aria | Entries tagged with rl: day in the life

Yuletide uploaded with time to spare! I did it very backwards this year, by feeling confident enough of the canon to write the fic, and in the course of the writing reminding myself how much I loved the canon, and going back to it after I'd finished the fic. In any event, I pretty much always enjoy writing Yuletide but I extra enjoyed it this year, not least because I did it in a focused and disciplined enough way that I've tricked myself (yet again, as I always do when I successfully finish something) into feeling like I might be a bit good at writing, actually.

Boston winter is staying stubbornly warm, but writing Yuletide is making it feel festive regardless. My little fake tree is up in the living room, slowly accumulating presents for our house gift exchange in early January. I lost track of days at the beginning of the month and accidentally performed the Hanukkah miracle of making Hanukkah last nine nights;

thewrongkindofpc and

filia_belialis and I made a huge batch of delicious latkes last Sunday, and ate them while starting to catch up on season two of Riverdale. (What! a! bonkers show!!) Holiday retail at the bookstore is v busy but not any worse than a slammed weekend day at the cafe was, except instead of making an endless line of drinks, I'm getting good at quickly wrapping books for presents.

I got a holiday-season catch-up letter from one of my aunts, and it's just bonkers how normal the family is -- like, all their news was about them going retirement golfing, and how my cousin and his wife are fixing up their house (because they can afford one?? the Midwest is WILD), and how my other cousin's boyfriend is so successful at his job. I thought about what I would end up sending in a holiday catch-up letter, and it would be, like ... this year I got top surgery and came out at work! my D&D groups are lovely! my household is fantastic, and me and several of my friends are embarking on new career trajectories now! All of which is, I guess, also normal, but good goddamn am I the queer cousin in the family.

Now I'm going to ... do things that are not working on my Yuletide?? Sounds fake, honestly.

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It occurs to me that I may be terrible at New Year's resolutions in part because my brain thinks of years as having September-August cycles (ie the way a school year/summer break is scheduled) rather than January-December ones. Leaves beginning to turn color? Time to figure out what habits and schedules to change in order to optimize the year! I think this means I should take advantage of my brain's comfort with fall as a time of change in order to make some nicer habits!

Obviously one of these is posting to DW more often. I have stopped worrying and learned to love twitter, but it has no archival-diary function, which is my favorite thing about journaling sites. Also, wow, being able to condense my thoughts is a nice skill, but at this point I feel like I need to relearn how to uncondense them. And so: an uncondensed list of things I would like to do!

1. Get back on tumblr tbh. I need to just pare it down to people whose posts I consistently like, and then give myself a half-hour time limit per day and make myself stop after that before I can go into a weird guilt spiral about never catching up. It's okay, self. Tumblr is infinite.

2. Stretch in the evenings?? The apartment of Gondor often mainlines shows in the evenings (the past few months it's been Warehouse 13); this is the ideal time to roll out a mat and unwind a bit. I have a job that has a lot of heavy lifting! My back has been REAL MAD lately! I should be kind to my body, it's the only one I get unless awesome cyborg enhancements are coming to the general public sooner than I anticipate.

3. Enjoy some new media! I ... have peaced out of Doctor Who so hard :( Instead I am watching Outlander, lololol; I definitely want to give Farscape a go, since it's all on Netflix. (I am told that the viewing order is in some way fucked?? Any pointers from people who know Farscape would be much appreciated.) I have also fallen back into the habit of reading actual books; just finished Jemisin's Dreamblood duology, and Leckie's Ancillary Justice is next on the list. EXCITED.

4. Write ... some books ...? I mean, I have a post-Thor 2 plotty political fic to write with

filiabelialis, and unrelated shorter Loki/Amora and apparently Sif/Lorelei fics, and probably some Gamora/Nebula if I can bring myself to care about the GotG part of the MCU enough; but then I also have some original projects to finish! And to start! And to middle! I think the takeaway here is that, just as I need to block out a half hour per day for tumblr and then call quits, I need to block out probably an hour per day for writing (and then NOT call quits if the writing is actually working). When my days were more structured I got lots more writing done per month, so now that I have a job with weird hours I need to do my own structuring.

5. Gonna learn to vid! This has been a backburner resolution for a while, but

verity has offered to actually teach me, so hell yes I'm doing that. (She's also offered to teach me how to break an egg one-handed, as per Thor's skill at that in her fic halfway between the gutter and the stars -- GO READ IT it features the very best Thor -- but presumably learning how to break eggs will take less time than learning how to vid.)

I think all this is doable! It'll be nice to settle in and work on getting comfortable inside my life; A and I just redecorated the apartment, so physically it's lovely to be in; I've had lots of summer adventures and am happy to lay low for a bit. Such good summer adventures, though: some New York friends came up to Boston and took me to a One Direction concert with them, which was pretty great; the following week

filiabelialis and I went down to NYC to visit (mostly different) friends. And I think I want to get back into the habit of having a narrative for adventures, either the gallivanting ones or the at-home ones. I like the way it makes them feel more permanent.

