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Still rereading Stargazy Pie.

Listened to the audiobook of Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. Yes, my first time with this series. I didn't read them back when they first came on my radar (late 90s, early 2000s) because I heard unpleasant things about the author's attitude to fanfic, and held a grudge. They came to my attention again recently because a Tumblr mutual was reading them and kept reblogging pretty fanart and also made me aware of the gender stuff.

That certainly was a 90s fantasy novel, for better and for worse.
After I finished, I read this person's shitposty summary of Assassin's Apprentice, and decided on the strength of it to put a hold on Royal Assassin at the library so I can read the next summary after I finish that.

Games
Hades II launched, and I went back to playing it (having set it aside back in March.) On a new save. Which is how I reminded myself that gaming for a long time really hurts my neck and shoulders and back and everything. Got as far as Granddad.

Crafts
sekrit!cross-stitch still in the drafting phase, but I did make some progress.

Tech
Still playing through Reeborg's World. I switched from the original levels to the Saskatchewan CS20 set to give myself a bit more practice before tackling Rain 2 and Storm 2 through 4. Currently I'm on level 19 of the Saskatchewan CS20.

Also dug out an old monitor with the intention of plugging it into my laptop. Couldn't find a DVI or VGA cable (I did say it's an old monitor!) and ended up buying a new DVI to HDMI converter cable. After which I couldn't find a power cable for the monitor. After which I found where I'd been storing the spare IEC connectors. You'll never guess what else was coiled up with them... oh, you guessed. (No, not a snake. A DVI cable and a VGA cable, of course!)

Garden
Impulse-bought and planted a couple of heirloom tomato seedlings (Tigerella and Cherry Roma.) It begins.

Cats
Wrestling and face-biting. All in good fun.

Nature
Saw a couple of magpies investigating some yellow leaves which I'd pruned from the broccoli and left to mulch.

Misc
Unwisely kept working on the miniblocks pumpkin after I'd run out of concentration, and started skipping steps without noticing. Disassembled it and started again. This is what audiobooks are good for.

azurelunatic

As apparently the result of some long-running bad communication (not on Belovedest's side) there's a certain snarl at their work currently. They laid out the situation and the players to me.

Regarding the largest part of it -- "You have a leg to stand on there," I said. "Two legs. And my legs. That's four. And Yellface's. That's six. Eight. And when you have eight legs? ( creepy AND crawly )!"

beatrice_otter

Back in the day, there were a lot of different fanfic archives. And then AO3 came along, and everyone moved there. And there's a lot to be said for having a central multifandom archive! I love AO3! But there's also something to be said for communities having their own space.

The OTW has always said they their code is open source and they want people to use it to make their own archives, but it is ... not very user-friendly, shall we say. But now there are several people who have gotten their own instance of the OTW-A code up and running for their own archives.

And now there is another! There is now a femslash-focused archive called Sunset! It was just created and is still very tiny, but if you are into femslash, either writing it or reading it, you might find it interesting. It is run by Agnes the Alien.

Sunset is a website established in 2025 dedicated to hosting femslash (F/F) fanworks. It holds pro-freedom of fiction, queer and trans inclusive, anti-racist and generally compassionate ideals. We're here to have fun and love women. Sunset is run by one person, Agnes the Alien, who dreamed this up in zher bedroom. Please be nice to zher!

...

THIS IS AN 18+ ARCHIVE.

I'd also like to shout out Squidgeworld, Superlove, Ad Astra, and Comic Fanfiction Authors Archive.

delphi

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

runpunkrun

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday and in addition to the things I was meant to purchase, I also got apple cider scented foaming hand soap, maple & sea salt kettle corn, ultra moisturizing pumpkin hand cream, and a little white and orange pumpkin to go with the big heirloom pumpkin I also impulse purchased earlier this week. Because it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers.

While we're on the subject of gourds, let me also recommend this recipe for gluten-free pumpkin bars from Texanerin. Though, really, it's more of a pumpkin cake, tall and fluffy and full of fall spices. I wrote up the details over on

gluten_free.

vass

Books
Listened to the audiobook of Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1921 dystopian SF novel We, translated by Bela Shayevich and narrated by Toby Jones. I don't have any basis for comparison for this particular translation, but I thought it was good. The narration was exceptional.

