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Her six, her noon, and her midnight [Podfic] (44 words) by blackglass
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dr. Mensah & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Mensah (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: Drabble, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming
Summary:

A podfic of Her six, her noon, and her midnight by Petra.

"Murderbot looks out for Mensah."

*

I enjoy the Murderbotian delivery of this drabble's podfic.

*

In related news, I have enjoyed Murderbot 1x01 and 1x02 enough to invest in Apple TV. Now to figure out what to watch next.

Late this afternoon or, well, early this evening, getting a very late start on a flying visit to my parents (I have been fed birthday cake), my train of thought was abruptly completely derailed when I finally worked out what was going on with the the individual loitering on the grass outside our block.

They were walking their lizard.

Or, more accurately, their lizard (possibly an iguana???), complete with harness and lead, had plonked itself firmly in a very bright patch of sunshine and was making it very clear (tail curled up and everything!) that it liked this basking spot, thank you, and had no intention of going anywhere.

The human tried at one point to gently encourage it to contemplate moving. The lizard, without moving at all, became visibly heavier.

The human, resigned, returned their attention to the phone in the hand that wasn't holding the lead.

Criticism.

Literary criticism, specifically.

unspuncreature's tag on the space Buzzfeed article about an anonymous space tweeter writing limericks slew me:
"fic of all time. tenured professors will be teaching petra in 400 level poetry seminars."

And then I got a comment on this Murderbot drabble that not only included Picking Up On Themes, but the line, "Back in the days of Honors English, I bet I could get a whole paper of meaning out of your little drabble."

Today I have: moved my body, joyfully, in ways I did not imagine might ever be possible, only a handful of years ago. I've provided expert support for a disability benefits submission. I've contacted people to let them know I can reunite them with things mislaid but also loved. I've played with stationery. I've eaten cake. I've built structures and made music and read books and tended plants. I've watched foxes and a slow worm and a woodpecker (greater spotted, apparently, though I didn't get a good look at it), and listened to the yelling from its nest. I've written to my government -- one small action toward justice. I've put water out for birds.

I've travelled around the sun thirty-five times.

It's been a good day.

Went to karaoke on Sunday! (At an actual karaoke place, rather than singing at home.) As ever, it was a lot of fun. My song picks:

- Busted, 'What I Go to School For'. I always try to do something ludicrous for my first song; it takes some of the pressure off. Everyone joined in on this one!

- Ricky Martin, 'Livin' La Vida Loca'. It is, it turns out, absolutely impossible not to dance while singing this song.

- High School Musical 3, 'Can I Have This Dance'. This was a duet with Rei; Rei played Troy and I played Gabriella, with all the sincerity we could muster. 'That was so cute,' we were informed afterwards.

- I did a few duets with Rei, actually! The other two, very tonally different from each other, were 'I'll Make a Man Out of You' from Mulan (my pick; Rei at one point grabbed my shirt collar to inform me I was unsuited for the rage of war, which is admittedly true) and 'Turn Back Time' by Aqua (Rei's pick; it's such an interestingly atypical Aqua song!).

- The Offspring, 'The Kids Aren't Alright'. Fun, but a little overwhelming, especially as most of the room didn't know it, so I had to do the 'whoa's as well as the lines! I lost the thread and dropped a couple of lines in the second verse.

- Vengaboys, 'Boom Boom Boom Boom'. There's always one song that gets stuck in my head for days after a karaoke session, and this was the culprit this time. At one point the whole room rebelled and added another chorus in a break, having apparently decided there just weren't enough booms.

- Of Monsters and Men, 'King and Lionheart'. Unexpectedly, nobody else knew this song, so I found myself doing an unanticipated solo right at the top of my range! Extremely intimidating. It went well, though; people were really nice about this one!

- Lady Gaga, 'Paparazzi'. Everyone joined in on this one, which was fun, but it really strained my voice!

I also joined in on a few picks by other people: 'In the End' by Linkin Park, 'Lay All Your Love on Me' by ABBA and 'Shake It Out' by Florence and the Machine. ('Shake It Out' was also quite a strain on my voice, it turned out, but it's a great song!) We all sang along to 'Gimme Gimme Gimme' by ABBA, and the entire room made a spirited attempt at 'Dragostea Din Tei' by O-Zone, despite our general inability to speak Romanian.

I really enjoyed Rei's dancing during 'Rasputin' by Boney M. Rei also performed 'Never Had a Friend Like Me' from Aladdin, which looked absolutely exhausting.

One member of the party picked 'Carry On, Wayward Son' by Kansas, which got the kind of reaction it can only have in a room full of Supernatural fans. Playing that song is a great way to expose everyone in the vicinity who's ever had a feeling about a Winchester. Later, in a second personal attack on Supernatural fans, Rei performed 'Bad Moon Rising' by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

(We're contemplating a Supernatural rewatch. Feels like a bad idea. That's not going to stop us.)

