screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)
- [community profile] threesentenceficathon is running right now! I loved it last year. I think I've been infected with Terminal Overthinking Disease this year, though, because the only thing I've posted is something I wrote last year and never posted then. I'm hoping to spend some time focusing on it tomorrow to try and finish off some ficlets - if nothing else, there's a Lady Jane Grey one I want to do something with - and reply to fills people have done on my prompts.

- I've found myself doing a lot of gifmaking recently! When writing fic has been consistently difficult (for reasons that could be their own whole post), it's been really nice to have some way to still... explore? the scenes that I've been rotating in my brain. Of which there are many!

- My current obsession is Private Nightmares, a Vampire: The Masquerade actual play series with people from around the Geek & Sundry/Critical Role/Dimension 20 world of actual play. I find the format of it engaging; they film in a theatre and they make really good use of the space. They call it an exploration of "personal horror", and it's so compelling to me! I'm also obsessed with Aabria Iyengar's character in particular, she's incredibly messy. I've got one episode left of the first season, and I'm so excited!
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)
Apparently when I sat down to do an end of year wrap-up thing for music and books and stuff my brain went 'no. just music'. So here you go. 

Read more... )
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)
Did I forget to do a mid-April post here? Yes.

This was the month for new releases, and also the month of Carmilla, apparently.

Read Books )
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)
I reshelved my books today to filter in books I've bought over the last couple of weeks, and I'm officially out of space for new fiction books. Well, technically I still have "stacking on top" space, which is more than can be said for my non-fiction, but it's still a bad sign about my ability to keep acquiring books.

The second half of March has been a lot of books with trans themes, because of the Trans Rights Readathon.

Read Books )

I've still got a few holdovers from the TRR to finish off, then I've got a couple library books to go through.

Games-wise, I got Beastieball at the weekend after watching a streamer play it, and I'm enjoying it a lot! I don't think I'm very good at it, but it's a lot of fun!
screechfox: A pixel art scene of a train platform in the snow. (pixels: train station)
Trying out a mid-month reading update, so books are fresher in my mind.

Read Books )

Trans Rights Readathon is a thing happening at the end of this month, and I figure I'd use it to focus my TBR for a bit. I've got a couple of non-fiction books from the library for it, and I have plenty of options for fiction on my own shelves.

Nothing much to say about other media - I bought The Roottrees are Dead and Pentiment in the current Steam sale, but I'm only partway through the former and barely started the latter.
screechfox: A pixel art scene of a train platform in the snow. (pixels: train station)
I don't expect to finish any books tomorrow, so here we are! Because of being on leave, then being ill, then having a bad brain, I've read even more this month than I did last month, and I have more to say as well! I also bought more books, so I've spared you the list of those, unless that's actively of interest to anyone? If I still read at this pace next month, I might break my wrap-up into the two halves of the month.

Read Books )

Other Media )
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (pixels: sunrise)
★ My week off last week was very nice and very needed, but I started feeling sick around Sunday and ended up with a cold. Luckily, it seems to have been a brief one; I've been off work since Wednesday and I'm feeling mostly better now. I'd really like to stop getting colds!

★ While sick, I've been rereading, then reading fresh, some of the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr, because mildly trashy YA faery romance seemed about my brain speed. It's a lot darker than I remember, and slightly more textually queer given they came out from 2007-11. I'd read the first three years ago but never got around to the last two, so even though I'm not really in the mood anymore, I'm determined to read the fifth and finish the series - if I don't now, I probably never will!

★ Games-wise, I've picked up Sky: Children of the Light again (MMO by the people who made Journey), and I'm enjoying it a lot! I dropped it last year because it's repetitively grind-y and very FOMO-y with its cosmetics, but for the moment I'm finding it very chill. Also, I look adorable:

A character from the game Sky: Children of the Light sitting and reading. Islands float in the sky in the background.
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)

★ I've changed my mood theme to these very cute rats by [personal profile] soc_puppet. The rabbits were very cute but I couldn't turn down the cuteness. (I have also changed my journal style for the millionth time, because I just can't settle on one for some reason. /shrugs)

★ My [profile] 3sentenceficathon pace has slowed down, so I've crossposted all the ficlets to AO3. I'm curious about [community profile] fic_promptly, which looks like it could fill a similar low-pressure commentfic niche, but I think I'll focus on 3SF for the moment.

