Polymorphous Perversity

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - a GoT prequel set some considerable time before GoT, and has a 9.2 rating on IMDB so far (which mostly seems based on fans having loved the book and feeling the show hasn't fucked it up so far in ep 1). Anyway, it was mostly fine, but nothing spectacular. Sir Dunc is a hedge knight's squire who's trying to pass himself off as a knight at a tournament. He's dirt poor so it's all very homespun and common folky so far. Presumably the show's world will get more complex and interesting as we go on.
My main gripe was the shitting scene, to which my reaction was you've gotta be shitting me! Dunc has a projectile shit from a standing position (slightly bent forward), like one of his horses but with way more rearward velocity. Was it supposed to be "gritty reality"? Because no one shits standing up like that ffs, and if they did it'd for sure go all over their legs. Presumably there's nothing wrong with his legs so why the fuck not squat like a normal, limber young person? Stupid nonsense, which I can only assume was supposed to be humorous. I was not amused.

The Pitt - I'm not liking it quite as much as season 1 so far but that's probably me finding anything not HR a bit lacklustre. Very happy Dana the charge nurse is back and in fighting form, and am enjoying all the usual suspects. One major plot point is that Dr Robbie's about to go on sabbatical and is being replaced by a new female consultant with whom there's a lot of friction as they do things very differently. She's a fan of generative AI for note-writing, for example. I can see they wanted the drama of the clash, but did they have to make her uptight, rulebound, female and with a Muslim name? Sigh. I really hope the drama's not going to play out in as stereotypical a way as it's currently threatening to, but the writing was good last time, so they get the benefit of the doubt.

Landman season 2 is on Prime, and is excellent as always. Superb writing, great acting and characters. It's about a Texas oil industry guy who is 2IC to the company CEO, and who does all the hands-on practical management and troubleshooting, including dealing with the local drug runners, wells blowing, and workers getting injured etc. His wife and daughter at first glance seem complete rich dumb blonde stereotypes, but underneath that facade both are interesting and funny, and cunning in the ways of their people (mostly at manipulating men). I enjoy it.

Okay, a few vids and edits. Sound absolutely on with them all!

First, two funny edits by hoechloin (tumblr - links now to gdrive as tumblr censored the posts) with soundtracks and embellishments that make me laugh out loud - Shane freaking out and being his dorky self:

edit 1

edit 2

Fanvids:

an angsty one to Casual by Chappell Roan by Leocities (play it with closed captions to get the most out of the great editing to the lyrics)

and a happier one to Long Time Running by The Tragically Hip by peakyboyos

You'll have picked up that there's a lot of sex in the show (and book) Heated Rivalry. And, unsurprisingly, there's a lot in the fanfic.

And one thing I'm having to deal with is a bunch of otherwise perfectly readable authors referring to "cum". It almost knocks me out of the mood, but not quite.

Having issues about spelling come as cum is doubtless linked with me being older than dirt and having learned English not just in school but from reading a hell of a lot of novels (before sinking without trace into fanfic). And I probably associate cum with porn dialogue, so that's partly an embarrassment thing, and partly me being a snob.

Anyway, I did some research on the interwebs and the most frequent viewpoint is:

• cum is the noun
• come is the verb

From etymonline.com, cum dates from 1973, initially used as a noun and mostly in porn, now used more widely and as both a noun and verb. Come is obviously a lot older, but as a synonym for ejaculating it seems to date from the 1500-1600s, and as semen, from the 1920s.

Which is all very well, but I just have a visceral dislike of the word cum. I'm going "ew, gross", like Shane when people use the term "lovers". It looks like a spelling mistake to me, and I doubt I'll ever use it in a fic except in a fake porn video title. So that leaves me stubbornly using come, or writing in a way that avoids the word altogether, because I am also not going to use "semen" or (worse) "ejaculate", except in very specific circumstances. Not to mention "reach completion" or "climax". Nope. Slang terms like jizz, spunk and spooge are sometimes okay in dialogue though, or in the pov of characters where it wouldn't be ooc.