In the gym today, someone was playing music loud enough I could hear it even with my headphones on and a podcast going, and when I turned to her to make a comment about how the Great Big Sea cover of "It's the End of the World as We Know It" managed to be even faster than the original, she did as fake a smile as I've ever seen. Just her lips. Nothing in her eyes.

I'd expected as much, honestly. I'm not at all surprised, except for how she was surprised - but I keep thinking that if she hadn't wanted someone to talk to her about the music, she wouldn't have been playing it so loud.

What's particularly odd is that she was the second person I had a baffling encounter with in that gym: before she arrived, someone quite a bit younger was in there, and I tried to make small talk about her tattoos. She didn't recognize the pigeon's scientific name of columba livia, and when I asked her about a skeletal hand giving a "rock on" horn sign, she didn't know how to take my observation that the slightly exaggerated proportions made me think it was a hand from another primate.

On the plus side, as she lived in Utah for five months, she knew about the radiation survivors - though as she said she was there for "treatment" I don't think she had a particularly enjoyable time there.

The Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality, 1972 made me cry in the good way.

\o/ I appreciate the long-ago Quakers who said, "Actually, bisexuals are valid and get erased by the binary."

In related news, Tumblr has thoughts on the definition of bisexual and pansexual but not really.

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis/Stargate SG1
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Elizabeth Weir, Radek Zelenka, Carson Beckett, Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, San Carter, Teal'c, Caroline Lam, Hank Landry
Rating: Teen
Length: 20,335
Content Notes: Disability due to aging, anger, grief and loss.
Creator Links: respoftw on AO3
Themes: Angst with a happy ending, Established relationship, Hurt/comfort, AU: canon divergence

Summary: A canon divergent AU after 'Common Ground'
“We just don’t have the resources or the facilities to care for him here. I wish that circumstances were different, you have no idea how much I wish that, but the fact remains. My medical recommendation is for us to send him back to Earth.”

Rodney refuses to leave John behind.

Reccer's Notes: In this story, John isn't given back his years after they were taken from him in Common Ground by Todd the Wraith, so he's very old and frail. Elizabeth and the Atlantis expedition are shocked when, after they decide to send John back to Earth for care and treatment (and to die), Rodney resigns and goes with him. However, the first obstacle to that is of course John, who half kills himself angrily rejecting Rodney and telling him he doesn't want him to come. The story is about the struggle they both face with John so frail, scared and ashamed, and Rodney, trying to cope while grieving and exhausted - and not too physically well himself. SG1 rally around to help, as do Teyla and Ronon back in Pegasus, and, well, this is the angst with a happy ending tag, after all. An at-times gruelling, but sometimes funny and overall heartwarming read, with great characterisation.

Fanwork Links: Grow Old Without You

Item the first: I totally failed to mention, yesterday, but one of the things we Observed the teenage coots doing -- okay, well, one of them was successfully managing to invert itself, Köpfchen in das Wasser, Schwanzchen in die Höh' -- but we only observed this after having already spent Quite Some Time laughing (delightedly) at its sibling, which was making great big determined accelerating shoulder-shrug motions, and separately managing to put its head and only its head underwater, but had not yet quite managed to work out how to combine the two movements so as to rotate itself around its axis. I realised while trying to describe this earlier that the reason for my feeling of Great Affinity is just how much it looks to have in common with learning to do a wheelie.

Item the second: cake of the day.

Item the third: the tomatoes I planted out and then abandoned for a couple of days seem to be none the worse for wear for it (and I established this on the trip where I took the water condensed in the dehumidifier from the latest round of laundry up to the plot, in an empty milk flagon, for the purpose of watering the blueberry, on the basis that the water butt is running low and there's still no rain forecast...).

Item the fourth: I am continuing to greatly enjoy Owl Facts. Favourite so far, which I am utterly failing to track down a specific reference for: apparently owl chicks start vocalising before they emerge from the egg, at the point at which they breach the air cell in their Containment! which you need a very sensitive microphone to pick up. The second favourite is a long shaggy dog story that I might manage to type up tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.

Item the fifth: I am now at two nights running for "watch thinks my sleep quality is significantly better if I spend ten minutes listening to wave recordings after lying down and lights out". If it continues to hold I will be both very pleased (about having a way to improve energy levels) and mildly irritated (about not being able to replicate this effect some other more convenient way). We Shall See.

A persuaded me to make the ridiculous stale pistachio croissant breakfast. This was absolutely the right call and I am very happy about it.

It is definitely the weather for linen. Went out to meet A and acquire dinner ingredients; bimbled home via watching baby birds (two sets of teenage coots! two batches of Canada gosling!) and eating pastries and collecting a pile of drugs for me.

