solovei | Recent Entries

Current Mood: accomplished

Hello! You've stumbled upon my dreamwidth account. You might know me from Tumblr or Ao3 or something like that, or maybe even Ye Olde Livejournal Days, however I don't remember all the usernames I had on there (I think one of them was disco_prince)

Fandoms I'm Into These Days:

Star Trek (mostly DS9 but have seen all except ENT; not caught up on DISCO/PIC but have started)
due South (I know, I'm like 20 years too late)
Yuri on Ice!!
Our Flag Means Death
The Old Guard
Haikyuu!!
Gentleman Jack
Hades and TSOA/Patrochilles more generally
Probably something else I'm forgetting, I'm sorry, I get into so many things, seriously just ask me!

Regarding Stand Still Stay Silent: back when I made this account I was pretty into this webcomic; you'll notice that I still have a large number of fics about it on Ao3. I've since left that fandom - something that's pretty rare for me. I tend to just let my interest peter out over time, occasionally coming back and rediscovering old favorites again. I'm still in touch with a few friends I made through that comic, though I don't think any of them participate in the fandom anymore either, for a variety of reasons. The attitude towards shipping and even mildly slashy works drove a lot of the artists away or into secret sideblogs, and the ensuing "debate" about whether NSFW work should be "allowed" on the forums further drove a stake into the community.

Also, I'm told the author of the webcomic started getting into some weird Christian proselytizing, so. Nope.

( Blanket Statement )

Have fun, don't be a jerk, I love getting comments!

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Tegan and Sara - Alligator

One of the only good things about this week was finishing Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree - a book I originally put on hold back in the spring, but which came in at a very opportune time (I needed a palette cleanser between my Gideon the Ninth re-read and... everything that follows)

I remember asking some folks for speculative f/f recs and someone mentioned this one. I put a hold on it immediately just based on the cover, because... come on.

Cover of "Legends and Lattes" by Travis Baldree. It shows a green-skinned orc woman with a steaming cup and an apron; she is winking and smiling at a shorter woman with horns to her side, who is holding a tray of baked goods

Cover of "Legends and Lattes" by Travis Baldree. It shows a green-skinned orc woman with a steaming cup and an apron; she is winking and smiling at a shorter woman with horns to her side, who is holding a tray of baked goods

This book was truly like a nice cup of coffee. Not one that you chug in the morning before work because you only got 4 hours of sleep, but one that you sit and enjoy while reading a book, a quick break where you can be still and collect yourself. It will make you want baked goods, for sure.

It's interesting that it's billed as "high fantasy and low stakes" -- on the one hand, for me as a reader that was a helpful thing to keep in mind during some of the more tense moments (there IS an actual plot, and antagonists, even though ample pages are devoted to stuff like... the invention of biscotti). With the world how it is, it's good to have some assurance that yes, the story will turn out fine, nobody is going to die, you can relax. But on the other hand, if you're Viv, trying to start over and throw yourself mostly blind into this crazy idea that you had without much experience -- I don't know if you'd consider that to be "low stakes". For her, the stakes are probably as high as the fantasy!

Even if the stakes are (supposedly) low, the emotions aren't. It's a surprisingly poignant look at trying to start over, at anxiety and doubting whether you deserve the things that happened to you. There's a bit about 3/4 of the way through that sort of gave me a shock because I realized that it was talking about imposter syndrome. and I did not expect to see that in a book where an orc is the main protagonist.

(As an aside: I don't read enough fantasy these days to know, but are there other books with orc protagonists??? Please tell me.)

Also, I didn't realize this until I read his author bio but Travis Baldree is apparently also a video game developer? Who worked on the Torchlight series???!!! Which I REALLY LIKED??? (Torchlight 2 was really really really good, everyone should play it if they haven't)

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Exquisite Corpse

Apologies for lack of posts - there is, unfortunately, a JORB situation.Coworker #1 went on medical leave, then we had about three weeks of regulatory hearings back to back, and then Coworker #2 had a death in the family -- all of which meant that our team of 3 became a team of "Solo + the team lead" and I got thrown into Coworker #1's tasks (Invoicing/Accounts Payable stuff). So I have spent most of July chasing down large sums of money across several software systems while trying not to confront my own mortality and those of my loved ones... and occasionally playing a video game or two.