What about you: come or cum? Enquiring minds want to know! Don't feel limited to its use in Heated Rivalry - this applies in most fandoms, and in some profic, I bet.

Apologies to friends here at DW. I've been so obsessed with HR everything I'd gotten very behind in reading my flist here. I am now caught up! Will try to do better.

I remember this state from when I first fell into fandom in about 2008/2009, and the key word is salience. The object of your desire becomes virtually the only salient (important) thing. Everything else pales in comparison and seems less important and interesting. It's no accident that salience is a technical term in addiction medicine. It's for sure linked with dopamine receptors and my brain is now very trained to give me dopamine hits for things related to HR, especially, at this stage, fic.

I'm not complaining, but I realise that we loons (an in-joke name suggested for the HR fandom) must be tiresome for those not in the fandom. (There's a solution to that...)

Anyway, it's also midsummer here and very nice, too. The garden (will do a few pics soon) is getting blowsy and a bit beset by fungal annoyances as we've continued to have intermittent rain and high humidity, but most days have highs of 27^C which is lovely and not too hot. Perfect for lying around reading and rewatching! I finally finished and mailed my second tranche of seasonal cards for NZ friends and family, the earlier lot having been sent overseas. They're later than usual due to the aforementioned salience of other distractions.

The bloody ducks managed to force their way back into my water garden through the duck dome, so the dome is now a basket weave with weft as well as warp, and tied more firmly to the barrel. The waterlilies are slowly recovering for a second time. The giant Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) is once more as tall as the house, having regrown from a 2 foot stub after cutting back. I'm not sure there's anything in the earth under my flat except Tithonia roots, these days. My peppers aren't thriving - not enough direct sun, as my potted plants got away from me and I didn't have the peppers in the front row. Lesson learned. Scarlet runner beans are doing well, but a lot of veggies and annuals haven't been great, probably as the very hot early summer exhausted and confused them. I'll plant some things earlier, in winter next year (sweet peas, tomatoes, peppers.)

Okay, that's my update - hugs for everyone and hope you're all coping with 2026 so far!

(Downs periscope and prepares to dive back into excellent HR fic).

Oh noes! Toomuchplor just posted a new HR fic but there's no fic! Must have taken it down after posting so as to fix something. *whimpers and waits impatiently*

The 3rd and final chapter of "Ember and Ice" dropped yesterday. Hilariously, fangirls on tumblr are getting stuck into the political situation in the story, which does leave a lot to be desired although the defeat of the Lunare by the Solari results in a slightly "captive fairy prince" situation which is always fun. I enjoyed this extra offering by the boys, but audio erotica as a medium does nothing for me, as opposed to the fanfic (and podfic) now being produced by the ton for Heated Rivalry, much of which is excellent and extremely hot. I find it more hilarious than hot to actually hear our heroes giving a blow job - all those wet sucking and smacking sounds - and I kept imagining the poor foley person having to slap their wet thigh, or something, when they were getting into serious fucking. Imagination works way better than surround-sound for me! Although, if "My Moon My Man" is the standout song of HR, "my moan my man" is definitely Hudson's theme song in Ember and Ice!

I've signed up for the Hollanov Big Bang as a writer, artist, and beta (not that I'm going overboard with this or anything). If you're interested, sign ups are here. Info and the schedule are here.

Excellent recs by lotstradamus, here. Almost all are explicit, with some great ideas and interesting writing.

If you're looking for another gay romance with a happy ending, try the movie "Bros". Where I live it can be rented from Apple+. It's more typical of gay culture than HR and the protagonists are a lot older (pushing forty), but it's very charming in its own way. Commitment-challenged bros to lovers in this case, not "enemies". I thoroughly enjoyed it.

What I said in my last post? Today is not that day...

There's now a DW comm for Heated Rivalry and the Game Changers series.
gamechangerhr - the profile page has several resources and events listed, like a big bang organised via tumblr.

And I did locate a Hollanov discord - here's an invite.

