memewidth

Well. Almost there. I'm not cooking Christmas dinner this year—Bun and MRBun2B have invited us there—but tomorrow I am producing Afternoon Tea for them, plus BIL, Boy, and MrBun2B's parents. The most concise way I have found of referring to this couple is "Bun's in-laws", though they are not that at present. Beast feels there should be a word for this relationship, but I don't think there is. Am I wrong?

*

Have spent an hour or so arranging holly (we have a tree with berries!), ivy, acuba japonica and white lilies (still in bud) to decorate the dining room. Very casual arrangements, but I like the effect. Also very economical, as all the greenery was culled from the garden and we only needed to buy two bunches of lilies. If any of you is worried about the cat, I can promise there will be *no* difficulty keeping her out of the dining room, when it is filled with People. She can have a nice, peaceful Christmas Day to recover.

*

Final chorus engagement for the year was at the Hamlet Centre last Friday. Now that the chorus is so much younger, a large proportion of members are working during the day )we used to have more pensioners and housewives) so there were only five of us, but we duly turned up. This particular version of the Hamlet Centre is for young adults with various disabilities. In the past we've also sung at the children's version, which is usually delightful because at least one little girl always got up and danced as we sang. I wasn't expecting a dancer this time, but I was wrong! There were a couple of kids there, and the little girl danced!

With only five of us—three Leads and two Baritones—there wasn't a lot we could do in terms of Christmas repertoire, but there was a recording of various Christmas songs which we sang along with, and we did manage to throw in Silent Night, White Christmas and the Carol of the Bells acappella. I harmonised happily as the mood took me.

It's a fairly unique experience. It's always kinda bizarre and quite joyous. I didn't take part last year, for reasons of New Hip, and remembered all over again why it is a good thing to do. I think the three newcomers among us were all hooked!

halfshellvenus

This is the last day to vote in this week's Idol poll. Only the top 3 writers advance, and I could really use your help. Thank you for your support all of these past months!

We're nearing the end of the year, and I've been looking at my Goodreads stats. Last year, I didn't make my goal (I think it was 70 books? It was ambitious). This year, I backed it down to 60. But! I seem to have read a lot of longer standalone short stories and some unexpected novelettes. So, I'll easily make 85-86 "books." I got in a few extra while we were in Hawaii (I always read more on vacation), but I've increased my reading time each day by pairing it with foot exercises for the plantar fasciitis that returned with a vengeance in May. That has definitely helped.

I'm currently reading the second book in the 2 Sisters Detective Agency series (and hoping there will be more at some point). But I recently finished The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, which was fun. It involves a school for magical creatures, or those who can do magic, and is told from the POV of one of the parents who is dealing with petty social circles and politics in an atypical setting. At some point, I'll read the fourth book in T. L. Huchu's series that starts with The Library Of The Dead. It will tank my stats— those books are gripping, but on the long side. I'm pleased to see that there's a fifth one now!

How's the holiday prep coming? I've wrapped most of the presents, but I'm afraid to put them (and their curly ribbons) under the tree. See yesterday's post...

turps

I've had post, thank you,

pushkin666,

frausorge,

venetia_sassy,

nopseud,

misbegotten

tara and CJ for the cards, and thank you to

ephemera and again,

nopseud and R for the parcels. You're all amazing, and my apologies for the late thank yous.

Those cards have been arriving at the same time as sympathy cards, which just sums up this weird time, really.

My MiL's funeral will be on the 14th of Jan ( cut for funeral talk )

So yeah, thank you for the comments on my last post, they meant a lot ♥

And as the world keeps on turning, we were at the vets today with Kevin for his usual congestion issues. I did phone asking if he could have the powders that help with that, but they said he needed to be checked this time, which fair enough. Kevin's fine, and showed how sappy he is by being Velcro cat with the vet, trying to snuggle into her. She was happy to prescribe the powders and said the script will stay open for six months so if he gets it again no need for a visit.

Now I need to finally go and deliver cards to my neighbours, then strip ~~Murphy's~~ Corey's bed as he finally let me know he's sleeping over Christmas day night.

falena

The Old Guard is a superhero movie about a bunch of inexplicably immortal mercenearies. >Superheroes are totally not my thing, I watched this movie because it had one of my Italian actor crushes, Luca Marinelli. Then I checked out the fic mostly only because sixthlight was writing in this fandom. See, I'm an extremely loyal reader. If I like an author I will try and read any stories they publish, no matter the fandom. I knew I was going to like whatever sixthlight was going to dish out. I was right. Also, Luca Marinelli played a medieval nobleman from my own hometown!And he was half of a canonical gay couple.

