starlings overhead

three random things

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 14:45:10 GMT

- 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!

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2025 music thoughts, I guess?

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:50:01 GMT

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... )

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april reading

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:58:46 GMT

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 )

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end of March reading recap

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 20:01:51 GMT

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!

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mid-March reading update

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 19:19:48 GMT

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.

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february reads!

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 21:21:54 GMT

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 )

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three things as per

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:16:31 GMT

★ 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:

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rats! rats! rats!

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 18:21:33 GMT

★ I've changed my mood theme to these very cute rats by 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 3sentenceficathon pace has slowed down, so I've crossposted all the ficlets to AO3. I'm curious about 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.

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january books (and other media)

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 18:24:37 GMT

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 )

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3SF fills

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 14:16:19 GMT

Like I mentioned a few days ago, I've been doing threesentenceficathon and having a lot of fun with it. My excited burst of energy has slowed down slightly, so I figured now was as good a time as any to make a post for my fills. I'll try to keep the list updated as I (hopefully!) post more.

Arcane, Jinx/Sevika, Silco finds out (or knew all along) [12-01]

Arcane, Jinx/Silco, gender play [12-01]

Lisa Frankenstein, Lisa & Taffy, ten year reunion [13-01]

Guild Wars 2, Kasmeer, "who am I supposed to pray to?" [14-01]

The Magnus Archives, Peter Lukas, Daemon AU [14-01]

The Magnus Archives, Agnes Montague, Daemon AU [14-01]

Arcane, Mel Medarda/Caitlyn Kiramman, arranged marriage [17-01]

Guild Wars 2, Aurene, crystalline [19-01]

Guild Wars 2, Queen Jennah, selfcest [20-01]

Guild Wars 2, Sylvari OC, the old lie [22-01]

Matthew Swift, wash the angels from your head [23-01]

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back again perhaps

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:46:32 GMT

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 threesentenceficathon over the past day or two. (Thank you, 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!

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eating my words (I wrote a fic)

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 20:37:44 GMT

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. ☀️)

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writing retrospective for 2023

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 15:20:13 GMT

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... )

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holiday love meme 2023

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 10:03:37 GMT

✨ holiday love meme 2023 ✨
my thread here

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

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joy of people

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 20:44:59 GMT

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.

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a non-exhaustive list of Jin Zixuan recs

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:11:44 GMT

(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! )

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came to me in a dream

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 20:51:39 GMT

(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.)

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train thoughts on a book

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 10:41:08 GMT

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.

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a fic and five icons

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 19:19:42 GMT

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 smallbatchicons a week or so ago, but here they are here as well!

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some bulletproof recs

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 16:57:23 GMT

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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snowflake challenge #2: a guild wars 2 primer

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 21:58:05 GMT

The Snowflake Challenge for today is to "In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom." So, may I introduce you to one of my long-lasting passions: Guild Wars 2!

Gif by me.
( Read more... )

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the latest obsession

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 20:43:58 GMT

I go in phases of fixations, which makes it hard to commit to any specific hobby or skill with any level of discipline. Apparently my current obsession is learning to draw, thanks to a set of multicoloured pencils I was bought for Christmas - or rather, to pick up drawing again for the first time since high school without my perfectionism killing me. I drew one OC today, in the middle of a quiet work day, in a way that made me want to do more, but it's not a hobby I find easy to do without getting frustrated with my lack of skill.

Things I'm doing to try and experiment: I've bought a copy of My Year in Small Drawings to experiment with. I've looked at Drawabox, although I don't know if I'd be able to stick to it. I'm considering buying Alphonso Dunn's Pen and Ink Drawing books; I really want to focus on pencil and pen work. I signed up for some life drawing sessions over the next few months, except the nervousness is already killing me despite the first one being a month away. It's not something I've ever done before, and I just don't know what to expect, beyond nudity and people doing drawings. (My brain: "Is it weird that I'm signing up for all the sessions they're offering? Should I only sign up for one or two?")

Does anyone know of any communities / resources / courses / books that are good for art? I've got a set of shelves coming for my home office/craft room on Friday, so hopefully by the end of the weekend, it should be set up properly for me to do more crafting and art.

(Anything will be better than the "How to draw erotic manga" book I saw on the Oxfam online shop. I'd have bought it if it wasn't £25.)

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day in the life: winter solstice 2022

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:36:17 GMT

I took the day off work today to go and watch the sun rise over the sea. I'm not especially spiritual by nature, but I attach some significance to the Solstice, both symbolically and as a part of nature worth appreciating, so I try to watch the sunrise each year. If the sea were easier to get to, I'd watch the sun rise at the Summer Solstice as well.

Close to the actual sunrise, I ended up accidentally sat next to a group of pagan/new age women also there for the Solstice. They were very nice, and correctly surmised that a guy in rainbow trousers probably wouldn't be scared off by them. So I sat by them while they did their stuff (they had these cool glass resonant things) until my feet felt like ice blocks and I had to go somewhere warm. Like I said, I'm not very spiritual, but it was nice to be invited to ambiently participate in their spiritual practice.

Then, since I had the day off, I went into town and got breakfast, returned a jumper that needed returning, and wandered around some charity shops. I ended up buying one of the Culture novels, and also a copy of Dune which someone has written in (!). I love books that people have written in, and I've never read Dune, so I'm going to enjoy reading it with someone's little annotations, I think.

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a brief writing retrospective for 2022

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 21:32:04 GMT

I was planning to use the same questions I answered last year (courtesy of anysin, who I forgot to credit then, though I don't know the original provenance), but given how little I've written this year, I thought I'd just do a short retrospective on my own initiative instead.

( Read more... )

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decorating woes, and other things

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 22:17:39 GMT

Decorating things
♥ The main bulk of rearranging my office and craft space is done! But a) I can't put up pictures yet, because b) I want shelves, and the shelves I wanted from IKEA became unavailable for delivery in the four hours it took me to decide I definitely wanted them. I have a backup plan set of shelves, but I don't like them nearly as much.

♥ I also framed some pictures today, but I haven't put any up because I want to see how much wall space I have when I put the shelves in. I have so many Marlowe Lune postcards I need to figure out what to do with, and I've added another postcard subscription to my collection - Risotto Studios, who produce four risograph prints a month from four different artists in a different city each month. I ordered some of their back-catalogue, and I've subscribed to the monthly batches. Any I don't like can be put aside for potential collaging or even, perhaps, posting!

Other things

    ♥ Things I've learned from working at home: I fidget a lot more than in the office, and it's even more important that a) I have a solid plan for my day, and b) I have some decent background noise. So I've been watching more of a video game streamer I've liked for years, and that's been really nice. I also need to get a desk lamp (or several) whenever I buy something from IKEA, so I'm not sitting in the dark at the end of the day, but I also don't need to get up just to put the main light on for ten minutes.

    ♥ The day I find a Dreamwidth style that I want to stick with will be a miracle. I'm the same with Tumblr themes - I'm so picky about them in a way that makes it really hard to find one I want to settle to. I thought the last one I was using was perfect, and then I realised I couldn't see people's icons on my reading page, and that made me sad. One day!

    ♥ I'm going to watch the Muppet Christmas Carol at my local cinema tomorrow, so then Christmas will officially have started. 🎄 Fingers crossed that the weather is kind, so I can get churros from the Christmas market afterwards.

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