This edition also included a forward by Margaret Atwood, an old review by George Orwell, and an essay by Ursula Le Guin, 'The Stalin in the Soul'. By the time I'd finished the novel, I had forgotten the Atwood forward. The Orwell review was interesting. The Le Guin essay got up my nose: it was about how market forces can suppress ideas just as effectively as state censorship (a valid point), but somewhere along the way became about the dangers of unserious writing.

Read Victoria Goddard's newest novella, Olive and the Dragon, and her previous ones Clary Sage and Traveller's Joy.

Currently rereading her second ever novel Stargazy Pie, because the fan server I'm in is doing a reread of the Greenwing & Dart series, and I'm hoping it'll lend me the momentum to read the rest of them.

Fandom
Still working on the concluding chapter to the fic I posted part one of at the start of this month. I've added at least a thousand words to the draft, and struggling with it.

Missed the nomination period for

trickortreatex and, subsequently, the signup period. Things have been difficult.

Did my Yuletide nomination a couple of hours before the AO3 server outage.

Games
Achieved A10 with all four characters in Slay the Spire and also killed the Transient before it faded; am now taking a break.

Tech
I've been working through the original levels of Reeborg's World, a gentle guide to programming using Python. As of this post, I've completed all the original levels except Rain 2, Centre 1 and 2, and Storm 2 through 4. (Edit with breaking news: I beat Centre 1 and Centre 2.)

Garden
Harvested some broccoli, purple and green varieties.

Hired a mower to come do what I was not managing.

Misc
Got out my old Lego Classic set, sorted the contents, and started working through the instruction booklet in order. I've never been into Lego: as a kid, I had my older brother's hand-me-down bricks and half an instruction manual with crayons scribbled across it. In my early teens I was in love with the short unit we did at school, using Logo to program Lego Technic sets (this was long before Mindstorms), but I couldn't get my parents to buy me Lego Technic to have at home. And as an adult the Lego kits just seemed too expensive and also too specialised. Recently I've been thinking I'd like to give Lego another look, in particular the less... "spend a lot of money on a playset to assemble and then dust" side of it.

Subsequently bought myself a "miniblocks" Halloween pumpkin kit from KMart, and have started building that. Much swearing has ensued. The quality really isn't as good as Lego, and the smaller size does not help.

delphi

Karaoke Iko! | Let's Go Karaoke is a coming-of-age comedy manga by Yama Wayama, which was adapted into a five-episode anime series this year and a live-action movie in 2023. The manga also has an ongoing sequel series called Famiresu Iko | Let's Go to the Family Restaurant.

The story starts out with young teenager Oka Satomi living in Osaka and dealing with the stress of being the leader of his school choir right when his changing voice is forcing him out of the soprano role. His worries about the future are thrown an even bigger curve ball when he's approached (*cough* kidnapped) one day by a local gangster named Narita Kyouji who has watched him perform and has a request: teach him to be a better singer so he can win a karaoke contest.

Kyouji's in a jam. His boss has a love of both music and tattooing, and to keep his men in line, he holds a quarterly karaoke contest where the loser is volunteered for his amateur tattooing practice—usually getting an image the boss knows they'll hate. Kyouji is determined not to lose and, in a fit of bad decision-making he potentially can't even explain to himself, decides this choir boy will make a good tutor.

Satomi starts spending time with Kyouji at the local karaoke parlour, and the two bring out sides of each other that neither seems to be able to express in their separate lives. Things then come to a head as the school year finishes up and Satomi's final concert is scheduled for the same time as Kyouji's karaoke competition, with an unexpected event disrupting both performances.

The sequel manga, Famiresu Iko, picks up three years later, when Satomi is a university student in Tokyo working part-time at a restaurant. He's visited regularly by Kyouji, and the two have to figure out what a relationship looks like between them now that they're both adults while dealing with complications related to Kyouji's criminal affiliations and Satomi's desire for a normal life (or belief that he should desire a normal life).

The premise of the series is enjoyably absurd, but the story is also rooted in reality in the right places, with strong characterizations and a good dose of feelings in there amid all of the ridiculous and dry humour. And admittedly, I'm just obsessed with Kyouji and Satomi's dynamic. Anyone who knows me knows what a sucker I am for two people who have nothing in common on the surface, who are both a little off or out of touch with themselves, but who somehow fit together in an unexpected way.