Predictably, my favourite stories are AU of the no-superhero-power kind. They can be read with little to no knowledge of canon and can be enjoyed as the tropetastic romance they are.

marriage of (in)convenience. Modern Royalty AU. In which my hometown is a small principality, Ruritania-style. Lolol. To be fair, Joe did know there were some things Nicky wasn’t quite telling him. But it didn’t matter to him who Nicky’s ancestors had been. What mattered was Nicky, who was kind, and thoughtful, and relentlessly committed to doing the right thing, including his share of the dishes. Really, what else did you need to know that someone was a keeper? I don't know why I have such a soft spot for modern monarchy romance but I just do. I'm very sad I can no longer link to the best of the lot, the X-Men royalty AU by Yahtzee (it's been published as proper romance! I bought it!).

Diplomatic Complications.A classic arranged marriage trope, but Yusuf is the nervous groom who gets shipped off to a strange country.

In The Heat of The Moment. This is history-flavoured fantasy and all names of historical locations should not be taken as referring to the serious historical nations/cities but, uh, places vaguely like them and vaguely located the same in relation to each other but with (checks notes) complete cross-faith acceptance of gay marriage, contact with the New World, and definitely no Crusades. We're all here for the arranged marriage romcom and that's just how it has to be. I also have, quite evidently, a thing for arranged marriage. :D This awesome story also comes as a podfic, by greedy_dancer.

The Pitt

except for breath, except for everything by sawdustdiamonds Pittsburgh Doctor Sentenced to Five Years in Drug Diversion and Theft Case. At 6:30 PM on a July evening, everyone in the city knew about Dr. Frank Langdon. This a WIP but it's one of the most powerful pieces of fiction I've ever read, It's emotionally devastating, brace yourselves. The best kind of what if/AU, the one which teaches you something about the fuckedupness of our world, in this instance the prison system in the US (the one in my country is equally inhumane).

halfshellvenus

I can't believe it. SIX cats have managed to co-exist with a Christmas tree, and the worst we've had is one who kept drinking the tree water and another who fanged the curly ribbons on presents.

But here we are:

We've only ever had a table tree with this cat before, and who knows what he encountered in the years before he was ours. But now that we have a full-sized tree... it might as well be covered with toys. :(

falena

I don't think I'm going to be able to keep up with this meme, heh. Biting more than I can chew is the story of my life, basically. I'll just make a post whenever I can, my perfectionist tendencies be damned.

With this out of the way, this is surely another fandom that needs no introduction. I also know it's problematic for many thanks to JKR turning out to be a horrible, horrible human being. I totally can understand if you decide to give this a pass. I can still enjoy fic about this universe, though. I'm sure that my recs are familiar to anyone reading in this fandom, but they are big favourites for a reason, I guess. As usual, the stories I like the most are those that have little to do with canon, in terms of plot. I prefer fic set after the end of the war, preferably ignoring the blasted epilogue, with all our heroes grown-up (and fucked-up). I also was never into the Marauders, like at all.

To start you off, you could pick any of astolat's HP stories at random and be blown away by her talent. Most are Harry/Draco, but she just posted a Draco/Hermione fic only the other day. My favourite is House Proud, Harry/Draco, 23K, His house liked Draco Malfoy more than him. The snark, the fun, the romance. They slay me. The podfic by Lazulus is sublime.

Hermione Granger's Hogwarts Crammer for Delinquents on the Run by waspabi. 93 K. AU for the Deathly Hallows, also huge canon divergence, Harry grew up as a muggle and never went to Hogwarts. It's also Harry/Draco eventually but the shipping is not the selling point. 'You're a wizard, Harry' is easier to hear from a half-giant when you're eleven, rather than from some kids on a tube platform when you're seventeen and late for work. Luckily for me Lazulus podficced this too. What a masterpiece.

What we Pretend We Can't See by gyzym. 131 K. Draco/Harry Seven years out from the war, Harry learns the hard truth of old history: it’s never quite as far behind you as you thought. I've only ever consumed this as a podfic, which was made by the amazing FayJay.