However, last weekend I decided to watch Netflix's adaptation of The Sandman since I needed something in the background while working on a crochet piece.

I was maybe a bit young for the source material when I read it in grade 9, borrowing volumes from my local library in mostly the order it was intended. Given that this was about 15 years ago, I don't remember a lot of the plot details beyond the surface premise ("terrible British man holds mythological creature captive in basement", which oddly enough the show both starts and ends with). Still, because I was going through a goth phase, so it was dark enough to interest me at the time; Delirium and Death were my favourite characters.

So, going into the show I had -- not exactly expectations, but the faded nostalgia of a fandom that you've since moved on from, hoping that it will match how it felt at the time than any current investment. I'm not really sure if it fulfilled that, to be honest. I thought the casting was done as well as they could have with real people (why are we not adapting graphic novels into ANIMATED things, I swear people don't understand the point of comics). Some episodes definitely stood out more than others to me in terms of impact and storytelling: "24/7" (the diner episode) was the kind of creepy thing I expected from this show, whereas the... I hesitate to call it a "battle", really, because it was basically an imagination contest between Morpheus and Lucifer (really that whole episode) seemed to fall flat.

(As I mentioned to a friend, that whole scene was akin to how people who have never done tabletop roleplaying games/LARP think they work)

I'm trying to put my finger on what it was that left me only kind of whelmed by the show, and I don't know if I can? Like, it was fine - it was a solid effort, but it felt kind of... normal, and not in a good way. I expected more surrealism and I didn't really get it. Morpheus is just a regular goth now, he looks like a person you'd see on the train. This might be me misremembering, but I felt like in the comics all of the Endless always had this otherworldly sense about them - they'd look slightly different every time we saw them, shifting around a core set of characteristics almost like they're not quite solid. The only time you got a sense of that was during the Hob Gadling sequence (I know people ship him and Dream together but I honestly did not see any chemistry between them, sorry)

It looks like there's going to be a second season, and I hope they get weirder with it, because they clearly have the budget and the star power but it feels like they're playing it safe for whatever reason.

( Super tiny spoiler for )

Current Mood: sick

I didn't know the air quality scale had an upper limit but apparently we hovered pretty close to it today! It was sort of okay on my way to work, hovering at 2-3, then SKYROCKETED up to 10+ which is the highest it goes. The view from the office windows was downright apocalyptic, all gray haze and wind and the sun nowhere to be seen. You could feel the smoke inside, too - my desk is closer to the outside of the building, so I
definitely smelled it most of the day and then took advantage of the offer to work from home the rest of the day.

Basically, UGH. I thought my apartment wasn't too bad when I got home but now I think maybe I just lost my sense of smell and couldn't tell? I'm also CONGESTED AGAIN after I just kicked whatever other thing I had the week before last where I was all stuffy and sick. Not enjoying this month so far, I gotta say.

I know these are relatively minor inconveniences, and we haven't gotten evacuated or anything -- so I shouldn't complain. My one coworker with asthma was having a really bad time. But it still sucks, especially because we usually get these smoky days closer to August.

Some good news though: I ended up going to the midnight release of Tears of the Kingdom after all. Lineup was a lot bigger than I expected, but we got there at a decent enough time that we were done at a reasonable-ish time. Have been playing it pretty much non-stop since Friday -- I didn't really get into the pre-release hype for it at all, but honestly I'm enjoying it on its own merits in spite of that? It doesn't feel like just "BOTW but with sky islands", there'a sooooo much more to explore now, it really does feel like kind of a new place where you have to find your way again.

Current Mood: refreshed

I have to get these down somewhere, and I don't have it in me to do a proper sort of "review", so this will just be point-form stuff.

