skywardprodigal

lilly_c posting in

writethisfanfic

How is the writing going?

Poll #34459

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

View Respondents

Today I

View Answers

wrote
3 (75.0%)

edited
3 (75.0%)

sent to beta
0 (0.0%)

researched
1 (25.0%)

planned
1 (25.0%)

had a cheeky break
0 (0.0%)

dealt with life
0 (0.0%)

Discussion: when you have momentum, do you stop for breaks?

forestofglory posting in

ladybusiness

After years of struggling to read new-to-me fiction, I’ve recently entered a phase of reading graphic novels and comics and I’ve been reading so much! (It helps that I accidentally got into a comics-based fandom via stress-reading fic late last year.) It’s only April yet I have already read more books this year than I have in any year since 2020, it's truly wild. I haven’t had this much fun reading in ages!

I wanted to share some of the things I’ve been enjoying, so I thought I’d write a rec list. I find graphic novels easier to focus on when I’m stressed than prose novels, and I also love getting to see so much art. I’ve been mostly reading MG and YA works – it feels like there is a lot going on in that space right now! Plus it’s a space where there tend to be many stories focused on friendship, which I really enjoy. I’ve also been choosing more lighthearted things to read. The world is stressful and I can’t deal with stressful reading at the moment.

( Read more... )

oursin

So dr rdrz will be aware of my recent problems with printer, so I finally bit the bullet and after consulting Which Best Buys and so forth, went for an Epson Eco-Tank from John Lewis.

Which arrived at lunchtime today.

And I had anticipated spending hours if not days whining and stressing and beating my head on the ground and wrestling like until Jacob with the Angel to get the thing talking to my system and actually printing/scanning/copying.

Behold me sat sitting here having achieved getting it connected to the Wifi (the Wizard, though, is crap because it assumes that your password is a word rather than numeric, fortunately there was an alternative route), appearing under printers/scanners in my desktop computer settings, and copying, scanning, and printing.

There was a little hassle with printing which turned out to be due to Advanced Printer Settings turning out to have weird Paper Size as default rather than A4, which given that A4 is supposed to be their standard size, was bizarre.

This is positively uncanny, do admit.

pensnest

Sycamores, now. Sycamores.

The sycamore tree is a glorious thing. It is a handsome tree, tall and straight and with majestic and elegant branches. Its leaves are lovely and, in autumn, spectacular.

And it is evil. It is out for world domination. A sycamore tree's one ambition is to fill the entire temperate zone with sycamore forest. Its seeds sprout everywhere and are relentless. Miss one, and you have a sapling three feet tall which takes enormous effort to extract, or a five foot high growth which must be KILLED WITH FIRE.

I plucked about fifty baby sycamores this morning when I had only gone into the garden to pick some kale. Grar.

osprey_archer

Onward I sail in my Hornblower movie adventures! Five and six are a pair, based on Lieutenant Hornblower, which features a mad captain who is convinced that his lieutenants are plotting to take over his ship. His lieutenants, in increasing fear for their lives, conclude that they’d better take over the ship.

It’s interesting to watch these so soon after reading the books, because you read the books and it seems like there’s plenty of dramatic incident, and then you watch the movies and you go “Ah, the producers decided they needed to juice this up a bit.” Example: in the movies, the entire action is framed by the lieutenants’ trial for mutiny. If they are found guilty they will be HANGED.

Example two: in the book, Captain Sawyer falls down the hatchway, hits his head, and basically is incapacitated ever after. In the movie, he still falls from the hatchway (obviously we’re not going to let go of the question “did Hornblower push him?”), but he recovers! retakes the ship! and then promptly sails it directly under the guns of a Spanish fort, which forces the lieutenants to take action to remove him from power!