I must say back in the day I read a lot of Hermione/Snape, but most of it is no longer accessible or err, a bit crap, when I was able to re-read it with more adult eyes. Still, I wanted to rec at least one story, which is really not quite romance (no HEA) but it has the big plus of having an IC Snape (so a complete dickhead): Chaos is Come Again by Aashby. There's some iffy consent, this was written well before content warnings were a thing. The story can only be downloaded from here, AFAIK. I'm also quoting the summary from that review because I'm lazy: "A decade or more after the defeat of Voldemort, Severus Snape and Hermione Granger work together to stop the Ministry from grossly misusing its power to solve wizarding Britain’s genetic problems. Starts with Marriage Law, and approaches near dystopian levels of corruption." There's a lot of plot in this fic. Lots of politics. Some spying/intrigue. Could have benefited from an editor helping the author with the pacing...Still, totally worth reading.

I also enjoyed Harry/Luna quite a lot, but unfortunately my pre-Ao3 bookmarks for the few good stories I'd found are all broken. It's so sad when we lose pieces of fandom history. :(

The Pitt

I don't need to rec avocadomoon to anyone who's into Mel/Frank. There's a reason her stories are the ones with the highest number of hits on the Ao3. My favourite of hers is Confidence Game. 72K. "Everything's fucking falling apart," Abby croaked, her voice thick with snot. "And you're - of course you're like this, you're fucking nice. Oh my God." "I'm not that nice!" Mel said frantically. I stole your husband, she thought. For example. How Mel and Frank could have got together after the end of S1. Meg has written several iterations of this, all wonderful. She gets how messy these two would be, how complicated everything would be...and she makes it work. In this one Abby is an antagonist. And yet so human you can't help sympathising.

steepholm

This is my second and last day in Onomichi in Hiroshima Prefecture. I'm writing about it now even though my last entry was so recent, because I don't know when I last visited a town I liked so well. (Sorry if a bit of Regency diction creeps in from time to time - I'm also transcribing some letters from that period in my spare moments, a subject for a later occasion.)

Onomichi (尾道 = "tail road") is not devoid of tourists, but most of the Western ones pass straight through. They get out at the station and immediately transfer to the little ferry that takes them over to the island of Mukaishima (a five-minute hop), and thence to the Shimanami Kaido cycle route across the Seto Inland Sea, a justly celebrated journey (though the only time I did it was on a rainy day and in a bus). I don't think many explore the town, which remains a bit of a hidden gem (or 穴場 - "hole place", in Japanese, as Mami informed me the other day). They should though, because it's really wonderful, at least if you share my tastes. Allow me to expatiate upon its charms under three broad heads.

First, physical geography. Onomichi is a town with a thin strip of flat land along the coast, where most of the shops are, then behind that a steeply rising hinterland. In this it resembles (on a much smaller scale) Kobe, where I'm going tomorrow, but the effect is more like that of a West country town - I was reminded oddly of Dartmouth. Mukaishima, though actually an island, feels like the far side of a river channel with a ferry connecting the two banks. Meanwhile, the narrow lanes and alleys above the town have more of a Cornish feel, with steps faced with granite in a more St Ives-ey manner. I got to know those steep lanes very well, because my hotel was at the very top of them, and it was not an easy climb on any of the three occasions I made it. (Luckily I'd forwarded my suitcase using the takkyubin, or it would have been impossible.) On the other hand, the view from my room is pretty damned good.

Yep, that's my hotel right at the top.

When I arrived yesterday I was told that, because it was the winter solstice, the public bath would have yuzu floating in it - something I've long wanted to experience, though I didn't have the body confidence to do so, sadly.

On the other hand, I did have the confidence to order the celebrated Onomichi ramen at an establishment in the town. An amazing meal at 900 Yen, which is (I'm almost embarrassed to write) about £4.50 at current exchange rates:

The second thing is cats. Onomichi is town of cats (which is presumably where the tails come from). Many of the cats are real, feral ones, lovingly fostered by the human population, but many are the inhabitants of stocks and stones, shrines and signs, and the twisty paths in the hills lead to many cat-haunted nooks, as you can see...

Clearly a lot of these displays are old and/or in relative disrepair, but that is far from detracting from their charm, at least to me. Rather, it helps create what one of the signs I saw described as "cat Ihatov" - a word borrowed from Kenji Miyazawa, who made his home of Iwate into a kind of palimpsestic enchantment, Ihatov, overlaying the quotidian. Onomichi is that, too, for those with eyes to see - which are, needless to say, cat's eyes. I ate lunch in a rather hidden restaurant called 'Owl's House' on one of these little paths, naturally choosing the 'Meow Pizza' with its sardines and bonito flakes. Two of the local feral cats sat inside watching me as I ate.

