I didn't have time to collage this week so this afternoon I did a card for a lady in my meditation circle.

This week's challenge is:




Reminder of Rules

Entries should be 100, 200, or 300 words exactly, excluding titles and headers.
Please place the body of your entry behind a cut.
Tag with the appropriate Challenge, Fandom, Type, and Ratings tags. If a tag for your fandom doesn't exist, leave a request on the Tag Request post and I'll create the tags you need. You can request as many fandom tags as you want.
You don't need to use the challenge word or phrase in your drabble, though you can if you like.
Each challenge ends when the new challenge is posted, but if you're a few days late that's still fine.

NEW RULE: DOUBLE AND TRIPLE DRABBLES ARE ALSO ACCEPTED ;)

Have fun!

A busy, quiet weekend... Friday, after work, I ran a bunch of errands and then settled in. (And slept my face off.) Woke up to storms, but also having annihilated the bedding. Changed the sheets, did a ton of dishes, fussed around... taichara and I are theoretically building MG Tallgeese Fluegel this weekend but I've not gotten mine started quite yet. Mostly finished up a 30MF Knight and have been picking up in general while half-watching the Granblue Fantasy anni stream.

Going to try to actually go through my cassettes and get through my cassettes this time... I wish I was more attached to my old radio shows, but I'm not. You know how some people have a face for radio? I had a voice for print and I sort of wish someone had done me a kindness and pointed this out sooner. So far, on my actual demo tape, I've found one incredibly good cut and that's it. I also found the single for MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This. ^_^ Right now, there's a mix tape I made at a station... So many empty cases, too. At one point, I was finding piles of my cassettes at home among my mother's stuff and I never figured out what she was doing with them.

Sorting through papers, too. I'm finding cards and whatnot from ~xmas and argh, I'm sorry and thank you to everyone who sent things. ^^;;

Fandom: Merlin
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Arthur is the main focus with Merlin, Gwen and Morgana
Content Notes/Warnings: N/A
Medium: Digital 
Artist Website/Gallery: klimtsonian
Why this piece is awesome: Lovely piece that is a little art nouveau and reminds you a little of a tarot card.  The focus is on Arthur, but also hints at those behind his throne.
Link: Tumblr 

Regularly readers of this blog will know that I am a fan of Sir Matthew Bourne's New Adventures productions.  Their current production is The Red Shoes, based on the 1948 film.  Originally, we had planned to see it back in January at Sadler's Wells, in London, but the weather that week was dodgy, which would have upset the trains (GWR trains are very temperamental), so we got a credit for our theatre tickets and booked to see it in Cardiff instead.

We went on Thursday, with a much shorter train journey, arriving in time for lunch and a quick walk around part of Cardiff Bay before heading to the matinée performance.  The Cardiff Millennium Centre is a great venue for productions, and one I'd happily return to.  

The production was everything we'd hoped for.  I last saw it in December 2019, so remembered most of the story, but with different dancers the performance was always going to be new.  The dancing was excellent - I don't think I can pick out anyone in particular, although I was delighted Victoria Page was danced by Cordelia Braithwaite, who I really like.  The staging, music and lighting all helped to enhance it, and I was so pleased we had seen it.

It continues to tour for another couple of months, and then next year, it will be Cinderella.  I'm already thinking of booking tickets.

16 Doctor Who icons from 12x08 The Haunting of Villa Diodati

  

Check out the rest here. <3 

Theme Prompt: #291 – Safe Harbor
Title: hypnopompia
Fandom: Sense8
Rating/Warnings: T
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 993

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conradveidt

A community dedicated to Conrad Veidt. Whether you are a seasoned fan, a casual fan, someone who has seen everything there is to be seen or who's just starting their journey, this community is for you!

You can post about anything related to Herr Veidt here. Discussions, film reviews, fanworks (fic, art, icons, vids, anything!), recs, meta, picspams, gifs, etc. Discussion of film/culture and society of the 1910s-1940s is also acceptable.