While I was reading Lieutenant Hornblower, I entertained myself greatly with the speculation that Hornblower DID push Captain Sawyer. However, upon reflection I’ve decided that if he had pushed Captain Sawyer, literally every promotion would be accompanied by the reflection “This is only happening because I MURDERED my CAPTAIN, truly I am the WORST.” On the other hand, this might explain the great increase in neuroticism between Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and our return to Hornblower POV in Hornblower and the Hotspur? Feels so guilty he can’t even name his guilt…

Okay no, I really think that if Hornblower were guilty he would be naming his guilt to himself incessantly. Maybe he’s just more neurotic because of the stress of serving under mad Captain Sawyer who was convinced that all his lieutenants and especially Hornblower were plotting against him.

ANYWAY. Getting back to the movie adaptations. I can see why these films must have made Bush/Hornblower fans Big Mad. Bush is at long last introduced - and then he’s upstaged at every turn by established movie fan favorite Lt. Kennedy.

Kennedy, not Bush, is the one who is nice to young Wellard after Captain Sawyer whips him for no reason.

When Bush is wounded, Hornblower briefly cradles his head, then the doctor is like “Go away, there’s nothing you can do here,” and Hornblower’s like “okay” and drops Bush like a hot potato. He hotfoots it off to have a chat with Kennedy, who tells him unsteadily that the prisoners have been dealt with… “Is that your blood?” Hornblower asks.

Kennedy mumbles something about how he’s fine.

“IS THAT YOUR BLOOD?”

Kennedy lets his jacket fall open and we see that his white shirt is SOAKED in blood. END OF SCENE.

And then of course Kennedy dies for Hornblower! Shambles into a court, barely able to stand upright on account of his wounds, and insists that he’s the one who pushed Captain Sawyer down the hatch! (As we have seen in endless flashbacks, he wasn’t even in the vicinity.)

Hornblower is not in court that morning, having been decoyed away, which upon reflection doesn’t quite make sense: surely he has to be in attendance at his own capital trial? But obviously we can’t have Hornblower spoiling Kennedy’s dramatic gesture by popping up to yell “That’s a lie! I pushed Captain Sawyer!” (Possibly no one pushed Captain Sawyer! Maybe he just fell! Those hatches have no safety rails. Absolute death traps.)

Anyway, Kennedy is duly sentenced to death. But before they can hang him, he dies of his wounds. Hornblower, of course, is at Kennedy’s bedside, holding his hand as he dies.

One presumes that sometime in the final two movies, Bush will at last have a chance to repair to his sickbed, where Hornblower will tenderly brush his hair from his forehead. But even then, how can he compete with the guy who sacrificed his life for Hornblower? The filmmakers clearly decided to ride the good ship Hornblower/Kennedy into the sunset.

smallhobbit

A quick first post on my encounters with wildlife, to introduce the challenges I'm involved in.

British Trust for Ornithology
Garden Bird Watch: I began this last summer, as part of my 25 Things in 2025. I continue to record my sightings (such as they are) every week.
Birds in Green Spaces: The project is running from April to June this year and asks for a count of the birds seen in specified green spaces. There are two designated green spaces near where I live, so I'm aiming to visit them once a week.

UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme
Flower Insect Timed Count: Runs from April to September, and asks for 10 minutes to count insects on certain flowers. It requires a warm, preferrable sunny, day.

Butterfly Conservation
Big Butterfly Count: Happens from the middle of July to the middle of August
Garden Butterfly Survey: I'm waiting for warmer weather and the flowering of some of our bushes
Butterflies for the New Millennium: An ongoing count, which I'm currently doing when I do the birds in green spaces count

While there may be other opportunities which are less structured, these are the ones I'm using when I go for a walk locally.

pauraque

Early spring in Vermont is a lot like winter, but with less snow. We can see the ground, but the trees are still completely bare, grass hasn't grown, and the only flowers yet are the occasional bloodroot and optimistic crocuses. On one hike I got excited to see some green on a hill, but it turned out to be last year's ferns, all squashed flat. There are still many days that hover around freezing, alternating between rain and snow. Earlier this week I had to drive in a sudden aggressive windy snowstorm that didn't stick but made visibility near zero.

