That's One Small Leap For Jen...
May. 7th, 2026 01:00 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
cakewrecks_feedJohn: "What are you working on?"
Jen: "Finding cakes for National Moon Day."
John: "Ok... so what's that, and what does it have to do with Moon Day?"
Jen: [clicking] "Hang on, you'll see."
John: "This still doesn't..."
Jen: "Waaaait for it..."
John: "OH. Moon day, heh. But see, I think you may have mis..."
Jen: "Dude, you totally just said, 'Butt see'.
Both together: "Bwahahaa!"
John: "But seriously, you've got the wrong Moon Day. It's supposed to be the Moon Moon day. The one in the sky.
Jen: [still clicking]
John: "Jen."
"Jen."
"STOP POSTING BUTT PICTURES YOU'VE GOT THE WRONG MOON."
John: "You win. Go back to butts."
Thanks to Brooke B., Adria P., Deborah B., Anony M., Lynne S., Nicole E., & Gorilla for helping me get the drop on John.
*****
P.S. I have the kind of insomnia old-timey bards would write songs about, so let me sing the praises of my amazing sleep headphones - for when you DO want to sleep:
I listen to boring audio books on these every night to keep my brain from spinning out of control, which works wonders. Lately I've been wearing them like a sleep mask - like the model here - and WOW, that's helped even more than when I wore them like a headband! These things have been a life saver: comfy enough for side sleeping, not too loud like some of my old speakers, and they only cost $20 Prime.
Note that they do run on the big side, but that works great if you have a big head like me.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
a new affair [by Saturn, Jack/Robby]
May. 7th, 2026 01:15 pmsiriareads_feed“Yeah, yeah. It’s—fuck this is dumb.” Jack mentally braced himself. “So you’re on Grindr, right?”
“...Yes,” Robby answered hesitantly, his brow furrowing in confusion. “And I know you know that, so…” He trailed off and raised his eyebrows, questioning.
Jack did some quick mental math on how to have this conversation without humiliating himself and came up empty, so he took the direct approach. “How would you advise an older bi guy who’s new to the whole ‘sex with men’ scene?”
Jack comes to Robby for help, but things don’t go as planned for either of them.
MV fic-Spilling the Beans (gen)
May. 7th, 2026 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mxcatmoon![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
vocab_drabbles Title: Spilling the Beans
Fandom: Miami Vice
Author: Cat Moon
Rating: G
Characters: Sonny, Rico, OFC
Words: 824
Summary: Sonny and Rico’s bad luck is someone else’s good fortune.
Note: I genuinely have NO idea where this came from…
( Spilling the Beans )
The Walled Garden again
May. 7th, 2026 02:27 pmpuddleshark
Bistort.
I know I said I wasn't going back to the Walled Garden, and that it was too expensive now... but with things being the way they are, it's hard not to think, damn it, the world is ending, I should visit gardens while I can.
( And it's wisteria season... )
3Weeks4Dreamwidth: E is for elegy
May. 7th, 2026 07:14 amstonepicnicking_okapipitchblackrenegade is offering a line of poetry as prompt/inspiration from one of their favorite poems. Ask for it here: https://pitchblackrenegade.dreamwidth.org/12309.htmlMine was:
It is enraptured by approaching sleep
—from "Before sunset" by Mirra Lokhvitskaya, translated by Temira Pachmuss
smartbitches_feed
My experience with The Bachelor franchise is as follows:
I edit the recaps from Elyse, which she’s been faithfully recording since 2017. That’s it.
Now, I have watched two (2) episodes to fill in for Elyse, prompting the following questions:
- Why are they four hours long?
- Why are they on two subsequent nights sometimes?
- Why on sequential nights or on four hour nights are they stretching out TWENTY FIVE TOTAL MINUTES OF FOOTAGE into an interminable length of time?
- Will my acute secondhand embarrassment survive this? (Answer: Barely)
I’m familiar enough through cultural osmosis and editorial work that I can converse about the show, but what I really love is listening to other people who are fans talk about why they love it – and what makes them want to scream.
So when I received an email from Ilana Masad and Stevie K. Seibert Desjarlais introducing this anthology, I was EXTREMELY ON BOARD. Why?