( Spoilers here!! )

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Sea Power - Whirling-in-Rags, 8 PM

Quick recap of the last two weeks because I kept meaning to post and then things would invariably happen:

Took Monday/Tuesday last week (May 1-2) off work because I had spent half of my Easter long weekend with migraines and I felt like I had to make up for it. Activities included finishing my sense8 rewatch, drawing, and Horizon Zero Dawn (I should write something more fully about that), though I did venture out to the mall to buy new work clothes. It's unseasonably warm here (which means we actually have a lot of wildfires happening?!) and I'm not mentally prepared for it to be summer yet, so shopping helped a little.
Unfortunately, I managed to also pick up some kind of... cold, or sinus infection, or something somewhere, (congestion, runny nose, general head-full-of-snot feeling) which came on Tuesday afternoon and got steadily worse throughout the day. I will fully admit that I should NOT have gone to work in that state on Wednesday BUT in my defence: I thought it may have been allergies, I wore a mask all day, and also I'm still getting used to the whole "nobody will think you're lazy for taking sick time" situation I'm finding myself in. Worked from home the rest of the week and should be okay to go back tomorrow, hopefully.
Been absolutely sucked into Disco Elysium since starting it on Thursday evening. Like, staying-up-till-2-am kind of sucked in, I genuinely didn't think I would like this game as much as I did.... (no spoilers plz, I'm not done yet!!!) Expect more posts/squee on this in the future
Tabletop the last two Saturdays, which went pretty well! Ongoing Pathfinder campaign last week, and Starfinder's "Save The Renkrodas" scenario before that. There's a very bi-flag dinosaur! You can make friends with it! We drove a car over the bad guy's face! Also now I need to level up my Safety Inspector (putting this here so I don't forget but I probably will and have to panic level as usual)

Generally speaking I'm finding myself in a weird sort of headspace where it feels like everything needs to happen now and that there's too many things I need/want to do at once so I end up just doing one thing for too long instead of breaking stuff up and doing a little of multiple things. Now that I have stable/good employment for like the first time in my adult life, I feel like I need to rush to get all the other aspects of my life squared away, to make up for all the time they were on hold while I was trying to GET said employment (and due to the panini) -- like, finding a somewhat nicer place to live (my kingdom for in-suite laundry...), reviving my social life, how do people even date nowadays??, etc. and trying to do all of those at once is very overwhelming!

Part of this is the usual "oh no I'm X years old and I haven't done [milestone of adult life that society expects of me] yet!!!" anxiety, yes. But knowing what it is doesn't mean knowing what to do about it!

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Janelle Monáe - Django Jane

Mostly prompted by

tafadhali 's (very NSFW but very good) "Super Bass" fanvid for Sense8, I decided to go back and give the show a rewatch, which I haven't done since it finished. I think I watched season 1 at least once before with a friend, and I definitely went back to see the movie-length finale episode after it aired, but all of this was in The Before Times and my memory is fuzzy.

First off, I have to give the writers a lot of credit here -- they had to basically make eight separate shows with their own protagonist and arc and pacing, AND THEN ALSO figure out how and when all of those protagonists will intersect. It's a lot! It would be a feat of superhuman artistry lot for anyone to try and pull off, and I'm not expecting them to get it 100% right all of the time.

But listen. We have to talk about Riley. I'm sure this has already been talked about in meta posts and Important TV Journalism, but it's annoying me now just as much (if not more) than it did the first time I watched this in 2015, so I'm going to talk about it too.

( Spoilers for Sense8 season 1 )

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Siouxsie and the Banshees - Spellbound

I would've probably enjoyed my 4-day easter long weekend more if it wasn't bookended by migraines on Friday and Monday mornings. My body continues to only feel bad during non-work time which I guess is convenient for my employers (shit gets done!) but also kind of annoying for me because I don't end up actually getting any rest. Still, the time I did have was passed fairly well.