All of which brings me to the third charm of Onomichi - and actually my initial reason for wanting to visit - which is that it was the setting for the 2005 anime series, Kamichu! - a truly charming story of a middle-school girl, Yurie, who awakes one morning to discover that she has become a Shinto kami. This is not, however, a chunibyou story - i.e. the tale of a middle-schooler with delusions of divine power. Yurie, a shy and unassertive girl, doesn't really know what to do with her new status, or even what she might represent as a divine being.

Anyway, I learned from various web sources that not only was Onomichi the setting, but that its geography was adhered to particularly closely - which indeed I found to be the case, from the ferry that takes Yurie between home and school, to the shrine where her friend Matsuri lives and the many other places featured in the series.

By far the most moving thing to me, though, was seeing the school Yurie and her friends attended. I first saw it from above, coming down one of the steep slopes, so I had a good view of the roof:

It was all there! The roof where Yurie first exercised her powers as a god! The raised part where Kenji held his solo calligraphy club! Even the ladder connecting the two!

Now, because I write about the motivations for literary and anime pilgrimages in my academic work you mustn't imagine that I'm immune to such things myself. On the contrary, I found the sight profoundly moving, and all the more so when, as I got closer, I realised that Yurie's school was no longer a school. The building had clearly not been used in some years. The gate to the playground was open, so I was able to look around.

Not the least affecting was the set of swings, now consisting of the frame only, the swings themselves having been removed. ("What's their history?" "A　鞦韆". That's a free pun for fans of Shakespeare, playground equipment and ephemerality.)

I don't know why the school closed, but as we are all aware, Japan's birthrate has been declining steadily and Onomichi's own population has begun to shrink. It's all a long way from 2005, still more from the 1980s, when the anime is actually set. (I did not find anybody in the town who remembered the anime, for that matter - not that I asked everyone. Just a couple of Ema at Misode Tenman-gu shrine - Matsuri's shrine - commemorating the 20th anniversary of the series, among many others praying to enter, or graduate successfully from, Hiroshima University.) I hope that Yurie can tame the poverty god, as she did in the series, in which she helped him become a cat.

Having visited Onomichi, I also now understand why they made an episode based on Fight Club, but with cats. Or at least, I understand the cats bit.

Anyway, Onomichi is great, and you should visit it - tomorrow if possible, but at any rate very soon.

steepholm

I finished my last full day in Tokyo for now by meeting Yuki for lunch at a Taiwanese place, followed by mitsuan, and finally dinner with Miho and Yuko, where we talked over our slow-burn project to research chirimenbon (books made in the Meiji and Taisho eras for Western tourists, usually telling Japanese folk tales and translated by some notable authors of the time such as Lafcadio Hearn). Here is a lovely view of the three would-be researchers outside a Christmassy Tokyo Joshidai:

On Wednesday I met my friend Mami at Haneda, and we flew to Nagasaki for a couple of days. I'd long wanted to visit, not least because this is the city that was the only toe-hold for direct contact between Japan and the West (more specifically the Dutch) from the 1630s to the 1850s - i.e. for most of the Edo period, when Japan had a policy of isolation (often known as sakoku). Even the Dutch, who were there purely as traders, were confined to a small artificial island known as Dejima - about 120/75m. (This was not reclaimed land, as I had somehow imagined, but was formed by a cutting a canal through a small peninsula.)

Dejima is no longer an island, but they've done a fine reconstruction job. Life there was rather more spacious than one might have enjoyed on a ship of the era, but it must have been tantalising being just a short bridge's width from the rest of the city. Nagasaki citizens weren't allowed in, either - though an exception seems to have been made for prostitutes.

The tablet computer in the last picture shows Nagasaki as it would have looked at the time, with a clear view to the mouth of the bay - rather than with a bunch of buildings in the way.

Nagasaki is, by Japanese standards, a very cosmopolitan city, with its relative proximity to the Asian mainland (it has a famous Chinatown) and its history of Dutch and, before that, Portugese trade - which can be seen in the ubiquitous Castella cakes. Here and there, though, a trace of the old sakoku spirit still remains, as in this pair of QR codes, where the Japanese "Guidance to business opening hours" has been Englished simply as "For foreigner" - which felt a little on the nose!

