sad professor fakeout

I wrote one thing for Yuletide this year, and it wasn't even my assignment:

So what happened was, I made an offer that was the "yeah sure what the hell" offer that I should not have been surprised to have been assigned. And I wasn't, I was like "yeah this might as well happen." It was Our Retired Explorer Dines With Michel Foucault, Paris 1962 by The Weakerthans. I know nothing about Michel Foucault and wasn't super keen to learn, so I wrote like 200 words of arctic academia and got stuck. Shocking. Even more shockingly I had an idea for a completely different thing that wouldn't leave me alone. On the recommendation of friends I defaulted, which turned out to be a great plan because it was a day before the default deadline. What I actually wrote was

Heaven (or someplace as nice) (3210 words) by izzybeth
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Decameron (TV), The Good Place (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Neifile (The Decameron 2024) & Panfilo (The Decameron 2024)
Characters: Panfilo (The Decameron 2024), Neifile (The Decameron 2024), Janet (The Good Place)
Additional Tags: Queerplatonic Relationships, Afterlife, No Character Death, Everyone's already dead
Summary: The beautiful, not-infected afterlife.

I watched The Decameron on Netflix and got kind of obsessed? Actually Good depiction of the late medieval period? Beautiful and accurate medieval interiors?? Catholicism as a part of everyday life??? Italy on the cusp of the Renaissance??!? And the occasional 1980s needle drop used to truly excellent effect. I'm not kidding, this is basically everything I wanted in the middle ages on a screen that I had no idea media was even capable of. And it is truly a fucking crime that it didn't hit on tumblr. You should watch it. I'll shill for it some more if you need more convincing.

And then I saw that a pinch hitter had made a Decameron request. I wasn't really expecting to get much feedback (yuletide fandoms already have limited audiences, and a crossover limits it even more), but a few people seem to have liked it! And the giftee was happy, so I am honestly delighted. yay

It's well past time I should have done this, but I'm having trouble being excited about things and talking about myself with any amount of enthusiasm (or indeed without being self-deprecating), so I'm just gonna drop some links:

What I wrote for Yuletide: historia naturalis gentis anglorum, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum | Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Bede. Sparrows, nature, the Staffordshire Hoard is a character. One of the weirder things I've ever written but I really like it.

What I got for Yuletide: Things Janet Knows by AngstBlanket, The Good Place. This was sweet and fun and has a really fantastic textual rendering of a Janet reboot.

and Bei Wind und Wetter by azhdarchidaen, Pentiment. An alternate reality where Andreas and Caspar survive the fire. It's just lovely and wonderful.

What I wrote for Pentiment Winter Fest: A Missed Meal. Sister Zdena and Brother Guy gossip and are bitchy. This was fun.

What I got for Pentiment Winter Fest: A little artist get together by TryingToChill. Art! I got art! And it's so sweet! Adult Caspar, recovering Andreas, Ulrike and Little Andreas being very round. I love it.

So yeah, once again I wrote for fests and exchanges in 2023 and for literally nothing else, surprising no one

My gift this year was delightful. It's both funny and a little bit tragic, and their Rosencrantz voice is absolutely perfect.

A Spirit Too Delicate (1291 words) by Roadsterguy
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rosencrantz (Hamlet), Guildenstern (Hamlet), Hamlet (Hamlet), Polonius (Hamlet), Ophelia (Hamlet)
Additional Tags: Love Letters, Meta, Absurd, Norway (Country)
Summary: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, as always, trying to figure out what's going on. Particularly, why does nobody seem to remember that Ophelia has interests beyond just dancing about and strewing flowers?

Things* what I wrote for Yuletide 2k22:

(love,) without retention or restraint (2235 words) by izzybeth
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Maria & Olivia (Twelfth Night), Maria & Sebastian (Twelfth Night)
Characters: Maria (Twelfth Night), Olivia (Twelfth Night), Sebastian (Twelfth Night)
Additional Tags: Framing Story, Flashbacks, Female Friendship, f/f if you squint
Summary: Sebastian needs to know Olivia, and so goes to the one who knows her best.

and

does dim arian gan ddreigiau (dragons don't have money) (287 words) by izzybeth
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Duolingo: Welsh
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Owen (Duolingo: Welsh), Dragon (Duolingo: Welsh)
Additional Tags: Agriculture, Parsnips, Gardens & Gardening
Summary: Owen just wants to sell his parsnips. The dragon doesn't help at all.

I feel like it's cheating to say the Duolingo fic is 287 words when chapter 2 is just the English translation of chapter 1, but oh well. (I feel doubly like it's cheating because the Duolingo kind of popped while the Twelfth Night didn't so much.)

