Twilight with Moon and Planets
Feb. 22nd, 2026 05:43 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
apod_feed
Twilight with Moon and Planets
apod_feedDaily Happiness
Feb. 21st, 2026 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torachan1. So nice to get back to my routine at home. I tried my best to stick to the things I could while away but it's not the same and it's definitely a source of stress.
2. Carla got some frozen char siu fried rice from Trader Joe's and it's really good. Making fried rice from scratch is an easy meal, but I wouldn't mind keeping a bag of this in the freezer for times we feel like something even easier.
3. A moth got in the house the other day and Carla was able to get some really great pics of Ollie when he was laser focused on the moth.
2. Carla got some frozen char siu fried rice from Trader Joe's and it's really good. Making fried rice from scratch is an easy meal, but I wouldn't mind keeping a bag of this in the freezer for times we feel like something even easier.
3. A moth got in the house the other day and Carla was able to get some really great pics of Ollie when he was laser focused on the moth.
Vocabulary: Bricolage
Feb. 21st, 2026 10:28 pmysabetwordsmithSunday Word: Bricolage
bricolage [bree-kuh-lahzh, brik-uh-]
noun:
1 a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.
2 (in literature) a piece created from diverse resources.
3 (in art) a piece of makeshift handiwork.
4 the use of multiple, diverse research methods.
Definitely useful if you like upcycling.
bricolage [bree-kuh-lahzh, brik-uh-]
noun:
1 a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.
2 (in literature) a piece created from diverse resources.
3 (in art) a piece of makeshift handiwork.
4 the use of multiple, diverse research methods.
Definitely useful if you like upcycling.
Sunday Word: Bricolage
Feb. 22nd, 2026 03:10 pmsallymn in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
1word1daybricolage [bree-kuh-lahzh, brik-uh-]
noun:
1 a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.
2 (in literature) a piece created from diverse resources.
3 (in art) a piece of makeshift handiwork.
4 the use of multiple, diverse research methods.
Examples:
Billed as fiction, this creative-critical work is a bricolage of archival research, colonial histories, transcribed conversations, ghost stories, memoir, epistolary address, reimagined pasts, speculative and suspended futures. (Jenny Hedley, A technology to remember and forget: André Dao’s Anam, Overland, August 2023)
That resourcefulness has developed into an art of exhilarating bricolage, of functioning objects that are greater than the sum of their pieced-together parts. (Andrew Russeth, Tom Sachs: Rocket Man to Renaissance Man, New York Times, July 2022)
This distinction also escapes a number of creative writing researchers who have adapted bricolage as a research methodology. They enumerate the benefits without sufficiently acknowledging the drawbacks, which include superficiality, overgeneralisation and misinterpretation of the theories and practices of other disciplines. (Jeri Kroll, 'The writer as interlocutor: The benefits and drawbacks of bricolage in creative writing research', Journal of writing and writing courses, 2021)
Her bricolage approach to songwriting is fairly obviously that of someone raised with streaming’s decontextualised smorgasbord as their primary source of music. You can hear it in the way she leaps from one source to another, unburdened by considerations of genre or longstanding notions of cool, like someone compiling a personal playlist. (Alexis Petridis, PinkPantheress: Fancy That review – sharp-minded bops hop across pop’s past and present, The Guardian, May 2025)
The system eventually introduced for Big Bang reflected this fragility and contingency of infrastructures: it was the creative result of reshaping legacy devices into a system that did the job for the time being. A band-aid. A product of creative, recombinant bricolage. (Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets)
Origin:
term used in arts and literature, 'work made from available things,' by 1966, via Lévi-Strauss, from French bricolage, from bricoler 'to fiddle, tinker' and, by extension, 'make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand (regardless of their original purpose),' 16c, from bricole (14c) (Online Etymology Dictionary)
According to French social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the artist 'shapes the beautiful and useful out of the dump heap of human life.' Lévi-Strauss compared this artistic process to the work of a handyman who solves technical or mechanical problems with whatever materials are available. He referred to that process of making do as bricolage, a term derived from the French verb bricoler (meaning 'to putter about') and related to bricoleur, the French name for a jack-of-all-trades. Bricolage made its way from French to English during the 1960s, and it is now used for everything from the creative uses of leftovers ('culinary bricolage') to the cobbling together of disparate computer parts ('technical bricolage'). (Merriam-Webster)
Projects and Bunnies
Feb. 21st, 2026 10:05 pmsenmut~ 10trueloves - 5/10 written
~ Fulcrum and Rex time travel to before Anakin runs to Mace. - NEEDS CANON REVIEW
~ Sequel to Retrieval - 93 WORDS
~ An Atin universe that is more like The Second Clone War or Mine, All of Them - 2 chapters written, each about 1k words
~ Rachel and Joe meet with BOTH finally aware in Closing Up Shop
~ Drizzt's fallout/Vierna's reactions in the Divining Destiny universe
nothing
10trueloves - 5/10 written Random Plot Bunnies in Progress
~ Fulcrum and Rex time travel to before Anakin runs to Mace. - NEEDS CANON REVIEW
~ Sequel to Retrieval - 93 WORDS
~ An Atin universe that is more like The Second Clone War or Mine, All of Them - 2 chapters written, each about 1k words
Potential Bunnies Pending Further Bouncing
~ Rachel and Joe meet with BOTH finally aware in Closing Up Shop
~ Drizzt's fallout/Vierna's reactions in the Divining Destiny universe
Finished
nothing
Was Florida man arrested after baptizing alligator in Waffle House? Don't bite
Feb. 22nd, 2026 03:00 amsnopes_feedAccording to the claim, the man attempted to use a pitcher of iced tea to perform the "baptism."