Finally finished A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske (of Be The Serpent fame) - I feel like the front-cover blurb ("Red White and Royal Blue meets Jonathan Norrel and Mr. Strange") may have over-promised and under-delivered for me. I haven't read the latter book in that comparison (yet, it's on my list), but I've read RWRB a couple of times now and I didn't really see much of it here? I'm assuming they mean the "enemies/rivals to lovers" aspect of RWRB, but that didn't really play out very much at all that I could see? It was more like "sudden coworkers to lovers", and it takes basically two weeks between them meeting and sleeping together - which is fine, but it doesn't really fit the formula they're trying to market this as?

I kind of struggled to finish this, to be honest -- at some point it just... fell apart for me. The magic system was kind of confusing, too (they keep describing it as "contracts" but then you cast it using... gestures from cat's cradle? Which, I don't know, just seemed pretty silly whenever I tried to picture it.)Maybe the sequel will be better, and I'm told it's f/f too which is a definite plus.

Aside from that, I've been playing Animal Crossing New Horizons again, mostly making vacation homes and vaguely fishing to see if I can finish my museum finally. Evidently before this recent comeback I hadn't logged in for just over a year (thanks, villagers) ... which kind of aligns with when I started my new job and everything got super busy and I didn't have the spoons to log in every day anymore.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Fever Ray - When I Grow Up

Title: For Guidance, Please See the Corporate Interpersonal Relationship Policy
Author: suspiciousflashlight
Fandom: Naruto
Length: 25.7k
Ao3 Link

I remember exactly where I was when I first read this fic. It was April 2022, and I was sitting in Starbucks drinking a somewhat disappointing iced matcha latte. For the first time since starting my current job I allowed myself to take the afternoon off to run some errands and pick up gifts for Mother's Day (though I ended up dealing with some kind of Powerpoint Emergency anyway because I forgot to turn on my out of office). A friend from grad school posted a link to it in our group chat the previous night, someone who isn't particularly in fandom but spends time on Reddit and aware of it from a distance.

Her only commentary had been "Naruto meets federal government employment".

I couldn't put it down.

At this point I need to admit that 100% of my knowledge about Naruto comes from mid-2000s weeaboo osmosis - a girl I hung out with in junor high subscribed to Shonen Jump so I would flip through the Naruto chapters occasionally but didn't read them too closely. I'd seen other kids at our local anime convention wearing those headbands; characters from it showed up pretty often in people's forum signatures and avatars; I knew it was about ninjas. If you gave me a random character's name, I could maybe tell you that they were from this show but not much else.

But there was never a time reading this fic that I felt confused or that I didn't immediately clue into what kind of person each character was - they felt somehow both accurate to what little I knew about them from the source material (Naruto is happy-go-lucky, Kakashi likes dogs and romance novels) and fitting seamlessly into the mundane halls of a government office in downtown Ottawa.

Which brings me to point #2, which is that you can and should (if you want) Take Your Fandom to Work. People don't stop wanting to write fic just because they have careers and pension plans and car payments. And people who do write fic also have other hobbies and interests beyond fandom, other experiences and skills. There are fic writers in every industry imaginable, probably. Some days (okay, most days) I would honestly rather read a fic set in some extremely niche industry that I've never heard about before rather than yet another high school AU. You know stuff! Even if you don't think your job is particularly glamorous or high-skilled, I want to hear about it!

The author clearly has a wealth of inside knowledge about how the Government of Canada operates, but even more than that, about how any large corporate-type office operates. I have no idea how they managed to make it both extremely specific and widely applicable at the same time - it's really kind of amazing.

Also, it's hilarious. I can't pick a favourite line because there are so many great ones but trust me, it will probably make you at least chuckle.

Anyway. Go read 'For Guidance...'; when you're done, there is an excellent sequel published about a year ago.