As they put it:
In 2020, we realized that although the fandom of The Bachelor is the entire reason the show–with its historically retrograde politics and lack of diversity–continues to exist, relatively little had been written about or by the fandom. We set about correcting that and filling that gap and the result is an anthology with nearly 30 contributors–longtime fans, cultural critics, and fellow Bachelor Nation members–writing about the messy, emotional, funny, and sometimes frustrating reasons why viewers keep showing up season after season.
Like the romance genre, romance reality TV (like a lot of media consumed primarily by women) is stereotypically considered to be trashy and/or for airheads–technically, there’s nothing wrong with trash TV or airheads. However, the fact is that millions of people engage with reality TV in meaningful and diverse ways. The Bachelor franchise, as one of the longest-running dating shows, has amassed fans from all corners of life who hold a plethora of identities and have a multitude of reasons for watching the show….
The Bachelor franchise’s fandom is a rich space for discourse on culture, race, sexuality, gender, human behavior, and community.
FINE. JUST EMAIL ME WITH A PILE OF MY CATNIP WHY DON’T YOU.
My episode with Ilana and Stevie is up now, but I also wanted to review this anthology to make sure you (hi!) know about it.
Holy crap is it good.
The essays are like scalpels equipped with magnifying glasses, dissecting and examining at The Bachelor franchise from every possible angle. Each contributor brought a fascinating perspective and pretty much made my brain explode as if someone put Pop Rocks on hot popcorn and drank a Diet Coke spiked with Mentos. It was a mess – a very enjoyable mess. I took so many notes.
Amanda and I have discussed on the podcast the challenge of reviewing an anthology, and this is no exception. I want to mention every essay, and share what I learned from each contributor, but that would be overkill and honestly, what I want to talk about may be very different from what you discover in this collection. These are writers who discuss media literacy skill development, tensions about gender, race, and hierarchical expectations, and beauty standards.
And much like romance lately, The Bachelor franchise and discussions thereof have become very mainstream, especially with the cross-pollination of other reality tv programs and the disastrous casting of Taylor Frankie Paul. This collection does for The Bachelor what we try to do with romance: explore and explain its importance as a cultural entity, while also offering criticism and condemnation when warranted.
Jeanna Kadlec’s essay “White Picket Cage,” which I am still thinking about, examines the evangelical Christian coded messages within the show:
Watching that first night of limousine arrivals and catfighting over cocktails, I had a strange out-of-body sort of experience, like I was watching an alternative version of my former life. I was stunned at how Christian-coded the show was in its treatment of gender roles and relationship expectations, and how hypocritical; for example, the show is belligerently insistent on ignoring the fact that contestants are in an open relationship with the lead while professing traditional values. (emphasis mine)
Apparently I’m one of the last people to recognize the polyamorous construction of the show; Ilana Masad emailed me a link to her March 2018 article in Playboy Magazine titled, “How ‘The Bachelor’ Franchise Celebrates Polyamory.” (Web archive link)
Kadlec’s essay also locates the growing popularity of the show within the evolving political and historical contexts of the time, and writes,
“I’ve come to treat The Bachelor properties as a temperature check of where the white evangelical movement is, and I take heart that, while reactionary Trump policies are flourishing, this show and others like it are dying.”
This concept of a ‘temperature check’ is echoed in other essays; in our interview, Ilana Masad said that for her, the show is a measure of “where heterosexuality is at in this country.”
Other essays I am still thinking about include Alana Hope Levinson’s “Pick Me (Or Don’t)” in which she explores the idea of being ‘chosen’ (or, conversely, not chosen to leave the show), and what that means for some of the contestants in terms of fame, wealth, status, and relative security. One unspoken “reason” for many contestants’ participation is upward social and economic mobility, especially for the women. Some former contestants have married professional football players, billionaire pastors, or other wealthy individuals:
“…it pays to not get picked; these rejected pick-mes actually ended up winning in the long run. There’s a lesson in there somewhere—that being picked by a shitty guy is actually worse for you.”
I love how this echoes Elyse’s repeated assertion that none of the contestants actually want to win The Bachelor; they want to last long enough to go on a cool vacation paid for by the network, and establish enough of a following on IG that they can parlay their Bachelor experience into an influencer career.
Prior podcast guest Sophie Vershbow’s essay, “Falling Out of Love with The Bachelor” focuses on her own relationship with the show, and with on the online community of Bachelor Nation that would watch and tweet about the show while it aired, an example of a live monoculture community event, now increasingly rare.