As you may know, soon after filming Heated Rivalry, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie made an audio erotica recording for the company quinn (available on mobiles as an app). It's an originally written audio porn paid subscriber app with largely male performers, mostly M/F stories (and most of those second person listener-insert), but with a few M/M and F/F offerings.

The Hudcon story is Ember and Ice, clearly intended as HR AU romantasy fanfic, where Finn (Hudson), and Dane (Connor) are rival fae princes, alternately fucking or at war with each other. Their HR personalities are maintained as Hudson is the dutiful, serious prince who only fucks Connor, and Connor is the promiscuous bisexual prince with daddy issues. It is, of course, a love story, just with a lot of explicit sex. The story's laughable overall, but no more poorly-written than a lot of fanfic, even if the worldbuilding leaves a lot to be desired. But that's not why we're here: we're here for Hudson and Connor delivering breathy porn dialogue with absolutely no fade to black. Overall, they both do the sex noises very well but I think Hudson is just a tad more uninhibited and realistic, especially nearing orgasm. Which fits with his persona from the press tour.

Hilariously, Ember and Ice has been so successful in the full frenzy of HR fandom that the quinn app crashed for a while yesterday with too many panting fans trying to sign on and sign in. Thus we now have wonderful tumblr posts like this.

Hudson and Connor also did a photoshoot for Ember & Ice, with tasteful dollar-shop gilt and silver wings to demonstrate their fae origins.



They must be having a ball! I love that they're undoubtedly giggling about all this and revelling in the nonsense, but their demeanour in the photoshoot and their voice acting in Ember & Ice is quality work, 100% professional (especially the sex noises).

And naturally, there's already a story in the Ember and Ice fandom on AO3, the fandom tag so new it hasn't been categorised yet. I predict many more!

ETA: more evidence! "I hope they get a really satiating love story", ha!

So season one is over, and we have to wait a year and a bit for season 2, because the script isn't written yet (whereas a year ago Jacob Tierney had the S1 script completed). I've already watched the existing eps at least twice, some three times, and have watched popular scenes many more times than that, in gifs.

Watching episode six was such a trip as by then I was fully immersed in the fandom. It dropped here at 7pm each time, and I made myself wait until after 9pm when it was dark before watching, as I like to be cocooned in a lighted bubble with the show. Then after the ep was finished I went to tumblr for the gifs, reactions, and meta, and today I rewatched it, picking up several small things others had noticed and blogged about. I'll rewatch the show again off and on - it's a comfort watch for me now - and while we wait for season 2 there'll be art, and fanfic.

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And in 2026 we'll get Connor in his first movie as a protagonist: April X. Dystopian sci-fi, already gathering kudos and in final production.

I've always loved water in gardens, but for some years I only managed that through bird baths, which are also handy for emergency plant watering. Then I discovered my local big box store had cheap plastic half barrels, which I've used to repot a couple of small trees, but it occurred to me one would be perfect as a water garden. They came with no drainage holes, but I cut those with a hole saw in the two used as planters. So I got a couple of small water lilies and a black taro (they like sitting in water), and another marginal plant, planted them up in some old perforated peg baskets, and hey presto. Mosquitoes are easily managed by putting a chunk of mozzie dunk in the water (it releases bacillus thuringiensis that kills mozzie larvae, harmless to anything else).

Everything was lovely until two weeks later when I came out one morning to find the tub filled with mud and ripped up water lilies. Ducks. The bastards had gotten in and savaged the plants, rooted about in the planters, and bitten off all the water lily leaves. Not eaten the leaves, just ripped them off. That was when I remembered why I'd never tried to make a water garden here before.

But I had a water garden now, although it took a day to lift and redo the peg basket planters, replanting the sadly denuded lily roots in each one and running the water in the tub clear with a hose. I wasn't going to let the duck pack get the better of me!