★ I only have one day left and then I'm off work for a week. The rest time is well-needed; the last time I had some proper rest leave was October. T-T I do have some things I want to get done and hobbies I want to work on, but keeping it low pressure.

screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (pixels: sunrise)
So, I've done a lot of reading this month, mostly because of Storygraph's January pages challenge - the chances of winning £150-ish worth of books and a Kobo by logging reading every day was too much to pass up, even if I'm competing with 200k-ish other people. time will tell if I manage to win!

this is what I've managed to read so far, what I've bought, and a few other media things going on.

Read Books )

Bought Books )

Other Media )
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)

I was going to put this behind a cut but HTML was fighting me, sorry!

★ I was planning to write my traditional big creative retrospective on 2024 but never got around to it, so in summary: I didn't finish a single piece of writing in 2024, but I did explore other creative mediums, like cross stitch, faux-kintsugi, and pottery! I considered signing up to Get Your Words Out this year, but I've decided to take the year off putting pressure on myself to write. If it happens, it happens; if my brain wants a rest, let it rest.

That being said, I've actually been having fun with [community profile] threesentenceficathon over the past day or two. (Thank you, [personal profile] almach, for reminding me that it was happening!) I think the limitations have made me really pare down to the core of ideas (and/or abuse punctuation), and it feels a lot more like writing as play than gruelling obligation. It's the kind of creative experimentation that makes me feel a little more confident about going back to finish some of the things I was working on last year. I'll probably make a proper post with all my fills at some point.

★ I had the first session of a course on women writers in medieval Europe this evening, and now I have a bunch of historical figures to look up! It's kind of freeing to go back to learning for its own sake as an Adult With A Job, knowing that if I don't like it, I can just... leave. I've got another on Old English coming up next month, which I'm looking forward to even more.

★ I've finished the last of my three-month experimentation with meal kit boxes. It's like a switch flipped in autumn 2024, and suddenly I went from stereotypical safe foods-only terrible-diet autistic to... willing to try new things? Baffling. Meal kits were great for narrowing my meal options down from Every Recipe In The World and giving me exactly the ingredients I needed, but I can't justify the expense or the packaging waste long-term.

★ Still have nearly 4500 photos to sort through from my holiday in Norway in December. Send help!

screechfox: Art of Vriska from Homestuck, with blue gore around her eye. (homestuck: vriska eye gore)
True to form, within two days of taking a retrospective on my year's writing and saying I probably wouldn't finish anything else this year, I wrote a oneshot. From start to finish. In one sitting, excluding the notes I took on my phone at work.

Sometimes writing just possesses you!

most pitiable of creatures
Homestuck, Beforus!Feferi Peixes/Roxy Lalonde. 1.3k words.

Feferi fell in pity as soon as she saw those eyes. The hue of royalty, beautiful Tyrian pink, on a creature whose natural weakness would never allow her to rise to that station? It was an awful cruelty, and utterly irresistible.
 
Written for a prompt about non-consensual hair-stroking, which probably tells you everything you need to know about the tone of the fic, and also my love for characters being unwillingly taken care of.

(And yes, I know I said in my retrospective that I'm not really in Homestuck fandom anymore. I'm as surprised as you are! Every day is brand new. ☀️)
screechfox: A photo of clouds in the sky at sunset/sunrise. (photo: soft sky)
This might be a premature, but working on the assumption that I'm not going to finish any fics by the end of the year - which, unless I'm hit with a wave of fixation in the festive season, is very likely - I wanted to look back on the writing, or largely lack thereof, I did this year.Read more... )
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)
holiday love meme 2023
my thread here

One day I'll post on Dreamwidth properly again...

screechfox: A photo of clouds in the sky at sunset/sunrise. (photo: vivid sky)
today, while on an Internet rabbit hole involving the editor of a Manchester alternative poetry magazine from 1970-1972 that we found in my grandma's books, i ended up on an archived copy of a California gay magazine from 1986. and there were many small delights or interesting (or sad!) things in this, but the one that has filled me with the most joy for humanity is this:

a horoscopes section with your standard signs, but also assigning those signs to animals as part of the "California zodiac".