She parallels her own evolving perspective about relationships against the stubbornly unchanging format of the show, chronicling the growth of her own perspective from “I wanted a man to choose me so my life could begin, even if that man was so obviously the wrong one” to realizing that The Bachelor is “…a franchise peddling the uninvestigated marriage fantasy, often among people too young to have fully-formed prefrontal cortexes.”
“These are people who want to get married, not who want to marry each other as an expression of their love, which is the only kind of marriage I now have any desire for.
I only got to see how full my adult life could be without a romantic partner because circumstance gave me the time and space needed to build a happy life on my own, and I’m often left thinking of all the women whose circumstances turned those bad relationships into worse marriages that stole far more than four years from them. The women who go on The Bachelor shows seem primed for the latter….”
There are so many compelling essays and perspectives in this anthology, and I am still pondering most of them. Like, all the time.
If you’ve ever thought about how The Bachelor continues to have a strange hold on American culture after over 25 years, you’ll find really smart people talking about many, if not all, of the fascinating reasons why.
On Reviews and What Makes Them Useful
May. 7th, 2026 08:00 amsmartbitches_feedFor those of you who have had the pleasure of being edited by Head Smart Bitch Sarah, you’ll know that she’s a master at drilling down to the core of things – distilling language so that it accurately reflects your feelings on a book and, more importantly, the reasons for those feelings so readers can assess for themselves if that book is a good fit for them.
Ed.note: thank you!
While I am a reviewer on the site, I’m also a reader of the site. I recently started working my way through Sherry Thomas’s historical romance back catalogue. I listened to the Lady Sherlock stories on audio a couple years back and really enjoyed them, so I was curious about her more romance-forward books.
I started with The Luckiest Lady in London. Once I finished the book, I searched the site for past reviews to see what had been said about it as I thought about my own experience with this romance. There were five reviews! Three RITA reader reviews, one guest review and one by Carrie. A wealth of thoughts for me to devour!
Four of the five reviews gave the book an A while Carrie landed on a C+.
Shari, one of the reviewers, made a salient point here: “Sometimes a book can go from just good to fantastic because of the particular state of mind you are in when you read it”. Good reviews are able to push past that simple ‘love’ into the nitty gritty of ‘why’, and our reviewers certainly do that.
Before I dive into a review of the literature, dearests, the blurb:
Felix Rivendale, the Marquess of Wrenworth, is The Ideal Gentleman, a man all men want to be and all women want to possess. Felix himself almost believes this golden image. But underneath is a damaged soul soothed only by public adulation.
Louisa Cantwell needs to marry well to support her sisters. She does not, however, want Lord Wrenworth—though he seems inexplicably interested in her. She mistrusts his outward perfection and the praise he garners everywhere he goes.But when he is the only man to propose at the end of the London season, she reluctantly accepts.
Louisa does not understand her husband’s mysterious purposes, but she cannot deny the pleasure her body takes in his touch. Nor can she deny the pull this magnetic man exerts upon her. But does she dare to fall in love with a man so full of dark secrets, anyone of which could devastate her, if she were to get any closer?
Although be warned, Pam G alerted that “prospective readers will need to ignore the cover copy as it is kind of misleading if not downright deceitful.” A personal bug bear of mine – misleading cover copy.
But on to the meat of the reviews …
Several reviews commended the writing (brava, I agree!) Patricia described herself as a “sucker for a really well phrased sentence, a bon mot of a sentence” and Thomas delivers that in spades. Pam G agreed, saying ‘There is just something so clean, controlled, and precise in her use of language. Even her prepositions are perfect. That is not to imply that her writing is stodgy or overly formal. Her descriptions are sumptuous without being wordy, she uses imagery and metaphor like a poet, and her work never seems to contain any repetitive verbal junk.”
The premise is pretty simple and straightforward. Pam G described the story as “deceptively simple”. Lulu concurred saying, “Sherry Thomas is a master at creating beautiful things from simple ingredients. She begins with rather ordinary themes and characters, in this case a rich man meeting and marrying a poor girl … Thomas then adds great dialogue and human frailty, and creates entrancing stories that are completely addictive.” Note, the great dialogue came up in all five reviews!
For Lulu, as Louisa and Felix interact with one another, “so commences an interchange of forward and feint, nuance and coercion. Thomas builds the relationship between Louisa and Felix brilliantly. They are loveable, imperfect creatures brought to life through their actions.”