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i. My parents were in town ... last week? Two weeks ago? I am terrible at linear time! Anyway, it was a particularly pleasant visit -- we walked all around the city, and the next day drove out to Walden Pond, which has swiftly become one of the top reasons I regret not having a car; I would love to be able to drive out there on any free summer afternoon and have a swim. My parents' visit was also short, which was lovely; we had enough time to catch up and remember how fond we are of each other without much time to also remember all the ways we drive each other up the wall. A+ mini-vacation, would do again next year.

ii. The other night, our entire D&D group went on a LARP pub crawl/scavenger hunt around Camberville. It was kind of amazing?? I think we collectively walked five or six miles over the course of about five hours; we had several drinks, and several boffing weapon fights (though these were mostly with the elder gods of Chaos and Justice, instead of with opposing teams, so we died without losing our loot), and sang the Clash for fake diamonds, and solved riddles, and learned somewhere in the dead hours past midnight that our team had won. (TYRANNY!) It was an Experience, and one I'll happily repeat next year. So that's a completely ridiculous fun thing I can cross off my bucket list.

iii.

verity showed me the first two episodes of s4 Teen Wolf on Friday. I ... may have to go back and watch 3b and then keep up. GODDAMMIT IT'S SUCH A TERRIBLE SHOW. There have to be good shows out right now, right? But somehow SHIELD was the thing I stayed caught up with these last few months; I'm a season behind on White Collar and a season behind on Orphan Black and whoa I should prioritize at least one of those over Teen Wolf. But, y'know, sometimes what you need is attractive young people wearing weird prosthetics and doing everything to a dubstep soundtrack! Teen Wolf it is.

iv. The apartment of Gondor has a cat!! She is a very recent acquisition, from this Saturday. The shelter basically begged us to take her, because she's a sweetie they all loved, but also kind of a problem cat: terrified of being there, liable to hiss and swipe at you if she gets overwhelmed, so she couldn't charm anyone into taking her. She's very curious, and very tiny (despite being about five years old), and after exploring the whole apartment she's mostly stayed under Polaris' bed, getting used to New Things. We're calling her Luthien, because obviously a cat in Gondor has to be called something Lord of the Rings-related and we liked that best.

( Several cat pictures beneath the cut! )

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i. WisCon this year was wonderful! as WisCon every year is wonderful. It felt particularly short this year, though (a situation exacerbated by [a] not arriving til Friday afternoon, [b] the vid party being on Saturday instead of Friday and thus cutting into Saturday lobbycon, and [c] increasing numbers of my friends being on panels; maybe one of these years I will be brave and go on a panel myself). The vid party was delightful, it was so so great to see old WisCon buddies and to meet new ones, the GOH speeches made me cry a bit, and next year I fully intend to arrive Thursday and give myself breathing room and really bask in the con.

ii. Relatedly I am reading NK Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy! Currently in the middle of the third one, still loving it, though nothing will be as id-satisfyingly perfect to me as Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was. (SO perfectly id-satisfying; I've been summarizing it to people on twitter as "court intrigues and captive gods and family drama," and there has been much sage nodding/laughing at me because why yes that IS a portrait of my id.) I ... also think they're really well-written and -plotted and all that good stuff, but I'm not sure I can recommend them as Perfect Books, because mostly they are just perfect to me.

iii. Other things that are a bit perfect to me: Maleficent! ( Mild spoilers, mostly pleased. )

iv. I also saw Days of Future Past, but that doesn't get a spoiler cut, since it can be summarized as "Quicksilver and Mystique were my favorite parts, it was fun I guess." Sorry, X-Men, I think I'm officially broken up with you :/ Not that I won't see any future films in that universe, but I don't have lots of fannish feelings about it right now.

v. Meanwhile, in my job in the barista AU, I am now a shift supervisor! This means getting up earlier, but also getting paid more and getting to go home earlier, and is for the most part really nice. (As I type this, one of the other shift supervisors is texting me to do a complicated schedule swap because he wants to play a show with his band on a day he has a closing shift. I'm living in a weird hipster fic, send help.)

iv. Polaris and I have spent some of the day researching animal shelters in the area! Perhaps next week we will get a cat or two, stay tuned :DDD

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My new year so far:

+ I had very pleasant shifts at the cafe; good tips, several super nerdy interactions with customers (including a little girl who had a Doctor Who book and told me her favorite Doctor was "Nine and Ten AND Eleven!")

+ Our D&D session last night was so great! Many shenanigans were had, and

scribe's visiting BFF seemed to have a good time.

+ Amiel stayed over and as usual did that thing where they make amazing breakfast. So, due to snowstorm, instead of getting up at unreasonable hours to catch a bus to New York, I got up at perfectly reasonable hours and had snuggles and BACON.

+ It is the third bus I attempted to get a ticket for, but I'm on it and actively on my way to the couch con

oliviacirce is hosting! By which I mean I'm sitting at the very front of the top level of the bus, watching the road go by below, listening to the Pacific Rim soundtrack and writing this on my phone and generally having a really good day.