Every month, we shall highlight one film.

Right now, we're hosting a movie tournament.

i used to be super active on livejournal, mainly in the icon community. i made a dreamwidth account as livejournal was fading, but i didn't really connect to the site and with irl changes i ended up leaving this part of the internet altogether. i've been reminiscing and have wanted to get back into "journaling", so i'm giving dreamwidth a proper go this time around.

name: laura

age: 30

i mostly post about: life updates and the occasional book review. i dealt with a lot of changes last year and a major loss at the end of january, so i'm navigating this new chapter (that sounds so corny) and just want to document the ups & downs as i experience them.

my posting schedule tends to be: for now, i'd say sporadic, maybe a few times a week.

my interests: reading, bookish content (new/upcoming releases, challenges, etc), horror, thanatology (see: Caitlin Doughty), arts/crafts, trying new recipes/cooking, hockey (nhl & pwhl), the sims 4, historical facts, theatre, concerts, cleaning/weekend reset videos (specific fandoms) lord of the rings, the boys, sailor moon, three days grace, prison break, jujutsu kaisen, tokyo revengers, schitts creek, supernatural, gundam seed, mcu

my dealbreakers are: aggressive or continuous political content; i'm well aware of what's happening in the world and i have no problem with people who want to discuss or vent, but i have no desire in befriending anyone who is consumed by politics (especially whatever trump is up to). anti-lgbt, conservatives/traditionalists, ableists.

before adding me, you should know: i have social anxiety; i have good days and bad days. i might come off as standoffish, but i promise i'm not. i love reading/hearing about other people's experiences and getting a glimpse into their lives. i'm just too nervous to approach them lol

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.

Though written before it, this book chronologically follows Wild Seed. It picks up the story in 1970s Los Angeles, where the body-hopping immortal Doro has continued his human breeding program, now focused on creating a race of telepaths who can mind-control ordinary humans into total subjugation. He has high hopes for his daughter/lover Mary to become his most powerful telepath yet, but when her abilities fully mature, she accidentally links herself to several other telepaths, gaining psychic power over them. Now, for the first time in thousands of years, there's a real threat to Doro's control and the continuation of his eugenics project.

spoilery thoughts

As I think about this book, a thought keeps arising: This book has no good guys. Mary is not a good guy. She's is positioned as the protagonist because she opposes Doro, and in the world of the books Doro is, if not literally the worst person on Earth, at least the person with the most power to do the most harm over the longest period of time. He is a merciless sociopath who will not stop until he is the absolute ruler of humanity. Being a better person than him is a low, low bar.

To be fair, Mary never intended to bring others under her control and she doesn't know how to stop it, and she at least has some conception of using her power to help others, even if only other telepaths. And yes, most telepaths were dying or succumbing to mental breakdowns before she set up a plan to help them. But she has no qualms about enslaving the mutes (non-telepaths) and using them as an underclass to serve her and the Patternists. Some characters voice concerns, but by that time it's basically too late, she's already consolidated her power and there's no going back.

Doro's downfall has the shape of classical tragedy, as his obsession with controlling others spectacularly backfires and rebounds on him. Everything he's been working towards points inevitably to this outcome, as he creates people with stronger and stronger powers while believing he would somehow remain in control of them. But he can't have it both ways. He's made Mary everything she is, and while she lacks his immortality, she has something he doesn't: followers who see her as a savior, who love her because she's made their lives better, not just because they're scared of her.

No reader is ever going to be sad about Doro finally being defeated, but his defeat means the triumph of a society where an enslaved majority serve a privileged minority. The best you can say for it is that power is shared with a sizeable elite rather than concentrated in one absolute despot. It's the victory of the lesser of two evils—emphasis on the evil. (And again, I am reminded of Kindred's chilling examination of "less bad" enslavers in real world history.)

