House is being sold. Have to be out of house by December 31st.
We are looking for a three-bedroom apartment in the greater Camberivlle that's no more expensive than $900 a person and preferably a bit less, or alternatively a four-bedroom apartment and an additional person.
I am also looking for help with the physical elements of moving, given that what COVID did to my heart is going to interfere somewhat with the moving-furniture stuff.
Also possibly a backup place to stay for a bit if I can't find an apartment in that timeframe.
--Sunset Boulevard - what a beautifully shot movie in which everyone is complicit in a woman's mental breakdown. Hooray for Hollywood.
--Blade Runner - I took A to this because she hadn't seen it and was fascinated to hear her thoughts. It was only my second watch but apparently I had a lot more to say about it than after the first one. Notably, A was fascinated by all the worldbuilding that was left unexplained, and had absolutely zero of the 'oh, that's where that quote is from' moments that I expected.
In terms of the eternal question (Is Deckard a replicant?), A remains undecided. My friend D believes that both a) to even ask the question is missing the point and b) of course he's a replicant because that makes for a better story. Whereas I believe the exact opposite, that it's vital for viewers to ask the question but impossible not only to establish the answer but indeed for there even to be an answer.
I refuse to get obsessed with this movie because I have a plentiful supply of things I could get obsessed with already and also I'm pretty sure that the 'Blade Runner microfixation' fandom is full of assholes. But if any of y'all want to tell me your opinions on the eternal question, I am interested.
--The Warriors (1979) - damn, being in a gang does not look like any fun, except for the lesbian one, and even they looked kind of glum. Hard pass.
--Jurassic Park - I forgot how little Ian Malcolm actually does in this movie. He provides quips and allegedly knowledge for the first third, gets injured, and then sits around shirtless and pointless for the rest of it. I am told that many people had their sexual awakening to Jeff Goldblum in this movie. I hope you all have not stuck with 'shirtless and pointless' all your life.
Acquired from: Little Free Library, Denver, Colorado, USA
Started reading: November 13, 2025
Finished reading: TBD
Reading Notes
Page 20: It’s hard not to be a little judgmental of people who buy land and put a house up and then have no money to sustain themselves afterwards but this author is supremely kind and writes in an un-sensationalistic manner which I appreciate.
I worked on the April pages yesterday and finished those and the May pages today.
April:
The April decorations are three tapes: a wide script washi, a narrow yellow and gold celestial washi, and the roses and black script bits are from my favorite PET tape, which is all about the romance.
May is back to my more usual set up, which I used all throughout both my work and home calendars for the last couple of years...just smaller, since this notebook is smaller than the composition books I have been using.
I probably won't touch the calendar again until next weekend, as I am kind of calendared out for right now.
Reading: Recently finished: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (Schwab, V.E.), Confidence (Frumkin, Rafael), and Hemlock & Silver (Kingfisher, T.).
Currently reading: Still working through Almost Everything: Notes on Hope (Lamott, Anne) and most of the way through Metal from Heaven (Clarke, August). scruloose and I have passed the halfway mark on listening to Network Effect, and haven't watched anything since that's occupying our "watch/listen to something together" time. Weathering: Well, the weather sure has noticed it's November! This is not the first gray wet day we've had, and while yesterday kindly didn't rain on us when we went out erranding, it was down near the freezing mark (and had gone below overnight). Eating:scruloose and I have a delicious go-to Indian place, but both it and our fallback spot too universally have onions in everything for them to be good choices for Ginny, so periodically when she and Kas are over we gamble on an Indian spot that none of us have tried. ( butter chicken sadness )
Free Bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd) has now joined Breakfast In America (Supertramp) in the storied annals of: *actually pays attention to the lyrics for the first time* this song's about WHAT?
OH NO I was suddenly reminded of The Magnus Archives and suddenly I had a rush of feelings. I still really like it, even if the final season wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I should re-listen to it sometime.
I have at least one, maybe two, Michael-centric fics in my wip folder. (Or rather, they were both Sasha/Michael, I think.) I do hope I'll get to them at some point. Maybe that'll be a project to finish in the new year?
