two week journey between Rivendell and Caradhras. It's genfic, full of adventures and largely centred on the rivalry/developing friendship between Legolas and Gimli. I reread some of it not that far back and it lived up to all my fond memories. The sequel, During a Journey in the Dark, doesn't seem to have made it to AO3 but is still available on Stories of Arda.

Celebdil-Galad and Tinlaure wrote a large volume of intensely smarmy, whumpy Legolas & Aragorn torturefic. I have not reread any of these since my teens, and I don't intend to, since I doubt my adult self will be able to reconnect with the emotions they once provoked even if they turn out to have been brilliantly written masterpieces. More likely, they were written by kids a couple of years older than me at the time and with commensurate skill. But I still remember them fondly.

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ride_4ever

I'm putting together a program at the public library where I work as an Acquisitions and Collection Management Librarian. It's a program about books that have been challenged or banned in the recent onslaught against the freedom to read in the U.S. Some of the reasons...I can't even! I don't know whether to engage in bitter laughter or to just plain cry...or both...yeah, both.

Just a few moments ago I encountered this one about a book I read recently: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has been banned in some parts of the U.S. because Dunbar-Ortiz puts Indigenous Native Americans at the center of her telling of U.S. history "causing the book to gain detractors who prefer that history be told from the colonizer perspective". To paraphrase Shakespeare in Hamlet: "If all history books were to be judged on preferred perspective 'who should scape whipping'."

Current Mood: I can't even.
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

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banned books

knave_of_swords

Recent AO3 downtime has made me want to put more of the text of my fics here on my dreamwidth... ugh it feels like so much WORK but maybe someone, somewhere, someday will appreciate it...

Also, I started watching Hermitcraft season 11! I took a break from minecraft youtube during season 10, but now I'm back. I'm watching Tango, Gem, and Pearl for sure. I also really like Bdubs's videos, but I think I'll consume his at a more leisurely pace, maybe after his season is done. I'm also planning on catching up on season 10! Tango, Gem, and Pearl again, but also Scar and Bdubs.

I also got through the Kazekage Rescue Mission arc in Naruto Shippuden! Ah it was so good. I thought I was going to NOTP Sakura/Sasori, but it turns out I am into them, just... not how the rest of the shippers seem to like them lol. Gaara/Naruto also rocketed up my list of ships. Naruto cares so much about Gaara! And Sakura was so good in general. I loved seeing her get stabbed like that.

I'm taking a little bit of a break before I continue watching Shippuden, because I want to actually write the fics that I've got ideas for! Though a few of them I have a lot of ideas, but can't really figure out how I want to string them all together. But it feels like I've got writing that's piling up in my head waiting to be let out, so I want to let it out before I keep watching the anime.

Other things... I started a new danmei novel series! The Wife Comes First, where a jerkass prince gets time travelled back to before he fell from grace, realizes that his malewife was the only one who ever was by his side, and decides to love and cherish his malewife while averting his bad end in this second chance at his life. I like the worldbuilding around the male wives! Both characters are fun, and it's a nice read.

I signed up for Candy Hearts! And even got my younger brother to sign up, too, which was less weird than I thought it would be.

I've also been battling the urge to make myself write a fic for every piece of media that I enjoy... I feel as though like, I can't say that I actually like this book or game or anime or whatever until I write a fic for it, and then I have Solid Proof that I like it. But I think that this is actually holding me back from writing what I actually have ideas to write about, because for most fandoms I haven't written yet it's because I just don't have any good ideas. So I'm trying to convince myself that it's okay to just blog about the thing I like, and that that counts as Solid Proof too. I have the feeling that if I can let go of the idea of writing every fandom I ever like, or writing every idea that ever floats by in my head, then maybe I'll actually be able to write the things that I have ideas for. It's a struggle because up until now, my strategy has been to save every last idea that I've ever had for fics, but I think that I need to go through and do a proper culling in order to be able to focus better. Well, we'll see how it goes.

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