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Plastic Tree - バミューダトライアングル (Bermuda Triangle)

Some auxiliary activities that may enable reading but are definitely NOT reading on which I've spent more time this weekend than actual reading:

Setting up Calibre exactly how I want it
- This includes creating a custom series-like column that tracks in-series Discworld reading order, as well as sub-series.
Trawling Project Gutenberg (as well as its... slightly more opinionated Canadian offshoot) for public-domain books I never got around to reading;
- Incidentally, it turns out the original Gutenberg is a pretty good source for those lovely monochrome ink illustrations that I was trying to figure out the name for a few months ago (does anyone know? I mean stuff like this); if I can get them cleaned up in photoshop/CSP they might make really nice transparent .pngs
Fixing metadata on the above
Also fixing metadata on all the books I had laying around from the 2019 Hugo Voting packet
Making some custom fanfic covers so my Kobo will look nice (I showedisis the one I made of her fantastic Being Ray Kowalski and she seemed to like it! ♥)

If you're thinking "Solo, you seem to enjoy organizing things around you hobbies more than you actually enjoy your hobbies!" -- well, you might be right. I don't know when I first became aware that I can easily fall into hyperfixation mode when I'm doing fiddly little classification/metadata work, but it's probably at least partly responsible for my choice of higher education, job, and volunteer work...

In terms of ACTUAL reading, I finished An Unseen Attraction; this was my first KJ Charles book, and I have to say I enjoyed it. I'm always a fan of shifting/alternating POV if it's done well, so that was nice to see. I think I'm realizing that my favourite kind of "romance" (a term I'm going to use carefully for a variety of personal reasons that I'll talk about later, maybe) books are ones that lean towards the plot-heavy or at least have a central mystery/problem/adventure for the characters to solve. Because like, if I want just the "will they realize their feelings?" and the aftermath of that -- well, that's what fanfiction is for, isn't it?

The blurb describes it as a slowburn, but honestly I thought it was a bit quick? If anything, it took a bit too long for the mystery to start happening, rather than the smut - though the smut was quite good, I am not complaining -- loved the vague Dom/sub undertones and that the characters don't necessarily fall into those stereotypes. Learned some new words (thank you, Kobo dictionary feature!) and more than I thought I would about taxidermy. Will probably check out the two sequels if my library has them.

Current Music: Falloch - To Walk Amongst The Dead

Spent a lot of time on Fanlore in the last couple of weeks because of IFD, trying to get links archived in any kind of systematic fashion. Starting with due South fanfics for now (soooo many Crack Van recs) and even there, in a fandom that you'd think would be more online than some others, there are dead links and deleted journals and stories that were only ever printed in a zine. And sure some of those probably vanished with intention -- an author goes pro, removes all fannish works from the internet, or maybe gets harassment over something they wrote, or just lose interest in fandom and don't want to maintain a site anymore. So I do occasionally feel like... archiving something without asking the person first is a bit iffy. We can't know, really... What sorts of things get saved because they're valuable and good, and what sorts of things just languish in an attic somewhere until they're discovered and become valuable due to surviving for so long?

Also, splurged and bought myself a Kobo e-reader last week. (Which I can actually use now, after an extremely fraught couple of days where I was fairly sure I'd gotten a defective on; it miraculously started working again just as I was heading out to take it back to the store). Currently trying to tweak Calibre and FanFicFare to my liking, as well as going through my backup drives trying to find ebooks I already have that I can add in. This is my first e-ink device, and it kind of feels... like, weirdly magical? Here's this thing that looks like paper and weighs almost nothing and but can store more books than you'll probably ever read in your lifetime. Don't like the font? Nothing stops you from changing it to Comic Sans or Papyrus or making it super huge. Oh and also it's made out of teeny tiny capsules floating in oil. Magic!

Currently reading "An Unseen Attraction" by KJ Charles, because I remember someone reccing it years ago -- my library only had an ebook copy this entire time so I couldn't read it until now \o/ I'm not very far in (chapter 2) but I'm a sucker for this time period, as well as for shifting POV, so I feel like I will enjoy it.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Morcheeba - Blood Like Lemonade

Hi again.

It's been a while! Time is, as the kids say these days, soup.