*yes I wrote more than one thing, no no one is more surprised than me

I wrote a gift and a treat for yuletide, and Here They Are:

he hatz nere that he soght (he is close to what he sought), The Green Knight. Honestly I was a bit worried someone might catch me out on this one since I keep doing the thing where the title is in some sort of no-longer-spoken English, whoops. Contains skeletons, stolen dialogue, stolen poetry, a little bit of blood, and probably a lot of pretension.

as far as i know nothing's wrong, Empire Records. just a bit of post-movie fluff. Literally nothing happens (but the movie's also light on plot, so).

(I meant to post this a lot earlier but Nelle distracted me with Star Wars and some light day drinking, which is both simple and effective.)

You can always tell it's yuletide season when a huge dude in head-to-toe green crashes your party and demands that someone play the most hardcore game of chicken ever. (And then some young idiot says "ok let's go bro" and you know that none of this is going to end well.) (In this scenario you are King Arthur.)

Happy yuletimes, author! I am so excited about my requests! And my offers! And everything! Gosh I just love yuletide. I am super excited to see what you, dear author, choose to write! I hope that my Optional Details are helpful (and not annoying, I did kinda go on for a while.) I will probably tweak this (nothing major!) until assignments go out, but then I'll stop.

( psst under here )

If you are in doubt about anything, please talk to shihadchick and/or lovelokest . These two know what I like. Also please see my tumblr to get a feel for what I like when I'm relentlessly on my bullshit. And thank you again, lovely author! I can't wait to read what you write!

Arthurian Mythology, loose me when ye list, for i am bound, Gawain/Dame Ragnell. The prose is gorgeous and there are sources and I am in love. (if you want the paywalled article pls ask, I have access)

14th Century RPF, Sponsor, Edward III of England/Philippa of Hainault. I'll just steal the summary because: "Marrying the king of England is overwhelming; supporting him is surprisingly easy."

Enola Holmes, every vine climbing and blossoming, Enola/Tewksbury. Tewksbury is the target of an(other) assassination plot, but this time he has something up his sleeve (maybe not his sleeve exactly). CUTE.

The Good Place, Vicky has a bad idea. Does what it says on the tin. Demons behaving badly and inventing meetings.

The Good Place, The Three People, One Dog, and One Non-Human Non-Robot Not-a-Girl You Meet in Heaven, Janet/Jason. This is hilarious and feelsy at the same time and I'm totally not weepy at all, YOU are.

Hamlet, silver lining, strike me down, Hamlet/Horatio. Horatio clearly doesn't know why he likes this guy but is kinda thirsty anyway.

The Martian, Falling Slowly, Back to Earth. The crew of the Hermes are dedicated literary critics. Adorable.

The Perilous Gard, then march this heathen company. Oh Alicia NO. or, Alicia Gonna Alicia (no matter what Kate does).

The Secret Garden, Perennial. What if Mary's parents hadn't died of cholera in India, what if Martha was actually Mridula, and what if there still was a garden?

Twelfth Night, Love's Labours Lost, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Malvolio takes a walk through the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Who knew Malvolio could learn tact and discretion?

Untitled Goose Game, Among Us, Amon Goose, or Untitled Impostor Game. A perfect mashup of incredibly weird shit that is hilarious and horrific. Everything that yuletide should be.

The Yellow Wallpaper, Before the Yellow Wallpaper. holy shit this is creepy. aaah. the children especially. aaaaah.

probably more later

hey y'all here are some yuletide fics that I liked

( Read more... )

did I miss anything that an elizabeth might enjoy? drop your recs here!

(Multiple posts in a month! Don't expect this to last once the semester starts; I'll be up to my armpits in work again.)

OK, so as if I didn't whine enough in my last post:

I am BROKEN. I don't know what the hell I did, but my right calf muscle is all effed up. Sometime before the end of the semester (which is how I measure time now, so this would be early December for those of you measuring time normally), walking around suddenly produced this stretching pain in my right calf. I was like "huh." It went away, mostly. Then on New Years Eve, I was going downstairs at my dad's to get the box of red to make mulled wine, and I felt something *POP* in my calf. And it suddenly hurt a whole fucking lot. And kept hurting, but I stayed off of it and ignored it because that's what you do when you don't have health insurance. It went away, mostly. Then last Friday (Jan 4) I went errand running after work, and oh my GOD it hurt. Like fuck me sideways, OW. It went away, mostly.

And then today. O, Today. So whatever is up with this dumb muscle, it doesn't appreciate the cold. Today was colder than it's been so far this winter. I wore my Actual Winter Coat for the first time. So I got off the bus to walk a damn block to my job, and the whole calf just like seized up or something, and I was noticeably limping as I went around the corner. Charter Street goes up a hill, and I don't even have to go up the whole thing, and by the time I got to the building where I work I was puffing and swearing and in a whole lot of pain. I sat at my job for a whole! two! hours! trying to decide what to do, and finally was like "look, I'm going to the clinic now" (I can go to the student clinic and get seen without insurance which is nice). And my job was like "you should do that." So I did, and the doctor was very nice and pushed at pulled and prodded at me a bit and said "yeah you probably tore it a little, why don't you come back tomorrow and see the athletic PT people, they can give you some exercises and good stuff." Which is what I'm doing.