One of those fics is almost done. Actually, I can't remember why I didn't finish it. It's possible I was thinking that I might need a beta for it, but the subject was kind of niche and I wasn't sure where to look. And then I put it aside and forgot about it, maybe. (That's usually how it goes.) ...Will have to revisit it later and see what kind of state it's in. :Va
Something I had wanted to do, but never got around to doing, was writing some gen horror for this canon. Likely in the form of statements, but not necessarily. It's just, that's my favourite part of the thing, and it lends itself so well to that type of fanwork, and and and... Coming up with ideas is hard, but hopefully if I revisit it at some point I'll get some inspiration.
Title: Sooner or later Fandom: MCU (What If) Relationship: Natasha Romanoff & Captain Peggy Carter Rating: T/Gen Word count: 387 Tags: Friendship, Banter, Light Angst, Past Peggy/Steve Summary: People kept asking Nat for Peggy's number. For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble
Sooner or later “You know, you could do me a favor and at least invent a date. This is the third time this week that someone asks me if I can put in a good word with you. Or just ask me for your number, I would like to know how I became the least intimidating part of that equation,” Nat says, sitting on the edge of Peggy's desk and getting in the way of this very important mission report.
That technically speaking Peggy might already be a week late with delivering. She can only use the excuse of not having computers in her time for so long, especially since they even gave her a mechanical keyboard to be closer to a typewriter. Besides, Peggy learned everything that she needed to know about computers and mobile phones while she was waiting for clearance to go out in the field, Nat even taught her how to search for apps.
“Just tell them I'm flattered but not interested. I told you, I don't want to think about dating,” Peggy says, trying to see if she can get the paper folder back from under Nat.
She doesn't know why everyone around SHIELD is so interested in her love life or lack thereof. Nat knows about Steve, but she's the only one that Peggy talked to, and she doesn't want her past to be any more the subject of gossip and speculation than it already was.
“I know this, but they are relentless. Just plant the gossip that you're off the market, that might help,” Nat suggests, as if she weren't part of the problem.
Nat meant well, but Peggy got tired of her dating suggestions before the first one, and the persistence didn't help. She's glad that Nat finally seems to have gotten the message, although she might still give a suggestion or two every once in a while.
“Or you could start a rumor that I punched the last person to ask me, that might help,” Peggy says, although it's not a serious suggestion.
“I'm not sure that would work. I'm Black Widow, and I still get analysts asking me out,” Nat says, finally getting off her desk. “I'm just saying, sooner or later you'll have to start living in this century.”
Teaching: Another up and down week. I'm kinda getting used to this rhythm: Mondays and Tuesdays are so bad I often find myself looking for, or at least fantasizing about, other jobs. Then Wednesdays are a little better, and Thursdays and Fridays I kinda coast into the weekend feeling generally okay. This Thursday we had a staff get-together thing after school ended...food, drink, chatting, sing-alongs led by a beloved and recently-retired theater teacher. Going into it, I wasn't feeling it at all (in part because I failed badly in my two attempts to bake something to bring), but once I got there I started feeling better, and left feeling something like affection for the little crew of colleagues who were there. Most people I talked to are feeling similarly ground down and dispirited (though I can't think of a time when any of my colleagues felt differently), and if nothing else it was kinda refreshing to know I'm not alone in what I'm feeling.
Yesterday I also did the fourth session in my creative writing workshop series, and it went well!
Learning: Our regular Chinese teacher had to travel back to China for some reason, so this week we met the substitute who will be our teacher for the next three-four weeks: Simon, a kinda dorky guy in his mid-twenties with a *very* different vibe than out normal teacher. The class starts at 19:00, and as soon as the clock struck that time, he announced to the mostly silent room "Time's up!" and jumped into the PPT (he also ended the class at 20:30 on the dot, which I appreciated, given that the regular teacher often goes ten or fifteen minutes over time). So far, our regular teacher has been reassuring us that at our level, we don't really need to bother with reading characters--learning pinyin is enough. But Simon scoffed at this idea, and his PPT was full of characters he expected/insisted that we know how to read. So far, no one has really spoken up or asked a question during any of our lessons, but this time one girl interrupted Simon at one point to say she was absent last week and felt like she'd missed a month of lessons--she had no idea what he was talking about. Things loosened up a little after that, and Simon eventually really started feeling himself, making jokes and sort of vibing with this one student sitting at the front of the room. For whatever reason he mostly avoided interacting with my side of the classroom, though. Anyway, all this is say that it's been a while since I've been a "student," and it's really interesting to observe a teacher from this perspective, and also to observe my own reactions to the teacher's energy, style, quirks, and the dynamics in the room.