There actually is one good guy in the book, though. Anyanwu (here called Emma) is a tertiary character. Of course, this was written before her character had been fully revealed in Wild Seed; I wonder how much Butler already knew about her? I'm not sure what I would have thought of her if this book were all I knew. This reading order emphasizes that the best Anyanwu could ever do was to fight Doro to a stalemate, and suggests that she could never defeat him in part because she wasn't ruthless enough. Unlike Mary, she wasn't born into his twisted world, and she has a moral code that goes beyond mere self-preservation. No wonder Mary can't stand her.

With this book I felt more of a sense of it being backstory to an existing work, setting up for what's to come. Which is exactly what it is—it was written as a prequel to the first-published book in the series. And Wild Seed was in turn a prequel to Mind of My Mind, but I got more of a stand-alone vibe from that one. I still do not actually know what eventually becomes of Doro and Mary's descendants, but I am guessing it doesn't go super great for humanity!

[47x] Xenoblade Chronicles (Rex, Pyra, Mythra, Nia)
[65x] Hazbin Hotel (Angel Dust)
[35x] RWBY (Blake/Yang)

Teasers:


Full post here

I guess the joint tour is going well. This is the most wholesome fucking shit I've ever seen.

Kendall's failures in Which Side Are You On? and Nobody Is Ever Missing are, in different yet similar ways, caused by his own character flaws.

The season finale is more obviously so. In Prague, Kendall assured Sandy that he had the stomach for conflict with his family. But when he actually comes face-to-face with his father and siblings over the bear hug, he can't handle it and decides he needs to be high. Now. This leads to a death, and something his father can use to blackmail him into backing down.

But his failure in Which Side Are You On? was caused by his own flaws, too. He is confident that he will be able to visit Ilona and come back in time for the vote because he is confident he will have access to a private helicopter. When he can't use the helicopter, when he is forced to rely on modes of transportation that are every day for most people, his plan goes up in smoke.

A couple of weeks ago I bought two potted plants, which have since come into full flower

I had to catch the bus home after work on Tuesday, instead of my regular train, but this longer, more frustrating journey was made somewhat enjoyable by the conversation two teenage boys were having behind me. They began the trip updating their respective mothers over the phone that they were going to be late home (with many repeated 'love you Mum! Yeah, love you Mum!' and so on), then pivoted to the epic online sleuthing they had undertaken when one of their friends claimed to have a new girlfriend but only provided photographic evidence of this ('It was so easy! All I had to do was reverse image-search the photo and it was obvious he'd just taken photos of a random girl on Instagram and Pinterest!'), then pivoted to the sort of inane philosophising that teenagers think is deep ('Religion is obviously just a tool for social control ... all wars in history were started because of religion — apart from economic wars'), and finally, having exhausted all other lines of conversation, started talking about how much they loved cheese and just naming different types of cheese ('Halloumi!' 'Gouda!' 'Do you know you can make your own mozzarella?' and so on).

I found the whole thing kind of endearing, and it certainly provided entertainment over the course of the 50-minute bus ride.

I never use headphones in public spaces as I like to stay alert, so I have overheard the most ridiculous things over the years, including:

A woman updating one of her friends about a family member who had just been released from prison

A guy spending the entire hour-long train ride from Cambridge to London instructing his letting agent on how to make a legal case for evicting a tenant from his property

A guy spending the entire Cambridge-London train ride talking through various complex financial market trades he was making

A young guy explaining to his girlfriend (I was sitting across from them on one of those sets of four seats around a table) that his afternoon had involved a) stealing a car, b) being chased by police as he attempted to steal said car, c) crashing the car in the police car chase and getting injured, d) the police attempting to take him to the emergency department at the hospital but refusing to go ('The car owner decided not to press charges, so I said to the police that if they weren't arresting me I didn't want to go with them to hospital') — all at absolute top volume such that the entire crowded carriage could hear every single word

I have also overheard so many specialist doctors call up their colleagues and convey huge amounts of sensitive patient information over the phone, in the reception area of our library, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a person sitting at a reception desk is actually a human being with functioning ears.