The series isn't marketed as BL, but queerness runs through the series and adaptations in both textual and subtextual ways that I'll put under the cut.

( Spoilery and Speculative Rundowns of What's Going on Between Satomi and Kyouji in Each Version )

Karaoke Iko! (Manga)
( A Page from the Karaoke Iko Manga )

Famiresu Iko (Manga)
( A Page from the Famiresu Iko Manga )

Karaoke Iko! (Anime) Note: contains some animated blood splatter and rescue from implied attempted sexual assault.

Watch on YouTube

Karaoke Iko! (Live-Action Movie

Watch on YouTube

beatrice_otter

justmarriedexchange fics have revealed, and so I can tell you that I wrote a Trip/T'Pol fic! My recip,

lionessvalenti, had several suggestions for canon-divergent AUs, which happen to be one of my favorite types of story to write--pick a canon event, tweak it slightly, and see what happens from there. And also, I love Vulcans, and have Opinions on the way Star Trek: Enterprise handled them, and this fic gave me lots of opportunities to explore all of that. I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it!

Title: that I could call my very own
Author:

beatrice_otter
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Pairing: Trip/T'Pol
Written for:

lionessvalenti in Just Married Exchange 2025
Word count: 14k
Summary:

T'Pol figures out something is wrong with her mother before leaving for Vulcan. She and Trip decide how to face the problem together.

"Maybe we're coming at this from the wrong angle," Trip said. "We're worried about what's happening on Vulcan with your mother, and trying to figure out the best way to handle that. But what if you looked at this long-term? What do you want your life to be like, a decade from now? Two decades from now? Then work backwards and figure out what we should be doing now to work towards that."

AN: This is a very minor worldbuilding note, but in English, there are gendered terms for "people who dedicate themselves to a religious life"—monk for men and nun for women. That is not the case for all languages; in Greek, "monachos" is used for both men and women. I'm going to assume that Vulcan doesn't have different words for different genders, but uses the same word for both.

sixbeforelunch provided a lot of excellent brainstorming and beta help, as is usual for my Star Trek fics.

***

"Ensign Sato, are there any remaining communications difficulties?"

The Human shook her head. "None that I'm aware of—I've got a lot of things coming through from Starfleet and the general Earth communications network, both stuff that's been waiting while we were out of range and congratulations for our triumphant return. Why?"

T'Pol debated. On the one hand, it was possible that neither her mother nor any other family member nor any former colleague had sent her a message while Enterprise was in the Expanse. Ensign Sato was very busy and had a great many tasks to perform before she could be debriefed by Starfleet and begin her well-deserved vacation. T'Pol had no desire to add to those tasks if there was nothing wrong. And it was certainly true that being out of contact had been a welcome reprieve; T'Pol was not in favor with the Vulcan High Command, nor with her family, and it had been a relief not to have to deal with anyone's disapproval.

( But she had always known that would be merely a temporary reprieve, unless she chose to abandon all claim to Vulcan entirely. )

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On Ad Astra. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.

runpunkrun

Yesterday, I was upset to learn that at some point in the last five months Masklab (Wayback link) decided not to sell masks anymore. They were the brand that fit me the best and they came in so many colors and patterns they made wearing a mask feel a little less dire.

Here's the stats for comparison:

Made in Hong Kong in an ISO-certified Class 7 clean room
Highest surgical mask standard ASTM F2100 Level 3 certified by STC:Test Report
PFE>99.9%, BFE>99.9%
EU PPE Standard EN149 FFP2:Test Report
Printed with non-toxic, azo-free dyes certified by STC:Test Report
High breathability
Fluid resistant up to 160mmHg
Individually-wrapped
Size: 190mm x 85mm

The good news is that other companies also make this style of mask. So does anyone have recommendations for PPF2/KF94 Korean-style respirators? I'd love it if they came in fun colors, but it's more important that they're trustworthy and reasonably priced.

The folks in r/Masks4All recommend Savewo (Family Masks in the US site), Breatheteq, WellBefore, and Vida as substitutes.

Anyone familiar with any of these?

Or just tell me what you're wearing these days.

lannamichaels

-Adventures of buying a serger: I have gone from "the bottom looper always comes out" to "the upper looper always comes out" with the occassional "the right needle always comes out" and yet somehow I did manage to sew a couple seams before this inability-to-keep-the-machine-threaded problem started, I have watched videos, I have called the company, I have not yet wept tears over it but I am so frustrated, so hopefully telling people will make the machine stop unthreading and then I figure out the tension issues and then I can serge.