Lulu’s claim of ‘lovability’ is one of the hot topics in these reviews. I was asking myself a similar question: are both characters lovable? Louisa, certainly. But Felix?
For Carrie and Pam G, Felix was a sticking point. Pam G said, “At more than one point the reader will want to reach into the pages and beat the crap out of Felix. After the initial piece of cruelty, the relationship recovers in a superficial manner, but, later on, another time bomb explodes and demolishes the fragile understanding they manage to reconstruct” For Carrie, she “felt distressed, and frustrated and worried, and never did believe the happy ending.” And it all hinged on Felix’s cruelty: “Felix is so horrified at the realization that he has fallen in love with Louisa that he gives her all kinds of confusing signals and at one moment treats her with absolutely unforgivable emotional cruelty. I’m not past that moment, as a reader. I don’t believe Louisa is past it, as a character. I think Sherry Thomas made Louisa get past it.”
Why were our other reviewers able to get past Felix’s cruelty while for Carrie it was a dealbreaker? Carrie herself has the answer, “I have no personal trigger greater than the idea of someone treating another person with great warmth and then suddenly, with no warning or explanation, becoming utterly cold, while maintaining that nothing is wrong.”
This is by no means an exhaustive comparison of the reviews of this story. A lot more could be said about just the dialogue!
But that isn’t my purpose. I wanted to look for similarities between the reviews and where there were differences, I wanted to see how they were handled by the reviewer. I wanted to see where I fell on the spectrum of these reviews. Certainly there had been moments for me where Felix’s cruelty made me flinch IRL. It’s unspeakable, some of it.
Like the reviewers, I was enamoured with the dialogue and the description and the writing in general. I adored Louisa and even liked Felix. Partly because I so WANTED to see the good in Felix and WANTED to like him, I was able to put to one side those flashes of cruelty and instead focus on the rest of his character. I think in the end, I land at about a B+.
Reading and comparing reviews for a book I’ve just finished was a good reminder of the importance of ‘why’ in a review: why did the reader assign that grade? Why did they like or dislike certain elements? It’s fair and well to love or hate a book, but if I don’t know why the reader felt that way, I have no idea whether the book will be a good fit for me or not.
I’m often frustrated by superficial reviews that don’t articulate the reasoning for an opinion about a book, and the exercise of looking in the SBTB archives brought home for me just how important sites like these and the longer narrative reviews are for readers like me who need more in-depth reviews. I want nuance. I want discernment. I want REASONS.
TL;DR Long may sites like this one live on to serve readers thoughtful, considered reviews.
What about you? What do you want in a review? A lot of detail? A short summary? Are you as obsessed with REASONS for opinions as I am? What reviews do you gravitate toward?
The reviews for The Luckiest Lady in London by Sherry Thomas
[#300 | Ceremony] Challenge Post
May. 6th, 2026 11:06 pmfanweeklymod posting in fandomweekly| Challenge 300: CEREMONY |
n. a formal act or series of acts prescribed by ritual, protocol, or convention Births, weddings and funerals, religious services, political and work events – there’s all kinds of ceremonies. Most people will experience at least one or two of those throughout their lives, but they probably won’t be quite the same! Ceremonies change over time, different cultures generally have different rituals and priorities, and some people care much more about ceremonies than others. How do your characters feel about ceremonies? What kind have they experienced? Write a story about a ceremony. If your submission features gold or silver, it will earn an extra point to be tallied in voting! |
| Challenge ends Monday, May 11 at 9:00PM EST. • Post submissions as new entries using the template in the profile • Tag this week's entries as: [#] submission, 300 – ceremony • If you have questions about this challenge, please ask them here |
[#299 | Uprising] Results Post
May. 6th, 2026 11:05 pmfanweeklymod posting in fandomweekly( This week's finalists are... )
Total Challenge Words Written: 3951
Congratulations to both of you, and thank you to everyone who took the time to cast their votes!
autobotscoutriella will be making this week’s banners, so keep an eye out for those next week.You may now post your Challenge 299 entries to any additional communities, blogs, archives or sites as you'd like! We also have a FandomWeekly AO3 Collection if you'd like to add your stories there!