But the important question: How are the birds doing? Migratory species keep showing up one by one. We saw our first Double-crested Cormorant of the year flying over Lake Champlain while we were visiting the waterfront. Eastern Phoebes are also back, including the one who makes its summer home in our yard. Several mornings I've seen it in the tree out my bedroom window, doing its characteristic tail-bob. And I heard my year's first Wood Duck before I saw it on the river—they don't quack, but let out a distinctive squeal.

We're on the edge of the year-round range for White-throated Sparrow and I have seen them here in winter before, but they're much more common in the spring and I've been hearing their ohhh sweeet caaaaanada song. Red Crossbill can supposedly be here in the winter too, but I saw my first of the year this week.

It's also getting easier to see waterfowl now that some of the smaller lakes and ponds aren't completely frozen over. Hooded Mergansers can be seen on the non-frozen parts of Lake Champlain in the winter, but now they're back on our local pond too.

We also get species briefly passing through while headed elsewhere on their migration routes. I was excited to spot a pair of Northern Shovelers on the pond in late March, which was a little early for them to show up here—the eBird app prompted for evidence when I reported them, so I attached this very non-aesthetic but at least diagnostic photo. They're both in this picture, but the brown female is much harder to see!

low quality photo of pair of ducks in reeds

low quality photo of pair of ducks in reeds

I think I was the first to see them, or at least my eBird report was first. I felt kinda special scrolling through all the subsequent reports as birders flocked to take a look. I also saw a pair in the same spot last year in the first week of April; I wonder if they're the same birds.

And the year-rounders who have been here all winter are shifting into breeding mode. Every day the American Goldfinches at our feeder are a little yellower, their breeding plumage showing up in scruffy patches. Black-capped Chickadees are a constant as always, but I'm hearing more territorial yooo-hooo calls as well as the eponymous chick-a-dee-dee-dee. The little Brown Creepers are singing instead of just buzzing, and I spotted one darting in and out from behind the peeling park of a tree, immediately after I saw a video explaining that that's where they nest!

So that's 53 species for me in 2026 so far. Countdown to warbler season in a couple of weeks!

james_davis_nicoll

A young man walks out of the City and into a multigenerational Tale.

Little, Big by John Crowley

torachan

1. I took my laundry over to the hotel next door this morning and since last time I used their app to do it, I did not take any cash. We’ll, you can still use the app, but there’s terrible cell reception in the hotel, especially back by the laundry room, and last time I didn’t notice it because I was using hotel Wi-Fi, but I’m not actually a guest at that hotel, so no Wi-Fi for me. I just about got the wash going after a long struggle, but unlike the machines at the last two hotels, this is not a combo so I had to go back to do the dryer separately and foolishly did not take cash that time either, and I couldn’t even text Carla to bring me cash since the reception was that bad. Instead I took the damp laundry back to the hotel to hang dry. Thankfully we had enough clean clothes to wear today (though we really were down to the last few items as we packed light with the intention of doing laundry multiple times) and when we came back to the hotel in the afternoon, I took the few things that were still damp and did a 15 minute run in the dryer (with cash) to finish them off.

2. Today was our Disneyland day and it was pretty much perfect. Despite the delay of doing laundry in the morning, I was able to get over there and line up before opening and Carla joined me soon after. We were in the park by a few minutes after 9 and got an express pass for Beaty and the Beast right away, plus one for Monsters Inc a little later. Last time we hadn’t managed to get the pass for Monsters Inc and while I went on it myself Carla wasn’t up to the hour+ line, so I wanted to make sure we got that this time. By the time we were able to put in for another pass, they were sold out for Winnie the Pooh, but we were able to do it with the regular line later in the evening when the wait was down to 20 minutes. It was a bit sunny in the morning but not hot, and windy in the afternoon and evening but not too cold.

3. We were planning on DisneySea tomorrow, but it’s supposed to rain all day (though based on the total inches, probably only sprinkling) and the park is closing at 6pm, which means we wouldn’t be able to go back to the hotel and rest then come back for dinner, which is our preferred method. So instead we will go on Saturday, which will be more crowded, and do other stuff tomorrow.

