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( Yes )
As always, thanks for reading with me. See you next year. ♥
1. In March especially I listened to a ton of Gallaghers as mood music for an Oasis fic I was writing. (As opposed to, you know, all the other reasons that I listen to them.) In particular I listened to Liam's most recent solo project a lot, C'mon You Know, which came out four years ago.
2. My cold early spring albums, specifically the first Mumford and Sons album and an old favorite, New Reveille, which is kind of country-adjacent but with fiddle, banjo, and cello. I love the strings, the vocals, and the angsty/dark vibe. For example, Hounds or Conway Shore. Does anyone have recs for more stuff like them? They released one album eight years ago, and it doesn't look like they exist anymore as a group.
3. Female-led country/Americana artists in general. Kacey Musgraves, Molly Tuttle, a little bit of Ashley Monroe and Kathleen Edwards.
4. Lord Huron, mostly Cosmic Selector Vol 1 in March and Strange Trails in April, as the weather has warmed up.
My top artists (by # of streams)
March:
1. Liam Gallagher
2. Oasis
3. New Candys
4. Lord Huron
April
1. Oasis
2. New Reveille
3. Molly Tuttle
4. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Favorite songs:
1. Still White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter by Lana Del Rey. It's just so weird and has like five layers of irony. The more I hear it the more I love it. Nobody does it like Lana.
2. Dry Spell by Kacey Musgraves, a serious-sounding but goofy-hearted song about how she hasn't had sex in almost a year and is SUFFERING. The music video is a hoot. This is the first single for her album that comes out tomorrow, which I'm super stoked about.
3. Suit and Tie by Soda Blonde. This reminds me a bit of London Grammar, although this gal's voice is very different. I love the moody vibe and the synths.
4. Everything Burns by Molly Tuttle. More banjo, some political rage, and a great driving sound. Between this and New Reveille (and I guess Mumford and Sons too), it's really clear that I love high-energy, moody rock songs with banjo. More of that, please!
⌈ Secret Post #7055 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
[Pierce Brosnan]
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1007.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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otw_news_feed Apr. 30th, 2026 07:34 pm)AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don’t belong to any particular fandom (also known as “No Fandom” tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.
In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical “No Fandom” tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic “No Fandom” tag announcements.
None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.
In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3’s auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.
New Canonicals
The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:
- Accidental Confessions
- Accidental Love Confessions
- College | University Students
- Corruption Kink
- Coworkers to Lovers
- Lovers
- Teammates to Lovers
- Dark Academia
- Date Nights
- Drooling
- Fingers in Mouth
- Spitting in Mouth
- First Time Being in Heat
- First Time Being in Rut
- Hard Vore
- Soft Vore
- Hyper Penises
- Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts
- Passive Suicidality
- Suicidal Behavior
- Suicidal Characters
- Medical Malpractice
- Marijuana | Weed Edibles
- Musk Scent
- Political Intrigue
- Slick | Self-Lubricant
- Soft Smut
Subtag/Metatag Revisions
Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.
- Cat/Human Hybrids is now a subtag of Hybrids
- Blood and Gore is now a subtag of Gore
- Non-Consensual Oral Sex is now a subtag of Oral Sex
- Trans Female Character is now a subtag of Female Characters
- Canon LGBTQ Character has been removed as a subtag from Canon Sexuality
In Conclusion
While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you’re intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you’ve never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here’s a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month’s new canonical tags:
- Alpha/Beta/Omega Mating Cycles
- College AU
- Dark Academia
- Love Confession
- Smut
- Suicide in Fanworks
- Vore
While we won’t be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you’re interested in the changes we’ll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.
You can also read previous updates on “No Fandom” tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:
- Past “No Fandom” Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
- Past Fandom-Specific and “No Fandom” Tag Wrangling Change Posts
For more information about AO3’s tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.
In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected. If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.
Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Lastly, we’re still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.
( Shall we do without hope? )
It started out with us rolling initiative (which was expected considering how the previous game ended), so we knew it would be pretty much nothing but combat. The DM consistently rolled high, though, while the rest of us rolled low on everything including initiative. Add in the fact that all of the enemies had flight capabilities while only two of the group did, two of the people on the ground had no distance attacks, and the other two depended on magic against enemies who cause double spell slots to be expended within 100 feet of them... well, needless to say, things didn't go well.