Alien Romance, the daily comic strip
May. 6th, 2026 10:25 pmgs_silva
We finally got to Thanksgiving, which in the US occurs on the 4th Thursday of November. They're having a big feast at Ren's family's house, and Jon and Ella Sievers came along in order to avoid having to navigate the drama of their own family. First stop, A&Z Grocery General, the little general store Maurice's family owns. Everybody grabs a dish or some merchandise to carry over, and Maurice talks strategy with Ella: "We'll leave the Rabbit (Ella's car) in the store parking lot and walk to the Swansons'. It's quicker than driving, and Jon says he wants to try the path."
"Here are my keys in case he changes his mind," Ella says, holding her car keys out.
"I'll stay with him," Maurice says. "Grab a casserole and go have fun."
I think at this point I was going to have Jon and Maurice give up on walking and take the car, but Jon ended up doing all right walking through the small patch of forest on crutches. It's very well-worn. "There's a whole neighborhood back here," Maurice explains to him. It's based on my grandmother's store, also in a rural community. The 'town' was barely a town at all, but it had a paper mill, a main street of sorts, a school on one end and a church on the other, and our grocery general store right in the middle, with my great-grandmother and her daughters living in a small apartment upstairs. And then a hill behind it, with the 'town' built up the hillside. You could drive the long way around or walk straight up the hill.
The town suffered for a while when the paper mill closed, but now it's become a suburb of a nearby town, with more development, an arts community, and I guess everyone commutes elsewhere to work. The days of walking down a narrow flight of stairs to begin your shift are over now.
At the end of the path, the neighborhood comes into view, and the yard of the nearest house is full of cars and car parts, piles of tires and various other items. The house itself is sprawling and run-down. "Whoa, look at that old house," Jon exclaims. "It's a whole junkyard."
"It's the Swanson house," Maurice says. "See, there's Ella."
Ella is standing in a less-cluttered spot in the front yard with a young boy and two dogs. More children run around behind them. Ren approaches her from the house. "Ella, do you want to come in and meet the grown-ups?"
"I will!" she replies. "I'm practicing being the weird aunt!"
Manga Check-in: "Witch Hat Atelier" volume 2 ch. 6-11 (reread)
May. 6th, 2026 08:56 pmbluapapilio[Previous]
Changing to the official English spellings of the names I guesss.
Chapter 6: Agott is still being cruel to Coco but I understand some of what she's attempting to say, but she's also not giving Coco a chance.
Very lovely moment between Tetia and Coco. I love Tetia's clouds.
Chapter 7: It's sweet that Coco used Tetia's clouds to lure the dragon in. X'D
"That's Agreat!" 😂
She gets to watch them work their magic up close. :P
The Dragon-Stupefying Cushion haha it's so cute.
The one who gave Coco the book has hold of her. "Let me teach you everything Qifrey won't. And when the time comes you'll..." So these challenges are going to be a regular thing. But what was she supposed to learn from this one? He gave her something but what?
Chapter 8: Brushbug really likes Richeh (and the others), it's adorbs.
Oh, Olruggio's first appearance! Poor Coco got a scare. He doesn't want anything to do with the Brimhats.
Chapter 9: Tetia's poofy hair. 🤣
Olruggio is the 'watchful eye' for Qifrey's atelier. They make sure nothing untoward happens. He's also busy making magical items.
The Order of the Council of Magic Security would've erased Coco's memory in an instant if they knew about her because all they care about is the law, even if she would lead them to the Brimhats.
Coco winning Olruggio over with her love of his magic. :')
Chapter 10: Qifrey is worried how Agott is fixated on the stuff she doesn't know yet instead of on what she can accomplish. Instead of taking Olruggio's advice to heart gets even more impatient.
Agott is working so hard to earn the approval of the people of those who've looked down on her. "I had such high hopes for you, Agott... I'm disappointed." "I can't believe she's her daughter." etc
The leader(?) of the Council of Magic Security is Lord Estheath.
Chapter 11: Coco and Agott are working hard together to save the boy who fell, alone Agott might've stayed paralyzed but Coco kept her moving.
Coco learned from Richeh and Agott and now Agott os learning by watching Coco even if she doesn't want to admit it.
Whatever the Brimhat gave Coco made her spell too strong and now she's in trouble with Magic Security. 😭
Daily Check-In
May. 6th, 2026 06:02 pmstarwatcher posting in fandom_checkinThis is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday May 06, to midnight on Thursday, May 07. (8pm Eastern Time).
How are you doing?
I am OK.