(no subject)
Feb. 21st, 2026 03:51 pmconuly in agonyauntMy daughter “Melody” is in the midst of the terrible twos. Five or more meltdowns per day over normal frustrations/limits are typical. Recently, my mother-in-law, “Darlene” took Melody and my 6-year-old son out to run errands, and true to form, Melody had a blow-up. It was how Darlene handled it that has me seeing red. She told Melody that she was leaving her in the store and that she could find her own way home, and left her screaming on the floor! She then moved off with my son, out of my daughter’s view, and waited for several minutes before coming back for her. I only learned of this later when my son told me what happened.
When I confronted my mother-in-law, she claimed her method was helpful because Melody behaved afterward. And she said Melody was “never in any danger” because she kept her in sight at all times. After this, I no longer feel safe with Darlene going places with the kids without my husband present or me. Sadly, my husband is no help. He agrees that this was a good “lesson” in behaving for our daughter and that his mother used to do it to him and his sister when they were kids! Please tell me I’m right in telling Darlene her days of taking the kids solo are over.
—Pissed
( Read more... )
When I confronted my mother-in-law, she claimed her method was helpful because Melody behaved afterward. And she said Melody was “never in any danger” because she kept her in sight at all times. After this, I no longer feel safe with Darlene going places with the kids without my husband present or me. Sadly, my husband is no help. He agrees that this was a good “lesson” in behaving for our daughter and that his mother used to do it to him and his sister when they were kids! Please tell me I’m right in telling Darlene her days of taking the kids solo are over.
—Pissed
( Read more... )
Anticipatory.
Feb. 21st, 2026 09:42 pmhannahTrying to clear my calendar and hunker down for the next few days in light of the storm had me allowing myself a little bit of panic buying in the form of another bottle of olive oil. It's not on the same level as rescheduling an appointment because I know there's no point trying to get anywhere farther than two blocks, maximum, come Monday, but it helped a bit.
I'm also charging up my devices as something of an insurance policy and made sure to return all my outstanding library checkouts. Again, something that only helped a bit, and still helped. Mostly I'm now waiting for it to arrive so I can finally enjoy the snow. The build-up to it isn't nearly as enjoyable.
I'm also charging up my devices as something of an insurance policy and made sure to return all my outstanding library checkouts. Again, something that only helped a bit, and still helped. Mostly I'm now waiting for it to arrive so I can finally enjoy the snow. The build-up to it isn't nearly as enjoyable.
Book review: Our Share of Night
Feb. 21st, 2026 06:16 pmrocky41_7 in booknookTitle: Our Share of Night
Author: Mariana Enriquez
Translator: Megan McDowell
Genre: Fantasy horror, fiction, family drama
If Mexican Gothic left you craving more South American fantasy horror, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez of Argentina (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) has you covered. This is a family epic intertwined with the dark machinations of a macabre cult and its impact. It's also a splendid allegory for the evils of colonialism and generational trauma. This book was #15 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.
The book begins with Juan, a powerful but ill man who acts as a "medium" for the cult to commune with its dark god. Juan, struggling with the health of his defective heart, the wear-and-tear of years as the medium, and the grief and rage of his wife's recent death (he suspects, at the orders of the cult he serves) is desperate to keep his son Gaspar from stepping into his shoes, as the cult wants. Juan's opening segment of the book is about his efforts to protect Gaspar.
From there, the book branches off into other perspectives which give background to both the cult and the family. This is a great way of giving us a holistic and generational view of the cult, but it does drag occasionally. Gaspar's sections--in his childhood and then later in his teens/young adulthood--together make up the majority of the book, and while enjoyable, do amble off into great detail about his and his friends' day-to-day lives, such that I did wonder sometimes when we were getting back to the plot. I don't like to cite pacing issues, because I think that gets thrown around a lot whenever someone didn't vibe with a book, but the drawn-out length of these quotidian sections doesn't fit well with how quickly the climax of the book passes and is wrapped up. I would have liked to have spent less time with Gaspar at soccer games and more on his plans for addressing the cult.
However, on the whole, the book is a fun, if very dark read. It also serves well as a critique of Argentina's moneyed class and of colonialism in general, and how money sticks with money even across borders. Here, Argentina's wealthy have more in common with English money than with the Argentine lower classes (and that's how they want it). The cult, populated at its upper echelons by the privileged, is an almost literal blight on the land, willing to sacrifice an endless amount of blood, local and otherwise, to beg power off a hungry and unknown supernatural entity.
It brutalizes its mediums, which it often plucks from poverty to wring for power and then discard. Juan was adopted away from his own poor family at six, under the insistence his parents would not be able to pay for the medical care he needed, and he is the least-abused of the cult's line of mediums. As soon as the cult sets their eye on his son, Juan must begin scheming how to keep Gaspar away from them.