By the end, the sorcerer/cleric was dead, one paladin was unconscious, the fighter/warlock was unconscious, the NPC who'd banished several enemies from the field lost concentration and those additional enemies returned, the other paladin was in the single digits after being brought back up, and my cleric was at almost full health but 100+ feet away from the rest of the group (as she'd gotten boxed in by some enemies near her who she'd just managed to kill). So the wizard decided to say "fuck it" and pull six cards from the Deck of Many Things mid-combat in the hope of getting something helpful.
Of course, he only got to pull five cards (none of which were particularly helpful), because the fifth one was Donjon and he immediately disappeared to an extradimensional sphere. 🙃
At that point, it was looking like my cleric might be the only character who'd have any chance of surviving as she was far enough away not to have to use double spell slots as the enemies she was fighting were down, and she did have Dimension Door so she could potentially run. The only other PC still on their feet was the paladin, who decided to take a page from the wizard's book and start pulling from the deck as well.
He pulled the Fates, which essentially lets you pick any moment in time and undo it.
... yeah, needless to say we stopped the game at that point, because that's going to be something to figure out before next week. We're definitely going to undo this combat. The question is what specific point in time do we want to pick as the changing point in the hope it will give us a better chance of surviving (and hopefully winning).
⌈ Secret Post #7054 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 13 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1007.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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polyamships' questions for 3weeks4dreamwidth:29 April: Self rec time! what poly fanwork of yours are you most proud of? share it here! Not a creator? Then who's your favorite fandom creator? Time to share!!!
I have too many fics, and I'm really bad at favourites or "most proud of"s, so I'm choosing one per fandom, and even that is pretty random/hard. ;-p
Due South
This one is about 2/3rds relationship negotiation and 1/3rd porn. I'd written a bunch of Ray/Ray bringing Fraser into the relationship at this point, and I wanted to try Fraser/Vecchio bringing Kowalski in. Which took more words than you'd think!
Title: The Invitation (8824 words) [Explicit]
Fandom: due South
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio/Ray Kowalski
Additional Tags: First Time, Post-Canon, Threesome - M/M/M
Summary:
But Ray had already turned on Fraser again. "You don't want me yourself, but I'm the go-to guy when your boyfriend has an itch you can't scratch?"
White Collar
My first fic in White Collar fandom. It starts off a little bitsy (I posted it as I went, in parts on LiveJournal), but hits its stride after a while, and I really like some of the exploration of feelings in here, as well the boundless trust issues that come with integrating a con artist parolee into one's respectable suburban married life.
Title: The Reasonable Doubt 'verse (45916 words) [Explicit]
Fandom: White Collar
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey
Characters: Elizabeth Burke, Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, June, Mozzie, Satchmo
Additional Tags: First Time, Episode Related, Threesome - F/M/M, Con Artists, Married Couple, Work Relationships, Trust Issues, Podfic Available
Summary:
Peter's changing, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why. He gets a light in his eye when he talks about work. He's relaxed, happier, more willing to indulge in romantic moments. He sings in the shower, kisses her in the kitchen. When they make love, he looks into her eyes, and she can feel it—all that attention she used to crave. It's giddying.
Neal isn't taking anything away from Elizabeth. He's giving her back the man she married.
While You Were Sleeping (2017 Kdrama)
One of my first WYWS fics, and aside from anything else, I think I really nailed Jae Chan's dorkiness. Hee! And also Woo Tak's yearning, and Hong Joo's cheerful bulldozing.
Title: The end of lonely (2480 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 당신이 잠든 사이에 | While You Were Sleeping (TV)
Relationships: Han Woo Tak/Jung Jae Chan/Nam Hong Joo
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Threesome - F/M/M, First Dates, First Kiss, First Aid, Driving all night, That Kdrama trope where the sunrise is always conveniently timed
Summary:
Woo Tak thinks even if tonight isn’t a date, he’ll come out to his friends. (Sequel to "I see you when I close my eyes".)
Guardian
This has Ye Huo working through his feelings for the others, in particular, going from seeing Guo Changcheng as a klutzy kid to someone who has matured and is desirable. And then there is a LOT of sex. This may actually be the porniest of my Guardian fic.
