mf

My plan to cope with daylight saving is to go to bed early and sleep through the worst of it. As this calls for me to go to bed early, there may be a flaw in the plan. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

I spent most of the day with a friend - the Frick art museum, both Central Park zoos, a bowl of noodles and broth. We took our time with the paintings and the parrots, and also the penguins and pinnipeds. We talked about our upcoming birthdays and traded presents, and made general noises towards plans to do it again in a couple of months. We spent about two hours at the bowl restaurant talking fandom and fic, bouncing from crossovers to omegaverse to the importance of a plurality of voices within the community. It was more than welcome.

( Read more... )

Here are some dreams I've had lately!


( Dreams from December to March. )


On a final and unrelated note: I forgot to mention the most important part of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage!

At one point, protagonist Swann comes across a little pile of rabbit droppings. The game gives you the opportunity to point this out to Swann's friends with the dialogue option 'Hey! Poop!'

I did not take this option, because I thought Swann's friends might find it offputting. My real-life friends are a different matter. Tem and I have been saying 'Hey! Poop!' to each other at every opportunity ever since.

In helping one of my clients sort through several decades of personal photos, we found the Polaroids of the man sitting on a bed and masturbating with his head out of frame came with a note where he extorted his adoration for her and his desire to masturbate while she watched. Our best guess is he followed her to her building and gave the doorman some story about knowing her and needing her apartment number to get back in touch.

I didn't get a good look and they're long gone by now. I didn't ask why she'd kept them these last few decades or why she decided now was the time to throw them out, either. But the story lives on, and proof positive unsolicited dick pics have been around for as long as the technology for the pics themselves. It was something I'd suspected and in an odd way, it was nice to see the firsthand confirmation.

Only slightly more surprising was seeing someone else pick a cigarette pack out of the trash, fish through the pack, pull out the last one in there, toss the pack away, and start smoking it. I didn't stay to watch, knowing it'd be rude to stare, but boy, what an addiction that is.

There's been a downpour on and off tonight, hitting a couple hours ago and then coming back loud enough I can't miss it. There was a little snow left in the parks and at the very edges, but this is going to see to everything. The feeling of knowing this is exactly it, more than it felt on Sunday, is somehow both peaceful and unsettling. There's an acceptance and a sense of gratitude of not having missed the moment. It's not something I'm eager to seek out, and it's one I can hold onto and sit with a while.

I put in three bids for this year's Fandom Trumps Hate, two for beta readers and one for a vid. Whether they'll end up getting outbid remains to be seen. I've got at least a day to figure out what my absolute maximum collective bid should be and which ones to prioritize. Not something to think about for the rest of the night, at least.

About twenty metres up the road is a front garden that is, at this time of year, full of ridiculous daffodils. It is an Annual Delight. I took this photo yesterday, and then I dragged A out to visit it at lunchtime today, in glorious weather. It has been a good day.

Things that are making me happy at this current time. I want to talk about them.

Things are still very not OK, I'm still barely keeping it together most days. Everything is Very Bad. But. I want to talk about happy things.

*

( books and tv shows )

Fandom: The Protomen
Pairings/Characters: Protoman & Megaman, Protoman & Dr. Thomas Light, Protoman & Dr. Albert Wily
Rating: Unrated, estimated to be Teen and Up
Length: 3,178
Creator Links: ricefu on Ao3
Theme:
Siblings, Science Fiction, Apocalypse/Dystopia, Robots, Androids and AI, Trauma & Recovery, (Not Really) Character Death, Old Fandoms
Summary:
You have heard me tell this story many times before you sleep... This time listen carefully.
Reccer's Notes:
A beautiful and sad character study of Protoman, the older sibling of two tragic brothers in the Protomen universe. It connects his backstory and dives into psyche throughout the canon storyline, including his relationship with his younger brother, his father, and the main antagonist. Although I'm tagging the Not Really Character Death theme for a reason, this is a tragedy, so tread carefully.

Fanwork Links:
The Inevitable Fall of the Firstborn on Ao3

Various:

--My mother tripped on her way to a concert (again) and fractured the bridge of her nose (again) and got up and went to the show anyway and enjoyed it while holding a plastic bag full of ice from the bar to her face (AGAIN). On the one hand I want to rage about her choice to just fucking carry on to the show, except on the other hand that's absolutely what I would do because I'm just as stubborn as she is, but back on the first hand she is seventy two years old and I am in the prime of my youth not. So I will just allow myself to be a little bit of a hypocrite about it, thanks.

--Melodifestivalen final is on Saturday. The lineup is mostly not terrible! I have no idea what the ultimate Eurovision pick will be, however, because I have given up on predicting the ~~mystery~~ that is the collective mind of Sweden (affectionate).

--I have been writing a deeply lemon-chicken fic for my new fandom but I'm fairly sure all the members of this fandom are too young to understand what it would mean if I tagged it lemon chicken. But I can glory in the tag in my mind. (Also I might not even finish it because there's no fun in writing an actual plot when I can just write my blorbo being hard done by.)

Right! I posted an entry about things that weren't The Goes Wrong Show, and everyone's very proud of me. Time to reward myself with more Goes Wrong fanfiction.


Title: Chekhov's Knife
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Robert/Chris
Wordcount: 2,700
Summary: Robert has the perfect plan for making things up to Chris after the Chekhov's Gun incident. Well, maybe 'perfect' isn't the right word.
Warnings: S... sort of self-harm? It's pretty atypical as self-harm goes, but this is a fic about Robert going 'well, I've injured Chris; obviously our relationship will be fixed if I can get Chris to injure me in return.'

