elanya

I was taken with the need to do an Orphan Black rewatch and there's so much I forgot! Tatiana Maslany is so good, which you all knew, and the supporting cast is *chef's kiss*. It makes very few missteps, and watching in marathon fashion means even storylines I disliked originally (CASTOR) work much better. It's on Netflix, so if you are in the mood and don't mind the grossout body horror, it's a good watch.

And this poem seemed fitting:

This Poem Will Get Me On Some Kind of Watchlist
by Jessie Lochrie

I'm dancing at a nightclub
when someone behind me
places a hand on my shoulder.
I assume it's a friend until
the hand slides down my chest.

Boiling with gin and rage
I grab his wrist, whip around,
and punch him in the jaw.
It doesn't land well—
I've never hit anyone before—
so I punch him in the gut,
just for good measure.

I look at him doubled over and spit
Never do that to a woman again,
and then I run. My friends laugh in the cab:
You punched a guy!
but I sit silent and burning.

In Crown Heights, in Union Square,
in South Williamsburg: men leer and
whistle and smack their lips.
I ignore them, or flip them off,
or tell them I'm married.

When they purr que guapa
I yell callate and they all laugh.
I can't tell if they're laughing at me
for being a white girl speaking bad
Spanish, or at the idea that anything
I say might actually shut them up.

In my impotent rage I dream of a world
where I am not public property. I would
start wars for my right to walk down a street
unafraid, a thousand wars for a single day
in which my body belongs to me alone.
An army raised against each cat call. A bullet
for every man who ever told me to smile.

***

We still have 4 post-deadline pinch hits available!

Due Fri 10 Apr 17:00 CEST (in your timezone | countdown) negotiable. To claim, comment on this post with your AO3 username and the pinch hit you want to claim.

PDPH #1: ( Imperial Radch, Murderbot - Wells, Alliance-Union, Chanur, Machineries of Empire, Teixcalaan )

PDPH #3: ( Phantasy Star, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Live a Live, Infinite Space, Legend of the Galactic Heroes )


PDPH #5: ( The Lost Fleet, Sins of a Solar Empire, FTL, Mass Effect, Hyperion Cantos, SG-1, Babylon 5 )

PDPH #6: ( SWOT, ST:AOS, DCU )

clive final fantasy should get railed. reamed, even

send post

Title: Power Cut
Fandom: Culture Club
Pairing: Boy George/Jon Moss
Rating: G
Length: 905
Author notes: Decided to write a little comedy.
Written for: Challenge 511 - Beam
Summary: The power goes out at half eleven. George gets his hands on the torch. This is a mistake.

( Read more... )

Today's poem:

An Epistemology of Planets
by Annie Dillard

Mercury

A brook runs on all night;
a book, shut,
still tells itself a story.
So you, out of thought,
you, forgotten Mercury,
still spin and spend the circles of your fury.

Venus

Evenings, after I've eaten
dessert, you rise, you wear
your barest, shining skin.

Later, mornings, you up
and do it again.

Do you think I've forgotten so soon?

Earth

Planets, alone, and grieving,
look who you're running with:
look at our baby-blue planet the earth
and all of the people, waving.

Mars

Mars keeps its dignity,
its networks of cool.
Certain photographs reveal
an air of longing, still.

Jupiter

Swings, spattered
by shadows of Jovian moons:
Io, Europa, Callisto,
the giant, Ganymede.
Companionable, each

nonetheless keeps

the perfect arc of his distance.

Saturn

         It is to you I come in my dream,
you, dancing alone in the dark, light-heart,
       asleep inside your spinning hat!

Uranus

Uranus, cold face,
old rock and ice,
remembers a song
and sings it once
round the dark, twice.

Neptune

Banished, Neptune,
luminous, green,
sleeps, and dreams of the sun.
Awake, he holds her round
as tight as he can.

Pluto

Spends twenty years
wandering in Cancer,
that old celestial
crab. Takes years to touch
carapace, jointed foot
on jointed leg; nudges
mandibles, roving, awed,
in every season.
                          Getting to know
you, still, I find you clear-eyed,
cloistered, clawed.