10 (50.0%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
10 (50.0%)
I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single.
10 (50.0%)
One other person.
5 (25.0%)
More than one other person.
5 (25.0%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
Song Shuffle Poem Meme
May. 6th, 2026 07:44 pmmxcatmoon
@3weeks4dreamwidth is celebrating Dreamwidth's anniversary!
Come join in for fun, memes, activities, and more ♥
Snagged from
spiralicious who got it from goodbyebird at 3weeks4dreamwidth Put your mp3 player/phone/streaming collection on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results.
I'm not sure mine makes much of a poem, but maybe a weird unfinished story? This is a most-80s rock, love song mix. Anyway, here it is:
I don’t care what they say
I never needed love like I need you
Don’t know what had happened
I got lost out there in this world
Fooled around and fell in love
Are those your eyes
Waking from this fever dream that’s killing me
The two of us are one of a kind
We live two different lives
Darling, I know you’re sleeping
Yes, I do I believe
Baby, don't betray me when we lay down tonight
It’s a time in my life
I’ve always had my hand on you
You know you’re everything to me
I can tell by the look in your eyes you’ve been hurting
There’s a burning question in my heart
Another lonely day
Dark is the night when candles brightly breathe a dying flame
So close to giving up
Fic: Zen and the Art of Document Preservation (Mature)
May. 6th, 2026 05:50 pmtopaz_eyes posting in robbyabbotZen and the Art of Document Preservation
by Topaz Eyes
Fandom: The Pitt
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Jack Abbot/Michael “Robby” Robinavitch
Summary: He derailed that train of thought firmly. That was not going to happen. Not if he could fucking help it.
Words: 4038
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Fic on AO3.
Fic on Dreamwidth
Thursday @ 9:16 am
May. 7th, 2026 09:16 amalisxA thousand blessings be upon all fanfic writers who seem to think catching international flights is like showing up for the inner city bus.
What I'm Doing Wednesday
May. 6th, 2026 05:59 pmsageThe Jeeves Omnibus Vol. 3: (I'm interspersing the Jeeves & Wooster novels with the rest of what I'm reading.)
Ring for Jeeves (1953). OMG such idiots. Not even Jeeves can redeem this. (I kind of despise gambling, sorry?)
The Mating Season (1949). Delightful beginning. Tedious middle (Bertie, you ass). Good, if brief ending.
Very Good, Jeeves! (1930). More vintage, not historical, Jeeves and Wooster. This is a collection of short stories, most very charming.
Wyndham & Banerjee #1: A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee. 2016. Really satisfying in terms of setting: the colonial India is vivid and fascinating. The plot is kind of a mess, complete with monologing villain. But I'll read the next one happily.
The Wild Atlantic Murders #1: The Clew Bay Detectives by Pam Lecky. 2026. ARC. ( gah )
Wyndham & Banerjee #2: A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee. 2017. I love the setting so much! There was a bit more literal running back and forth than was completely necessary here, and the opium subplot is appropriately skeevy, but I loved all the women and really appreciated the ending. Looking forward to the next one.
Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From by Tony Joseph. 2018. Brilliant, if very slightly outdated wrt the prehistoric DNA research.
Wyndham & Banerjee #3: Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee. 2018. So good!! Nearly a perfect novel.
next up: rereading all of Murderbot bc I don't remember where things left off before Rapport.
healthcrap
Wrapped the wrist-thumb joint in kinesio tape, since I can't find where I put the thumb brace. Fibro is flaring & I'm way too sore. Still sleeping 12 hrs a night and not resting. /impatient to feel better.
I hope you're all doing well! <333
Podfic!
May. 6th, 2026 05:26 pmsenmutChapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker
Additional Tags: Drabble, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming
Summary:
A podfic of Do It Again? by Merfilly.
"Leia asks a question."
ludicrous question of the day
May. 6th, 2026 05:15 pmjulianShe's more "there" in the mornings, and is sometimes able to connect up and have actual conversations, though I admit, this is not often. Then once she starts getting tireder, she is just not rooted in reality, meanders verbally, and has some kind of rich inner life to which I am not privy, and which, when she's asked about, she is unable to explain. (Which is more curious to me because she was just in 2026 in the morning, you know? But it is what it is.) This does often lead to problems because she meanders off, physically, to obey the mysterious dictates of her soul, and can't/won't explain what she wants to do, and does *not* take well to re-direction. (Or, in the words of the medical establishment, is combative.)