Although he acts out of love of his son, Juan is also a deeply flawed person. He is secretive, moody, lies constantly (there is actual gaslighting here) and doesn't hesitate to knock Gaspar around to make him obey. The more he deteriorates--a common problem with all cult mediums--the less human he becomes. Part of this is his work, but much of it is also attributable to years of being used by the cult for its ends and the accumulated emotional trauma. This, of course, is then inflicted on Gaspar through his father's tempers and secrets.
Similarly flawed are the other members of the immediate family. Juan's wife Rosario, despite a better nature than her parents, still supports this cult and is eager for Gaspar to follow in his father's footsteps as a cult medium, in part for the prestige it will bring her as his mother. Gaspar, although far more empathetic and gentle than either of his parents, eventually grows up with his father's temper. Watching him grow from a sweet-natured little boy into the troubled young adult he becomes after years of his father's abuse and neglect is painful, but realistic.
The book is also unexpectedly queer. It's not often a book surprises me with its queerness, because that's usually what landed it on my radar in the first place, but this one did. Juan and Rosario are both bisexual and later in the book we spend some active time in Argentina's queer scene, including during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
An ambitious novel that for the most part, pulls off what it's trying to do. As mentioned, I wish the ending had gotten more room to breathe, and I would not have minded this coming at the cost of some of the middle bits of navel-gazing, but I still felt the story was satisfying.
Author: Mariana Enriquez
Translator: Megan McDowell
Genre: Fantasy horror, fiction, family drama
If Mexican Gothic left you craving more South American fantasy horror, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez of Argentina (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) has you covered. This is a family epic intertwined with the dark machinations of a macabre cult and its impact. It's also a splendid allegory for the evils of colonialism and generational trauma. This book was #15 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.
The book begins with Juan, a powerful but ill man who acts as a "medium" for the cult to commune with its dark god. Juan, struggling with the health of his defective heart, the wear-and-tear of years as the medium, and the grief and rage of his wife's recent death (he suspects, at the orders of the cult he serves) is desperate to keep his son Gaspar from stepping into his shoes, as the cult wants. Juan's opening segment of the book is about his efforts to protect Gaspar.
From there, the book branches off into other perspectives which give background to both the cult and the family. This is a great way of giving us a holistic and generational view of the cult, but it does drag occasionally. Gaspar's sections--in his childhood and then later in his teens/young adulthood--together make up the majority of the book, and while enjoyable, do amble off into great detail about his and his friends' day-to-day lives, such that I did wonder sometimes when we were getting back to the plot. I don't like to cite pacing issues, because I think that gets thrown around a lot whenever someone didn't vibe with a book, but the drawn-out length of these quotidian sections doesn't fit well with how quickly the climax of the book passes and is wrapped up. I would have liked to have spent less time with Gaspar at soccer games and more on his plans for addressing the cult.
However, on the whole, the book is a fun, if very dark read. It also serves well as a critique of Argentina's moneyed class and of colonialism in general, and how money sticks with money even across borders. Here, Argentina's wealthy have more in common with English money than with the Argentine lower classes (and that's how they want it). The cult, populated at its upper echelons by the privileged, is an almost literal blight on the land, willing to sacrifice an endless amount of blood, local and otherwise, to beg power off a hungry and unknown supernatural entity.
It brutalizes its mediums, which it often plucks from poverty to wring for power and then discard. Juan was adopted away from his own poor family at six, under the insistence his parents would not be able to pay for the medical care he needed, and he is the least-abused of the cult's line of mediums. As soon as the cult sets their eye on his son, Juan must begin scheming how to keep Gaspar away from them.
Although he acts out of love of his son, Juan is also a deeply flawed person. He is secretive, moody, lies constantly (there is actual gaslighting here) and doesn't hesitate to knock Gaspar around to make him obey. The more he deteriorates--a common problem with all cult mediums--the less human he becomes. Part of this is his work, but much of it is also attributable to years of being used by the cult for its ends and the accumulated emotional trauma. This, of course, is then inflicted on Gaspar through his father's tempers and secrets.
Similarly flawed are the other members of the immediate family. Juan's wife Rosario, despite a better nature than her parents, still supports this cult and is eager for Gaspar to follow in his father's footsteps as a cult medium, in part for the prestige it will bring her as his mother. Gaspar, although far more empathetic and gentle than either of his parents, eventually grows up with his father's temper. Watching him grow from a sweet-natured little boy into the troubled young adult he becomes after years of his father's abuse and neglect is painful, but realistic.
The book is also unexpectedly queer. It's not often a book surprises me with its queerness, because that's usually what landed it on my radar in the first place, but this one did. Juan and Rosario are both bisexual and later in the book we spend some active time in Argentina's queer scene, including during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
An ambitious novel that for the most part, pulls off what it's trying to do. As mentioned, I wish the ending had gotten more room to breathe, and I would not have minded this coming at the cost of some of the middle bits of navel-gazing, but I still felt the story was satisfying.
Recent Reading: Our Share of Night
Feb. 21st, 2026 06:16 pmrocky41_7 in booksIf Mexican Gothic left you craving more South American fantasy horror, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez of Argentina (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) has you covered. This is a family epic intertwined with the dark machinations of a macabre cult and its impact. It's also a splendid allegory for the evils of colonialism and generational trauma. This book was #15 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.