4. Finally heard back from the tax preparer and we will be getting a decent refund!

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: awake

sovay

We just had a blackout! For what looked like blocks around! It lasted exactly as long as it took

spatch to light a candle in a yahrzeit glass and me to find a utility bill to call and report the outage. Briefly, stars were visible.

(Today was concerned primarily with taking Hestia to the vet, falling over afterward, and thinking unavoidably about geopolitics.)

Current Music: Metric, "Victim of Luck"

ysabetwordsmith

This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...

* Posted "Draw a Bird Day" in

green_joy.

* Posted "Crafts" in

green_living.

* Posted "Poem: Haiku for Natural Monuments of Japan 1-10-26" to

haiku_gallery.

Current Mood: busy

aurumcalendula posting in

baihe_media

Preview:

( 5 icons under the cut )

lassarina

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off, because the DM's internet died again (as the game's start was already delayed because of internet issues).

Current Mood: accomplished

hannah

I know you're supposed to meet works where they are, and there's some where I can't manage that. I had an appointment this morning and wanted something easy and light that wasn't all that many pages so it'd easily fit in the backpack. I'd picked up Red White and Royal Blue off a stoop some weeks ago, so I didn't even need to wait for a library hold - just grab it off a stack and stick it in there. It started out as little better than "just okay" but I still wanted to know firsthand what the fuss was about. The voices were flat, the drama felt cheap, and I kept going. Then it got to a moment where the main character thinks of his mother by her first name. Firmly in his point of view, suddenly shifting from "his mother" to her first name. We're given no indication his is the kind of family to do that. Any decent editor looking to maintain tone and voice should've picked it up and requested a change.

Threw me right out of the book twenty pages in. I didn't literally throw it because I was in a waiting room, but I certainly stuffed it into my backpack with enough force to count.

It didn't have be bad, either. While it suffers when put next to the other novel I'm reading, Clockers by Richard Price, pretty much everything suffers when put next to that one. But this could be better, and end up as good a possible version of this story as possible. Do more. Try harder. Deepen and broaden your goals. Be better.

I may keep reading out of spite. If this got onto a shelf, then clearly it's not because my own writing isn't good enough to do the same, it's a problem with me not pitching to more agents and the industry being less and less willing to gamble. I know I'm better than this. It's not a problem on my end, and if nothing else, this book is solid confirmation of that.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Dreamers in Exile - Voxtrot

ysabetwordsmith

Today is Draw a Bird Day. You don't need to be "an artist" for this. Your drawing (or painting, or whatever) does not have to be fancy. Just squiggle out a bird!

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

china_shop

Previous poll review
In The whooshing sound as they go past poll, 25.6% of respondents said they generally find deadlines motivating, 28.2% want to hide from them, and 64.1% find them manageable in moderation or under specific circumstances. In ticky-boxes, sunbeams dancing brightly on leaves in the breeze came second to hugs, 66.7% to 87.2%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Still listening to The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley, read by Sid Sagar. There's an interesting tension between my being 90% sure the POV character is unreliable, and 10% aware that he is familiar with the ancient world and its mores, while I am not, so what if all his wrong interpretations are right?

I'm up to the second-draft section of Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell, and I am somewhat despairing. In brief, he recommends: discovery write your first draft for raw material, reverse engineer an outline from it, fix the outline, then write the second draft from the revised outline from scratch. Which makes sense if a) you need to discover your characters and worldbuilding along with your story, and b) you can write from an outline. But when I've tried this in the past, I kept editing the outline until it was a completely different story from my first draft. Also, I don't want to rewrite my fics from scratch, and even if I managed to, I'd end up with a differently not-working draft and have to do it all over again. Tl;dr, there is a lot of good stuff in Refuse to Be Done, but it's not the magic bullet for my writing woes that I'd hoped. Oh well.

Maybe I should give the method a try for something shorter.