( Chekhov's Knife )

Okay, I'm going to be very brave and make a post that's not about The Goes Wrong Show. Let's talk about videogames! You wouldn't know it from my determination to talk about Robert Grove five hundred percent of the time, but I have played a couple of interesting games lately.

The games in question are Silent Hill f and Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. They're substantially different in gameplay and tone, but they're both on the theme of 'weird, intense, supernatural coming-of-age stories about young women'.


( Thoughts on Silent Hill f. )

( Thoughts on Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. )


Okay! That's your allotted entry about other things. Let's get back to working on my fifteenth Goes Wrong fic.

Apparently I posted fourteen Goes Wrong fics over the course of two months? Not counting the fifty-two Goes Wrong fills I wrote for the Three-Sentence Ficathon? I'm personally responsible for over 20% of the Chris Bean/Robert Grove fics on AO3. This might be the most severely and swiftly a fandom has ever eaten me.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to sustain my Goes Wrong illness, but I'm having a great time while it lasts!

This evening I am having A Headache. It's an annoying headache; it's definitely a distracting headache; but it's "just" A Headache. No other symptoms that I'm noticing.

... except that it's Exactly The Right Time For A Migraine, and yesterday I had a bunch of migraine prodrome symptoms. (Being Too Warm. Wanting to close my eyes a lot. Nausea. Overwhelming despair.)

I find myself Wondering whether my regular menstrual migraines actually started on 1^st January 2021, or if that's just the point at which symptoms tipped over into very obviously photosensitive migraine. At that point I was on continuous acute pain relief, and it is slowly dawning on me that An Annoying Headache with no other symptoms distinguishable from background noise (anxiety, depression, thesis-related stress, ...) is the kind of thing I'd have just merrily ignored, and for that matter that I'd still be ignoring if I weren't now Keeping A Headache Diary...

I've entered the "Fandom Trumps Hate" auction this year. How this works is offering to create fanworks to people who pledge charitable donations. I'm offering fic, and I'm open to pretty much any fandom that I'm familiar with (ask if you're not sure). My auction page is here with more information!

Feeling accountably tired today - I'm not sure of the precise cause, but there's enough of them it's probably something I can point to. The weather, the loss of community members, peeking into the job market, pick something. The effect is the same of having me struggling to focus on editing, so in the end it doesn't much matter where it's coming from.

I did manage to peek into the job market and send something out. I did manage a decent workout. I did manage to cook some congee to use up some rice and stretch out some braised chicken a couple more days. Productive in ways most people would think of, but with little writing getting done, it doesn't feel quite that way to me. The solution is to try for bed and try again tomorrow.

Fandom: Batman - All Media Types
Pairings/Characters: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Length: 4,742 words
Creator Links: Wisetypewriter
Theme: siblings, complicated relationships, drinking & talking

Summary: Dick drinks on a rooftop.

Jason shows up.

Reccer's Notes: Really interesting fic! I love the exploration of Dick and Jason’s relationship, especially how the story weaves in elements from different comic continuities. It hit me right in the feels <3

Fanwork Links: Brothers around a beer

Fandom: The Protomen
Pairings/Characters: Megaman & Protoman & Quint
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Length: 53,236
Creator Links: VioletVulpini on Ao3
Theme:
Siblings, Science Fiction, Time Travel Fix-it, Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma & Recovery, Apocalypse/Dystopia, Robots, Androids, and AI, Old Fandoms, Gateway Fanworks
Summary:
"The sound of Machines marching into a screaming mass did not cause Megaman to turn. The sound of children crying for their mothers would not pull his gaze from the far edge of the city."

And then he kept walking.
Reccer's Notes:
This fic takes the premise of an existing Mega Man character from the games, who was used as a minor sad character, and makes him the main character of a time travel fix-it in this alternate universe of The Protomen. Megaman goes back in time to before he killed his brother Protoman in an attempt to fix things, and manages to save his brother -- but now both his past self and his brother are after him, not to mention Dr. Wily, whose iron grip still holds the city. It has some of the best robot hurt/comfort I've ever read and amazing looks at the family dynamics between the characters.

Fanwork Links:
Through the Window to the Mirror on Ao3

Fandom: Mega Man (Cartoon 1994)
Pairings/Characters: Mega Man & Proto Man, Mega Man & Roll
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Length: 342,087
Creator Links: BlackRussian on FFN and BlackRussian on Ao3
Theme:
Siblings, Action/Adventure, Enemies Working Together, Plotty Fic, Series, Science Fiction, Gateway Fanworks, Epic Works
Summary:
Fighting Dr. Wily while watching your rebellious sister is tough for anyone, even a robot. Add an evil brother who's determined for you to join his side (or else battle to see who's strongest), things get ugly. Retcon of the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon.
Reccer's Notes:
An amazing AU take on the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon from 1994 which adds heart and multiple intertwining subplots, as well as fixing major plot holes and including more background for various characters. The central character relationships are between Mega Man and his (evil?) older brother Proto Man, and Mega Man and his sister Roll, but there's plenty of background relationships that keep the story engaging, along with a lot of clever worldbuilding and cheesy moments to fit the original cartoon's tone. It's part of an ongoing series, but seasons 1-2 are complete.

Fanwork Links:
Read it here on Ao3 and here on FF.net