"The ancient traditions of the zodiac are rooted in vivid animal images. The word "zodiac” means cycles of animals. The animals mentioned herein comprise the California Zodiac — the first major revision of the militaristic Roman Zodiac in 2500 years. By the year 1999, the animals will be fully reinstated with traditional dignity."

and I present to you the list of traditional zodiac signs with their assigned animals, in three categories:
  • THE REASONABLE
  • Scorpio, The Scorpion
  • Cancer, The Crab
  • Aries, The Sheep
  • Taurus, The Ox
  • Sagittarius, The Horse
  • Pisces, The Shark
  • THE "I GUESS YOU HAD TO ASSIGN THIS AN ANIMAL"
  • Gemini, The Wolf
  • Libra, The Leopard
  • Virgo, The Pig (🤔)
  • THE CONFUSING
  • Capricorn, The Whale
  • Aquarius, The Eagle
  • Leo, The Snake
obviously, I'm sure there was more thought put into these than my surface-level judgements. but also, reading this page of the magazine filled me with a delight in humanity that I just can't explain. I think it was the conviction that these would be adopted by 1999, and just... Leo, The Snake. I love people, okay? people are weird and great and I love them.
screechfox: A pixel scene of sunrise over the ocean. (Default)
(Reposted because I forgot a cut and then broke the formatting.)

Because what is there to do when ill but, apparently, go through fics with Jin Zixuan tagged as a character which had his full name mentioned to pick out some stuff I liked -- Jin Zixuan is a character I don't have a great understanding of, so I'm always on the look out for stuff that I feel explores his perspective in an interesting manner!

Recs presented in no particular order except the order they ended up in in my tabs.recs below the cut! )
screechfox: Art of Caithe from Guild Wars 2. (gw2: caithe)

(i.e. I remembered the existence of this Tumblr-style gifset code after spending yesterday and today making a gifset of one of my Guild Wars 2 OCs. More interesting posts to follow -- potentially.)

ALT TEXT
ALT TEXT
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screechfox: A pixel art scene of a train platform in the snow. (pixels: train station)
Hell Followed With Us is a YA post-apocalypse horror novel about a trans guy infected with a body horror bioweapon, who escapes from the fundamentalist cult that raised him. I love that it exists, I was excited to read it, and... it's fine?

Sometimes I can't tell whether I dislike books because of flaws in the book, or because I'm not the right person to read it. All of the elements were right for me, but I think I would want to read them in a different novel. I think I've aged out of YA fiction, or else I've grown away from some constraints of the genre.

It's also a glaring example of how the "for fans of [X thing] and [Y thing]" style of marketing is misleading. It was marketed as similar to Gideon the Ninth and Annihilation, and while I can see why for both... it's just not the same.

Finished it on a train to London, which is sometimes the only way I finish books that I've stalled on. I'm not sure what I'm going to read next; I should have put an extra book in my bag so I'd have another option.
screechfox: Wang Lingjiao looking into the distance. (cql: wang lingjiao forest)
nothing gold can stay

"Unearthed from a pile of papers a decade old, you find Meng Yao, half-sketched in black ink, staring up at you."

An angsty Nie Huaisang/Jin Guangyao character study, set after Nie Mingjue’s death, through the lens of two portraits never finished.

2.9k words on AO3.

icons of Wang Lingjiao

I posted five icons of Wang Lingjiao on [community profile] smallbatchicons a week or so ago, but here they are here as well!


screechfox: A photo of clouds in the sky at sunset/sunrise. (photo: vivid sky)
Three recs for The Locked Tomb from Bulletproof 22/23: so savage with red desperation and hold you close and hear you cry, two delightfully codependent Coronabeth/Ianthe fics, and Necromantic Adventures in Bodyswapping!, a Mercymorn/Augustine fic where they have sex while body-swapped with each other.

(A bonus rec: in the tall weeds, a Nie Huaisang/Jin Guangyao fic set in the Qinghe era, with class issues and gender stuff.)

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