She's also miserable and seems to have developed actual aphasia at this point -- that is, she has something specific she wants to say but says the wrong words. Which, sometimes is commentary on 2026, but is also sometimes commentary from her inner life, so even if we could understand it, it wouldn't make sense, but the frustration is the same either way, so sympathy is at least called for.
She does recognize me pretty consistently, which is good both for her sake and mine (because the first time I actually knew she didn't know it was me was Not Entertaining), but she also firmly has the idea her parents are still alive and she wants to visit them (in Lancaster, PA), which is... not so good. My dad is very bad at dealing with the latter, and keeps going, in essence, "No, they're dead," which is. Nowhere near the response you want, there.
Also, she has no sense of time, so she's like, "Let's go!" three minutes after we start a thing. Which is one thing if it's at home, but it's more of a problem if she's at, say, her 5 year old niece's birthday party. My brother and I did decode that it's also her telling us she's done with our visits and we should go away, though, so that was good.
And, she is still doing the "taking a walk and then getting lost and getting the police called on her," thing, which frankly by this point is infuriating because why the fuck won't my dad get inside locks for the house, or at least notice that she's leaving. ?!?!??? <-- my internal state.
Anyway, the reason I'm making this post is that she's getting a lot more unstable on her feet, and has fallen a few times lately, though has not, thankfully, broken anything, but she can't get back up again when she does fall. My dad has now, despite their previously having promised each other they would Never Leave Their House, made the decision that he's open to looking into assisted living/memory care facilities, hosanna. (They've had in-house helpers for a bit, but my mom keeps taking against them because they tell her what to do and she hates that, see above re: combative.)
He called me up (I having had warning from my brother) and was like, "Can we get her into an ambulance and have her taken somewhere this afternoon?" and I barely managed not to laugh at him. No, is the answer, no we can't. I said something about it not being feasible. (I mean, if she broke something it would be, but that is To Be Avoided because it would lead to the downslope, and while she is not exactly happy in her life, the "broken bone to pneumonia" pipeline is not the most efficient way of dying, pardon my distancing humor.)
But! I have now scheduled two tours, one for my brother (on Friday) and one for me on Monday, at two different local-to-my-parents places, and we'll go from there.
Why not? It's been a minute.
May. 6th, 2026 12:51 pmhuxleyenne posting in addmeAge: 37
I mostly post about: Writing, exercising, shows I'm watching, or any old thing that's on my mind.
My hobbies are: Fanfiction (reading and writing), sports (watching), anime/manga, older video games, long walks, playing with animals. I dabble in a lot of little things, but mostly, I'm a writer.
My fandoms are: WWE (specifically the little corner of tumblr that still likes The Shield. I'll never let Roman live Rolleigns or Ambreigns down) Final Fantasy IX, Persona 5, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Survivor, and many others.
I'm looking to meet people who: I want a variety of people to talk to, but I'm not looking for anyone to sell me new interests or criticize my current ones. I have my own reasons for what interests me, and it doesn't matter if those reasons are superficial. I want people with a "Live and Let Live" mentality when it comes to fandom, but also, who feels comfortable leaving the occasional comment.
My posting schedule tends to be: Sporadic, but daily posting is my goal.
When I add people, my dealbreakers are: MAGA, performative activism, disagreeable/argumentative people who can't help themselves, plus anyone who makes or agrees with statements calling for the general mass harm of US American citizens (or anyone around the world, yes, but listen.) Personally, I fucking hate MAGA, never voted for the clown king regardless of what anyone else did, but I am so sick of random self-righteous assholes saying cruel shit about my country's working people. Any of my country's working people, including ones scammed into morally reprehensible work. We should be changing their minds, not calling for their harm. Yes, that work is never done and we're all tired, but consider this: there are billionaires and politicians causing real harm in real time while some people are seriously still out here policing fandoms and cancelling low hanging fruit like they're accomplishing anything. That's a fucking joke if you ask me. And you know what? You do you, but please, skip friending me if this is you.
Before adding me, you should know: I am a passionate, friendly person. I want to talk to people in a light and fun way, hang out, do fandom as chill as I can. This is stress relief from work. I don't want to treat it like an obligation or something I have to think too hard about. Naturally, there's nothing I wouldn't ask of people that I'm not willing to give in return. :)