There's more to Nagasaki than Dejima, not least in terms of food. Most famous of all perhaps is Nagasaki champon, which, having been invented in Nagasaki by a Chinese restaurant owner, is as Japanese as chicken tikka masala is British. We sampled it in the original restaurant:

Nagasaki bay, when seen from above, sans buildings, is lovely. Other highlights included the trams (I'm a sucker for a tram, and this is the third Japanese city I've seen them in after Matsuyama and Hakodate) and a really charming bookshop-cum-picture-book museum, which had something of the air of the Ghibli Museum in its architecture:

We also took a day to visit Hui Ten Bosch - the Dutch theme park. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't this:

And yet, in retrospect, how could it have been otherwise? Actually, Huis Ten Bosch is on a truly grand scale, and in terms of recreating buildings it puts even British Hills in Fukushima in the shade. Highly recommended if you find yourself on the shores of Omura bay with time on your hands!

I said my goodbyes to Mami on Saturday and started working my way back to Tokyo, albeit by a very circuitous route. First stop was Miyajima, home of the famous floating torii gate. This was the one night of the trip when I splashed out on a ryokan, mostly so that I could stay overnight on Itsukushima island (where Miyajima is located). I'd been told that it was easier to beat the crowds if one stayed overnight, though to be honest the crowds weren't that big - no doubt because of the season. (There were, however, more Westerners in evidence here than anywhere else I've stayed.) This meant that I was able to experience the shrine about both low and high tides:

It also got me this view from my bedroom window:

And, of course, ryokan style meals. This was breakfast, before and after the battle:

Altogether, an amazing place. The next day I set off on the next leg of my journey, to the place I'm writing this entry. But where is that place? Tune in next time to find out!

halfshellvenus

Seriously, I still don't have the outside Xmas lights that were supposed to be delivered on Friday. They haven't reached "Out for delivery" status on the tracking app, which means they're not even on a truck. They're just stalled out in a UPS depot somewhere. :( At least the tree is up and decorated now.

We saw Wicked Two last night. LOVED the art direction– especially the Wizard's castle, which lights up all of my fannishness for the Steampunk aesthetic. Ariana Grande is looking scary-skinny now, though. Beyond slender and into having the body of a child. Yikes. And I'm not in love with the music, or this style of musical even. A lot of modern musical composers seem to have fixated on the opera recitative (where all dialogue is sung, but is not melodic) and missed the fact that operas also have arias– and those are what people love and remember! The songs here have "tunelets," but are missing the basic verse and chorus structure. For that, think Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Lerner and Loewe. Heck, think Andrew Lloyd Weber or any of the Disney musicals! I truly don't understand the point of the newer style, unless it's that these are composers who just aren't that good at writing melodies? The best I can remember, from the sum of both movies, is the hook for "Defying Gravity." But that's it. :(

Our daughter flies in this afternoon, so I'm off to bike in the garage before she gets here. I've parked Orphan Black temporarily on the back burner while I blow through S3 of Squid Games. God, but those death "games" torture me. And for the 5-minute warmdown, I'm creeping through Is It Cake? Not riveting enough for the high-intensity biking, but I DO get a kick out of it.

Pssst! The current Idol poll is HERE. Please help!

shippen_stand

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halfshellvenus

If you haven't already voted in this week's Idol poll, I could really use your support! My online identity is separate from my real life, so other than our kids, I can only get votes from readers and my friends-list. And I'm lagging behind right now. :(

My outdoor Xmas lights were supposed to be delivered yesterday, and they still aren't here! What gives, Amazon? They aren't even listed as "out for delivery." I only have so much time to get them up, and it's supposed to rain this entire coming week, which could complicate things. We DID get a tree yesterday, so I'm about to start decorating it. I bought replacement heart lights for the Silvestri ones we had for so many years (lost to the fire), and I'm hoping they'll look okay. Lost our vintage "bubble-lights" too, plus the cheap-looking backup set. They were one of HalfshellHusband's favorites.

Speaking of HSH, I spent some time yesterday with my company's benefits center and Kaiser trying to straighten out why I've gotten two notices saying his insurance is ending. He should still be covered by my office (and is), but he's also turning 70 this month AND Trump's sycophants have screwed Medicare users, so there are three different reasons why dropped/altered coverage could be a thing. In theory, this is a form letter Kaiser sends out because the calendar year is ending. So, why didn't I get one then? Current state: things should be good. We'll see. :O

azurelunatic

My hyperfocus does still work to the extent that when I was reading earlier today, I tuned out the various scraping and occasional hammering noises from the roof. I could not, however, sleep through the hammering.

