queue | y'all

I wrote the first thousand words of this while we were in the Lakes, and it's sort of dithered in my Scrivener ever since. Swoony romance, idk. And also an accident involving an e-bike, which was for a long time the only known feature of this story, plus a minor tour of Scottish folk music. I actually quite like it, I hope you do too.

to pull wild mountain thyme (what we need is here) (7216 words) by raven
Fandom: Shetland (TV)
Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez, Alison McIntosh & Jimmy Perez
Characters: Duncan Hunter, Jimmy Perez, Alison McIntosh
Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Ghosts, Magical Realism, Romance, big swoony romance, I’m having a time

This little house could be the world’s heart. This place, Duncan thinks, with awful wryness, is his heart.

(On music; ghosts; coming home.)

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I have now made salsa verde! I went with a simple version where I just ran tomatillos, onion, chili, and cilantro in a blender, fried the result in some oil and cooked it for a while, added salt, and bottled it. It is delicious: at once sour, fruity, and spicy. Last year I was like: oh, tomatillo, that's a cool crop I've never grown before, but what should I do with it? I see now that salsa verde is its destiny.

I was also going to save some seeds from the tomatillo I harvested, but to my surprise, none of them had seeds at all, even the fruits which were obviously mature! And there were no small immature seeds, either. *baffled* I mean, I grew mine from seed (that I got from someone else), so obviously the variety has seeds. I have two plants close together, having read that they need cross-pollination to set fruit. Does anyone have an explanation? The variety is Queen of Malinalco.

ETA: Completely unrelatedly, check out this version of Bella Ciao. *goosebumps*

Tags:

food,
the farm

I never met Tim Curry, but back in the 1980s I saw him in a production of Shakespeare's "Pericles, Prince of Tyre", at Chautauqua Institution. Chautauqua has probably half a dozen stages here and there on its grounds; this performance was at an outdoor stage, not under cover, and we did keep checking the clouds to make sure the rain that was predicted wouldn't stop the show.

It was a small production; I suspect the audience may have been 200 at most. We were all fairly close to the stage.

What I remember most of all was the shipwreck. Shakespeare's plays have plenty of shipwrecks -- they're a standard plot bit in Twelfth Night, The Tempest and quite a few others. But here the wreck didn't happen offstage, it was front and center.

To portray the shipwreck, the entire cast became the ship. Tim was at the front as the figurehead, with his arms back around the shoulders of two people whose arms were on his shoulders and on two more behind them and so on. Their upper bodies stayed fairly still, but their legs *writhed* and so the whole assembled ship pitched and yawed on the invisible waves. And the cast is all still talking during this, describing what is happening until the ship breaks, and they all fall to the groumd.

It was spectacular. I still can see in my mind Tim Curry being a figurehead, saying his lines sardonically. I wish I'd had the chance to meet him, but the sidestage area was crowded when it ended and I didn't want to have to deal with that.

After much checking up with the Apple support person (who honestly didn't seem to believe that I could have 25 tabs open in two browsers without problems), the answer to the signal problem was the operating system. Apparently several of the updates that I've scheduled to happen late at night never happened. So now I have the latest operating system and everything works again.

And I am still crying about Dolly and Tim, and the drummer from ZZTop.

I made some things!
all hockey rpf

game for anything by demotu (36 min, rated E) - the first and currently only edmonton polycule podfic on ao3!

older, younger, both by notthequiettype (13 min, rated E) - really sweet established mcdrai, reminsicing about the clumsy sex they had at age 19

heat check by jolach (27 min, rated T) - mike richards, in philly for the flyers alumni game, finds trevor zegras in the parking lot

and I received some things!

from LittleRedRobinHood: heat check by jolach - yes, we did the same one for each other!

from LittleRedRobinHood: trying to be better in the morning by kitnita - jake oettinger/jason robertson drunk married in vegas fic, cute as heck!

and from sis_rambles: Thank You by WerewolvesAreReal - a tiny temeraire podfic, in which Emily writes a thank you note to Lady Allendale

.

Tags:

For some reason I'm not getting enough internet signal here to watch a reel on FB, let alone load pages without waiting or go into Second Life. It's like the 300 baud days are back, but worse. If you don't see me, that's why.

I broke my streak of writing only at Yuletide to pick up a pinch hit for Fandom 5K, because I could not resist

lapsedpacifist's prompt "some form of Travis Tate interact[ing] with either Varl or Aloy (or both of them), either right after the events of Zero Dawn or during Forbidden West. Maybe an AI emulation of his personality or his uploaded mind?"