Quick recap:

Lost the job I posted about here (layoffs/budget cuts); spent the next four-some years temping at various short-term contracts
Have a much nicer job now! \o/
Still volunteer at OTW, and I got be there Worldcon when we won the Hugo! Best birthday ever. (Those are my pants in that one photo in the Mary Sue article.)
Wow, historical events sure are happening, aren't they?
Picked up some new fandoms, will probably list those in a bigger post later.

Privated some old entries and f-locked others. Looking for folks to follow!

So, somehow I had gotten myself interested in comics. Like, actual mainstream comics, of the Marvel/DC variety. You can now add X-Factor to the list of Things I got Interested In Because of the Ships.

I had never really bothered with it before, you see. I watch all the movies when they come out, and I like the characters and the set-up... but having to dig through 50-some years of issues never really appealed to me. It was daunting. Where does one even begin?

Well apparently in this case, one begins with seeing someone on Slack posting cute pictures of Shatterstar. And then remembering that one's favorite tumblr fanartist has drawn even more cute pictures and oooh so that's who those two guys are, please tell me more!

I guess what I'm trying to say is I've been working my way through X-Factor Investigations, and it's pretty good. Having literally never read a comicbook before (Saga doesn't count), it took me a little while to get used to things like crossover events and changing artists and the fact that sometimes half the story is actually in another series entirely, but I'm actually really enjoying it.

Part of me is waiting for the axe to drop, actually. Part of me can't believe that here is a mainstream publication with two queer characters in a relationship, and nothing bad has happened to them so far! And I keep being told there is angst upcoming, but right now it's been pretty cute shit, along with, you know, feels. Lots of feels.

There's also this amazing feeling that comes with having your ship become canon, when the subtext becomes text. I feel a little bit invested in it, like it's a matter of... faith, almost? Look everyone, we believed and it came true! Look at them go.

I had that feeling reading The Raven Cycle and I'm getting that now with X-Factor. What a time to be alive!

Also this morning a train hit a car downtown and as a result I was late for work. But I got paid so I bought myself some cake! (I actually wanted cupcakes, but the closest place to get them was an additional 15 minutes of walking past my house, and it was rainy and cold. Next time, maybe!)

p.s. I broke down and bought PWR BTTM's album after spending various hours playing their NPR Tiny Desk concert on repeat. Everyone should listen to it. It's amazing.

Current Music: the pillows - Crazy Sunshine

So remember how I said I was going to post a review of The Raven Cycle? And how that was quite a few days ago? Well I had actually just never gotten around to it but I'm going to pretend it's because I was waiting to finish the last book in the series so I can talk about the whole series.

So. The Raven Cycle. *insert incoherent flailing here*

This is one of those books that happens to have absolutely god-awful official blurbs, which means anytime someone mentions it and someone goes "Hey lets google that and see what it's all about!" they immediately get turned off by words like "paranormal romance". It will say something about true love and curses and you will probably think Twilight and cringe and close the tab. It's okay, my friend. I was one of those people too, way back when I started seeing some slashy fanart on tumblr tagged with "trc" and I wanted to know what it was all about.

Here is what it's actually about: codependency, chosen families, coming out via a giant nightmare monster, magic, privilege, the circular nature of time, platonic intimacy, welsh kings, a gaggle of psychics who spend their time being snarky and drinking a lot, antagonists you want to hug, protagonists you want to slap, cars, trees, pet ravens, and a metric fuckton of character development.

I do have to say I went through this series in record time. Part of that was just having a lot of commute to fill up, but the 3rd and 4th books I devoured in about a day and a half each. (It was the feelings. There are a LOT of feelings in these books. I just finished the last one and I am still not okay with stuff that happened in the second.) Some people seem to find the language flowery, but I personally found it very easy to keep going. There was rarely any part where I was taken out of the story by the writing itself.

Oh and there's also the amazing feeling of having your ship actually become canon, which happens so rarely that it's worth mentioning just because of that. (Actually there's a lot of subtext in this book. Everyone loves everyone, thought not always in a romantic way)

So yeah, if you like sort of... modern-day YA with paranormal/magical elements and an adorable queer subplot, definitely, DEFINITELY read this series.