***

Title: Feeling Wanted
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Explicit Sex
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Relationships: Ilya Rozanov/Shane Hollander
Tags: Established Relationship, Plot What Plot, Ass Eating, Shane Teases Ilya
Summary: Ilya was beautiful with the sun on him. Shane couldn't help himself.
Word Count: 5,240

The brother came for dinner with his wife and his eldest daughter (they left the 20 month old with the Phillipino nurse) and we had a great evening of dinner and talking and catching up and dealing with an enthusiastic 5 year old.

And I have learned that I do not know how to deal with small willful children. I've dealt with small children at church and in social things before, but generally their parents are pretty clear on the boundaries. Not that G and his wife S weren't, just that I think Miss 5 worked out that I was a pushover pretty early and basically decided I was the most fun to push boundaries with.

Oy.

But it was a good night. I did the food prep and it went down well. G and S enjoyed themselves, and Miss 5 also liked having aunties who were happy to play and engage with her.

But man that girl has a lot of energy.

Anyway, they came around 5:30pm, we had dinner around 6:15, and they left around 9-9:30pm. It was such a good night!

Title: Moving On
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairings: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss
Characters: Emily Prentiss
Rating: G
Length: 84 words
Summary: Emily decides to let go.

( Read more... )

Today's poem:

Great Things Have Happened

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

--Alden Nowlan

*

Title: From Dust to Thimbles
Fandom: Miss Marple
Rating: G
Length: 3 x 100 word drabbles
Summary: Miss Marple finds dust, a lot thimble, and the solution to a problem

( In which split up )
 

2011; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020; 2021; 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

Once again I used flamebyrd's bookmarklet to download all pages of the works list and then shoved them together using the command prompt, with the wonderful (?) experience this year of ao3 putting me in Bot Time Out around page 45ish of just opening them in tabs a few at a time, downloading, opening a few more...

Oh well. ( Read more... )

I have decided to do an alphabet drabble challenge for myself! I can't guarantee I will get to everything but I'd like to try.

Leave a single word (or short phrase) prompt starting with an unclaimed letter of the alphabet that includes the fandom and character or pairing! Any fandom I've written before goes, or things you're confident I know, games I've been in, etc. You can look at my Ao3 profile for ideas as well!

a: Asleep, the Duke at Hazzard, Cassian/Daizel (Shizuku)
Fill: Morning Peace

b: Bar, Rifts, Xypharan Landoric (Xyph)
Fill: World of Wonder

c: Corset, Copper Script, Joel/Aaron (Secretandarling)
Fill: All bets are off

d: Dedication, AW, Aleyn/Vedran (Nary)

e: Echo, WDA, Will/Alfie or Will re Alfie (Secretandarling)

f: Feet, DitS, Jem/Nicky (Shizuku)

g: Growth, Ashnabis, Daifan (Malkontent)

h: Huddling for warmth, Doomsday Books, Joss/Gareth (Silvershadowsea)

i: Implement, YOAW, Korivan (Malkontent)

j: Jagged, WDA, Kim Secretan (Marquise)

k: Keys, Think of England, Daniel/Archie

l: Love, WDA, Kim and Phoebe (Marquise)

m: Mislead, Final fantasy IV, Kain Highwind (notsodeadfandoms)

n: Never, YOAW, Korivan/May (Malkontent)

o

p: Public, All of us Murderers, Zeb/Gideon (Marquise)

q: Quads, Haikyuu!!!, Iwaizumi/Oikawa (Nary)

r: Roleplay, Doomsday Books, Odo/Laura (Silvershadowsea)

s: Scars, Will Darling Adventures, Will/Kim (Marquise)

t: Tease & denial, WDA, Will/Kim (Catoncatnip)

u: Unsung, AWRR (either continuity), Firrin|Liralu (Kennesaw)

v: Velvet, ToE, Archie/Daniel (Catoncatnip)

w: Work Outing, ToE, Archie/Daniel (KindNotNice)

x

y: Yellow, AWRR2, Mol/Firrin (Nary)

z: Zeb, AouM, Gideon/OMC (Secretandarling)

Happy Easter if you celebrate! Happy Sunday if not.