The book begins with Juan, a powerful but ill man who acts as a "medium" for the cult to commune with its dark god. Juan, struggling with the health of his defective heart, the wear-and-tear of years as the medium, and the grief and rage of his wife's recent death (he suspects, at the orders of the cult he serves) is desperate to keep his son Gaspar from stepping into his shoes, as the cult wants. Juan's opening segment of the book is about his efforts to protect Gaspar.
From there, the book branches off into other perspectives which give background to both the cult and the family. This is a great way of giving us a holistic and generational view of the cult, but it does drag occasionally. Gaspar's sections--in his childhood and then later in his teens/young adulthood--together make up the majority of the book, and while enjoyable, do amble off into great detail about his and his friends' day-to-day lives, such that I did wonder sometimes when we were getting back to the plot. I don't like to cite pacing issues, because I think that gets thrown around a lot whenever someone didn't vibe with a book, but the drawn-out length of these quotidian sections doesn't fit well with how quickly the climax of the book passes and is wrapped up. I would have liked to have spent less time with Gaspar at soccer games and more on his plans for addressing the cult.
However, on the whole, the book is a fun, if very dark read. It also serves well as a critique of Argentina's moneyed class and of colonialism in general, and how money sticks with money even across borders. Here, Argentina's wealthy have more in common with English money than with the Argentine lower classes (and that's how they want it). The cult, populated at its upper echelons by the privileged, is an almost literal blight on the land, willing to sacrifice an endless amount of blood, local and otherwise, to beg power off a hungry and unknown supernatural entity.
It brutalizes its mediums, which it often plucks from poverty to wring for power and then discard. Juan was adopted away from his own poor family at six, under the insistence his parents would not be able to pay for the medical care he needed, and he is the least-abused of the cult's line of mediums. As soon as the cult sets their eye on his son, Juan must begin scheming how to keep Gaspar away from them.
Although he acts out of love of his son, Juan is also a deeply flawed person. He is secretive, moody, lies constantly (there is actual gaslighting here) and doesn't hesitate to knock Gaspar around to make him obey. The more he deteriorates--a common problem with all cult mediums--the less human he becomes. Part of this is his work, but much of it is also attributable to years of being used by the cult for its ends and the accumulated emotional trauma. This, of course, is then inflicted on Gaspar through his father's tempers and secrets.
Similarly flawed are the other members of the immediate family. Juan's wife Rosario, despite a better nature than her parents, still supports this cult and is eager for Gaspar to follow in his father's footsteps as a cult medium, in part for the prestige it will bring her as his mother. Gaspar, although far more empathetic and gentle than either of his parents, eventually grows up with his father's temper. Watching him grow from a sweet-natured little boy into the troubled young adult he becomes after years of his father's abuse and neglect is painful, but realistic.
The book is also unexpectedly queer. It's not often a book surprises me with its queerness, because that's usually what landed it on my radar in the first place, but this one did. Juan and Rosario are both bisexual and later in the book we spend some active time in Argentina's queer scene, including during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
An ambitious novel that for the most part, pulls off what it's trying to do. As mentioned, I wish the ending had gotten more room to breathe, and I would not have minded this coming at the cost of some of the middle bits of navel-gazing, but I still felt the story was satisfying.
The book begins with Juan, a powerful but ill man who acts as a "medium" for the cult to commune with its dark god. Juan, struggling with the health of his defective heart, the wear-and-tear of years as the medium, and the grief and rage of his wife's recent death (he suspects, at the orders of the cult he serves) is desperate to keep his son Gaspar from stepping into his shoes, as the cult wants. Juan's opening segment of the book is about his efforts to protect Gaspar.
From there, the book branches off into other perspectives which give background to both the cult and the family. This is a great way of giving us a holistic and generational view of the cult, but it does drag occasionally. Gaspar's sections--in his childhood and then later in his teens/young adulthood--together make up the majority of the book, and while enjoyable, do amble off into great detail about his and his friends' day-to-day lives, such that I did wonder sometimes when we were getting back to the plot. I don't like to cite pacing issues, because I think that gets thrown around a lot whenever someone didn't vibe with a book, but the drawn-out length of these quotidian sections doesn't fit well with how quickly the climax of the book passes and is wrapped up. I would have liked to have spent less time with Gaspar at soccer games and more on his plans for addressing the cult.
However, on the whole, the book is a fun, if very dark read. It also serves well as a critique of Argentina's moneyed class and of colonialism in general, and how money sticks with money even across borders. Here, Argentina's wealthy have more in common with English money than with the Argentine lower classes (and that's how they want it). The cult, populated at its upper echelons by the privileged, is an almost literal blight on the land, willing to sacrifice an endless amount of blood, local and otherwise, to beg power off a hungry and unknown supernatural entity.
It brutalizes its mediums, which it often plucks from poverty to wring for power and then discard. Juan was adopted away from his own poor family at six, under the insistence his parents would not be able to pay for the medical care he needed, and he is the least-abused of the cult's line of mediums. As soon as the cult sets their eye on his son, Juan must begin scheming how to keep Gaspar away from them.