And then this evening I got myself onto the mat! Did a sequence! Full of happy chemicals about it! (Laughing at my brain for trying to pull the "nooooooooo if you get on the mat you'll want to do the whooooole seeeeequence and that would be baaaaaaad".)

Sleep now? Sleep now.

I Speak Six Languages is a song about the weight of overachieving from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a musical by William Finn.

I think it would make a good song for my beleaguered blorbo, who gets saddled with a problem child when he's 25, paracanonically speaks a lot of languages, and is the master of a subclass of his martial art.

The first stage of grief (500 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala
Additional Tags: Drabble Sequence, Overhearing Sex, Denial, Obi-Wan Kenobi's A+ Parenting, A+ Jedi Pedagogy
Summary:

Obi-Wan inadvertently listens to Anakin and Padmé having sex multiple times and concludes that it's no big deal.

We have 20 initial pinch hits! If you can claim one of these, please comment with your AO3 name and the number of the pinch hit you want. All comments are screened.

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( PH 7 - Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), Dial M for Murder - Hatcher )

( PH 8 - Path of Night (Podcast), Vampire: The Masquerade - Various Authors (Choice of Games), Vampire: The Masquerade Port Saga (Podcast) )

( PH 9 - 終わりのセラフ | Owari no Seraph | Seraph of the End (Anime & Manga), Blue Lock (Manga), Fairy Tail )

( PH 10 - Doctor Who (1963), Dragon Age (Video Games), This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone )

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( CLAIMED - PH 12 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Crossover Fandom, 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | M�d�o Zǔshī - M�xiāng T�ngxi� )

( PH 13 - The Elementalists (Visual Novel), Heart of Battle - Fay Ikin, Royal Affairs - Harris-Powell-Smith )

( CLAIMED - PH 14 - Gran Hotel (TV), 무빙 | Moving (TV), 설강화 | Snowdrop (TV), Zorro (TV 2024) )

( PH 15 - Code Vein (Video Game), 神さまのいない日曜日 | Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi | Sunday Without God (Anime & Manga), Octopath Traveler II (Video Game), 刀使ノ巫女 | Toji no Miko | Katana Maidens (Anime), よるのないくに | Yoru no Nai Kuni | Nights of Azure (Video Games), Xenoblade Chronicles (Video Game) )

( CLAIMED - PH 16 - Archive 81 (Podcast), Mythic Quest (TV 2020), The Locked Tomb Series | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir, Disco Elysium (Video Game) )

( PH 17 - Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), The Godfather (1972 1974 1990) )

( PH 18 - Ancient History RPF, Solstice (MoaCube Visual Novel), Crossover Fandom )

( PH 19 - Ace Combat (Video Games), Dishonored (Video Games), Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors )

( PH 20 - ATEEZ (Band), Blink-182 (Band), Men's Basketball RPF )

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I'll be posting pinch hits soon! As last year, I will offer the option for you to request a swap from your current assignment to any open pinch hit.

More of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy! I've finished the cult route and taken a brief detour back to the Coming-of-Age route.

Heads-up: this entry mentions (fictional) consent issues, to put it mildly.


( Notes on The Hundred Line. )


I can't believe how much of this game there is. There are a hundred endings, apparently. Having played for fifty hours, we've seen six of them.

On Saturday, I wandered down to a park and discovered there was a Polish cultural festival going on!


I had an ice cream, listened to some singing, watched some dancing, admired some traditional dress, wandered around the stalls. Did a definite double-take when I heard Hatsune Miku's version of the Finnish song 'Ievan Polkka', although I think that might have been someone playing music on their phone, rather than an official song choice of the Polish heritage festival.


I wasn't certain of the cultural relevance of Sonic the Hedgehog, but, hey, always happy to see him.

It felt impolite to photograph Sonic without buying something from the stall, so, in honour of the fact that I've been revisiting the Dragonriders of Pern series, I picked up a flexible little 3D-printed dragon!




Top: my dragon pictured with one of my paintings (my first painting, actually: the one that got me into painting!), the chunk of rose quartz I picked up when I visited the Science Museum with necrophilia, and the beautiful cross-stitch of James Sunderland that Tem gave me for Christmas.

Bottom: my dragon pictured with our cat Zuko, who does not understand why he's not allowed to bite it.

I've named my dragon Zephyrith, after the dragon I rode in an ILLEGAL PERN ROLEPLAYING GUILD on Neopets when I was a kid. (Anne McCaffrey didn't approve of fanfiction or roleplaying at the time, although she later relaxed her stance, so there was an illegal underground Pern roleplaying scene for a while.)

I brought Zephyrith home and showed her to my housemates, and they all wanted dragons of their own! So I quickly hurried back to the festival and bought three more dragons. We're a houseful of dragonriders now. Wait, does that make us a Weyr? We're a Weyr.