Here is today's poem:

Sunflower Astronaut
by Charlie Espinosa

[commence imbibition]

I begin my log in the seed capsule. There is little to report.
I am dormant. I am alone. I am drifting through the void.
Sometimes, I wonder what lies beyond the vacuum-sealed walls.
Sometimes, I swear I hear a very faint, very beautiful, song.

I have landed. Surface: moist. Atmosphere: favorable. Competition: unknown.
I discard the shriveled seed coat. Every cell in my body pulses with life.
Enzymes fly like meteorites and I emerge, gasping from my pod.

[commence germination]

There is no need to waste time with instructions.
I open my endosperm sack and gorge on the stored feast of sugar.
Invigorated, my radicle, that intrepid probe, plunges into the depths.
For the first time I taste, no absorb, the rich minerals of the new world.

My cotyledons unfurl like two green sails into the light.
Ah, sweet solar wind, filling my chlorophyll with galactic energy.
Gradually, I establish myself here, growing up and down, in light and dark.

[commence vegetative growth]

Forgive me. I have not been carefully logging my progress.
The divisions, they simply became too numerous to catalogue.
Besides, I was in a kind of trance, conducting the photo-symphony–
Keeping my glucose stocks fat and multiplying my meristems.

The important point is that I am tall with a well-defined stalk and enviable leaves.
There are other sunflowers too, and a rather impudent beast who is fond of digging.
All in all, I have adapted well. I am happy. Though I don’t care for the beast.

[commence ripening]

For months I have studied the sun. My head of bracts tracked its arc like an antenna.
Now I am a sun, with a yellow crown and a hot core of disk florets and pollen.
I, too, emit signals to orbiting bodies who come and go with fertile stardust.
Was this my mission, to set into motion a new solar system?

I merge with another star. My head sags under the weight of our fruits.
The inflorescence fades. The wind scatters my wilted petals over the floor.
It has become difficult to know where I end and where this planet begins.

[commence decomposition]

The digging beast beheaded me and made off with my seeds.
The sparrows peck at what’s left. Somehow, I don’t seem to mind.
Each day, a little darker, a little colder, siphons me away.

I said before I began alone, but now I remember something else:
Being a seed among other seeds encircled in a halo of yellow rays.

*

I made gyoza! #mygyoza They might not look that great but they are delicious!

*

A fic I'm subscribed to updated for the first time in a over a year. I read the update. I notice there is no lengthly author's note explaining the absense. The person posts another chapter. No note.

I discover, to my surprise, a deep feeling of relief. How nice, how truly refreshing, not to have this. To just treat it normally and update the fic.

Especially because a lot of times I'll read a fic and there will be all these notes apologizing for not updating "on time" (no schedule has ever been mentioned), or being "late" (ditto). And long apologies for plenty of things. And I'm reading the fic after it was finished, all in one go. These notes are not relevant anymore.

And all sites have their own customs regarding author's notes, and ao3 gets to have its own because of its own dedicated author's notes section, which unlike ffn, is a seperate part of the page. So ao3 notes tend to get long. And that is the custom of the website.

So to see someone not engage in that, and just post the fic and not flagellate to the audience. That was nice. I was very glad to see that. It felt restful.

Then I catch up on the newly posted chapters, and behold, there is the lengthly explanation of why there was no update for a year, and then in another chapter is an argument about people saying things in the comments (and I feel like some of the people the author is annoyed with are spambots), and you know at least in ffn, when you wanted to respond to commenters you did it by name. Was that better? No it was not. But if you want to respond to commenters, you can just respond to them. Most people reading a fic do not dip into reading other people's commenters. So you're just highlighting something people would not otherwise see.

But ugh. It really was so nice not to have an author feel they need to apologize to me for posting fanfiction, in a timeline of their own choosing, which is their hobby. You don't owe me an apology! You don't owe me an explanation! It's your fic, not your job.

The deadline has passed! We have 6 pinch hits that need to be filled.