(I've also already written fanfic for it, so I guess that means I'm officially in raven boy hell now)

Up Next: I have no idea. I picked up Leviathan by Scott Westerfield purely because it happened to be on one of the highlight shelves at the library, and I'd heard some good things about it. It's.... also YA, some kind of steampunk I think? But more likely I'll just dive into Raven Boys fanfic now that I can't be spoiled by anything.

Current Music: Siouxsie and the Banshees - Arabian Knights

Wow, it's probably about time I updated this thing, no?

☂First things first - Yes I am alive.
All sort of real life things happened and because the universe is a cold, unjust place, they all decided to happen at the same time. Or at least, within the same 2-3 month span. Here's a quick rundown:

I volunteered for my local comic expo; had a job interview - didn't get it, then did; went to Vancouver for a week to see my grad school friends, came back significantly poorer (oops); signed the lease on my first actual apartment, and now I'm here.

☂The new job is going okay. I mean, it's a significant step up from my previous job (dear retail, I will not miss you, even if you tried to win me over with sweets!) and actually makes use of some of the skills I, you know... have an education in. The contract is for 18 months but I'm keeping a sharp eye on other internal postings already.

☂Book news: I'm speeding through Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Cycle series. I have a lot of feelings about it and will probably make a bigger post about it tomorrow or the day after

Current Music: hide - LASSIE

I really should stop writing in this thing once a week at most. Sorry about that, guys.

Before I forget, and because my post-it notes are buried somewhere in the mess that is My Desk at the moment, here's my to-do list for the upcoming week:
( attempts at productivity )

Okay, let's hope that will actually get done. Who knows,

yuuago posts his to-do lists on here all the time, maybe it will work for me too? :P

So, I ended up seeing a couple movies in the last few days. Saw Zootopia with some friends on Friday (I'm not a furry, but...). It was cute! I am pretty sure the chubby cheetah cop is totally me, if I had an animal equivalent. Ambiguously gay and a huge sweet tooth and an unabashed fanboy - yes yes so very much yes.

I also watched Kingsman: The Secret Service on Netflix and, well... I've had a bunch of people tell me how great it is, and I know it has an active fandom on AO3, but. I wasn't really that impressed. If anything it just made me watch to watch Misfits again. It's not that it was bad, it's just seemed very unfocused, like it wasn't sure if it was trying to be a Serious Spy Movie or a ridiculous action-fest.

P.S. my friend somehow managed to get me into TsumTsum plushies >.> This is baaaad. Very very bad. I don't even have one yet and I'm already planning sneaky ways to go to the disney store here so I can avoid horrendous shipping charges.

Current Music: Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)

Somebody managed to drag me out again yesterday, this time to a queer pub night. It was pretty fun, though I may have lost my voice somewhat. I'm kind of glad I didn't wear a dress because the crowd was pretty masculine-presenting. Like, I had on black skinny jeans and my fox sweater and I still felt kind of out of place. It doesn't help that maybe 60% of people (at least most of the younger ones) had That One Lesbian Haircut. You know what I mean. I don't even have to describe it because it's so ubiquitous.

Anyway, onto stuff that actually matters: FANFIC.
I finished the really angsty Kuroo/Kenma one I've been working on since January. I mean it's angsty yes but the ending is good so fear not, my friends. It borrows heavily from "Jenny" by Studio Killers, which is a great song that everyone should listen to (shapeshifting lesbians on motorcycles!).

( click for link and summary~ )

Next up is an Onni/Reynir fic that's about half done! Featuring mageverse makeouts, elaboration on Onni's romantic history, and just how far down those freckles go.

Current Music: The Ink Spots - I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire

So.

I really liked Carry On.
Like, a lot. Enough to go and order my own copy before I'd even finished reading it. (And that totally doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Chapters had a promotion for 10x points going on this past weekend, noooo.)

(Mostly I just thought that I haven't bought books in a while, so why not?)