Title: Every Shimmer Is A Searchlight (15909 words) [Explicit]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng/Ye Huo
Characters: Ye Huo, Chu Shuzhi, Guo Changcheng
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Threesome - M/M/M, Pining, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Polyamory, Consent, Talking During Sex, negotiating sex, First Time, everyone's a switch, Let's say Dixingren can't catch or pass on STDs, AKA I couldn't be bothered with condoms, Traces of angst, Belonging
Series: Part 1 of This Sunsettled Life (Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng/Ye Huo)
Summary:
“We’re asking you out,” says Guo Changcheng. “Or—well, asking you in. If you want to.”
a woman can't survive by her own breath alone (7491 words) by raven
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Relationships: Melissa "Mel" King/Trinity Santos, Trinity Santos & Dennis Whitaker, Michael "Robby" Robinavitch & Trinity Santos
Characters: Melissa "Mel" King, Trinity Santos, Dennis Whitaker, Michael "Robby" Robinavitch
Additional Tags: Trinity Santos and Dennis Whitaker are Roommates, Trinity Santos is Bad at Feelings, Canon Lesbian Character, references to past sexual abuse
:
“I don’t need a fucking script, Huckleberry!” Trinity says, furious. “I can ask a girl out, jesus.”
“I mean, that’s weird,” Whitaker says. “Because you haven’t. Like, that’s what this entire conversation is about.”
( More details under the cut. )
( Instead of Depression )
*
( How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best )
⌈ Secret Post #7053 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1007.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
otw_news_feed Apr. 28th, 2026 11:08 am)Every month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works.
In the News
A discussion on NPR Radio centered on a growing debate: should fanfiction have remained tucked away in private internet forums and zines, or was its advance into the mainstream inevitable and even beneficial?
That conversation seems to reflect a broader cultural shift, indicated by several recent news stories describing fanfiction as not only a major force in pop culture, but also a legitimate creative endeavor.
For example, in an article for Vogue, Alexandra Romanoff describes how fanfiction gave her the incentive to immerse herself in romance in her writing while helping her better understand story structure and how to develop a complete narrative.
I had such a specific vision in my head for how these people interacted, how they felt about their world and each other. Eventually, there was nothing to do but to start typing it all out into a Word doc.
This growing legitimacy is also reflected in fanfiction’s increased visibility in publishing and the media. In How fan fiction went mainstream, Danielle Hewitt and Noel King explain that after a wave of commercially successful books and films which began as fanworks, from 50 Shades of Grey and The Love Hypothesis to Heated Rivalry, publishers are now actively scouting fan spaces for talent—a dramatic reversal from earlier attitudes that treated fanfiction as something to hide.
I think part of it is just a broader mainstreaming of fanfic, and that people are kind of waving that fanfic flag proudly in a way that they hadn’t a decade or so ago. And if we’re understanding the structures of traditional publishing, whether it is the editors who are acquiring works or literary agents, a lot of these people are people who grew up on fan fiction, right? So they might not have the same hangups or ideas about fan fiction that previous generations had. They’re interested in it, and they see it as a legitimate form of writing.
Beyond publishing, fanfiction is also being recognized for being, at its core, a collaborative community. Writers create and share stories not for profit but for connection, creativity, and mutual enthusiasm. In a story for the University of Tennessee’s The Pacer, author Bethany Collins emphasizes this aspect, portraying fanfiction as one of the internet’s most honest and participatory forms of storytelling.
Fan fiction is unapologetically sincere. People are not pretending they are above caring. They are not hiding their excitement behind layers of irony. They are saying, very openly, “This story mattered to me, so I made something in response.” That kind of vulnerability can look embarrassing from the outside, especially in a culture that often rewards detachment and sarcasm. But it is also what makes these communities feel so human.
In fandom, emotion is not something to be hidden. It is the entire point.
An article published in The Harvard Gazette describes how the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University’s primary location for East Asia-related collections, is building a unique collection of K-pop fan merchandise to chronicle the global rise and cultural impact of Korean pop music. The collection, which includes items from the 1990s to today, includes things like posters, magazines, and other fan goods tied to idol groups.
The project was inspired in part by a course on “Korean Stars” taught by Professor Chan Yong Bu, who uses these materials to help students understand how fandom, celebrity culture, and media industries shape K-pop’s success.