Although he acts out of love of his son, Juan is also a deeply flawed person. He is secretive, moody, lies constantly (there is actual gaslighting here) and doesn't hesitate to knock Gaspar around to make him obey. The more he deteriorates--a common problem with all cult mediums--the less human he becomes. Part of this is his work, but much of it is also attributable to years of being used by the cult for its ends and the accumulated emotional trauma. This, of course, is then inflicted on Gaspar through his father's tempers and secrets.
Similarly flawed are the other members of the immediate family. Juan's wife Rosario, despite a better nature than her parents, still supports this cult and is eager for Gaspar to follow in his father's footsteps as a cult medium, in part for the prestige it will bring her as his mother. Gaspar, although far more empathetic and gentle than either of his parents, eventually grows up with his father's temper. Watching him grow from a sweet-natured little boy into the troubled young adult he becomes after years of his father's abuse and neglect is painful, but realistic.
The book is also unexpectedly queer. It's not often a book surprises me with its queerness, because that's usually what landed it on my radar in the first place, but this one did. Juan and Rosario are both bisexual and later in the book we spend some active time in Argentina's queer scene, including during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
An ambitious novel that for the most part, pulls off what it's trying to do. As mentioned, I wish the ending had gotten more room to breathe, and I would not have minded this coming at the cost of some of the middle bits of navel-gazing, but I still felt the story was satisfying.
Science
Feb. 21st, 2026 08:06 pmysabetwordsmithScientists just mapped mysterious earthquakes deep inside Earth
Scientists at Stanford have unveiled the first-ever global map of rare earthquakes that rumble deep within Earth’s mantle rather than its crust. Long debated and notoriously difficult to confirm, these elusive quakes turn out to cluster in regions like the Himalayas and near the Bering Strait. By developing a breakthrough method that distinguishes mantle quakes using subtle differences in seismic waves, researchers identified hundreds of these hidden tremors worldwide.
Scientists at Stanford have unveiled the first-ever global map of rare earthquakes that rumble deep within Earth’s mantle rather than its crust. Long debated and notoriously difficult to confirm, these elusive quakes turn out to cluster in regions like the Himalayas and near the Bering Strait. By developing a breakthrough method that distinguishes mantle quakes using subtle differences in seismic waves, researchers identified hundreds of these hidden tremors worldwide.
Eldest Prince Above fic
Feb. 22nd, 2026 12:58 pmthawrecka in c_entFinding Moments (627 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 长公主在上 | Zhǎng Gōng Zhǔ Zài Shàng (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gu Xuanqing/Li Yunzhen
Characters: Gu Xuanqing, Li Yunzhen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 长公主在上 | Zhǎng Gōng Zhǔ Zài Shàng (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gu Xuanqing/Li Yunzhen
Characters: Gu Xuanqing, Li Yunzhen
(no subject)
Feb. 22nd, 2026 12:57 pmthawreckaFinding Moments (627 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 长公主在上 | Zhǎng Gōng Zhǔ Zài Shàng (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gu Xuanqing/Li Yunzhen
Characters: Gu Xuanqing, Li Yunzhen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 长公主在上 | Zhǎng Gōng Zhǔ Zài Shàng (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gu Xuanqing/Li Yunzhen
Characters: Gu Xuanqing, Li Yunzhen
(no subject)
Feb. 21st, 2026 08:14 pmshadaras1.
I'm far enough from the coast that the blizzard spinning up to hit the Northeastern USA tomorrow/monday is ~only~ going to be a major storm, but still, man. Forecast of another foot of snow when not all the snow from the last big storm has been cleared? And this time wet snow and wind? It isn't going to be fun! I don't expect a power outage but it sure is a possibility, and I expect work to be cancelled on Monday because of this. (I wistfully hope for Tuesday as well but it doesn't seem likely in this industry; so long as the roads are clear-ish and the parking lot and site are plowed enough to get in, it'll be open.)
2.
Went to the other local dojo (not mine, but our cousin dojo; they're about the same distance from where I live now, but that was not always the case) this past Thursday out of "I have Energy right now and also god I miss people and the practice." Absolutely delighted all of them by showing up, and when I was like "yeah Thursday evening fits my schedule better right now" they were all "soooo you're gonna keep coming then?"
And, well, yeah. I will! I like those people! Also I'm going to be taking nidan in a few months and I should be taking class once a week at least in the lead-up to that, just to keep the practice in my body even if it isn't practice dedicated to that test. The sensei there will kindly give me some opportunities to practice with an eye towards the test, especially since his own yudansha like training with me, but it isn't something he needs to do. Neither is the yundansha offering to stick around after class to do specific training with me; that's out of the kindness of their hearts and friendship, and it is truly lovely.
3.
Sometimes I think about what "being good at X" means to me and then sigh about how yeah okay I am generally comparing myself to people who I personally perceive as being "good at X", which tends to mean "better than I am", which means that it is going to be a skewed perspective.
This brought to you by thoughts about cooking. xD.
Thought A: going "...wait if you're asking about salt because you normally salt your rice, please eat some before you do because I salt the rice water (a thing I hadn't realised you don't remember to do)" at a friend last night.