One thing I enjoy with gardening is DIYing things. I've made tripods and more complex plant supports, mesh cubes to cover brassicas for my wheelibeds, and so forth. I lay awake in bed trying to figure out how to keep the damn ducks out, and finally had a plan. The duck dome. (shown lifted up off the water garden tub)


1. A circle of hose, joined by jamming a 4 inch bit of thick bamboo in to hold the ends together (a system I often use to make small hose circles to raise pots up for drainage).
2. Four 4-inch bits of hose attached to that circle with the bottom side slit open so as to fit over the lip of the plastic tub. Easier to take it on and off with just a few attachment points.
3. A number of long, thin privet branches slotted into holes drilled in the main hose circle, bent over to make the dome and tied where they cross. I wasted some time researching where to get willow slips for this, then realised I had what I needed already - several Chinese privets that are invasive but provide shade, and I keep them trimmed so they don't flower. They have long, straight branches which I've been using for a while as plant supports.

All that remained was to assemble the bits. It went pretty smoothly, although the privet branches weren't perfectly straight, but it adds to the rustic look. I'm happy with it, and it's been duckproof so far. The water lilies are both making a comeback, as well.


In other news, I posted pics of our local reservoir dam on common nature, here.

And I'm now completely obsessed with Heated Rivalry on TV. In between episodes I look at all the meta, gifs and despairing posts from other similarly obsessed fans on tumblr, have read the books, am now listening to the audiobooks (Connor Storrie does a vastly better Russian accent than the readers manage - I gather real Russians think he's actually Russian!), and am trying not to rewatch the eps too many times in the gaping voids between Fridays. It's bloody inconvenient, as I have less than a week to finish my due South and SGA Santa fics, but I'll get there. Here are three meta pieces about how THE SEX IS THE POINT, two collected by machinistm, and one by Gav at the rec centre. Jacob Tierney is a fucking genius, and has taken Rachel Reid's (very readable) books to a new level, like Peter Jackson's loving LotR adaptations. Not to mention the explosive chemistry of Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. Storrie is getting a little more attention as his performance of Ilya is spectacular, but I'm very fond of Hudson's Shane and when you see clips of Hudson being himself you realize how well and subtly he's performing the role. Plus Shane's such a sub; I just love him. God, four days to get through until Friday, but that's one ep a day, right? And then number five drops at 7pm. Not that I'm desperate, or anything...

Another piece of art for my current obsession.



On AO3 and tumblr

Also I've realised what the TV series reminds me of. The Canadian govt-supported film company is called Crave, but it could easily be Gay Porn For Girls. Not because the series is actually porn, but because it's made by a team that understands how to film sex scenes.

It's that time of year again! Mine are more like New Year cards as I'm slow to start making them.

If you're on my card list but your mailing address has changed, let me know - replies to this post are screened.

And if you're not on my seasonal cards list and would like to be, also drop me a reply below, with your preferred postal name and address. I send them all over the world, so no worries about that.

Ok, so, I have a few basic games/apps I use on my iPad while listening to audiobooks or podfics, if I'm not doing art. This is partly as usually I seem to need another activity while listening, and partly as a way to keep my aging brain ticking over in various ways. Note that most have annoying ads which I either manage to avoid eg. by leaving the app smartly when I've solved the puzzle, or I get rid of by them paying the annual fee. These are:

• Real Jigsaw - for spatial skills, pattern recognition, and as I upload art and photos I like (with a suitable level of intricacy) as the jigsaws.
• Happy Colour - just basic colouring-in but there's a certain degree of attention and concentration needed to find all the damn little pale green bits numbered 115, etc. I like the mandalas and use a few as icons, also the silhouettes which are complex and have no lines marking colour patches, so are more of a surprise to complete.
• Mah Jong - which bears no reaction to actual Mah Jong (I used to play that with friends and have a nice old set in a wooden box). Again, for pattern recognition.
• Solitaire and FreeCell - I don't play them competitively or to beat prior scores, just to relax. I guess they use a number of cognitive skills.
• Crosswords - I do one a day, for fun and to maintain and sometimes extend my vocabulary and word-finding. I make this manageable (hello, nominal dysphasia!) by using another app Wordplays that suggests answers to clues, plus internet searches for definitions, Rhymezone.com for synonyms, and gMaps for place names.