-Where is a good place to buy desk lamps? The one I had broke and then I spent a while trying to find one including going to a hardware store, and then I found out that home depot has two listings with what appears to be the exact same lamp, but a different company for each and slightly different cost, and this decision has now left me lampless for a month as I figure out which to buy and decide on neither. Lamp is used to be on a timer so it goes on at the time my alarm clock sounds, this is helpful for the time of year when the sun is not up yet at that time, which -- not to worry anyone -- is approaching. So I need a new lamp. Looking for 12-14 inches, not LED, no random bits at the bottom for pens and stuff that'll just collect dust. Not a sun lamp; I tried that and it gave me a headache immediately.

What is keeping me from buying a new sewing machine is falling in love with one that's out of stock and then scrolling down today on my usual check of it's in stock to see multiple complains, 2 and 3 years old, that it's out of stock. Perhaps I should settle on my second choice, rather than falling in love with an out of stock sewing machine with features I do not need. (but! the one I have now is not great and I've wanted to replace it rather than keep fighting it, and all it really does is straight and zigzag, so I do not, in fact, need to replace it with a machine with 240 built-in stitches and two fonts, I just need a machine that has a speed I can set rather than try to be perfect on my foot pressure. But if I'm going to upgrade, I wanna upgrade.)

I have no intention of writing a Tishrei fic. No ideas, nada. Happy to take a prompt if someone has one but this may just be the year where it stops happening, and I'm okay with that.

runpunkrun

Another Ana and Din mystery. It was fine! But, like the first book, it lacked charisma. I'd put it down fully intending to pick it back up again once I'd eaten dinner or brushed my teeth or ensured the kitten wasn't quietly unravelling the fabric of the universe, but once I got back I'd do literally anything but pick it up again, sometimes leaving the actual book open next to me while I played hours of picross, watched trashy documentaries on Netflix, or read articles I'd had languishing in open tabs for months.

The world is interesting, but the main characters still aren't doing it for me. Like the first book, I was more intrigued by the secondary characters. Here, the warden Malo with her brash confidence, traumatic past, and uncertain future, and in the last book, the investigator who was better with a sword than a notebook and whom I'd inadvertently—and with absolutely no encouragement from the text—pictured as Gimli from The Lord of The Rings movies. Din, in many ways, reads as a means to an end, a recording device more than a fully developed person with his own voice and thoughts, and Ana, well, I figured out what she was before Din, but that's not saying much.

Contains: smoking (especially as a form of self-medication); hereditary enslavement; descriptions of violence and dead bodies; body horror.

trillingstar

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

azurelunatic

The worst part of colonoscopy prep turned out to be the sheer number of trips to the bathroom, which knotted up my legs something fierce. The second worst part was the taste of the solution, even with added flavorings. It was salty! (I got the huge jug rather than the Miralax version. Miralax at least isn't salty.) Next time, probably either green unsweetened Kool-Aid or lemonade Crystal Lite or whatever.

( Off topic for FFA )

I did make the planned gallon of orange jello, but since it was a little late for me to actually eat it, I put mandarin orange slices in it. Since that's often part of Belovedest's lunch. Today I packed it into smaller boxes to help with that effort and to decrease the crowding in the fridge.

I got a slight nap after everything was about finished. The split prep schedule meant that I started the second half around 12:30 am. Appointment check in time 6 am.

The distance in the facility wasn't super bad, although we brought my chair just in case. (Speaking of the chair, I have decked it out with retroreflective tape and electroluminescent wire. It looks much safer. The cup holder went on Friday.)

( The procedure wasn't bad. )

I got dressed again. I had picked a cute nightgown for the outing, black with flowers and butterflies. Instead of a coat (it's getting chilly at night) I wore my dramatic black velvet robe, the one with lace trim and bell sleeves. I received a compliment. And as soon as I proved I could stand up without excessive wobbling, we were off.

Belovedest gathered breakfast for me on our way home, and I took a much needed nap (interrupted a few times to confirm that I could be made conscious and accept hydration).

And that was that.

We did our usual Friday shopping on Saturday. I was still sore. Today my legs are thankfully feeling normal.