The somatic movement workshop this week was pretty good, and I also booked a one-on-one session with the facilitator to talk about some strategies I can use when I feel really overwhelmed or overstimulated in the classroom (and on the walk home, when I've got all sorts of nasty thoughts and feelings roiling inside me). It was a kinda intense and emotional session.
Listening: Finished season one of It Makes a Sound. Loved it, and loved sharing it with T. and seeing her get into it. Some other stuff too, but nothing much stood out.
Reading: Still working on The Dream Hotel. Smart and bleak.
Watching: We've finally gotten to the last season of Big Bang Theory. I'm ready for it to be done. Everyone is just so mean to each other all the time. Also watched this movie Weapons, which was pretty entertaining. Tried watching the new Frankenstein but was not feeling it at alll. The first scene looked and felt like a video game, and we didn't have the patience for all the visual bloat in the fifteen minutes or so that followed before we turned it off.
Writing: Kind of a quiet week on the RP front, which allowed me to write a couple short things for that unconventional formats challenge. I would've liked to write more, and to try some of the unconventional media prompts, but I feel satisfied with what I did. Also wrote a little triple drabble thing for the weekly drabble challenge community I joined a few weeks ago. Should probably start working on my Yuletide fic (I have the rough outline in my head, more or less, but now I need to start doing something with it). Also looking forward to participating in Fandomtrees for the first time. 2025 will go down as the year I really got into writing fanfiction, I guess, and these little events feel like nice ways to cap off the year.
Also tinkered a bit on some poems in preparation for the big spoken word festival next week.
In the news/on my mind: Whatever the fuck is going on with/about to happen to Venezuela just feels so dizzyingly stupid and wrong, and again it feels like there's just nothing to do be done about it...
For anyone interested, the first episode of The Mighty Nein is available on YouTube for the weekend in advance of the first three episodes going live on Prime Video next week. The episode can be found here if you want to watch it.
To the shock of no one, I've watched the episode, and I have thoughts!
What Moves The Dead: Another T. Kingfisher novel, and, wow, it’s a good thing I didn’t start with this one. DNF halfway through. I figured out the twist pretty quickly, double-checked on Wikipedia that I was right, and wasn’t gripped enough by the characters to enjoy the process of “listening to them bumble around for a couple more hours failing to figure it out.”
Future game plan: stick with her fantasy works, skip the horror.
The Queue, by Basma Abdel Aziz: Bought this on Audible years ago, and didn’t remember not liking it. So I downloaded it when I tried out Libation, and gave it a re-listen.
Definitely worth it. Reminds me of 1984, in that it’s a near-future dystopia run by a government that is as totalitarian as it is surreal. At the same time, it’s set in Unnamed Middle Eastern/Muslim City (the author is from Cairo), so it all plays out in a way that’s culturally-specific to that part of the world.
Cool and enriching to see which parts are different. Depressing to see that certain things are the same. The POV residents have a range of perspectives and life experiences, but they’ve all been more-or-less frogboiled into accepting an untenable situation as Just How Things Work. One guy spends the whole book actively dying, but he was injured during the Disgraceful Events that nobody will talk about directly, and his friends/loved ones/doctors keep running into “of course the government will authorize him to get life-saving surgery…just as soon as you have all the proper paperwork.” The titular Queue is all the citizens lined up to get their paperwork. It hasn’t moved for a month now. But it’s going to start soon! Somewhere between the MOASS and the Rapture, probably!
Also, there’s a character named Yehia, which I assume is the same name as Yehya Badr with a slightly different Anglicization. So that was entertaining.