Kdramas
I'm currently watching four Kdramas, woohoo!

Andrew and I are watching Phantom Lawyer, which is goofy and kind. I would probably enjoy it even more if I hadn't recently listened to a bunch of episodes of Movie Briefs podcast; now I'm very conscious of the rampant unethical lawyering (your client being guilty does not mean you get to turn evidence over to the police, omg; you can't lie to a client about their case to spare their feelings; etc). Anyway, I'm kind of hoping it doesn't develop a romance; I like the leads as a platonic odd couple.

Pru and I are still watching Love Scout. More this evening. (And I showed my brother episode 1 on Friday, though he chatted through it; is that how normal people watch TV?)

I slipped and fell into a rewatch of You're Beautiful, the 2009 "nun undercover as her twin brother in a boyband" drama that was my gateway drug. It is still ridiculous and adorable. Neither of the leads has two braincells to rub together, and I love them. The second lead is still annoying.

spoilers

The lead is arrogant, impatient, and rude, but when he accidentally overhears his new bandmate talking about keeping the fact she's a woman a secret, he immediately confronts her, demands that she go to the manager and confess, and generally engages with her as an (annoying, accident-prone) person. Eventually he ends up helping her and conspiring to keep her secret. Meanwhile, the second lead guesses from Mi-nam's physical attributes that she's female (which reads very differently to me in 2026 than it did to my clueless younger self!). He doesn't tell her he's guessed, just goes out of his way to befriend her and invite her confidence, and he gradually gets jealous of the first lead. He's "nice", but I do not like him.

Hwang Tae-kyeong's reluctant self-embroilment in the deception makes me laugh a lot,and I'm permanently earwormed with the theme song. I feel like in a modern remake, a) the other boyband members would be more androgynous looking too, and b) the management would be all over everything. A.N. Entertainment is one ramshackle operation.

I also started Lovely Runner, starring Kim Hye-yoon (Extraordinary You) as a Kpop megafan whose idol dies by suicide. She time-travels back 15 years to when they were both in school and proceeds to be extremely in-his-face, leveraging her encyclopaedic fan knowledge of him to try and change the course of history. Kim Hye-yoon is always delightful, so I'm enjoying it so far, but it's early days.

Other TV
The Pitt. Ahhhh!!

Rooster (why do writers on TV never actually sit down and write? or read, for that matter?), Scrubs, Cheers, and about ten minutes of DTF [location] which was enough to know it's not for me.

Fringe and Bluey with my sister.

spoilers for Fringe

We've reached the terrible part of Fringe. Wow, I'd forgotten how bad it gets. I mean, why wouldn't you have one of your lead characters choose to give up her entire personality, life history, and all of her friendships and social and family connections for romantic love? I mean, none of that meant anything much, right? Wow. /o\)

Paper Girls and Connections with Andrew and Ed.

Audio entertainment
Bill and Frank's Guilt-Free Pleasures' episode "Crowded House: 'Don't Dream It's Over'". A bunch of relistening to RNZ podcast Conversations with my Immigrant Parents as research for a fic I'm not writing.

Online life
520 Day assignments are out, woohoo! The Slo-Mo Guardian rewatch is kicking back into gear this weekend. I've started a new browser window (window #4) where I'm camping out; it currently only has thirteen tabs. I'm failing at keeping up with Dreamwidth, but hopeful that will change now Writers' Hour is at 8am instead of 10am.

Writing/making things
The last week has mostly been modding, squaring away my Yuletide fic for when I get back to it, making notes for a thing that I'm not going to write after all, and alibi sentences. But sometime in the next couple of days, I'm going to start my 520 Day assignment. This is my resolve face.

Life/health/mental state things
( Cut for length. )

House
I am optimistic that my kitchen windows will be re-puttied next week sometime, weather permitting.