One thing with the crossword app (these are basic crosswords, not cryptics which I've never been able to do) is that you get used to the crossword maker's habits and favourite words. They like short 3-letter ones to fill in gaps, and one I've had to learn is "ani", for the clue "cuckoo".

And today, on tumblr, there she is! Ani from my crosswords!

What are your favourite things like this, to relax and pass the time? I should mention that I don't play any of the major games out there. I got into a Civilisation-like worldbuilding one for a while back in my thirties and became obsessed with it until it consumed a lot of my time. I've been kind of nervous about trying any since, even though I'm sure I'd love a lot of the visuals. Plus I have no interest in adding more layers of tech complexity to my life, like a high-powered gaming computer.

For those of you who like my garden photos, I did a post to common_nature featuring self-seeded plants in my garden that I enjoy. It's here.

Oh god I had to get a new iPhone as my old one was a stegosaurus and apps were starting to give me the finger. But now I have to set the new one up and I hates it, I hates it!

So far it won't even talk to my old dino-phone, or to my iPad which is barely more advanced, and it won't download everything from iCloud as my wifi is apparently using an old, insecure system, wpa2. So I have to upgrade that first and then will my iPad wifi and laptop wifi still work?? *grinds teeth*.

But in 20 minutes we go into a planned power cut so the local lines company can fix some urgent thingy, the second such in 3 days, which means I can postpone all this shit to another day.

Writing this to the sound of fireworks going off as Wednesday was Guy Fawkes night and with it now the weekend, lots of people saved their fireworks and we've had them exploding the last three days. You can set them off here anytime, but you can only buy them in the lead-up to Guy Fawkes once a year, in NZ law.

So I'm sitting here stumped by futuristic tech while being serenaded by a five centuries old celebration of averted English domestic terrorism.

Time for a nice cup of tea.

---

I am the Hurt and the Comfort


I am the evil tyrant, the abusive parent.
My charges are cruelly abandoned, tormented, neglected.
Trapped in small prisons their limbs strain, distorted,
They grow starved and pale, yellowed with hunger,
Allowed barely enough water to survive, brittle with thirst.

Then I am the saviour, making all things right.
I free them from their prisons, tuck them into lush new homes.
To the starved and the thirsty I give food and drink.
I bathe them in gentle water, straightening their abused limbs,
Debriding what cannot be saved so the whole may thrive.

This is about gardening.

God, how I love repotting.

---

You can sign up for these until Oct 26th - HERE!.

I've been messing about in the garden, repotting and planting various things, and weeding what beds I have. We're in the midst of spring now so there are more flowers out, and my kōwhai tree is in full bloom. The weather's been living up to the Auckland tradition of "four seasons in one day", and there's been enough rain that I haven't had to do much watering, just in the rain shadow under the eaves. I'm enjoying getting back into gardening now it's warm enough, and the exercise is good. Here are some pics - the stars are the clivias I rescued from my old house before I moved. They're in two big containers and after two years here, are now happily rootbound and flowering. Cabbage species are also putting on a show.

( pics here )

Our annual October art challenge is underway over at drawesome. I've been combining some of the prompts where possible as it adds an extra twist. The pics are all made in Procreate - you can click on each one for the full-sized art. The individual posts are here.

"through a window" & "molten"

"friendship" & "pool"

"mushroom procession"

"ignite" (mushroom procession at night)

"fluffy" and "under the bed"

First, thanks so much for making me a gift! I'll love whatever you want to make, but here are a few general guidelines about things I prefer and those I'd rather not receive.

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Snaffled from various friends. Some of the following eccentric behaviour is only possible as I live alone. :)


1) I briefly got my hair done peroxide blond in my twenties. Proof. But mostly I dyed it auburn using henna. Chemists (pharmacies) in NZ used to stock packages of powdered henna back then - it was the seventies!

2) By chance, I have a lot of Nepali restaurants nearby - 3 or 4 within takeaway range. I love the chicken momos best (steamed Tibetan dumplings served with a romesco-chilli sauce). Yum.