Which is perhaps why Belovedest is on the shopping trip without me today. I was too cold and tired to get ready, let alone go out into the cold and dark.

halfshellvenus

That's how long it's been since I last biked outside. Criminy. Today broke the longest streak of garage-biking I've had in... more than 30 years. The endless stretch of cold fog has finally broken, and temperatures are warming up to the low-mid 50s, which I can work with. BUT... we're also entering a period of probably two solid weeks of rain. Ideally, there will be some breaks in that and I'll be able to get outside again. Biking out in the world is not only less boring, it lets you stretch out your muscles more. Stationary biking is a grind. Literally.

You may have seen a bunch of Idol entries pop up recently. The current challenge involved assembling a portfolio that included two new entries, a letter to a past participant, and an overview page to pull it all together. We only have 5 contestants left now, so the poll is very small. Please vote if you can, and thank you for your support!

Christmas tree tomorrow, I hope? We replaced the excellent stand we lost to the fire, and we were lucky enough to get our ornaments back. No outside lights yet, though my son and I put up the mug hooks under the eaves for them. But they're not due to be delivered from Amazon until tomorrow. To be fair, I am ALWAYS behind at Christmas time, regardless of the year. \o?

ruric

Halle-fricking-lujah my out of office is on and I am (technically) on leave until 5 January.

I say technically because I have to nip into the office stupidly early tomorrow to pick up some keys and make some posters, and possibly work a couple of hours one day over the weekend. I will also be very swiftly checking email at least once a day most of next week. Then I plan to have some serious offline time as far as work is concerned between 29 December and 5 January.

They're introducing a new "email over 5 years old gets trashed" rule in January so I have some 20,000 emails to check and delete before then (my predecessors did not believing in archiving important stuff) so I'll be scanning/deleting over the break.

And I have my own epic cleaning, clearing, sorting and decluttering project to deal with over the 17 glorious days that I have to get my shit together. I have a master plan and so many lists with a multiplicity of bullet points! And the icing on the cake the ex is at the cottage from 20 December to 6 January so I can make free use of his washing machine.

My hope is to start the first working week of 2026 from a tidy flat with no more chairdrobes or piles of washing to be done or put away.

I'm sure my plans are overly ambitious but I'm looking forward to seeing what I can actually get done before 5 January rocks around.

falena

Wonderfalls was a quirky, short-lived TV series about a twenty-something philosophy grad working a dead-end retail job in a souvenir shop in Niagara falls. Jaye is smart and ironic and damaged and has a meddling family. One day animal-shaped inanimate objects start talking to her, asking her to do things. The show is hilarious.

Here are some fic that do the tricky job of preserving the showw's humour and heart while letting us spend more time with these characters.

Homing Pigeon by ospery_archer. 7K words. Jaye hated losing arguments with inanimate objects. Especially when they got the last word by burning her trailer down, and her car with it.

Hot Duck by Yochan. 1.7K words.Jaye truly started hating life when her vibrator spoke up over the sound of the water rushing in her tiny shower. Now, not only was she well and truly crazy, the devil knew she owned a vibrator shaped like Ernie's rubber duckie.

I Wonder Why The Wonder Falls On Me by Zanne. 9K words. Crossover with Supernatural. Dean and Sam meet Jaye. Lolol.Surrender to Destiny" is a terrible catchphrase.

An now a festive gem: Jolly by Fox1013 1.8K. "I don't do festive," Jaye said. "It's like asking Mickey Mouse to do a striptease. It makes everyone uncomfortable."

The Pitt

Since on Day 16 I recced a threesome, I thought I might do another one: 86 Days, 87 Nights. 24 K. Robby/Abbot/Samira. There's lots of plot. Which makes sense as it's a fic that could be best described as Lost meets The Pitt. Fantastic.

niqaeli

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kayre

In the past week....

our microwave has twice quit, and then revived after poking and cussing
ordered a replacement microwave, which proved to be wired incorrectly
two GFI outlets in the kitchen (different circuit) tripped, and couldn't be reset, until 2 hours later when they could
Instant Pot overflowed the little drip cup and slopped broth all over the counter
I've spilled a 22 oz drink on carpet
I've spilled a small cup of sangria-- into my crochet bag
I broke a dulcimer string
my choir folder went walkabout, 24 hours before conducting a very complicated choir anthem (it's still missing)
Also I've got a Situation with a choir member.
Finally (I hope!) today it turned out that a fairly simple car repair will take two days, causing lots of complications because we're currently 3 people with 2 cars.