Thought B: ...yeah okay the ability to eyeball pancake ingredients and their ratios and make proper pancakes without needing to keep adding more wet/dry ingredients is a learned skill and speaks to Knowing Things About Cooking. (didn't add enough leavening agent but also I do not actually care if I eat flat pancakes xD they don't need to be fluffy so long as they're Good Flavor.)
Thought C: my belief that if I cook something I will like the thing I cooked even if I was going "idk this is probably a good combination of flavors/stuff" rather than following a recipe, and that the main thing keeping me from being better at cooking is "having more kitchen gadgets" and "bothering to look up recipes to follow instructions" and not "an inability to pull that off", is not a mindset that a lot of people have? I think? Which seems odd to me but I do just Like Cooking, even if it isn't a Major Hobby the way it is for some folk I know.
4.
I spent like all of Tuesday dead of migraine and didn't feel human until maaaaybe Wednesday evening but realistically Thursday morning when I woke up and was like "oh wow I was Out Of It". I am dearly hoping that this nor'easter blizzard isn't going to lead to something similar, but, well. It's the sort of thing that likely will anyway.
5.
Relatedly, I have not written much this past week because of brain being melty and also Doing Things With People. Weird.
But people are good, and I like hanging out with them once I get myself to actually Do That. Initiation/activation energy is the harder part than socialising, and I usually remember this consciously but that doesn't make it easier to apply that knowledge consistently.
6.
hafnia started running the short-form airship heist Eberron campaign I've been hyped about for like six months. xD Finally got to play my Warforged Cleric last weekend! And started getting a sense of the Eberron as it's interpreted for this campaign world, which also means starting to have feelings about what I want to do for the long-form campaign that'll happen after. (Half-Elf, wings, Mark of Detection. Normal stuff! Probably a soulknife rogue or a circle of the moon druid, possibly a bard of some sort; depends on LORE and also if I can bear to part from skillmonkey nonsense.)
The Warforged Cleric is a fun character, though, and it's always a joy to start playing a character and see them start turning into a Person rather than a Vague Concept. I hear that some people can plan things more? But nah, I write a sketch of backstory and a few prominent character traits and the rest can develop through play and interaction.
Conduit (it/its) is a Cleric who, like pretty much all Warforged, served in the Last War. Since the war ended, it and its squadmates have been building a Warforged enclave/outpost in the lower reaches of Sharn, and have recently been going "wait fuck there are organics who want to live here too because we've made a safe place" and realising that this requires More Money than they have. So Conduit, as one of the community leaders and someone oriented towards healing/caretaking anyway, is very willing to take a moderately sketchy job stealing an airship when it's offered.
This surely will not have Consequences!
The next session (for my group; this is being run for a few different sets of players) is tomorrow, in a feat of "wow everyone has two weeks in a row free?" that is rarely managed xD The Consequences will begin coming to roost then, I'm sure, and force all of the PCs (who have no particular attachment to each other) to interact more and give a shit about something other than the coin and their personal lives.
7.
In utterly unrelated fannish things, I am excited for the Witch Hat Atelier anime! It has a full trailer and an air-date now! It is making me want to reread the manga, especially since I think I'd have an even better time with it going in with expectations of "slow-burn story about insular mage cults" rather than "cute slice-of-life mentorship story". (It is both of these things. I like both of these things. Only hearing about the latter when the former begins taking a greater share of the plot is a very ??? thing to experience when one binge-reads manga.)
anyway here's the trailer!
I'm far enough from the coast that the blizzard spinning up to hit the Northeastern USA tomorrow/monday is ~only~ going to be a major storm, but still, man. Forecast of another foot of snow when not all the snow from the last big storm has been cleared? And this time wet snow and wind? It isn't going to be fun! I don't expect a power outage but it sure is a possibility, and I expect work to be cancelled on Monday because of this. (I wistfully hope for Tuesday as well but it doesn't seem likely in this industry; so long as the roads are clear-ish and the parking lot and site are plowed enough to get in, it'll be open.)
2.
Went to the other local dojo (not mine, but our cousin dojo; they're about the same distance from where I live now, but that was not always the case) this past Thursday out of "I have Energy right now and also god I miss people and the practice." Absolutely delighted all of them by showing up, and when I was like "yeah Thursday evening fits my schedule better right now" they were all "soooo you're gonna keep coming then?"
And, well, yeah. I will! I like those people! Also I'm going to be taking nidan in a few months and I should be taking class once a week at least in the lead-up to that, just to keep the practice in my body even if it isn't practice dedicated to that test. The sensei there will kindly give me some opportunities to practice with an eye towards the test, especially since his own yudansha like training with me, but it isn't something he needs to do. Neither is the yundansha offering to stick around after class to do specific training with me; that's out of the kindness of their hearts and friendship, and it is truly lovely.
3.
Sometimes I think about what "being good at X" means to me and then sigh about how yeah okay I am generally comparing myself to people who I personally perceive as being "good at X", which tends to mean "better than I am", which means that it is going to be a skewed perspective.
This brought to you by thoughts about cooking. xD.
Thought A: going "...wait if you're asking about salt because you normally salt your rice, please eat some before you do because I salt the rice water (a thing I hadn't realised you don't remember to do)" at a friend last night.