I find it absolutely excruciating to talk over the phone in public — anything more than arranging meeting times/places or letting someone know I'm running late and I'll basically immediately tell the person that I'll call them back when I'm at home — so it's always mind-boggling to me the amount of highly personal stuff that some people feel comfortable discussing at top volume in crowded public transport.

So, my question for this week's open thread: what is the strangest thing you've ever overheard on public transport?

This post is to give information so people can decide whether they want to subscribe to me or not.

In no particular order:

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Hello on Friday!  Looking back at the day today -- or yesterday, if today hasn't gotten going yet -- how did it go?

   - I thought about my fic once or twice
   - I wrote
   - I did some planning and/or research
   - I edited
   - I've sent my fic off to my beta
   - I posted today!
   - I'm taking a break
   - I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

Looking forward, how are you planning to spend your weekend?

   - I'm going to make up for not writing all week by having a writing marathon
   - I'm going to keep writing at my current rate and see how it goes
   - I have other plans, but I might have time to get some writing in
   - I'm going to take a break from writing

Theme Prompt: #291 – Safe Harbor
Title: Like Coming Home
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Battered and weary, the travellers find unexpected refuge in the midst of a severe storm.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Beck Chambers



Blurb:

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

An enjoyable story about a monk who becomes dissatisfied with their life and therefore treks into the wilderness to try to find their purpose. The world is a sort of utopia where the humans gave up their mastery of the machines they built when the machines gained awareness. They let the robots go without a fuss. The humans also ceded their mastery of the wilderness.

'Wild-built' turns out to refer to robots who were built by other robots once the robots gained their freedom and moved to the 'wilds'. Such an interesting idea - to put the robots in the wilderness.

A hopeful vision of what things could be like if humans weren't so arrogant. I may or may not read the next book in the series; there's only the two books and both are short.

Elbow still hurts. Physiotherapy helps, but I definitely need more of it before my elbow is fine again. Just writing this post took me three days. Apart from that things are pretty good in RL. And spring is already here with a lot of sunshine and an ability to finally wear a thinner jacket. 😊


I finished:

Melody of Secrets

It wasn’t bad, but in general rather mediocre. There were a few lovely scenes, but if not for my love for ForceBook I would probably drop it somewhere in the middle. But I love them both, they’re good actors and their chemistry always delivers. I’ll gladly re-watch it in a year or two, and I think it might even benefit from not waiting a week between each episode.


Dare You to Death

I did watch all of it, but that one was so, so bad. I would still recommend Melody of Secrets to someone looking for crime + mystery + amnesia BL, but this drama, no. I absolutely wouldn’t rec it. Bad script, bad directing and very poor tone balancing. They really should have chosen if they wanted the show to be a gritty crime drama with a lot of horrific, graphic deaths, or romance with classic romcom elements, and suitable sound effects and lighting. These two parts didn’t mesh at all.

And I’m sorry, Dunk, you’re a gorgeous boy, but you’re not a good actor. And Joong couldn’t carry such a bad script all by himself. But their chemistry is still there, so you know – all the flirting and kissing was enjoyable to watch. And I liked Aou and Boom in their small supporting parts.


The Art of Sarah

That was a fascinating watch, even though IMO it fell apart a bit at the end. But Shin Hae Sun was amazing, mesmerizing and charismatic.

Dramabeans review is good (and spoilery) if you would like to know more.


The Night Manager

I watched the 2nd season last week. I enjoyed it a lot. Except one thing, which I really disliked. The reasons for both are spoilery, so they go behind then cut.

selenak wrote a good review here. I agree with all of it.

Read more.