Let me first summarize the premise. In 2013 Rainbow Rowell wrote a book called Fangirl, which is about a fanfic author named Cath. Her fandom of choice is this Harry Potter-esque children's fantasy series about a guy called Simon Snow. Carry On is the defictionalized version of Cath's fanfic, and I know that sounds confusing, but I promise you don't need to know any of that to enjoy it. Just enjoy it for what it is: A magical, queer love story with ghosts and a mystery and some really funny things.

It's kind of ridiculous and utterly believable at the same time. I would call it a parody only it's not really meant in jest, it just uses very familiar tropes to tell a very different story. And that's okay. It kind of reminded me of the music video for Genghis Khan, taking cliches everyone knows (Chosen One, Secret Agent, Supervillain, Nemesis) to tell a story that's different, that doesn't end how you'd expect, that feels like it's for me.

Some other stuff:

★ There's a new class of wranglers joining up this month and the chairs have decided to pilot this mentoring program where a bunch of experienced wranglers (me included) help them out with questions and generally make them feel welcome. There's a special separate channel on Slack and everything. I think it's a super cute idea and I really wish this was around when I started!

★ Gotham had it's winter premiere today (also, since when is that a thing that shows are split in half over fall and winter, like school terms? I had to wait like three months, come on). Pretty solid episode, they did some interesting setup for what I'm guessing will be the theme for the rest of the season. Hope Penguin will be okay!

★ Looks like my friend already got the package I sent him on Thursday! Definitely didn't think it would take such a short time.

Current Music: Malice Mizer - Color Me Blood Red

I'm about halfway into Carry On by Rainbow Rowell which is a difficult book to describe. Like, it's sort of a spinoff of Fangirl but it's more a weird queer rehash of every YA teen wizard book/chosen one ever. It's like Harry Potter, but with more kissing and more vampires, I guess. And swearing, there's swearing in it too. Expect a full review when I'm done with it.

Speaking of Rainbow Rowell, I've noticed a weird trend with her books. I've only read her YA titles so far but they're all that sort of book that is very easy for me to devour, they look big but read fast. I haven't stayed up till 3 am reading with this one (yet) but I can absolutely see myself doing that. I wonder if her adult books have that same quality. The thought did occur to me to check them out one of these days, but I looked over the synopses and neither really appealed to me? Oh well.

The weather's been doing really weird things lately, like they promised +17 yesterday? It didn't happen but it was still really warm. And then today it started to rain which turned into actual big white fluffy flakes of SNOW that melted as soon as they hit the ground? No wonder I started feeling shitty at work today. I really don't want to be THAT PERSON that carries around painkillers but migraines are also not fun.

Current Music: VAST - Touched

You. Yes, you.

Do you like looking at pretty pictures with words on them?

And did you ever think "what if those urban fantasy novels were set in some middle-of-nowhere town in Oklahoma"?

If the answer is yes then you need to read this RIGHT NOW because there is a webcomic I really like that has both of those things and by sheer coincidence is also running a Kickstarter campaign to get the first three chapters printed! Not that I'm only writing about it to get you to back it, noooo of course not. Anyway, here is

Wilde Life

This series is great, you guys. It's been running for two years so far and the art and writing and research behind it is great. There are ghosts and witches and a snarky teenage werewolf, all seen through the eyes of Unlucky Everydude Oscar. That's him up there having a small crisis. That happens kind of a lot. It's funny and creepy and borrows a lot from Native American mythology.

Need more proof?

Soooo you should all go read Wilde Life and contribute to the Kickstarter if you have a chance!

~(◔▽◔)~

Sticky: STICKY POST / FAQ

Coffeeshop Canon

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Legend of the wildfires

[SPOILERS] Assorted list of things I liked about Disco Elysium

roundup

writing in eight dimensions

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Fic Rec: For Guidance, Plase See the Corporate Interpersonal Relationship Policy

something something sunday

across time and space

How do you do, fellow journallers?

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dead kings and feelings

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my interest is purely academic

squared away

ensconced

what is fiction really?

things to throw your money at: Wilde Life

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