All this shortly before Christmas (and I have a wedding the Saturday after Christmas, and probably a funeral the next week)... I'm pretty much out of cope. But I picked hubby up from the car dealership, then took myself out for a comfort food lunch, and spent 4 hours at church catching up on things. Kid and I cooked a lovely dinner together (despite the unfortunate sangria), and now we're watching the new Benoit Blanc movie.

halfshellvenus

Portfolio
Idol Wheel Of Chaos | Week 17, #1

x-x-x-x-x

We're down to just five writers for Idol: Wheel Of Chaos now. This week, we're writing a portfolio that centers on five key components: our favorite story we've written, our favorite story by another author, a letter to an author from earlier this season, and stories for the prompts 6 7 and Banner year.

Choosing favorites is always hard! For my own stories, I wrote a lot of humor this season, but also some drabbles, two poems, a couple of entries with pathos, and a horror story. I considered choosing the acronym fun-fest (Going BATty), the caustic self-help guide (A New Man), the baking witch (Cursecraft), The Three Trolls from last week (Piplet!), or the souful Little Metal Hearts. But I think my best story was unlike all the others. It was a classic, timeless sort of tale with a tinge of bittersweetness. It was hardly read, because I was poisoned that week and it wasn't included in the poll, but it's the one I'm proudest of.

My favorite of my stories: Here Be Dragons

Weighing other authors' stories was just as hard. There were so many I really liked this season. From week 1, the Quality entries by bleodswean and static_abyss really stood out.

rayaso's week 2 War Of The Words (the evils of ChatGPT) was a riot, as was

flipflop_diva's Week 11 beleagured aliens story.

serpentinejacaranda's Week 6 dreamlike political satire (Affliction In The Form Of A Question) really stuck with me, as did

xeena's Blair Witch Idol Meta and

l0lita's hard-hitting zombie apocalypse story. But the one I finally picked used a difficult prompt and featured a great child's voice and very real drama disguised as fiction. It was both beautifully written and painfully true.

My favorite other-author's story:

inkstainedfingertip's Week 5 Toi, Toi, Toi

Next, we were to write a letter to a former contestant from the Wheel of Chaos season. There were so many to choose from: static_abyss (never here as long as I would like), bleodswean (such talent, and such a great Idol supporter), rayaso (so funny, week after week), alycewilson (talent and soulfulness all in one). I couldn't choose inkstainedfingertips because I'd picked him for my favorite other-author entry, plus he's still in the competition. So, I chose one of my overall favorites from this season AND last season (Idol Mini). She was the author whose season this was to lose, I thought, and apparently so did others because she was taken out by a targeted elimination vote after Week 10:

My letter to xeena

And finally, there were two entries to write for specific prompts:

6 7

Banner year

I hope you've enjoyed my portfolio, and the range of offerings it provided! If so, please vote for it here.

halfshellvenus

All Anticipation
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 17, #4 | 2227 words
Banner Year

x-x-x-x

"These are the best years of your life," Lanie's mother always said. With her senior year of high school just a few months along, it seemed as if her mother was right.

Lanie was kneeling on the floor of the art room, working on the Homecoming banner for the game this weekend. She was dating the quarterback, and was every bit as invested in Homecoming as he was. Her best friend Chloe was there with her, helping out and keeping her company. Chloe's boyfriend was on the basketball team, so she was more interested in painting neat letters than what the banner represented.

"How do you think you did on the SATs this time?" Chloe said.

"I feel like the math went better?" Lanie said, "And I'm hoping that will be enough."

"I can't believe you took it twice. I mean, your original score was better than mine!"

"I just want to have the best options for where to go to college," Lanie said. "Could you hand me the yellow?"

Chloe passed the can of paint. "Well, there's always Podunk U."

"Don't remind me. My dad went there–it's why my mom keeps reminding me not to settle."

"She chose him, though," Chloe said.

Lanie moved around to the other side of the mural. "Yeah, but we all thought he was a better person than he actually turned out to be…"

( Read more... )

If you enjoyed this story, please vote for my Portfolio here!

falena

Surely no one needs an explainer on this fandom, right? If you do, google is your friend, I reckon.