3) I have a side table by my main armchair that's like a restaurant table set-up. It has a titanium spork (my main cutlery item), tissues, a kids' jewellery organiser full of tea bags, a long-stemmed sundae spoon, a small serrated kitchen knife, a cruet set with balsamic vinegar and garlic-infused olive oil, a pink-salt shaker, and jars/bottles of mango chutney, peanut butter, maple syrup, store-bought lemon juice, promite, and apricot compote. It cuts down on traipsing to and fro to the kitchen for stuff.

4) Since moving into my flat 2-3 years ago, I sussed out the ceramic cooktop but haven't been able to figure out the main oven controls. The landlord couldn't either. Haven't been able to intuit the electronic controls or find info online, so I use a toaster-oven instead, which works fine.

5) I have mild sleep apnoea that doesn't bother me as long as I sleep on my side. That's what my tricky right hip and left knee prefer, anyway.

6) I got fed up with bed-making, stuffing duvet covers, and getting tangled in layers of bedding many years ago. I just use one thinnish faux fur blanket (leopardskin pattern of course) with a faux-flannel backing. It's lightweight but surprisingly warm and I only need to add one extra light blanket a few times in mid-winter. So my bedding is a flannel sheet on the mattress and then the blanket. It's like being a Neolithic person using just a fur spread for bedding, but with more microfibres. I make the bed once a week before Fionna comes to clean my flat, and my elderly washing machine can just manage the blanket as a single load.

7) I haven't worn any shoes except crocs for over 20 years. Auckland's warm enough for that to be comfortable, and all "normal" shoes pinch my feet. I go barefoot inside, only rarely resorting to slippers on especially cold nights.

8) I've lived with one or more cats all my life until several years ago. I miss having a cat friend, but when someone recently offered me a nice adult boy they were trying to find a home for, I had to say no. There's a busy road only a stone's throw away and the neighbours drive up and down the driveway a few feet from my front door every day, so it wouldn't be safe. The flat's not set up for an indoors cat - the back door to the garage has no screen and it'd be way too hot in summer to keep it closed. But mainly, I no longer feel able to cope with the regular round of vet visits, emergencies etc. that come with caring for a cat. I'll make do with feeding the sparrows, and my duck visitors.

9) My first boyfriend when I was 17 was Dave, from a smallish town in Illinois. He was in my English class - an exchange student at my high school. We taught each other to play chess (badly) and sometimes actually did play it before Mum got home from work, but "playing chess" was mostly a euphemism for making out.

10) In my twenties to thirties I had a series of Morris Minor cars as they were cheap and I liked their quirkiness. Kiwis are good at repairing cars with NZ being harder to import to and local DIY culture, so you could get fixed-up Morris Minors fairly easily. I drove my last one from Christchurch up to Auckland when I returned from working overseas. I'd painted it with red, maroon, and gold swirls in the seventies, then in Auckland I sanded it off and repainted it bright yellow, with the chrome all done in black. Here's a cartoon I did of it back in the day.

Offers are up for the sunflower_auction to help Ukraine.

My offer to make art is here.

I've offered in these fandoms: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG1, Murderbot, Sinners, The Old Guard, due South, and Hawaii five-O.

To see all the Offers (only 10 so not too difficult) scroll down the sunflower_auction entries past several sticky posts to reach them.

I drew this in Procreate for the current drawesome challenge. The prompt was What makes you happy.

Breakfast is my favourite meal (the promise of a new day), and this has become my favourite breakfast over the past while - it definitely makes me happy.

A toasted bagel drizzled with garlic olive oil, smeared with Promite (a gentler variant of Vegemite made in Aussie), then generously covered with smoked garlic hummus (Turkish Kitchen brand, for any Kiwis here). I've only drawn half of the bagel, so assume I've eaten the other half and am humming happily. Dilmah's English Breakfast tea with milk in my favourite yellow Chinese mug (see icon), and Greek yoghurt flavoured with Barker's Apricot (like apricot jam but with no added sugar or sweetener) plus a little maple syrup. Yum.