The Harvard Gazette article emphasizes that K-pop fandom has historical roots going back to early 20th-century Korean celebrity culture and evolved through television stars in the 1980s and first-generation idol groups in the 1990s.
Overall, the collection treats fan merchandise not just as memorabilia, but as important cultural artifacts that reveal how K-pop’s global influence is built, marketed, and experienced by fans.
OTW Tips
Would you like to learn more about the preservation of fannish history? The AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP), a project of the OTW, is dedicated to the digital preservation of zines and other fannish artifacts, with permission from the creators and/or publishers. If you are interested in helping us preserve fanworks for the future, or if you have any questions about the FSHP, please contact the Open Doors committee!
We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.
polyamships comm's 3weeks4dreamwidth:27 April: How did you discover poly ships? What makes you write/read/draw them?
Overlooking a few dabblings, I arrived in online/LJ fandom in mid-2004, in Due South. It was after the Ray Wars had mostly settled, in the time of Pax Speranza, which is to say that Ray Kowalski had mostly won, but it was outre to bash Ray Vecchio or be rude to Fraser/Vecchio fans. By and large, we shared the same comms and fannish events, etc. To start with, I fell in with the majority and was exclusively Fraser/Kowalski. But within a year, I was dabbling in other sides of the Fraser-Kowalski-Vecchio triangle, particularly keen on Kowalsi/Vecchio AKA Ray/Ray. And then
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pearl_o prompted "strange and uncomfortable threesomes", and because my brain was a petri dish, I wrote it: Canoes and Taxidermy (F/K, K/V, F/K/V, angst). But that wasn't really poly so much as cheating/failing to communicate, and an ill-advised falling into bed that ended badly.
Four months later, I wrote my first real threesome get-together: Soft Arithmetic (F/K/V). And from there, all bets were off. The OT3 fic flowed thick and fast. *ahem*
So when I transitioned into White Collar fandom, it felt only natural for Peter/Elizabeth/Neal to be my primary ship. I'm a slasher at heart, but I loved Elizabeth, and they all clearly cared about each other. I found El's inclusion in the ship made it more stable, that the guys would be careful of her when they might not commit as fully to just each other (given all the trust issues, etc). Peter/Elizabeth/Neal was my main focus for the five years I was in that fandom.
I also started watching Kdramas, and I found that in love triangles where they all care deeply about each other, my preferred solution was to smoosh them all together. I acquired some tiny fandom loves: a vee-shaped threesome for Love in the Moonlight (the crown prince/his trusted head guard & the crown prince/the female lead) and a more equilateral threesome for While You Were Sleeping (Han Woo Tak/Jung Jae Chan/Nam Hong Joo).
My current fandom, Guardian, is a drama based on a Chinese m/m novel, so it's super super slashy for the main pairing. But I'm a poly-shipper now, as well as a slasher, so after a while I inevitably started looking for threesome possibilities and exploring those (usually inspired by others' exchange/fest prompts): Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng/Ye Huo, and Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan.
Things I love about threesomes:
- when it comes to love triangles, no one gets left out
- interesting/complicated dynamics
- they force characters to communicate
- so many different kinds of first times!
- the "obstacle" of assumed monogamy making someone believe the already paired-off objects of their affections aren't available/don't return their feelings
- *smooooosh*
(Wow, this took me ages to write; I got lost in the forest of old Due South posts and debates about characterisation for which there would be much more useful language these days. :-)
My car battery is flat again. *facepalm* I've bought a solar trickle charger, but I need to top up my battery before I install it, so I guess that's one task for this week. Sigh. I've considered ditching the car altogether, and relying on taxis and my bike, but there are certain circumstances (which hopefully won't recur *knock on wood*) under which I need to be able to drive. I chose my car for its exceptionally light power-steering (my arms), so unfortunately it's not interchangeable like snowmobile parts. /Due South reference
Previous poll review
In the Fanfic vs Profic poll, 20% of respondents said they're pretty relaxed about prose quality if other aspects of the story capture them, 40% said they're more picky about profic, and 38% said they're picky across the board.
In ticky-boxes, Bob Dylan/Hitchhiker's Guide otters came second to hugs, 58% to 66%. Thank you for your votes! ♥
Reading
Still making my way through Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell. It's good to dip into (I'm mostly reading it during my post-exercise stretches). I'll probably go through it again at some point and make notes.
The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold, read by Grover Gardner. Miles is a great character; I'm enjoying his POV, even if details of the interplanetary politics don't quite stick in my memory.
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, read by Natalie Naudus. I have 5 hours left in this, but I got distracted. It was a bit "in one ear, out the other", which likely says more about me than the book.
Good old-fashioned Korean spirit by Kim Hyun Sook. Graphic novel sequel to Banned Book Club, etc. A lovely read about a university students' traditional music club taking a field trip, set in 1980s Korea under the military regime. (I actually read this a couple of weeks ago when it was due back at the library.)
Kdramas
You're Beautiful - finished my rewatch! I love this show so much. It has a bunch of tropes that have fallen out of fashion, most for very good reason(!), and the leads are absurdly bad at self-awareness and communication, and I still ahhhhhhhhhhh! SO SWEET!! SO RIDICULOUS!!
Phantom Lawyer - yayayayayayay, [SPOILER]!! I'm so happy! :D Only two episodes to go now, and it's pretty obvious how it's going to turn out, but I'll enjoy the ride. The only thing that's up in the air is whether the villain's terrible son will double down on being terrible or make a bid for redemption.
Absolute Value of Romance - someone on
tv_talk mentioned this, so I gave it a try, and it's ADORABLE. It's about a teenage BL web novelist desperate for success; four hot new male teachers arrive at her high school, and she starts using them as inspiration. Naturally, her stories are acted out in her imagination... I'm so curious to see how it's going to end. (I really hope at least one of the teachers is legit gay! No spoilers, please -- I've only seen the first two episodes!)The Red Sleeve - I don't watch a lot of historical Kdramas, but this has Junho and Lee Se-young, and a friend watched it recently, so I thought why not? I've seen an episode and a half, and it's reminding me of Love in the Moonlight, which is by no means a bad thing, though this one doesn't have the cross-dressing. Oh hey, it's from the same director as Jeongnyeon -- nice!
Lovely Runner - I lost patience with this around the end of episode 6 on the grounds that if someone is going to time-travel back into their high school body, they should retain their adult emotional intelligence. Like, shouldn't the 15-year age gap be more of an issue? And also why is she giving the male lead obviously bad (but genre-typical) life advice like "only think about yourself so you'll be happy"?! The male lead is very teenage boy (hiding his feelings, pretending to be disaffected and cool), but I quite like him. He doesn't know about the time travel, or why the girl next door is suddenly acting so weird.
The Gentlemen of Wolgyesu Tailor Shop - this is a 50-episode soap opera which I started in 2020. At the time, I wrote, "I finished episode 14 and mentally collapsed into a pile of HOW ARE THERE FORTY MORE EPISODES?!" But back then, I had no opinion about Choi Won-Young (Family by Choice, Mystic Pop-Up Bar). Now I'm skimming through the episodes (I never skim!) looking for the minor-subplot scenes of him being a ne-er-do-well, washed-up one-hit-wonder rockstar, with flowing locks and facial hair, reduced to demeaning-in-his-eyes jobs like wedding singing and supermarket promotions. His wounded dignity is my happy place.
Other TV
Finished The Pitt. The pacing of this season felt a little awkward, but I think it's just because we were watching it week by week, rather than in a continuous rush. We're going to rewatch at some point, so I'll see how I feel about it then.
The latest Trevor Noah Netflix stand-up special.
Still watching Rooster, Fringe, Bluey and Scrubs. With Ed, we've started Deadloch season 2 (no spoilers, please!) and a rewatch of People of Earth (starring Wyatt Cenac). And we've begun season 4 of Dark Winds, the cop (tribal police) show set on a Navajo reservation in the 1970s.
Audio entertainment
Deep Questions, Better Offline, Dreaming Against the Machine (the Trek episode kind of lost me), Cross Party Lines (local politics), You Can Learn Chinese (random episode), Bill and Frank's Guilt-free Pleasures, and an excellent episode of Writing Excuses about tension and release. (Several of the recent Writing Excuses have been great, actually. I love it when they get into tips and techniques.)
Writing/making things
My writing plan for last week was to finish my 520 Day fic by Friday, then go to the London Writers' Salon 24-hour sprint for most of Saturday to work on my abandoned Yuletide fic, write this update post, and write a comment for this week's Guardian rewatch post.
What actually happened was that I typed "The End" on my 520 Day fic on Friday, then spent 8 hours of the 24-hour sprint revising it. It took two and a half hours to fix the first 500 words alone! I AM SO SLOW RIGHT NOW!! But anyway, the fic is at beta. I'm happy with how the revision went and reserving judgement on the fic draft overall until I see what my beta says.
Revision techniques I experimented with:
- Chopping the fic into small chunks/scenes (as per Refuse to Be Done).
- Considering the scenes in terms of tension (types: anticipation, conflict, juxtaposition, unanswered questions, microtension) and release (as per Writing Excuses). (I would add 'UST' to the list of tension types.)
I don't know how thoroughly I did the latter, but identifying the tension in a scene did help me amp it up in a few places -- possibly I could have taken it further.
Another thing to consider from the latest Writing Excuses episode: in terms of "Character tries something: do they succeed? Yes, BUT (something goes wrong as a consequence) or No, AND (things get worse)" -- it's the yeses and nos that control momentum. For example, if your character is constantly coming up against insurmountable obstacles, the story might feel stuck and frustrating. (This made me think of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, in which Will kept failing to achieve and being sent on side-quests, and side-quests to side-quests, to the point where his plotline felt (to me) completely directionless.)
I'm really hoping this revision approach is going to work for the Yuletide fic, too. Overall, my writing is incredibly slow this year, but I'm learning a lot and experimenting with process, especially in rewriting, and that makes me happy.
I also spent a fair chunk of the week betaing an excellent exchange fic, which I'll rec after author reveals.
Life/health/mental state things
The first half of the week, we were in a state of emergency due to a pretty bad storm; I hunkered at home (I live on a hillside) and occasionally checked the news for dramatic flood photos. The bank above the path didn't fall down, woohoo! And now it's sunny and relatively still, though the temperatures have dropped an average of about five degrees, it feels like.
Grocery prices keep climbing. I am sleeping badly and failing so hard at my to-do list (and at making a to-do list, for that matter). Meanwhile, the gutpunch of Schrodinger's oil crisis approaches at speed (or not, depending on who you talk to; our government is bafflingly, alarmingly sanguine /o\).
House
Conveniently, the storm only came from the north for the first day -- just long enough to identify that the window still had a slow leak -- useful information! After that, the storm turned southerly, and the house proved weatherproof. The leak turns out to be an easy fix (so, of course, now I'm questioning whether my windows needed reputtying at all -- maybe I just needed this leak fixed? Hindsight!).
In the meantime, my house is partially packed up and pretty dusty. I'm expecting the builders back every day for the next few days.
Link dump
Fire and Emergency New Zealand's recipes to cook if you're drunk or high (my favourite is Forbidden Lasagne) | Nathan Surendran's substack, Energy and Resilience (Aotearoa NZ focus, panic-inducing) | Oil is easily substituted, and ultimately not important (Bountiful Energy blog, April 2023; no quick/short-term solutions, natch).
Good things
Sunshine, washing, clean sheets, Halle, Andrew, biking, arms surviving the writing sprint, fic at beta. A freezer full of chicken dumplings (thanks, yesterday!me!). My sister is into op-shopping (clothes, books, jigsaws), and she comes over once a week; I just realised I can get her to take things and drop them off for me: de-junking made easy!
What search engine(s) do you use most often?
DuckDuckGo
22 (45.8%)
StartPage
5 (10.4%)
Google
24 (50.0%)
Bing
1 (2.1%)
Ecosia
2 (4.2%)
Qwant
1 (2.1%)
other (rec me your superior search engine)
3 (6.2%)
ticky-box full of apocalypse fatigue
26 (54.2%)
ticky-box full of parrots doing clumsy acrobatics in the very tops of trees
21 (43.8%)
ticky-box of having a fic at beta
6 (12.5%)
ticky-box full of construction disruption
12 (25.0%)
ticky-box full of hugs and more hugs
33 (68.8%)
⌈ Secret Post #7052 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 27 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1007.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.