The tv show ended the way it did (the less said, the better), and we will never see the book series completed; having got these two elephants in the room out of the way, let's concentrate on what drew me to this fictional world: medieval-England-like politics, fantasy, lots of intrigue, a sprawling cast of characters with endless permutations of shipping possibilities... ASoIaF/GoT really had a lot going for it. And I think this is why it attracted so many talented authors.

I've read extensively in this fandom, and if you had the patience to trawl through the sheer mass of fic posted, you were simply bound to find something to your taste. When it comes to single out the stories I enjoyed the most, I think I'm going to have to take two different approaches: the ship way (my favourite was, unsurprisingly, Jamie/Brienne, but I've read pretty much any pairing under the sun, lol) or the astounding-author way.

Let's start with the latter. I'm just going to list who my favourite authors are and give you a couple of recs for each of them, sure in the knowledge that whatever work of theirs you will read is pretty much awesome. I'll keep the shippy recs for another day. One last warning: something I found particularly satisfying in this fandom is AUs of the canon divergence kind, because changing one single fact and seeing how the consequences span out is extremely interesting in an intricate and politically fraught world as Westeros. So most of the stories I'm going to rec here fall under this category. Last but not the least, for me, this fandom is all about the women.

arbitrarily. My top pick: the joinery. 14K words. Cersei/Ned, Cersei/Jaime. by what right does the wolf judge the lion -- ned stark takes the iron throne, and with it, a lannister for a wife.

lareinenoire. My top picks: 1)Reap the Whirlwind. 6K. The circumstances under which Cersei Lannister finds herself Princess of Dragonstone are not the ones she anticipated.; 2)False Sorrow's Eye 18K. Elia Martell/Lyanna Stark. Two women survive Robert's Rebellion and everything changes.

Net_girl_y2k. She writes mostly femslash and it's ALL excellent. My top picks: 1)Had A Dream I Was The Queen (woke up, still the queen). 7K words. Rhaegar marries Lyanna Stark, and runs away with Elia Martell; 2) The Sisters BlackNight gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no husband and bear no children. I shall wear no gowns and no jewels. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life's blood to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come. The Night's Watch is for women. Lyanna Stark survived and was forced to take the black. Arya decides to follow in her aunt's steps. Podfic available!

vixleonard. My top picks: 1) No Featherbed For me 154K. Arya Stark wanted to be a knight; she wanted to find glory and adventure with Needle in her hand. But that is not an appropriate life for a highborn lady, and that was all Arya of House Stark was allowed to be. This is the definitive Arya story. What an epic journey. 2) The Evening Star. 38K. Some day people will tell tale of Ashara Dayne, the tragic and beautiful sister of the great Ser Arthur Dayne, who flung herself from the Palestone Sword with a broken heart. They will whisper about the man who dishonored her at Harrenhal, the man who got a bastard on her. But they will never get the story right.

astolat. Keeping in mind I'll rec the shippy bits elsewhere, my top picks: 1)The Price of Bread and Salt 12K. “The girl asks for more deaths than she is owed. The Many-Faced God may grant it. But for this, there will be a price. And a man cannot say what the price will be. A girl must pay. A man must pay. A girl’s brother must pay, if he agrees.” Podfic available. 2)Royal Flush. Robb Stark had swept his entire hand of cards off the table, and Tyrion couldn’t see how to make a single play at all.

The Pitt

Compiling this rec list made me realize arbitrarily has written for The Pitt too and I didn't notice! So I went on a good ol' binge-reading and come offering this gem runner's high. 7K. Robby/McKay/Abbot threesome, woot. Jack joins a run club, Cassie’s raw-dogging a 10k, and Robby’s sweating. Can't believe I'd missed this.

Crunching that data

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Plz vote!

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Rec-cember Day 19: The Old Guard

Meme Cat

Rec-cember Day 18: Harry Potter

On the Tail Road

From Dejima to Miyajima, by way of Amsterdam

Wur 2.0

Join in!

Wur R my lightz?

Deck the roof with loud repairmen

3 1/2 weeks (or 25 freakin' days)

Whoopedy Doo - Out Of Office is On - Let the CLEANING begin

Rec-cember Day 17: Wonderfalls

right, okay, an update

Murphy is busy

LJ Idol Wheel of Chaos: "Portfolio"

LJ Idol Wheel of Chaos: "All Anticipation"

Rec-cember Day 16: A Song of Ice And Fire /Game of Thrones

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April 2011

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