Thought B: ...yeah okay the ability to eyeball pancake ingredients and their ratios and make proper pancakes without needing to keep adding more wet/dry ingredients is a learned skill and speaks to Knowing Things About Cooking. (didn't add enough leavening agent but also I do not actually care if I eat flat pancakes xD they don't need to be fluffy so long as they're Good Flavor.)
Thought C: my belief that if I cook something I will like the thing I cooked even if I was going "idk this is probably a good combination of flavors/stuff" rather than following a recipe, and that the main thing keeping me from being better at cooking is "having more kitchen gadgets" and "bothering to look up recipes to follow instructions" and not "an inability to pull that off", is not a mindset that a lot of people have? I think? Which seems odd to me but I do just Like Cooking, even if it isn't a Major Hobby the way it is for some folk I know.
4.
I spent like all of Tuesday dead of migraine and didn't feel human until maaaaybe Wednesday evening but realistically Thursday morning when I woke up and was like "oh wow I was Out Of It". I am dearly hoping that this nor'easter blizzard isn't going to lead to something similar, but, well. It's the sort of thing that likely will anyway.
5.
Relatedly, I have not written much this past week because of brain being melty and also Doing Things With People. Weird.
But people are good, and I like hanging out with them once I get myself to actually Do That. Initiation/activation energy is the harder part than socialising, and I usually remember this consciously but that doesn't make it easier to apply that knowledge consistently.
6.
hafnia started running the short-form airship heist Eberron campaign I've been hyped about for like six months. xD Finally got to play my Warforged Cleric last weekend! And started getting a sense of the Eberron as it's interpreted for this campaign world, which also means starting to have feelings about what I want to do for the long-form campaign that'll happen after. (Half-Elf, wings, Mark of Detection. Normal stuff! Probably a soulknife rogue or a circle of the moon druid, possibly a bard of some sort; depends on LORE and also if I can bear to part from skillmonkey nonsense.)The Warforged Cleric is a fun character, though, and it's always a joy to start playing a character and see them start turning into a Person rather than a Vague Concept. I hear that some people can plan things more? But nah, I write a sketch of backstory and a few prominent character traits and the rest can develop through play and interaction.
Conduit (it/its) is a Cleric who, like pretty much all Warforged, served in the Last War. Since the war ended, it and its squadmates have been building a Warforged enclave/outpost in the lower reaches of Sharn, and have recently been going "wait fuck there are organics who want to live here too because we've made a safe place" and realising that this requires More Money than they have. So Conduit, as one of the community leaders and someone oriented towards healing/caretaking anyway, is very willing to take a moderately sketchy job stealing an airship when it's offered.
This surely will not have Consequences!
The next session (for my group; this is being run for a few different sets of players) is tomorrow, in a feat of "wow everyone has two weeks in a row free?" that is rarely managed xD The Consequences will begin coming to roost then, I'm sure, and force all of the PCs (who have no particular attachment to each other) to interact more and give a shit about something other than the coin and their personal lives.
7.
In utterly unrelated fannish things, I am excited for the Witch Hat Atelier anime! It has a full trailer and an air-date now! It is making me want to reread the manga, especially since I think I'd have an even better time with it going in with expectations of "slow-burn story about insular mage cults" rather than "cute slice-of-life mentorship story". (It is both of these things. I like both of these things. Only hearing about the latter when the former begins taking a greater share of the plot is a very ??? thing to experience when one binge-reads manga.)
anyway here's the trailer!
Candy Hearts creator reveals!
Feb. 21st, 2026 05:31 pmsnickficA week before the CH deadline, I thought I might have to default on my assignment. I had literally no words and no energy to try to make some. But at the last minute I got a nice, easy, short idea and wrote it in two days, and I was really happy with it. And then somehow in the three days before reveals I wrote two more things! Huh! And also a separate thing for Bulletproof!
for the man who has everything, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 1400 words. 5 times Liam flirted with Noel during the reunion tour, and one time he didn't have to. I WAS NOT going to sign up for CH this year, but a request turned up for Liam/Noel at the very last minute, and I could not possibly refuse. (I've decided that I'm allowed to break my no-signups rule for Oasis requests. It's not like there are lots of them!)
This feels like a spiritual sibling to my vignettes fic from last year, although not in the same continuity. That fic was about their slow relationship rebuild leading up to tour, while this is about rebuilding during the tour, but in both cases it's a lot of short scenes that string together into a bigger whole, relatively sparsely written. This one leans a lot harder on specific canon events, partly because the period during the tour gave us all way more to work with than the period before (which is mostly a total mystery to this day!).
I didn't think I had another of those in me, but once I had the idea the day before the deadline, it all flowed really smoothly. I wrote the last scene and was like "this is way too soppy and cheesy, I'll need to rewrite it," but then I came later to edit and decided it had exactly the right amount of cheese, actually! FEELINGS.
--
14 Capra, Drowning by Numbers (1988), Cissie/Cissie/Cissie/Madgett, 800 words. It happened like this: on a Saturday afternoon, Cissie, Cissie, and Cissie agreed it was time for an experiment.
This movie had been on my radar for a while, I think because I'd seen a Yuletide promo for it? I was motivated to finally watch it when a CH request came up for pinch hit. It's a deeply weird, surrealist meditation on death featuring three women named Cissie and also starring Bernard Hill, and after I finished I was like, "I definitely cannot write fic for this." Then I went to take a shower, had not even gotten into the shower yet when the first line came to me, and I put my clothes back on, sat down, and wrote the whole thing in half an hour.