Due Wed 8 Apr 17:00 CEST (in your timezone | countdown) negotiable. To claim, comment on this post with your AO3 username and the pinch hit you want to claim.

PDPH #1: ( Imperial Radch, Murderbot - Wells, Alliance-Union, Chanur, Machineries of Empire, Teixcalaan )

PDPH #2: Claimed!

PDPH #3: ( Phantasy Star, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Live a Live, Infinite Space, Legend of the Galactic Heroes )


PDPH #5: ( The Lost Fleet, Sins of a Solar Empire, FTL, Mass Effect, Hyperion Cantos, SG-1, Babylon 5 )

PDPH #6: ( SWOT, ST:AOS, DCU )

Fandom: GOTH - Otsuichi
Rating: T
Length: 100 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: The title is from The house and the birds by Sonia Bueno, translated by James Womack.
Summary: Kamiyama thinks that other teenaged boys have no taste.

( Read more... )

Title: Hazard of the Job
Author: lucy_roman
Rating: Teen and up
Summary: Set after the episode Look After Annie
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle
Word Count: 170

( Hazard of the Job )

I was supposed to get a blood test on Monday. I fasted and everything. And then the doc couldn't find my veins. This is not an unusual problem, although he's been pretty good at it before. It's just sometimes nobody can find a good vein in me. And it's not usually this bad.

So I came away with a paper for a pathology appointment where the people seem to manage it very well and swiftly (they're also younger; I like this doc, but he's pushing 70 if not 75). I made the appointments for a couple of weeks time because it's fasting, and because my veins in both arms had not been forthcoming so no point in trying again and collapsing them further.

Tuesday was the solar battery guys (which is going quite great guns, tbh), and while I was clearing stuff away for them, I felt a sting in my heel.

Ugh. Pointy wood splinter, in under the skin. I pulled it out, tossed it away, and thought nothing of it. I didn't put any antiseptic on it, or try to clean the thing out. I just didn't think of it at the time since the splinter came out cleanly.

Except, obviously, the splinter wasn't clean.

Five hours later, my ankle hurt right in the spot where the splinter had been - over the achilles tendon, making walking difficult. I skipped hockey training, went to bed early.

Woke on Wednesday, still swollen, and the swollen area was slightly larger. I was a bit worried, but hoped it would pass. By midday, I was feeling tingles in various extremities. Not a good sign. We had a set of antibiotics from...some time previous. So I started taking those - keflex, is the type.

I booked an appointment with the doctor the next day. Went to bed. Woke up feeling a little better, but still with the swollen heel and the tingly. The doc looked at it, declared it infected, and put me on a course of penicillin, which I've been taking the last four days with varying regularity. The tingling has pretty much stopped (phew) and I'm supposed to check in with him on Tuesday.

So that was my near-brush with infection this week.

Lesson: when stuck by a bit of anything in the garden, clean it off!

--

Today, the half-brother and his family are coming over for dinner. Hopefully the little girls will be okay, because the twins are eager to meet them. I've met them both before, although the younger one was only just over a year old and she wasn't great with strangers, but we hardly see them at all and we're not really a presence in their lives except distantly.

I'm doing dinner - roast goat loin and roast pork. Along with roast vegies.

Anyway, hopefully it all goes well.

Today's poem:

After After
by Kristi Maxwell

This was after we moved into pencil drawings of tree houses on stilts, but before the cows grazed in the diminishing field of the freckle signifying our face.

This was after a refusal of berries too close to rotting, but before self-consciousness about metaphor.

This was after the butter-soaked collard greens, but before we deflated the ache as if it were something reusable and easily stowed.

This was after the pimple you mistook for jam and, obviously, failed to wipe off, but before the last comma, which we obstinately misplaced.

This was after the bite mark, but before the tongue.

This was after the nosegay protecting the nose from the plague-stench, but before the video of the autopsy of the woman with a bra and panties matching your own.

This was after lushness, but before lushness.

This was after the ghosts caught fire and after their flimsy collage of light, but before the building conceived space and before the hard labor and before the dead men.

This was after the green shoe busted and the wool shoe, but before the description of a bus-struck owl.

This was after we knew, but long before saying.

*