Mogworld, by Yahtzee Croshaw: Checked this out based on how much I liked Will Save The Galaxy For Food, and it did not disappoint.
Starts as a fantasy story about a necromancer overlord’s reign of terror through his undead hordes, but from the POV of Jim, a beleaguered zombie who just wants to die (again) (for good, this time). Then it develops into a parody of fantasy-adventure video-game mechanics. Then you start to see the chat logs between the game developers. Then Jim starts to see the chat logs between the game developers…
It’s like if Terry Pratchett wrote Guilded Age. It’s full of absolutely incredible turns of phrase. (One that I had to stop and write down: a group of supernatural beings is described as “heading off to deliver unwanted resurrections, like a flock of poorly-briefed storks.”)
There’s a character type you see sometimes, where the male protagonist has the support of a devoted female hanger-on, who he finds grating and annoying and never appreciates…but he keeps her around because she does useful things for him. She conveniently never notices his disdain, so she keeps giving him endless support for zero care/support/respect in return. (Misa from Death Note is…a deconstruction of this trope? A commentary, at least.)
Mogworld pulls a twist on this that I’ve never seen before. Undead bodies don’t heal, so Meryl is the local expert in sewing them back together. When the plot drags Jim off on a solo adventure, Meryl follows, conveniently dedicating herself to repairing all the dramatic injuries he gets along the way. But, the reason is: Jim is the only other zombie from Meryl’s home country…and Meryl is a huge [their country] supremacist! So there’s something Jim can legitimately resent about her, he’s not just being an entitled sexist. (They both do a bit of learning and growing as the story goes on, too.)
One warning: the R-slur gets thrown around a bunch. It’s a book that deals with video-gamer culture and was published in 2010, so this isn’t hugely unrealistic…but the writing mostly doesn’t have other slurs/profanity outside of that, so it was kind of a jumpscare.
As long as that’s not a dealbreaker, definitely give this one a read.
Because I was a little bit busy during the Georgia part of the trip, and didn't really have the ability to write up what I was doing, this is my (late late late) review of my tour through Georgia from the 8th-14th September.
So, I joined the tour late - I was supposed to join on Saturday morning when the tour began, but ended up arriving on Monday afternoon. I'm glad I took the time to recover from COVID, though - it was definitely worth it, even if the actual sickness wasn't as debilitating as initially feared.
The tour organisers arranged for a driver to take me to where the others were, and it was a little unnerving arriving at Tbilisi airport, trying to get my bearings, meet my driver, get my phone started - everything all at once! And we promptly drove out from the airport and off to the village of Signahi, where the tour had headed out to just that morning.
I thought maybe decorating the March pages in my work calendar would be safe enough this afternoon, but I made plenty of little mistakes. Stamps wiggled in my fingers, markers went where I didn't intend, I brushed over wet ink.... It has definitely been A Day.
Just to note: this year's requests include Baldur's Gate, Black Ships by Jo Graham, Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Related Fandoms, Critical Role: Exandria, Doctor Who, Dragon Age, Gargoyles, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Mass Effect, and Star Wars.
First of all, relax! I'm far from being picky, and I can pretty much guarantee that I'll love whatever you decide to write me. These are nothing but guidelines, for you to take to heart or ignore to your heart's content. Also, hey! You're creating a fanwork for me! About a poly relationship that I love! That's automatically a good reason for me to love you, no matter what. So, please, keep that in mind. Trust me, you can pretty much do no wrong. ♥
That said, I thought that I'd elaborate a bit on my requests and provide some general prompts in case, like me, you're the type of person who likes to have something to work with. If you're not that type of person, it's totally fine with me if you skip over anything/everything that I've included in this letter. Feel free to use and/or ignore as much of this as you want.
It is free book time again! This is a Christmas romance, a full length novel unrelated to my other series (though obviously it has shifter-romance-style werewolves in it). The link will work until the book goes live on Amazon on the 21st.
This book went through heavier rewrites than my books normally do, so please let me know if you notice any typos or inconsistencies and I will try to fix them!
As always, no obligation, but feel free to download and enjoy.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkit