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i. ( Christmas tree! )

ii. Visiting my parents was, as usual, a weird mix between my increasing frustration with their tolerant amusement re: issues I feel strongly about (though they will at least actually listen and ask questions about queer stuff), and the ability they both have to make me cry laughing because they're ridiculous people. I also mailed myself a bunch of stuff that was still in their house (very important stuff! like Beanie Babies!) and brought up some of the remainder of my clothes and books. It felt like getting a lot of new stuff for the holidays, even though it was mostly old stuff, because brains are cool like that.

iii. I continue to be the sort of person who goes out for drinks with coworkers and dresses up to go to work holiday parties and things? The work holiday party was pretty delightful, actually! Nothing of note happened or anything, but I did stand around in a room full of people and talked to them for three hours without wishing I was somewhere else, and I enjoyed myself, so SUCCESS.

iv. I saw the Hobbit earlier this week! It held together a lot better than the first installment, I was only cranky with one bit they left out, and I continue planning the edits I want to do in order to make a Just The Book (+ maybe some other parts I like??) cut when all three films are out. I kind of wish I had more feelings, but instead I just keep having lots of Avengers feelings, and resurgent due South feelings as Housemate A and I make our way through season two, and that's a pretty comfortable place to be, fannishly.

v. I just really like this time of year. We had so much snow, and then most of it melted, and though I'd love to have snow for Christmas, this is really nice too. I'm spending good time with people, and there are so many lights everywhere in the city, and ... I'm happy right now. It feels important to catalogue when I'm doing okay, so yes: I've spent the morning wrapping presents, and I made bacon and eggs-in-a-basket for myself and Housemate A like a goddamn adult who can cook meals, and I'm about to start my second cup of tea, and I'm happy.

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I caught myself thinking "I have so many things to tweet about, but I don't really want to limit myself to soundbites," and then remembered that I have a Dreamwidth, c'mon, self. So here are some things I was going to tweet about, in more than 140 characters:

i. I have completed 90% of my holiday shopping for my parents! As usual I have fifty gift ideas for my mum and very few for my dad, so I'll try to just locate some nice chocolate for my dad and not go on some sort of tea and mugs and earrings rampage for my mum. I also have wrapping paper! And I should find some nice things for my housemates, and Jessie & co's white elephant gift exchange, and ... maybe for some other people? Idk, my general policy is to get physical gifts for in-person friends and bang out a few giftfics for fandom friends generally, but I actually have a lot of friends in the area this year, and lots of nice wrapping paper. Only my parents' stuff was urgent, though, as I'm going to see them next week. This weekend, though, the tree! (I really love December, and festival-of-lights gift-giving style Christmas. I would like some snow, though, c'mon, let's get winter up in here.)

ii. I have a new laptop! The old kind of broken one (m key hasn't worked for aaages, lid will no longer close because it was winching off slowly) is called Methos, which was apparently a terrible idea, because it kept dying but never stayed dead. I think I'm calling the new one Frigga, and it will hopefully be a much better-behaved immortal until its time comes. I haven't set it up yet, though, because that really feels like a day-long task to transfer all my files and get my music in order and make sure it has the right browsers and useful programs like VLC &c. It is also going to have much better processing power than my current one, which means it is time for me to LEARN HOW TO VID. Seriously, I want to try this! So, vidding friends: anyone know what vidding program would be good? Keep in mind that I'm still on a Windows OS, so all the nice Mac-only programs are right out.

iii. Speaking of vids! The Aims vid project, in which vidders are making a vid to each song on said Vienna Teng album. The latest is The Breaking Light, a Pacific Rim vid by

such_heights, which I knew was going to slay me going in, because anytime she vids a Vienna Teng song I basically become a sobbing mess. That it's also Pacific Rim just made everything 1000% betterworse.

iv. And speaking of Vienna Teng, I had this theory that the song Never Look Away is just one of those great songs that is applicable to basically any pairing one is currently having feels about. I was fairly sure of this when I was having lots of Thor/Loki feels about it, and now I am entirely sure of it, because I've started showing Housemate A due South and suddenly Never Look Away was this ridiculous amazing torrent of all my old Fraser/Kowalski feelings. So yeah! I am showing Housemate A due South! We're still only in first season, and I'm enjoying it immensely; it's been at least two, possibly three, years since I watched it last, and oh gosh I just love it so much, what a perfect show to watch in the drawing-in of winter.

v. I hear there is a meme going around where you suggest topics and then I post a response to one a day! I ... really don't have the wherewithal to be that diligent, but if you like, please do comment with a topic, anything you like, and I'll choose some to talk about!

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+ THE FIC DRAFT IS DONE. It clocks in at 105k (...roughly 12k of which are porn), and it's off with Olivia right now, being beta'd. I feel really bizarre about this fic! I mean, I woke up today feeling really light and happy and excited because it's done, or done enough that I can actually think about anything else ever again, but -- among other things I've made myself emotionally compromised about Thor for life, so Thor 2 next week is going to be a difficulty. Amiel and I are going to the midnight premiere with a flask of mead, of course; and the funny thing is that, because we've only just made our fic deadline, if we post one a day starting Thursday it'll also be our fic-is-done-being-posted celebration. I really like the symmetry of that, and I also really like that it means this stupid fic is going to be like a bizarre week-long advent calendar countdown to Thor 2.

+ I have had so much wear out of my Thor dress lately! Obviously I wore it to NYCC, but I also wore it to a Halloween party Friday night and then to a come-dressed-in-your-costumes birthday party bowling session on Sunday. (Among the people bowling we had Kirk, Spock, Thor, Loki, and Martian Manhunter. Kirk and Spock took turns and were Team Enterprise; Thor and Loki were not a team. I did spectacularly well in the first game and spectacularly badly in the second, but in my defense there had been pizza and beer by then.) I am also working on Halloween, so ... gonna be barista!Thor. Looking forward to this kind of a lot.

- I got so excited about finishing the draft and having any free time again that I decided to get some finances in order and register for direct pay things! Then nothing would work in Chrome so I had to use Firefox, and one site worked after that but another refused to let me copy-paste anything into the email field, which ... is unfortunate, since I'm still doing ctrl+v every time I want to type the letter m. I'm putting this particular adulting shit on the backburner until I get a new laptop, but the latest in the ongoing laptop saga is that I got an email yesterday saying, sorry, your delivery has been delayed, we apologize for the inconvenience. At least this time they're not ... rescinding the product entirely? But this is fucking ridiculous.

+ On the other hand I finished the draft and I have any free time again! I also have very little work this week, which means I'm going to clear out the slush and catch up on tumblr and play lots of Dragon Age II and, assuming poor Housemate A actually gets home before midnight, make her play tons of Lego Marvel with me (seriously it is the BEST GAME EVER, like, Reed Richards literally turns into a giant tool, and HULK SMASH EVERYTHING, and the cut scenes with Doom and Loki are amazing). And I have plenty of time to do edits before posting, too! This week should be really pleasant.

+ FIC FIC FIC

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Last weekend's New York adventures were such a good idea. Thursday evening was the Night Vale live show with

oliviacirce, and it was SO GOOD. Cecil Baldwin's face is so great, and all their guest voices were delightful; I laughed so hard my belly hurt, and I hid in Olivia's shoulder from the scary parts, and I really hope they wide-release that episode sometime reasonably soon, because I want to yell with everyone about it! The cosplay was really great too: there were some hooded figures, a surprisingly large number of Scouts -- mostly from younger audience members who might actually be Scouts -- several Cecils with really impressive tattoos, and a super cute Carlos who did indeed have perfect hair. (I also spotted two Apache Trackers, one at the show and one at NYCC, but didn't collect myself in either instance in enough time to yell "WHAT AN ASSHOLE" after them.)

Comic Con was also pretty great! Went with

polarisnorth, met up with

hazellazer and

nicoleanelle, though we didn't have the best time keeping track of one another; we did have some good hangouts and lunch and cosplay-spotting, though. I went as casual sundress Thor, and soon realized that this was a good costume in which to ask Loki cosplayers if I could give them a hug. Which was really interesting, actually! Everyone said yes, but most of the ones who were really into it, wanted to hug me back and talk &c, were being Lady Loki. I have no idea if this means anything! Some of them were also like "hey, thanks for asking," which ahhh oh god OF COURSE I WAS GONNA ASK. I think my favorite Loki encounter was one where Loki was this tiny lady in wearing Loki's end-of-Avengers costume, complete with chains and mask; she was the only one who hugged me like she was a super dangerous version of Loki, and the dude Thor she was with was really amused by it. All the Lokis were great, though! I didn't take pictures of most of them, because I didn't want to ask for a hug AND a photo, but one Lady Loki who'd made her own incredible costume did take a picture with me while we were out of the crowd crush.

( Sundress Thor on the New York subway, holding a Starbucks mocha that says 'Nicole' on the side cos the barista wildly misheard me saying Thor; me with the really excellent Lady Loki, in what may be one of the best pictures of me ever. )

Then I stayed over with Olivia; she sat me down with booze and cupcakes and proceeded to tell me about One Direction for like three hours. In the morning before I left we went to brunch with

mistresscurvy and one of her friends, and it would've been One Direction all the time except that I kept insistently talking about Tom Hiddleston while having a mimosa. I love New York vacation? and pretending to be an adult? and then talking about RPF at brunch.

I'm pretty happy now, is what I'm saying here! I have a movie night with friends tonight, and D&D tomorrow, and really kind flexible work hours that are letting me do the last bit of the Avengers fic in a fit of madness. (On the last part! 87,000 words and counting! Gonna try to be done over the weekend! WHEEEE.) I managed to order a new computer today, and I have lots of art from con to put up around the apartment, and ... some days are better than others, but it's good right now.

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I have been watching some television! Specifically I have been watching SHIELD, Person of Interest, and Elementary.

( SHIELD! Speculation and disgruntlement. )

( Person of Interest! Cheerful but not deep. )

( Elementary! Shruggy but willing. )

Besides watching television, I'm also in the middle of an excitingly busy couple of weeks. Last Tuesday was the Vienna Teng concert; I went with friends and met up with more friends and started crying nearly right out of the gate when she played Recessional as the very second song. Mostly she did the new album -- quite possibly everything off the new album except Never Look Away, which is a bit of a shame as it's my second-favorite from that one -- and the most gorgeous rendition of Gravity ever. I just. I can't express how much I love Vienna Teng.

(And then Housemate A, who couldn't concert-go with us because she has a work conference this week in Connecticut, sent us an increasingly hilarious series of texts which read "So my friend just informed me that Vienna Teng is playing at the casino I'm in tonight" followed by "Missed Vienna Teng's concert twice but I did get to play blackjack with her ^^" so I think someone is in for some serious excited interrogation when she gets home tomorrow.)

This next week I have a county fair tomorrow (COUNTY FAIR, I haven't gone to one of those since I was in my early teens, yaaay) and Night Vale in NYC Thursday night and then a Friday ticket to ComicCon, so adventures await! Amidst all this I am also trying to finish the damn Avengers fic (72k and counting; I have resigned myself to the fact that it's going to hit and surpass 100k, sigh) and having a slow ridiculous breakdown because of the increasing bits of Thor 2 footage. I will get it done! And have work and a social life and all such good things, yes.

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i. I can't stop listening to Aims, Vienna Teng's new album. (Link goes to the soundcloud album stream she posted. Actual album comes out tomorrow!) Just want to listen to all of it on endless loop, particularly Level Up and Never Look Away. It is good fighting music, and being happy music. It's perfect as a ward against and an accompaniment to the onset of autumn; my brain doesn't know what to make of the cold, because in the general way of things fall and winter make me very happy, but last winter was the absolute worst and of course has attached sense memories, so ... we'll see how that goes. And listen to Vienna Teng on loop.

ii. Last week I went with a bunch of friends to see Dessa! IT WAS SO GREAT, of course it was; she played nearly everything I wanted her to, and I kept running into her in the bathroom because there was no proper backstage, so there was a lot of casual smiling acknowledgement while we washed our hands and I screamed internally. Also, quite by accident, friends I went with to the concert were my D&D group minus

scribe, who was ... still out of the country, I think? Unsurprisingly these humans are excellent to hang out with whether or not we're slaying monsters and flirting with other monsters at the time.

iii. I just ... keep playing Dragon Age. Housemate A got Dragon Age 2 and everything! But my elf is nearly to the final battle and my dwarf is being the most hilariously best bros with Sten and I can't move on yet. (Also I got Wynne to ship my elf/Zevran; I'm not sure why I didn't get an achievement badge for that.) Polaris and I are considering whether when we run out of Dragon Age games we should try Mass Effect. I ... have the vague fannish osmosis feeling that it's good? I know some of you have played it! Please deliver unto me your Mass Effect feels, whatever they are; I would love opinions.

iv. Fic update: part five of eight complete! ONLY THREE LEFT. I'm starting to have this feeling like I'm hurtling shrieking towards the finish line, though mostly in a good way; I'm not sacrificing quality to time, it's only that I finally have my full complement of writing enthusiasm back. Getting it done is going to be a bit scary, though, because I want to have it all posted at the very last the day before Thor 2 comes out, which means I have to start posting it by very latest on Halloween, and I have to be done in time that Olivia can reasonably beta it, and ahhh. Current wordcount: 63,826. \o/

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i. I went to my cousin's wedding last week! It was ... well, I'm glad I went in the sense that I don't get to see my extended family that often, and there's always the possibility that whatever time it is might be the last time I see my grandma, so it was good to see them all! But, as I explained coherently once and much less coherently other times when trying to relay the feeling of that particular family gathering, I feel as though most of them definitely have inner lives, but they are inner lives I have no way of accessing or relating to, which means we do polite small talk and then have nowhere to connect and go forward from. I suppose this is fine! But it meant a lonely weekend; and when I heard that my friends and housemates were having good hangouts and adventures (and apparently breaking everything in the Shire in Lego Lord of the Rings) I felt so homesick, and then really happy? Because there is a place that is home! And I want to be here! And there are all these lovely people with whom I am really happy to be found family! So that's lovely.

(Of course there was also the wedding itself, which gave me the reminder -- that I hope I won't need too many more times -- that I might want to stay away from earnest straight het religious weddings? Like, the nice Presbyterian priest opened his mouth and one of the first things out was something like "We are gathered here for the purpose for which God created man and woman" and I wanted to NOPE NOPE NOPE off into the sunset like that one octopus gif. So, y'know. Whatever works for your ceremony! But I need to stop going to ones that make me feel like someone is firmly and politely slamming a door in my face.)

ii. No but I'm just really happy to be here? I had an entirely typical workday today, in that I got up, had breakfast, cheerfully made people coffee for most of the morning while chatting with the regulars, didn't have much time to talk with my coworkers even though many of them are awesome to hang out with (whee Sundays are BUSY), made my way through a bit more Temeraire over lunch, nabbed discount cider on the way home, hung out with A drinking said cider and nattering for hours before playing Dragon Age, and watched Elementary with both housemates. Like. I am happy? And my stresses feel like normal dealable-with non-world-ending stresses?? IT IS PRETTY GREAT.

iii. DRAGON AGE, GUYS. ( In which I go on about a specific version of a stupid video game, so cut for length and self-indulgence and also spoilers. Anyway I played Loki the Bad Decision Blood Mage all the way to the end. )

iv. The Avengers fic: now officially longer than any one fic I have ever written except the Harry Potter Fic That Shall Not Be Named that I wrote from the ages of thirteen to fifteen (which clocked in at 130k). But yeah! It hit 50k! It's longer than the Doctor Who season projects! It's halfway done! Aahahal;sdkfd. Trucking along on part five, still going to do my best to have a complete full draft by the end of the month, oh godddd. \o/

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This last weekend was really lovely. On Sunday Housemate A and Amiel and I all went down to the Common with A's slackline and did our best to wobble about between two trees; A can go four to eight steps consistently, but Amiel and I were only good enough to stand on the line for a couple of seconds before falling off. A lot of tourists came over while we were at it, and tried it too; most of them were surprised by how hard it was, probably because A makes it look relatively easy. It was lots of fun, anyway, and made my leg muscles do new bizarre things, which of course made seven hours of baristaing the next day mildly painful. Still! Want to try it again soon, preferably without a shift the following day.

We also went (as a group of five, hilariously enough) to see The World's End Sunday evening. It was ... I don't know what it was! I enjoyed it a lot, and laughed a lot, and unlike Shaun of the Dead (which I can never rewatch because dfl;dfkds zombies) I think I'll see it again, even if it never gets the same wear that Hot Fuzz does. That trilogy really likes rejecting ... organized sameness? I feel like there must be a better way to put that; though it also isn't big on punishing the people/beings/&c involved in the organized sameness. Which is cool! I hadn't picked up on that with just the first two to compare.

Real life is being mildly stressful; I have health insurance shenanigans to sort, which will probably involve the bureaucratic phone runaround, which -- well, I don't have full-on anxiety attacks when I have to talk on the phone with strangers anymore! I'll do it, though! And then set up the various appointments that insurance will give me! And those appointments will be so much less stressful than the initial phone calls. /o\

Organizing my real life also makes me think about organizing my online life, especially because I ... don't do fandom the way I used to. I think some of it has to do with the way I'm allotting my time, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have both long-distance from-fandom friends whose friendship isn't contingent upon us being currently in the same fandoms, and local fannish friends with whom I frequently have hours-long Avengers discussions or we find ourselves, over dinner, saying in unison "ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD." So at the moment fandom isn't filling any sort of isolation-from-community need. And I'm not in desperate need of any particular fic, either; I read the Avengers fic by authors I know I like, and am writing the Thor/Loki fic I want to see in the world, and Night Vale the show is fulfilling enough that I don't find myself in great need of fanworks. (Although, go go right now listen to

thingswithwings' podfic Second Date, an episode-style recording that I have already failed to remember is not canon.) The point is, I am not entirely sure if I miss my fic-devouring ways, but I suspect I should get a Pinboard, and reorganize myself, and that I'll feel much more fandom-settled when I do this.

Speaking of the Thor/Loki fic I want to see in the world, it has just passed 47,000 words. We're ... about halfway through. I'd like to get it done by the end of September, just so I'll have it all posted before Thor 2 comes out (plus, uh, we have a lot of feelings about this universe and there are side stories where Steve takes Thor and Loki to art museums or Natasha and Sif hang out talking about feminist theory, it'd be cool to be able to post those before Thor 2 also, oh pipe dreams). That effectively means writing another 50k in a month, but ... I've done 50k in two weeks while on summer vacation, I can do 50k in a month while also having life obligations. Yes.

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Another Wednesday sans reading meme, because I'm still mid-King of Attolia; my reading time has mostly been on meal breaks at work. Nor do I have fic-reading to report, because I have instead been writing huge swathes of my Avengers fic. Apparently all I needed was the new Thor trailer! I did ~8000 words last Thursday, which finished up part three of the fic; I'm ~5500 into part four; and, uh, all told so far this fucker is ~38,000, which I just counted for the first time and now I'm wheezing slightly. Welcome to definitely the longest fic I've ever written! (I mean, not yet, but I'm halfway through part four of seven, so ... yeah, I'm definitely going to break 50k this time.) To be fair,

filiabelialis is cowriting it with me; they're generating all the outlines and about 1/4 of the final written material, I think? Something like that. Anyway, this monster is not my fault alone, but it's finally picking up speed and I am so excited about it and hoping to have it up well in advance of Thor 2. (Not only because it's going to be Jossed, but because the new trailer is also giving me inexplicable Thor/Loki/Sif/Jane sedoretu feelings, revisions to these feelings pending what actually happens in the next movie. But oh gosh all the stuff I want to write.)

I should also probably get a new computer this weekend. Or order one, anyway, because this poor laptop is now officially on its way out. The 'm' key hasn't been working for months (every single time I use it, I'm doing ctrl+v) but eh, whatever. And then two days ago, part of the back of the computer just ... warped outwards, twisty metal sticking out, plastic very unhappy; the screen is still working fine but the back of it keeps popping out, so I backed up all my files this morning, and yeah, new laptop this weekend. I am a Windows-using heathen and I'm perfectly fond of the Windows 7 OS, but if anyone has laptop models they particularly like, feel free to rec! I'm used to Dells, but they do have a tendency to bork in exciting ways, so other options are always good.

...oh god, that means I have to sort out all my tabs. THE HORROR.

Meantime, until it gives up the ghost, gonna write like the wind. It's ... really nice, discovering my brain is behaving enough again now that I just have this endless well of writing excitement again. :D

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+ The other weekend Polaris and I had a few friends over to eat baked goods and nominally celebrate our belated birthdays. Tasty food was consumed! We are now the happy owners of several new books, fancy candles, and an Inspector Spacetime poster! We also cobbled together a DYI version of Cards Against Humanity, excising all the cards that were gender essentialist or potentially rapey, and adding several fandom cards. Perhaps the best submission of the evening was "[Frost giants] are a slippery slope that lead to [black holes]," which is such a great summary of Thor that Emma was an instant winner.

+ Last night Polaris and

paper_tzipporah and I went to see Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, fortified with tiny bottles of booze, as one does. We started edging toward the back of the tiny theater when I noticed that the other people there seemed to be talking happily in the way one does at fangirl parties, so I asked them if they minded us sitting just behind them and heckling. "Of course not, that's what this movie is for!" was the general consensus; and then we all made Avengers jokes, and when I came back from my pre-film bathroom break everyone was talking the Hobbit, and of course the lovely people sitting in front of us turned out to be local fanpeople, and we all at least recognized one another's handles and/or fics to some degree, and it was DELIGHTFUL. The movie was great too, I guess? It was TERRIBLE, and full of incest and cartoon gore and gleeful joy at its own awfulness. We laughed the whole way through, and went out for cupcakes for afters. AN EXCELLENT EVENING, is what I'm saying here.

+ Work continues apace. Some days I am full of RAEG and some days I'm quite happy to be there, and goddamn, I can now make you any caffeinated drink you desire! The excellent thing about work is that standing up for eight hours is ... actually kind of good for my back? I utilize all my back muscles and don't hunch, anyway, so my posture is pretty great; that plus walking to and from work, and the occasional carrying of heavy things, means that I've got actual muscles and may be in good shape! Which is pleasing and exciting, and makes me like my body a whole lot even though I suspect I objectively look the same as I usually do. (I mean, the queer haircut helps too! The queer haircut is great every day.)

+ I seem to be reading Les Mis! I have read it once before, but that was in high school, and I recall doing a lot of skimming to get to what I thought was the Good Parts Version. This time I am not skimming! I read every word of how great M. Myriel is! I read all about the year 1817, and also every jerkass thing Fantine's horrible boyfriend said! It remains to be seen whether I will actually get through all of Waterloo; right now I'm in the middle of Valjean's crisis of conscience re: whether to reveal he's Jean Valjean. His cart is broken! His horse cannot be ridden! Everything is going wrong but STILL HE DOES THE RIGHT THING! I love this book a lot? I love Javert most of all, though; there may or may not soon be coming to a post near you all my really, really fervent Javert feelings. At the moment they mostly seem to be coming out as late-night tweets where I yell JAVEEEEERT, but I'll try to also cobble together something more articulate.

+ Avengers fic: one part complete, next three thoroughly outlined, Thor and Bruce currently making awkward spaghetti. :D

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Today I was ringing up a woman who gave her name as Annie. "Like the little orphan, I guess," this Annie said. "Actually," said I, "I associate that name with the character on Community; have you seen it?" She was familiar, she said, but only because her roommate watched it, so I explained a bit about Annie Edison, with great enthusiasm, while I got her change. "Okay, sold," Annie said. "I'll totally check it out." VICTORY!

Unrelated to Annie, a protip: if you don't deign to get off your fucking phone whilst ordering coffee, your barista may be smiling, but they will probably also be harboring warm fuzzy thoughts of totally murdering you right in the face.

I don't ... actually spend a lot of time at work imagining barista AUs, but the Avengers one would be so easy. Like, Nick Fury owns the coffee shop, obviously; I don't know what the coffee shop is called, because I can't think of any coffee-related puns with the word "shield" in them. Whatever. Coulson and Hill and Natasha run shifts; Clint has been there longer than Tasha, and got her hired, and watched starry-eyed while she got promoted, and may or may not be dating her. The other baristas are Steve, art student; Bruce, PhD student who works weekends; Janet, who hates the part where she has to get coffee for her asshole ex-boyfriend Hank every morning; Loki, who got Frigga in the high school divorce and needs this job to pay for college; and Thor, who got Odin in the divorce and could totally be a junior partner at dad's company but is rebelling in what Loki thinks is the most irritating way possible by working at the same stupid coffee shop. Tony, obviously, is that one regular who flirts with absolutely everyone (especially Natasha and Bruce) despite the fact that Pepper meets him there half the time. And I guess this coffee shop is near a school with a good science program, because Jane is obviously also there, and has recently become a regular in order to stare at Thor more frequently. (Darcy endorses this.) Uh so probs Reed Richards uses it as his local too, and ... probably the X-Men are around too; Charles and Erik play chess in the back room every day. And I'm going to stop now! But this AU would be SO EASY, whee.

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A list of excellent things in the past week:

+ The election!!! So happy, so relieved, so uselessly apologetic that North Carolina went red this time. I've been reading lots of smart articles about what the election turnout/results/&c mean for the country; I've also been reading and watching lots of Fox News and cohorts freaking the fuck out, and basking in the schadenfreude, because wow is that cathartic.

+ SNOW! It did not stick, but I love winter, I love it so, so much.

+ Cats! The apartment of Gondor is fostering Jessie's cats because her current living situation turned out to be not cat-friendly. The cats adjusted really quickly, and they are purring machines, and both of them are currently loafing on a couch, ahhh delightful furballs.

+ Haircut! I continue absurdly pleased with my short hair of queerness and joy. I tend to only spike it if I'm going to be leaving the house or have to otherwise make myself presentable, but I'm enjoying it both like that and in its natural fluffy state.

+ Job?? Last week I was hired conditional on my background check going through, but it ... hasn't yet, possibly because Hurricane Sandy fucked with databases or possibly just because bureaucracy. I called today to check and was assured I'm on the list of new hires, so I'm resigning myself to another potential week of limbo. But! assuming all continues well, I shall soon be gainfully employed in the actual city in which I live. It's work as a barista, because I'm an actual English major punchline, but Jessie and I realized that it means we (and

feverbeats) will be living in a barista AU! So that's kind of delightful.

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Things I have done today:

+ gazed starry-eyed upon White Collar
+ cleaned the house
+ done most of the online shopping I've been meaning to do
+ done a round of combing through job listings

Things I will do today:

+ go a second round of combing through job listings
+ stare blankly at my resume and feel sad
+ write about Frigga visiting with Norns
+ try to get Thor and Loki the hell off Asgard in under 10,000 words

Things I might do today:

+ phonetalk with my mother and be able to report actual adulthood happening
+ respond to some emails I keep forgetting about
+ figure out what the fuck is up with the sizing chart for this sleep shirt so that I can order it

...no, really, though, what the fuck is up with the sizing chart for that sleep shirt? Either even the small will fit me fairly loosely, or they somehow mixed up in and cm, in which case all the sizes are bewilderingly small. I look at that chart and all I can think of is Hiddleston yelling LOKI'D!

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+ Today we went on wine-tasting adventures around the finger lakes! There was much delicious wine, some of which we bought, and ice cream in between vineyards. fsdjds I love going on vacation, and also

thingswithwings and

eruthros remain basically the best.

+ I have figured out my bingo line! It is five different fandoms! It's all potential fics I have lots of feelings about! This is all absurdly exciting. Oh gosh, so much fic to write. :D

+ So I may have mentioned at various points that I have lots of feelings and general love for the Demon's Lexicon trilogy. Tragically I don't think I ever made proper reaction posts when I read them for the first time -- seriously, I read the Demon's Surrender all in one day, and afterwards made a post mentioning that I'd read it and saying something about how most of my feelings wanted to be expressed in complicated plotty poly fic -- but ... maybe at some point I will do (another) reread and talk about why these books are kind of a perfect storm of things I love. In the meantime, though, I've been compiling a links & general recs list, for my own benefit and to give to various friends after foisting the books upon them, so I thought I'd post it here too.

( Demon's Lexicon recs: canonical short stories, various canon extras, excellent fic; SPOILERS, oh my goodness, don't even click this if you don't want to be spoiled. )

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+ Visiting

eruthros and

thingswithwings is really wonderful, you guys, it was absolutely worth the all-day bus ride Friday. (Plus the endless buses gave me a chance to reread Eight Days of Luke, which as usual gave me all the Loki feelings.) So far I have snuggled the dog a lot, and we went to the farmer's market yesterday during a really epic thunderstorm, and we keep having impromptu vid parties, and I have eaten lots of delicious food. Last night we went out for dinner with

livrelibre, with whom I bonded enthusiastically over Thor/Loki. Many of the delights of conventions, none of the crowds or panel scheduling!

+ Speaking of cons, I am now entirely ticketed for Dragon*Con, although at this point my D*C feelings are mostly logistics anxieties rather than actual excitement. Presumably by late August I will also have excitement! In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out what sort of cosplay to do and whether it can fit in my duffle. (I ... kind of want to make myself a Thor costume chiefly out of duct tape. I could do that, right? PERHAPS.)

+ And of course today I watched the Henry IV part one Hollow Crown. OH GOSH I HAVE LOTS OF FEELINGS. The only real disappointment was the director's baffling decision to turn Hal's first soliloquy into a voiceover, which, WHY, I really wanted to watch Tom Hiddleston's face while he explained all his cunning lies. That aside, though, Hal was of course basically perfect, and that's really all I absorbed; I'd have to watch it again to have other thoughts, and obviously I do have plans to watch it again forthwith. Because HAL. *___*

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a conspiracy of cartographers

every day is taako tuesday

don some gay apparel

but I believe you when you say we're never gonna fall

level up

cons, books, baristaing, the usual

starting the year off right

holiday things

five things, as you know

here it is the knock knock knock of your own heart that matters

so long as all your doors are flung wide

tv! and other stories

if you're out there in the cold I'll cover you in moonlight

cheerful things in the time of dragons

mishmash

I come from over the horizon

x things make a post, &c

the barista au

determinedly fighting back against november

a not particularly interesting post

three happy things

:DDD

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