Definitely Not a Goddess (7053 words) by Isis
Fandom: Horizon (Video Games)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Aloy & Travis Tate
Characters: Aloy (Horizon), Varl (Horizon), Zo (Horizon), Travis Tate (Horizon)
Additional Tags: Mentioned Erend (Horizon), The tiniest hint of Varl/Zo, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ted Faro sucks, The GAIA Gang (Horizon), Except they're the Travis Tate Gang, Game: Horizon Forbidden West, Quest: The Eye of the Earth, Some dialogue lifted from canon
Summary: “Turns out that wasn’t a GAIA kernel,” Aloy said to Varl. “That, apparently, is Travis Tate.”

This story probably requires knowledge of the games (both Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West) to make sense (and to be entertaining)! But basically, I've AU'ed the quest in which Aloy activates the main terraforming program GAIA, who appears as a hologram Aloy's people consider the Goddess, such that it's not GAIA's kernel she slots into the computer, but an uploaded copy of the most annoying computer whiz of the Old World. And if you think I was heavily inspired by Dennis E. Taylor's Bobiverse, you are absolutely right.

Tags:

Previous poll review
In the Sleeping conditions poll, 28% of respondents sometimes sleep with wet hair, 50% with slightly damp hair, and 22% neither.

Hugs won the ticky-boxes with 66%, followed by "raccoons cheating at mahjong" and "battling entropy" with 46% each. Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
Same as last week: Mirror Game by Bujold in audio (there was one chapter that nearly had us noping out, but we're continuing on for now), plus graded reading in Chinese. I've just started a story on DuChinese about an aspiring Beijing Opera singer trying to perform in a reality show and discovering no one cares about Beijing Opera anymore -- cue time travel.

Cdramas/Kdramas
We finished The Apartment Job, which was silly fun with plotholes you could drive a bus through. Overall, I enjoyed it, though as with many Kdramas, the ending felt a little shaggy.

Last night we watched the first episode of Reset, starring the female lead from Amidst a Snowstorm of Love and the male lead from First Frost and Mobius. It's Groundhog Day meets Speed, as two people try to figure out how to stop an explosion on a bus. Seems great so far.

And in solo-watching, I finished Find Yourself, which ended in a pleasing if unsurprising way. I spent a while casting around for something else, and then restarted First Frost, at least for now. I might give Meet Yourself a real go at some point: note to self.

Other TV
After a few episodes of Life on Mars, I discovered I don't have the appetite for "period-typical" -isms and general police brutality right now, so we put that aside.

We flew through My Brilliant Career on Netflix, an Australian show set in 1900/1901, which was a delight. It reminded me a bit of The Other Bennett Sister but is more raucous, with fantastic casting (Roddy Ho from Slow Horses as one of the love interests; Mon Mothma from Andor and Dulcie from Deadloch in supporting roles). I guess if you have a sensitive embarrassment squick, there could be some moments of cringe, but it didn't bother me. I thought it was great.

And last night we resubbed to Apple+ and watched the first episodes of Widow's Bay (seems good; gave me flashbacks to every smalltown-America show ever), Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed (a Tatiana Maslany thriller; she's playing a disaster; her ex-husband is Jake Johnson from New Girl and Stumptown), and Margo's Got Money Troubles (comedy starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, and more), in which the daughter of an ex-Hooters waitress and an ex-pro-wrestler has an affair with her college professor and gets pregnant.

Apple+'s catalogue is smaller than Netflix's, of course, but there's quite a bit we want to catch up on: new seasons of Ted Lasso and Shrinking, Slow Horses when it arrives, and so on.

Online life

guardian_wishlist sign-ups are open!! This is our second annual Guardian event, modelled after

fandom_stocking. I love it!

I brutally closed a bunch of browser tabs, but I still have six cluttered windows open, so there's more to do. And I've been reading Dreamwidth on my phone, so not managing to comment much. *waves to you all*

Writing/making things
Haha, no. I haven't been spending much time at my keyboard, too much in thrall to The Apps.

House stuff & related
The MiniDVD camera arrived... I have not figured out how to get it talking to my PC. Anyone had any experience with this?

Language Learning
All-consuming. ( Blather. )

Good things
Sunshine. Language learning: visible/measurable achievements, and challenges ahead. Andrew prettifying the garden, and Halle enjoying being out there with him while he does. New TV shows.

guardian_wishlist. Dreamwidth and you all.