Ebooks:

Copper Script by K J Charles
The usual well-plotted historical romance/mystery from Charles. Set in 1924, the fantasy element is that Joel, gay and a WWI veteran who's lost his dominant hand, makes a living as a handwriting expert but his uncanny success at assessing the personality and state of mind of writers is a paranormal gift. Aaron is a closeted detective in the London force and their chance encounter and subsequent work together uncovers a serious enemy. I liked that the tension built so that everything seemed insoluble (to the more uptight Aaron) but was eventually deftly resolved by the other two less-conventional protagonists. An entertaining read.

I had less luck with the other ebooks I tried.

Angelfall (book 1 of 3) by Susan Ee
A YA series from 10 years ago that had mostly rave reviews. It's post-apocalyptic, centered on the protagonist Penrhyn, a 17 y.o. girl who, yes, is a bit of a Special Girl. No overt powers but her mother, who has paranoid schizophrenia, paid for her to have extensive martial arts training, like you do when you have a major mental disorder. I could have put up with that nonsense as Penrhyn's nicely feisty, but there were three big problems. 1. The worldbuilding was crap. The apocalypse was 2 months earlier and "the world as we know it" has been comprehensively trashed by destructive, homicidal angels. Yes, as in archangels etc., with wings and swords. There's a vague reference to "the asteroids and the fires" to account for the extreme infrastructure damage to cities and bridges, but no real attempt at making the cracky premise work. And the angels are very much extrapolated from Judeo-Christian myth (unfair to the non-Christian world) which mythology makes no sense at the best of times so good luck basing your worldbuilding on it! No explanation was given for the angelic vendetta on humanity (I gather a bit more emerges later, but I was past caring). We're told that only Gabriel knew the plan and human weapons killed him early on, so now no one knows. 2. The romance was bothersomely Twilighty with Raphael, an ancient (and beautiful and built) demigod angel thrown into travelling with Penrhyn, and clear hints of attraction developing. It felt like an adolescent girl's daddy fantasy with no depth or coherent structure. (Ee is not an adolescent.) 3. The latter part of the book suddenly switched from gritty survival in the ruins to a bizarre infiltration of the angelic HQ in a luxury San Francisco hotel filled with desperate human women slinkily dressed and made up to the nines, fawning over tuxedoed clubbing angels like a mobster's wet dream. And then it takes another sharp turn into horror, and finally into a dramatic and improbable rescue. Nope.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
Another post-apocalyptic series but the action rapidly moves to an underground dungeon maze as in similar games. Full of typical gaming detail and you need to be at least a bit of a gamer to enjoy this. I'm not, so DNF.

Audiobooks (read by the author):

On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves
Interesting enough, and nostalgic for me as I did the big OE and travelled from NZ to Kathmandu at about the same time as Steves ended up there in the mid 70s (although he did what we used to call "the overland", from Istanbul to Nepal, before various wars erupted and made that impossible). I found it reasonably engaging but although there were occasional attempts at deeper thinking about white privilege, the issue of beggars, travelling vs tourism, and other interesting subjects, he didn't give these much space and it was mostly a travelogue and sometimes a little casually dismissive of the local people who were struggling to get by and didn't actually owe Steves friendship or generosity. Comes with access to a pdf with lots of photos he took, which is a nice bonus.

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
A fascinating, horrifying, and engaging deep dive into the history of TB and how it's ravaged humanity, and how it continues to do so in those parts of the world that can't afford the inflated prices of Big Pharma. There were many fascinating revelations, such as that the skinny model look Western women are supposed to aspire to partly stems from C19th TB chic when getting thin and dying became romantic (and was also hard to avoid). Green gets angrier as the book progresses about the fact that TB killed/kills many AIDS sufferers and is still a terrible disease in poorer countries while the West does very little (Trump of course cut funding recently, e.g. to the Apopo programme where rats sniff out infected samples with amazing accuracy). The rise of resistant TB is also daunting, and Green lays it all out clearly and with passion. A great read, although the issue does seem to have gripped Green in a somewhat obsessive manner.