The fic is partly a "for want of a nail" fix-it of canon, and partly simply a fill for the prompt of the Cissies taking turns with Madgett. I think of all the fic I've written, it's probably one of the least comprehensible for reading canon-blind. I had fun, though, and christened the fandom tag, which is always nice. And the recipient seemed to really like it, which is the most gratifying part of writing something super niche. <3
--
full-service, The Housemaid, Millie/Nina, 2100 words. The obligatory post-canon cunnilingus fic, as you do.
This movie ended with such interesting possibilities for these two, and I knew my friend lioness was requesting them for CH, but what really got me to write this was that there were two entire fics in the fandom tag and neither for this ship. ;___; I wrote it all in a rush over two days, and I think it kind of shows, but I had fun, and maybe people will see the vision and write more of them. I would definitely read more about Millie's post-canon exploits and how her relationship with Nina evolves.
--
tea in the moonlight, The Endless, Aaron/Justin, 1700 words. The red flower knocks Aaron up, with Justin's assistance, and they have to decide what to do about it.
I had about 200 words of this for the Bulletproof tag "complicated but ultimately positive feelings about incestuous mpregnancy," one of maybe half a dozen Bulletproof false starts this year. I didn't think it was going to go anywhere, but after I finished the Housemaid fic, it turned out I still had energy left over, and I wrote the rest of it and posted it that same day.
I didn't end up gifting it to anyone, so as one of exactly twelve fics in the fandom tag, it hasn't gotten much attention. Now I'm kind of second-guessing posting it at all, or at least posting so soon without letting it sit for a while and giving it another editing pass. It's not remotely on the same level as my other Endless fic. OTOH I do really like the weird incesty mpreg feelings in it. IDK.
for the man who has everything, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 1400 words. 5 times Liam flirted with Noel during the reunion tour, and one time he didn't have to. I WAS NOT going to sign up for CH this year, but a request turned up for Liam/Noel at the very last minute, and I could not possibly refuse. (I've decided that I'm allowed to break my no-signups rule for Oasis requests. It's not like there are lots of them!)
This feels like a spiritual sibling to my vignettes fic from last year, although not in the same continuity. That fic was about their slow relationship rebuild leading up to tour, while this is about rebuilding during the tour, but in both cases it's a lot of short scenes that string together into a bigger whole, relatively sparsely written. This one leans a lot harder on specific canon events, partly because the period during the tour gave us all way more to work with than the period before (which is mostly a total mystery to this day!).
I didn't think I had another of those in me, but once I had the idea the day before the deadline, it all flowed really smoothly. I wrote the last scene and was like "this is way too soppy and cheesy, I'll need to rewrite it," but then I came later to edit and decided it had exactly the right amount of cheese, actually! FEELINGS.
--
14 Capra, Drowning by Numbers (1988), Cissie/Cissie/Cissie/Madgett, 800 words. It happened like this: on a Saturday afternoon, Cissie, Cissie, and Cissie agreed it was time for an experiment.
This movie had been on my radar for a while, I think because I'd seen a Yuletide promo for it? I was motivated to finally watch it when a CH request came up for pinch hit. It's a deeply weird, surrealist meditation on death featuring three women named Cissie and also starring Bernard Hill, and after I finished I was like, "I definitely cannot write fic for this." Then I went to take a shower, had not even gotten into the shower yet when the first line came to me, and I put my clothes back on, sat down, and wrote the whole thing in half an hour.
The fic is partly a "for want of a nail" fix-it of canon, and partly simply a fill for the prompt of the Cissies taking turns with Madgett. I think of all the fic I've written, it's probably one of the least comprehensible for reading canon-blind. I had fun, though, and christened the fandom tag, which is always nice. And the recipient seemed to really like it, which is the most gratifying part of writing something super niche. <3
--
full-service, The Housemaid, Millie/Nina, 2100 words. The obligatory post-canon cunnilingus fic, as you do.
This movie ended with such interesting possibilities for these two, and I knew my friend lioness was requesting them for CH, but what really got me to write this was that there were two entire fics in the fandom tag and neither for this ship. ;___; I wrote it all in a rush over two days, and I think it kind of shows, but I had fun, and maybe people will see the vision and write more of them. I would definitely read more about Millie's post-canon exploits and how her relationship with Nina evolves.
--
tea in the moonlight, The Endless, Aaron/Justin, 1700 words. The red flower knocks Aaron up, with Justin's assistance, and they have to decide what to do about it.
I had about 200 words of this for the Bulletproof tag "complicated but ultimately positive feelings about incestuous mpregnancy," one of maybe half a dozen Bulletproof false starts this year. I didn't think it was going to go anywhere, but after I finished the Housemaid fic, it turned out I still had energy left over, and I wrote the rest of it and posted it that same day.
I didn't end up gifting it to anyone, so as one of exactly twelve fics in the fandom tag, it hasn't gotten much attention. Now I'm kind of second-guessing posting it at all, or at least posting so soon without letting it sit for a while and giving it another editing pass. It's not remotely on the same level as my other Endless fic. OTOH I do really like the weird incesty mpreg feelings in it. IDK.