Poll #34985 Parsimony and thoroughness

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

View Respondents

When a tube or pump bottle (eg, moisturiser) stops delivering

View Answers

I throw it away
2 (4.8%)

I go to reasonable lengths to get some of the remaining product out
26 (61.9%)

I will not rest until I've extracted as much product as possible; knives may be involved
17 (40.5%)

I avoid commercial packaging
2 (4.8%)

other
0 (0.0%)

ticky-box full of the big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in
18 (42.9%)

ticky-box full of grammar particles
16 (38.1%)

ticky-box full of doodling in the margins
24 (57.1%)

ticky-box full of kiwi doing high jumps, using their beaks as poles
20 (47.6%)

ticky-box full of hugs
28 (66.7%)

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weekly update

For a variety of reasons -- travel, weather, air quality, workload -- we haven't been kayaking all summer. But this weekend we finally made it out for the first and second times! On Friday we just puttered around on Lake Ontario, but yesterday we went a little ways north to one of our favorite launch spots; it feels like a huge lake but it's actually a calm part of the St Lawrence River (there's no palpable current). We saw a lot of wildlife, and for the first time, I took pictures! Click through for full-size photos if you like.

A turtle on a rock!

I think we saw three in all.

The view across the lake from there, i.e., what the turtle could have been looking at:

Our first pair of swans:

We saw a ton of ducks and geese and cormorants, and I wouldn't normally bother with pictures, but I liked this sight of cormorants in a tree:

Our second pair of swans, this time guiding half-grown cygnets across the water:

We were lucky enough to see at least half a dozen herons and either one osprey several times or several ospreys, but I didn't think I'd get photos because it's not like I can fumble my phone out of my dry bag in time to snap a bird in flight -- but then the osprey perched in a treetop just above us, beside its nest!

(It's a bit hard to see in the photo unless you zoom in, because everything is so backlit; the osprey is at the top right of the tree that's second from the right, and the nest is in the crook of the same tree just below and to the left of the osprey.)

Our second pair of swans, guiding seven cygnets across the water:

And a heron politely posed for a portrait:

And just as we were almost back to our launch point, we saw a third pair of swans nesting at the edge of the reeds, with three cygnets! I very carefully and quietly inched as close as I could, snapping photos all the time; this was the closest I could get before the adult on the right roused itself to get in the water and begin warily eyeing me, at which point of course I backed off.

I even caught a glimpse of a deer on the shore, but it was gone in an instant.

It was a lovely afternoon.

For reasons that don't bear exploration at this juncture, the 2005 Vividcon intro vid came up in conversation with

sanj and

kouredios this evening. We went looking for it, but it doesn't seem to be online anywhere that we could find anymore. This is the "Llama Llama Vid" one made by

tzikeh -- also showed in the History of Intro Vids vidshow that

renenet VJ'd in 2014. Can anyone point me to a place where it's still available online?

Tags:

Crab dip, a cheese biscuit, dark chocolate walnut cookies, an arnold palmer made with watermelon lemonade, grapes, 4lbs of peaches, figs, salt-&-pepper pistachios, and my friends' CSA box because they are out of town this week: 5 ears of corn, a beefsteak tomato, a pint of cherry tomatoes, a watermelon, some other kind of melon (or maybe squash?), a zucchini, a bell pepper, two large jalapenos, and some bagged salad -- that was all from a 'medium share' box that is intended for 1 to 3 people for a week.

I might cut up the watermelon for lunch this week, and I will roasted the corn in the oven tonight, but I'm going to have to think about what to do with the rest of it.

Current Mood: humid

Tags:

farmer's market

I am, uh. Quite embarrassed about this story. It’s 4000w of porn, only, because I’m me, it’s VERY SAD PORN. I told

usuallyhats about it and she identified some more reasons why it would be sad, so it got even sadder and marginally more embarrassing. I hope someone who isn't me likes it.

grief is all the geography we know (4296 words) by raven
Fandom: Shetland (TV)
Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez, Fran Hunter Perez/Jimmy Perez
Characters: Duncan Hunter, Jimmy Perez, Fran Hunter Perez
Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Grief/Mourning, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Voyeurism, Unsafe Sex, Pre-Season/Series 01, Sad Porn, Depression

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Fran looks around her, her eyes wicked. "I want Duncan to fuck you so I can watch."

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It has been five years since I've posted anything to helens78 on AO3 (there are a few bits of hockey RPF on my hrpf pseud, but it's been three years since even those). My fic brain has been extremely dormant, and I'm not even really sure why.