Paper Towns by John Green
Fiction, from a run of YA novels that preceded his current focus on TB. It felt a bit similar to Looking for Alaska, which I listened to a few months back, in that it focuses on a somewhat anxious and socially sidelined young man, Quentin, at the end of high school/start of college who's obsessed with a mysterious girl. In this case his beautiful neighbour, a somewhat "manic pixie dream girl" of a young woman who's superficially one of the cool kids, but who runs away leaving clues which he frets away at for the bulk of the book. It's set in Orlando, Florida, and Quentin has an engaging friend-group although initially all male (they're not great at achieving girlfriends and in Ben's case I can see why - he calls all women honeybunnies; even his girlfriend refers to him as "a challenge"). Much of Quentin's detective fretting revolves around a dog-eared copy of Whitman's Song of Myself, and the book partly explores the barrenness of the USA suburban subculture and physical environment, set in unreal theme parks and abandoned subdivisions - the paper towns of the title, although that also refers to unreal, multi-faced people. Interesting, but a bit slow and neurotic. Green's been open about having OCD and there are hints of obsession in these YA books, and in his new TB focus.

Physical library books:

Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
I liked his first book Moon of the Crusted Snow a lot more, maybe as it was immediately post-apocalyptic so there was more change and drama. In this sequel (which has solely been available as a physical book way longer than seems usual) an exploratory party from the tribe go south to find the ancestral lands by Lake Huron the government forced them to move from. They're surviving in the colder north 12 years after the ?EMP and civilisation's collapse, but barely, and game is getting scarce. They have the expected encounter with evil white survivalist cult dudes, but most of the book is lower key travelling, and there was a lot of untranslated Anishinaabe language that I had to skim. The ending also seemed a bit too happily-ever-afterish to ring true. I got through the book, but it didn't grab me.

Once More With Feeling by Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton.
A non-fiction account of their attempt to make a porn film after they stumbled into a job reviewing porn movies in their youths and decided they could definitely do it better. I DNF'd I'm afraid - I'm just hopeless at reading physical texts these days. My eyesight is worse at night which is usually when I read, and I can't read them in bed. I was enjoying this amusing tale, and if it was an audiobook I'd have mainlined it for sure. Unfortunately, as an older text, it's not even an ebook. Recommended if you still read physical books.

Extremely good finale for Murderbot! I'm feeling pleasantly melancholic now the series has finished, but at least I get to watch it all again. Also, it's been renewed for a second season!

I'm very much in winter mode here as although some days are sunny, it's cold, and a lot of days are very wet. So not going outside much and not doing gardening, which I don't feel great about. I seem a bit beset by inertia in terms of things physical, possibly a mid-winter slump, but I'm doing indoors things just fine - well, the things I like doing, anyway. Not cleaning or organising! I do tidy up once a week before Fionna comes to vacuum, and occasionally the dishes get washed, but that's about it.

I've started another longer podfic - this one for the due South Big Bang. Am also continuing to add lots of new podfics to the Audiofic Archive (we got inundated by >600 short ones from a recent Voiceteam challenge). And I finished a personal project with the Audiofic Archive of adding streaming links to all the SGA podfics there so they can be enjoyed easily with no need to download zip files. That's 138 pages of SGA podfics! - and increasing each week, as we make more. Next fandom to complete is due South.

In the process I stumbled on Lim's old Fanvid page on Wayback, and the vid downloads still worked. Lim made avant garde vids with lots of altered graphics. Some are on AO3 but a lot of the SGA ones aren't. The Wayback page is here (with additional info and credits), and I downloaded the SGA ones and converted them to mp4 format here. CW for flashing, fast cuts, loud music in some of them. One, Mission Report, (lyrics) is a multimedia podvid where Lim created the lyrics, music, and vid, and sang it for the SGA flashfic comm.

In "first world problem" news, a grocery mix-up. My online delivery packer needs help with alliums! Ordered a bunch of spring (green) onions:

And got a giant leek. Size matters! (in terms of making salads, anyway)



Finally, I saw this amazing poem on tumblr, apparently written by nine-for-a-kiss as a teenager. It's very Dark-is-Rising-ish.