Why don't humans hiberate?
Dec. 1st, 2025 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kantayraPersonally, I feel that hibernation would be a proportionate and excellent response to winter existing. I was very not prepared (mentally) for the snow last week. 😕 Also, I'm very out of shape because shoveling was harder on my back than usual. Usually, I get tired from the first shoveling, but it's a good sort of tired. This was just a painful sort of tired, blech. However, on the brighter side, I believe I'm now prepped for all my skating exhibitions next week! I will be very happy when those are over and done with (and the synchro competition the week after). Then I can properly devolve into a slug or maybe some sort of jellyfish. I have almost two whole weeks off at the end of the year, and I fully anticipate that I will merge with the soft sofa cushions during that period and become even more useless than usual.
But enough of my whining! Here is fandom stuff:
November Totals: 247k for the year so far - only 3k from my 250k goal, which I still think I will make, even though November was my lowest wordcount of any month so far this year. I have 92 works revealed so far, but am definitely over 100 with works not yet revealed.
Goals for this week: 1) Sooooooooooo much editing for FIAB! 💀 2) Finish my Yuletide assignment. 3) Catch up with BNHA. 4) Read more of The Deer and the Cauldron. 5) Read more Dear Door, as the mood strikes me.
But enough of my whining! Here is fandom stuff:
- Exchanges due in November/December (
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fffx, ficinabox part deux, yuletide_admin + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I'm still at 5/7 (see above, RE: useless slug), but I'm making some good progress on my YT assignment! My goal this week is to get that done and posted. And then FIAB is revealing this weekend, so I have a boatload of editing to do for that, which I've already started. - Exchanges that will go into 2026: au5k & highadrenalineexchange. I did not nominate for AU5K, but a bunch of other people did for things that are relevant to my interests. That's definitely an exchange where I'll wait and see what prompts are up, because I am super finicky about AUs - so finicky, in fact, that I'm more inclined to treat than to sign-up myself.
- Nope, nothing new on Femslash Salad Bar...
- BNHA: I've started catching up on S8, and OMFG Bakugo is SO PRETTY in 8x03! And Deku didn't even get to see most of it! 🥺 Truly, that episode is a treasure for me personally, lol. Hoping to finish my catch-up this week.
- I can now reveal some of my habits which were top-secret because I was angling for PHs, but ultimately I didn't pick them up. Starting off with: Felvidek! Holy shit, this game was so much fun! It is pretty much the congealed essence of "nerdy grad students procrastinating on writing their dissertations" and if that's not how that game was initially created, I will be genuinely surprised. I had so much fun with this! Short enough that I didn't get frustrated (there is a reason I have relatively few video-game fandoms, lol), and I loved all the characters. I may end up writing for this some time in the future, because I really loved it. My only complaint is that now I want a random video game of my historical era of study, goddammit! This should be a requirement for every graduate program, post-haste!
- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - I did, indeed, finish this, with time to spare. And it was...okay? I have to say, I didn't love it. Definitely not as enjoyable as Piranesi, to my tastes, at least. It had that aura about it that some books do where 90% of the humor is deliberately designed so that no one who is not British will enjoy it. And I didn't really like the magic or magical system much, and none of the characters did anything for me. It dithered about in the Napoleonic Wars for way too long, too. It did start to pick up after page 1200 (lol, there is a "recommendation" for you!), and the ending was better than the beginning. But, all in all, it was very 'meh' to me. Oh well!
- I can now reveal that the undisclosed thing I'm currently reading is The Deer and the Cauldron by Louis Cha - I can reveal this because it is very, very long and thus I was not able to pick up the PH associated with it in time. I'm currently on Ch13 (of 50 - they are LONG chapters, lol). This is an older novel, and I'm mixed on it. On the one hand, the good parts are REALLY good: There's a lot of really funny political commentary in there, and I really like the notion of a main character in wuxia novel who sucks at martial arts, is not a cultivator, and instead gets through solely by trickery, lies, back-stabbing, and luck. On the other hand, I'm starting to get into the "harem-building" sections and, whoa boy, is this some sexist bullshit! It's pretty hard to stomach at times, which is unfortunate. It's exactly the sort of thing SVSSS is making fun of with PIDW, lol, which is one of the things getting me through it. I am all there for the convoluted ways Wei Xiaobao becomes the leader of, like, every single opposing political sect all at once, mmkay? Can we just stick to that and ignore the harem stuff? (No, no, we can't.) Anyway, this is currently my reading focus!
- Dear Door - When I have time, I'm still reading a chapter here and there on this.
November Totals: 247k for the year so far - only 3k from my 250k goal, which I still think I will make, even though November was my lowest wordcount of any month so far this year. I have 92 works revealed so far, but am definitely over 100 with works not yet revealed.
Goals for this week: 1) Sooooooooooo much editing for FIAB! 💀 2) Finish my Yuletide assignment. 3) Catch up with BNHA. 4) Read more of The Deer and the Cauldron. 5) Read more Dear Door, as the mood strikes me.