Link dump
Why Greenland is an Island and Australia is a Continent (via

starandrea) | Losing Self-Control (5-minute short film about gay love in a Big Brother-like dystopia (with happy ending), which is actually an official music video for Minute Taker; via

mific) | Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (via

tinny) | London Writers' Salon are having a free 24-Hour Sprint 7pm 24th to 7pm 25th April UK time (you just go to whichever hours you want) | Migaku language-learning app (via

tinny) (note to self: come back to this next time I'm in a language-learning phase).

Good things
Hair! My 520 Day assignment! Kdramas! Social occasions (I guess). My sister mended my favourite slouching-around-at-home trousers and made me Brazilian cheese bread. Halle and Andrew and the fact it's not raining or cold.

Poll #34458 Stoic hurt/comfort

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

When dealing with stoic characters, how do you prefer your hurt/comfort?

View Answers

stoic character stoically/reluctantly/awkwardly receiving comfort
14 (43.8%)

stoic character stoically/reluctantly/awkwardly providing comfort
15 (46.9%)

anyone and everyone hurt!
13 (40.6%)

anyone and everyone comforting!
12 (37.5%)

it depends
11 (34.4%)

none of my characters are stoic/reserved/clams
0 (0.0%)

all of my characters are stoic/reserved/clams
1 (3.1%)

I'm not into hurt/comfort
3 (9.4%)

other / it's more complicated than that
4 (12.5%)

ticky-box of having multiple browser windows open right now
16 (50.0%)

ticky-box full of story structure is my nemesis
9 (28.1%)

ticky-box full of a red panda circus troupe performing for grapes
12 (37.5%)

ticky-box of appreciating being able to breathe through your nose
21 (65.6%)

ticky-box full of hugs
26 (81.2%)

winterfirelight posting in

gardening

It's been busy times in the garden! I got the last of my cold-stratified seeds planted last night. On Sunday we took on the big project of replacing the old wooden bed out by the street that's been slowly rotting away and was full of grass anyway. It's all concrete underneath, and the bed was too shallow to be able to plant anything substantial, much less anything that I'd feel comfortable harvesting. In it's place we put in four 2x2 corrugated steel beds that are much taller, and there's space for another 3-4 small beds of that size if we decide we like how these first ones are working. Still some cleanup to do from that, but otherwise it's looking much better.

I've gotten the feverfew, oregano, and thyme settled in those new spaces, with the last bed ready for the tulsi seedlings whenever they're big enough to transplant. The nights are still getting quite cold, so I'm waiting a while longer before making the little things have to brave the weather. It's supposed to be a temperate variety that can handle our cooler temperatures, but I've previously only grown the more tropical tulsi, which makes me a little more cautious than I maybe need to be. I'll be curious to see how the varieties differ.

The elecampane officially survived the winter, which I'm very happy to see! I thought for sure I had lost it. It's much slower to wake than the rest of the garden. I'm not sure if that's just how it is, or if it's a function of the place where it's been planted. It seemed to lag behind other plants in growth last year, too, but I imagine the second year will tell me quite a bit about how it feels where it is.

There's plenty of maintenance work to do in the garden, but in terms of plants, it's back to a waiting game. All the big plant sales and swaps won't happen until May, and none of the seedlings are quite ready for transplant yet, so I shall bide my time and be patient. I still haven't quite decided where everything will go, or what else I'll buy when the sales come along. There's a real risk I'll run out of space, but at least the soil is amended and weeded and ready to go. Hurrah for warmer days!

Current Mood: chipper

offcntr

This is how many Empty Bowls were in the kiln on Monday. Literally half the load, around 150 bowls.

a princess of now

check in day 9

Graphic Novel Favorites From My Recent Reading

Hedjog versus THE MACHINE

this new life has begun

Hornblower movies 5 & 6

Wildlife - April

early spring birds

Little, Big by John Crowley

Daily Happiness

Heated Rivalry rec

Shoot like a magnet to the surface of the sun

Community Thursdays

The Unseen icons

What Are You Playing Wednesday

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 4/8 Game

Kiss the rules of empires past.

Draw a Bird Day

Me-and-media update

Spring Has Sprung!

Bowled over

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October 2010

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