Nelle the blessed housemate is lending me her crutches from when she sprained her ankle, and has made me promise to use them. She also bought me a heating pad which is unbelievably nice feeling, and I took anti-inflammatories and am resting it. Ugh, I just wish I knew what I DID. It's just so STUPID, why is this HAPPENING.

Also they cancelled one of my spring semester classes. Women and Gender in the US to 1870, we hardly knew ye. And now I have to fuckin find something to replace it in like a week and a half. That has enough credits, counts toward one of my degrees, and fits into both my existing class and work schedules. Cool. cool cool cool cool cool.

This Yuletide has been awfully nice, in that I did not sign up (small sigh) but then there were All These Stories just Magically Made Available For Me yesterday? Here, have some (extremely on-brand) recs:

( psst under here )

I have not yet read the four (FOUR!!!) fics for the Voynich Manuscript (THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT!!! what the fuck fandom), but I'll get there.

(PS I sort of regret not signing up this year, but it is obviously not the end of the world and perhaps next year I'll have worked out what this Time Management thing is (ha ha ha) and I'll get to sign up again.)

(it, of course, being me)

So hey, yeah, hi, I guess we're doing this? I shall give it a try. I'm typing horizontally because summer break is almost over (we'll discuss this in a moment), a bunch of my city is mildly underwater, and I just took a selfie and it was horrible. So I'm lying down to get over it.

I don't know and I don't care to know how long it's been since I've written anything in here, so I'm not going to try to update from the last post whenever that was. I shall just say that the spring semester went better than I expected (an A in the grad level seminar, ABs in the other three classes: transgender in history, Intro to East Asian Civ, and all-Divine-Comedy-all-the-time). Still not on the dean's list though? Which, fine, my fancypants university has a higher GPA standard for the dean's list than my community college, but still I'm slightly put out.

I was supposed to take two classes this summer, both three credits, one four weeks and one eight weeks. I dropped the four week one because my dad had to go to the hospital in June for some heart-related shit. He is fine and all fixed, but being out of commission for three days out of a three credit four week class basically did me in there, so I had to drop it. The other one was Neural Basis of Communication (aka The Awful Brain Class, you may have seen me bitch about it on twitter), which apparently I needed because I was missing a bio science requirement. STORYTIME: Back in September 2016, I had a meeting with UW-Madison's history department advisor, who told me that the bio science class I had taken at Madison College was totally cool and transferred and filled that requirement. Fast forward to November 2017. I was trying to pick classes for spring, and I hadn't properly declared my major yet so I went to see the general Letters and Science advisors who told me "NOPE that class doesn't count, you need a bio science! Here's a list of bio science classes that may appeal to non-STEM majors!" And I said "ugh great thanks I guess," which is how I ended up taking Brain Class this summer. And it was hell, friends. It was an online class, and I hate online classes. The professor chose to assume everyone in the class was a neuroscience major, and therefore she decided she didn't have to explain some kind of basic and therefore necessary concepts and ideas. Also I didn't mention this on twitter (what happens on DW stays on DW, guys), but she also accused me of academic misconduct, by which I mean she thought I cheated on a test. It turns out Canvas (which is an online thing like Blackboard) can tell when you have other tabs open in a window where you're taking a test. I was nervous about the test and I forgot to close my tabs, and the prof gave me a zero. The lowest test score was dropped and I ended up getting a C, which is honestly what I expected and wanted, but I lost some sleep over that. I PASSED, IT'S DONE, NO MORE MATH OR SCIENCE EVER.

So now I'm pretty much just killing the last few weeks until the fall semester starts on the 5th. I am super excited about my classes though. I have Intro to Islamic Law, a medieval lit class on monsters and other cool shit, Elementary Latin, and Old English (two languages because they're only offered in the fall semester and this is my last fall semester and I hate myself and I'm going to die). The same prof is teaching Old English and the lit class, and he is a medieval scholar of some prominence, so I'm gonna try not to be too annoying. As I said to a friend at work, either he's gonna get super sick of me or we're gonna be besties. Hoping for the latter, especially wrt grad school. ugh ugh I have no idea what I'm doing about that yet don't ask me idk idk. I'm working myself up to spending $$$ on books, and now I feel like I should plug my ko.fi or venmo or whatever. I don't have any of those things. I have a poor is what I have.

Also I've been painting my nails a lot. Which is fun, and unlike makeup that you put on your face, if you fuck it up no one notices. Standards are low and I appreciate that. I have been using a lot of sparkly shit, which I have decided I like. However, it's fake holo and I need some real holo. (The difference is that in the stuff I have, each individual sparkle is just one color. Proper holo sparkles shift through the spectrum. Fuckin cheap ass Sally Hansen.)

And that's it. What I really should do now is start clipping for the Good Place vid I've been wanting to make since like March? I know I told Claire about it when she was here and it was cold and not May. do it izzyyyyy