But something I saw today made me want to revisit old friends, and so I did. I don't even know how to warn for spoilers except to say that the Marvel universe has tendrils everywhere, so if you are avoiding any spoilers for anything Marvel right now, even for minor characters, give this a pass. (The thing I saw has already been released, so if you're current as of August 19, 2026, you're in the clear.)

This is the first time I've posted something since Ces passed and I'm not sure I'm going to handle it well. I'm pretty sure I'm already not handling it well. I wish I could share it with her. She'll be a part of my heart forever, especially while I'm writing. I miss her so much.

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In reading news, sort of: back in June I had to stop by the library to renew my card, and while I was there I got talked into signing up for their Summer Reading Challenge, which involved entering what I'd read into their app - the selling point was that they did prize draws, separate for adults and children, and according to the librarian, "There aren't many adults signed up, and the prizes are really good, so you'd have a good chance of winning!"

Yep, I won a big tote bag filled with Stuff: a Constellation Mug (the constellations appear when it's filled with hot liquid), a scented candle, a tea towel, a notepad, several pens, a beer koozie, a t-shirt, a cloth reusable bag, a book (I got to pick from a small selection, and chose The Wide Wide Sea because it seemed up my alley), and a "Book Trove" consisting of a copy of City of Brass with post-its marking where to open each of 7 packages - okay, I've already read it, but it will be fun to read again!

What I've recently finished reading:

Blitz by Daniel O'Malley, which is the 3rd book in the Checquy Files series about the organization of people with weird powers who keep Britain safe from the supernatural. This one has an interesting parallel narrative, alternating a story about the modern-day operatives we know from the previous book (well, sort of; each book so far has centered on new characters, so the familiar characters are only in minor roles here) with a story about, as you might guess from the title, World War II. The stories are really only very tenuously connected, by a reveal nearly at the end, but both are interesting tales. The present day story is about Lyn, a librarian (married, with a child) who abruptly manifests powers and is swiftly taken into the secrecy of the Checquy, which in a way parallels the first book's brilliant amnesia narrative. The historical story is about three young women who are (like all Checquy operatives) chafing at the restriction against involvement in the war (because they don't want their enemies to know that Britain has people with weird powers), and then oops, they accidentally get involved.

I did laugh out loud at this marvelous easter egg, in which Lyn is learning about historical people with powers, who of course concealed them...

The librarian part of Lyn's mind perked up and cleared its throat. "Gaul was ruled by the Romans then, right?" she asked.

"Well, not entirely," said Arndt. "There was some village in Brittany that they never managed to conquer. But apart from that, yes, Gaul was occupied by the Romans."

What I recently finished watching:

Outlander, the last season, which is roughly the book Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone. Mostly I was pleased that it felt much more compact than the rambling doorstopper it was based on, but it was interesting to note the changes from the book (and also to figure out why they made those changes).

Tags:

reading,
viewing

Well, the weaving exhibit is finally up! We had our opening reception on Sunday, I got a lot of lovely compliments, and several hugs from little old ladies, and now I don't really have to think about the exhibit again in any real capacity for at least a month.

I did finally get some help out of the one person who was not very responsive to emails -- I managed to hand over the entire opening reception party planning to her, so all I had to do was relay RSVP numbers to her and leave her to it, and she did fine, and I didn't have to pay attention to that aspect at all, leaving me to focus on getting the exhibit up. I also managed to get the car from my sister for the week, so I also didn't have to bum rides or walk 45 minutes (Google maps claims it's an hour walk from the nearest bus stop, which I'm suspicious of, but I haven't walked the route since the last bus route redo).

It's a pretty nice exhibit, if you're interested in fiber art. I dropped a link in the local fannish discord chat, which is pretty quiet these days. It also made me realize how bad I am at accepting compliments, all the people telling me it looks great or thanking me for doing it, and it's just another thing I have to respond to, rather than actually being able to enjoy the nice words.

Tags:

life,
weaving

Published today at Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.

Tags:

my poems

tribal lore

fic: wild mountain thyme (we'll go there together) [Shetland, m/m]

Seedless tomatillo??

A touch of Curry

(no subject)

summer podfic swap 2026 - reveals!

(no subject)

I wrote something!

Me-and-media update

kayaking!

A long shot: looking for a vid

Farmer's Market -- 22 August 2026 (Salmon Day, 6th of Fruitful, Year 234)

fic: grief is all the geography we know [Shetland, m/m, m/f]

BIG FEELS.

wednesday reads and things

stumbles over finish line

new poem: "Gullable"

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