Current Music: Tom Cardy - "H.Y.C.Y.B.H"

delphi

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

lannamichaels

Title: Teach Us Something, Please.
Author:

lannamichaels
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: Merope Riddle is a disquieting little girl.

( In which Tom Riddle is a girl )

runpunkrun

Like many things this year, my Japanese study has been greatly reduced by time and circumstance. In January I stopped doing my daily work on WaniKani (where I'd reached Level 9) and KaniWani but kept up with my lessons on Duolingo. Much of my vocabulary has slipped away from me, but the grammar persists, and the vocabulary's easy to look up, so I'm not that bad off, and I can pick WaniKani back up whenever I want because I have a lifetime subscription. I'm just gonna be SUPER BEHIND when I do. ウヘッ。

Vol 1 | Vol 2 | Vol 3 | Vol 4
References

Volume 4

Describe a wedding | Make plans to go out

( Vol 4 )

delphi

bethefirst is a challenge that invites participants to create the first fic for an otherwise fic-less fandom (terms and conditions may apply), and the results of an autumn flash round just went live!

Be the First! Flash Round IV Collection

It features a whopping 30 fics based on a wide range of media, with a great spread of categories and ratings. You can also find creators'
fandom promos for introductions to some of the canons.

I'm still making my way through the collection, but everything I've read so far has been fantastic, and I'm compiling a list of new-to-me canons to check out. I definitely recommend manually browsing, if you're interested, since not all of the fandoms have been canonized as AO3 tags yet.

runpunkrun

ALSO, long time no see, but I've been quiet because I've been WRITING. Stay tuned for Kirk & Spock bonding in their shared bathroom.

runpunkrun

Set in a place that is probably not Earth, or Earth at a very different time, where kaiju rise up out of the ocean during the wet season and head for land. In the Empire, the Engineers maintain the sea walls that keep the leviathans out; the Legion fight them back; the Apothetikals develop organic means to alter the plants and animals—and people—that make it possible to survive in this hostile land, and the Iudex investigate the crimes. The wet season's coming and Dinios Kol, Imperial engraver and (apprentice) assistant investigator, has been sent to the scene of a ghastly murder to engrave it in his memory and report back to his master, the reclusive and eccentric (and possibly autistic) Anagosa Dolabra.

This is a plot-driven mystery, more focused on the details of the investigation than the development of the characters, and for me that made it feel a little empty. The ad copy wants you to believe Din and Ana have a Watson and Holmes thing going on, but that is barely the case. The characters are mostly a means to an end, a collection of characteristics rather than actual people, and this includes our first person narrator, Din. He's a nervous little (queer) guy, basically, only tall, did he mention he's tall?? He's tall, gang. And dyslexic. I liked him well enough, but I never felt like I really knew what he was about.

The book has a fantasy science-fiction vibe, and a bunch of new guys, like whenever RJB needed to explain a crime he just invented a new type of guy. It was starting to feel a little silly. Like, "Oh, didn't you know about this type of guy? It's the only way this mystery makes sense!" I don't think the mystery is the kind that can be solved just by paying attention, rather it's the kind with an extensive drawing room scene near the end that explains it all.

And I guess I've been reading exactly the right amount of Adrian Tchaikovsky because I kept wondering what was up with the leviathans, like what's their deal? Has anybody bothered to ask why they want to come on land? Maybe it's part of their life cycle, maybe there's something there they need—but this is not that book. It's a fantasy murder mystery set in the middle of a seasonal kaiju attack that must be stopped, and that's fine, it's just one more way the story lacked depth. But the mystery and the world building were enough to keep me engaged, and I'm curious to see what happens next so I've already checked the sequel out from the library.

Contains: body horror; a lot of blood; fear of contagion; sword violence.

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New frontiers in conflict resolution

New archive just dropped

Six Sentence Sunday

fall vibes

Things

What I'm Reading/Watching: Karaoke Iko and Famiresu Iko

Fic: that I could call my very own

mask up

Things

A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan #2), by Robert Jackson Bennett

A Dollop of Murder (Agatha Raisin)

They checked it

Six Sentence Sunday

"Teach Us Something, Please." (Harry Potter) G

Duolingo Japanese Vocabulary, Vol 4

Volume 4

Be the First! Flash Round IV

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The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1), by Robert Jackson Bennett

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December 2018

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