It’s always a pleasure to see two such wonderful actors like Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie going head to head. And I didn’t read any spoilers before watching, but after that ‘previously on’ segment at the beginning of the 1st episode I instantly knew that Roper would be back. But I don’t mind because, like I’ve said, it’s a pleasure to watch Hugh Laurie be ruthless and evil and homoerotically obsessed with Tom Hiddleston.

And I liked what they did with Teddy and Jonathan’s relationship. And I don’t even mind that Teddy died at the end. Of course I wouldn’t mind reading a fix-it fic or two. But I opened I think around 10 fics, and closed the tab after a paragraph or two every time. Because in all those fics I tried, Teddy was presented as a blameless woobie, who never did anything wrong in his life. You know, the guy we see killing innocent people on screen, they guy responsible for training kids to be soldiers. That guy. *sigh*

But what I do mind is everything they did with Angela Burr. I hate that she died. And I hate that they made her less competent and looking like for six years she didn’t care that Roper was out there killing people and doing other illegal stuff.

I dropped Our Universe (so disappointing, even super adorable kid and fantastic acting by Bae In Hyuk couldn’t make up for a bad script, a bland female lead, a very annoying SML and a very unnecessary love triangle, and a few other annoying things) and My Romance Scammer (nothing’s really wrong with it, I just got bored).


I started Love Like a Bike - another Thai BL drama that is on Netflix here. It takes place in Pattaya and it’s about three adopted brothers and their three very different romances.

The 1st episode was mostly lovely and cute (there were two scenes with traumatic backstory for two characters). And sexy, too, thanks to Ta and Us. I like them as a couple a lot, and I already feel they will be my favorites in this drama. 😊

Here is the trailer:



And I have one rec – a funny and educational vid about Korean language.

I've had a couple of pretty busy days, but I think (I *THINK*) I can chill now. I have some more bureaucratic stuff to take care of, but it's gonna have to wait until next week (pretty sure that the office I need is open like three hours a single day each week lmao). 

Now that the health stuff is on its way to being taken care of and that I finally got my new ID, all I have to do is sit my ass down and study. That's gonna take a massive amount of effort, depressingly, because my brain is fucking fried :°

Anyway, it's almost the weekend, so I can allow myself to listen to some music!

The new ERRA album, "silence outlives the earth", out today! I really enjoyed "gore of being", "further eden", and "echo sonata" when they first came out, and I'd been looking forward to this album a lot! I'm maybe halfway through my first listen and it's definitely not disappointing so far :)
(By the way, I found out ERRA did a cover of "Stockholm Syndrome" by Muse and it actually kinda slaps!)

Also, I was fucking around the list of new releases on r/metalcore and bumped into a band called "The Gloom in the Corner" and their new album "Royal Discordance", and... holy shit. I'm such a sucker for music that blends genres, and these guys mix metalcore with a kind of theatricality that in certain points reminded me of My Chemical Romance (and whoever knows anything about me at all, knows that that's the highest of praises I can give anybody lol). I need to listen to the whole album again, but man, I really, really liked it!

A bunch of random songs that are going straight into my March playlist:

• Pain is a Must - Angel Du$t
• CONSTANT TENSION - Held.
• Reflection - Opal In Sky
• there's no place in heaven for people like us - hush, darling
• The Coldness of Your Absence - Sugar Spine
• Paradox Man - Shoreline
• Liminal - Haste the Day feat Silent Planet
• Locked and Loaded - The Cab
• Free - Beartooth

ALSO!!!
Did y'all hear about the Fall Out Boy demos thing? Apparently some people are being sent CDs in the mail with a bunch of previously unreleased old FOB demos. The person from the reddit post I liked uploaded them on the Internet Archive :O 
What are those dudes even up to, this time??? >_>

I'm gonna listen to some music for a bit, and then either watch the latest JJK episode or start the new documentary miniseries The Dinosaurs, because fuuuuck yeah, it's finally here! \o/

I just learned that spikedluv's mother died three weeks after spikedluv died. Gawd, this fucking era.