jadislefeu | Recent Entries

My friend

limiculous asked me to walk her through how I set up a custom column in calibre for comments on downloaded fic (which I did because I discovered that whoops, puting notes in the summary means they're wiped if the fic updates because the summary resets, and I don't know how many notes I lost before I noticed this, WHOOPS), and I figured I'd put it up here too, in case it would be useful to someone else as well.

The comments look like this:

(Comment selected for its utter blandness as an example, because this post isn't about the contents of the comments.)

And now, how you get one of those!

First, right click on the column header. You'll get a right click menu, wherein you select 'Add your own columns'.

The window you get looks like this, and you hit the + button to add a new one:

You want to set up the new column about like this, though obviously you can change the title and all as you like. If you set it to plain text instead of HTML, the comments display in monospace in the metadata pane, and I found that really jarring, so I have them as HTML even though I have no desire to put any actual HTML in them.

Back in the add your own columns window, make sure the tickbox in the 'Column header' column is ticked if you want to be able to see comments in the general display rather than just in the metadata pane--which also lets you sort by comments, which I use to group together all the fics I've left comments on if I want to look at just them.

And that's it! Boom, custom calibre column to keep notes to yourself in. (Obviously you could also leave comments on actual books, if you read those and not just fic like I do of late.) (If anyone would like to know anything else about using calibre for downloaded fic--I've got mine set up so it can scrape urls for fics to update from email notifications, for instance, and to tag every downloaded fic with 'fanfiction' so I can have it in a virtual library just for fic--well, you can see all my virtual libraries up top in the tabs in the first screenshot--this sentence has gone on for a very long time and the point is I'm happy to do other mini tutorials if anyone would like.)

This is my first time, I only ever saw the first three films as they came out. Alex and I have been slooowly watching through the series, mostly because he wants to watch me shout at the tv. (Less of that in the later films, because I don't know the later books well enough to be going THAT'S NOT WHO SAID THAT LINE AND HALF OF IT IS MISSING like I did in the first three or so.

I'm still bemused by the pillars of black smoke instead of apparition effect. It's very dramatic, but it's just kind of silly. I continue to be infuriated by how bad the bloody lighting is, I can't SEE ANYTHING. TURN ON THE LIGHTS.

We were cheerfully mocking the teenager love drama, but I felt quite bad for Lavender when she ran out of the hospital wing, actually. She didn't do anything wrong? I feel like a film makes it way more obvious that she did nothing wrong because it's not imbued with Harry's narrative voice that's so dismissive of her.

Also, wow, the bathroom scene. Doesn't Draco start to cast Crucio in that scene in the book, and then Harry cats Sectumsempra? There were just a few generic wordless blasts in this and then Harry's casting 'for enemies' and nearly killing a kid for want of a happy accident. Draco was also SOBBING and that was a lot more visceral in film. He looks so distraught basically this entire movie.

...We're in the Astronomy Tower scene now and... isn't Harry supposed to be petrified and under his invisibility cloak, not just standing in a corner???

The grey cloud dark mark is stupid and barely visible, IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE GREEN. Everything in this movie is missing the colors. (Dumbledore's clothes!)

IT MAKES NO SENSE FOR HARRY TO TAKE THIS LONG TO ATTACK SNAPE IF HE ISN'T PETRIFIED

I don't like the movie locket. In my head it's a heavily encrusted rounded/poofy gold heart and that's way funnier/more interesting. The movie prop looks cheap and also doesn't remotely look a thousand years old.

Oh, other things I don't like: BITCH WHY IS THE FELIX FELICIS CLEAR, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE GOLD. POUR SOME GODDAMN CAKE DECORATING LUSTER DUST IN IT. VERITASERUM IS THE ONE THAT'S CLEAR, MOTHERFUCKER.

Obviously the way they did the pensieve is inaccurate but it's at least interesting AND THAT LEADS ME INTO ANOTHER POINT: the may they did young Tom was absolute garbage. He's supposed to be preternaturally handsome and charming, and they made him an average looking kid was a malicious flat affect, and just fucking ruins all of the nuance and also makes Slughorn seem dumb as a box of rocks for not seeing through him. His total lack of reaction to anything in the scene in the orphanage--it just rung so false and it played way too much into Dumbledore's shit about him being Born Evil and just, hate. I hated it. It was bad.

Koschei is spending more time every day hanging out with me on the couch during the day and sleeping in bed with me at night, instead of sleeping by himself on the dining room table. I'm very encouraged, because I was sad about him not being near me the first week.

I've also figured out a method to get his claws clipped so he'll maybe stop accidentally snagging me all the time--he struggles wildly if I try and hold him in place or flip him upside down to do them, but if I wait for him to fall asleep and then grab a paw I can usually get a single claw clipped before he wakes up enough to go 'wait no give me back my foot'.

I'm also trying to figure out how much wet food I should give him in how many portions how often, which is a completely new skill to me because Tabby and Bluebell, bless them, wouldn't deign to so much as sniff wet food unless it was wildly pricy human grade flaked tuna in broth.

Related to this is the discovery of the truly bizarre cat food flavor SUPER SUPPER DINNER.

Oh, and he fucking destroyed the living room blinds, but Bluebell had already broken them months before so like, it's fine I guess, I figured out how to hang a curtain so it's not just an empty window.

( Cat pictures under the cut )

In summary: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MY FEELINGS

( Spoilers, and also like, trigger warnings for most things, because most terrible things appear in this show )

I'm basically always pining for more of a very specific type of video game, and I don't know how to articulate what it is well enough to find more, if there even are more. The Westward series of four games are basically the ideal for this--and I feel like anything made in that vein these days is a shitty freemium pile of boring, rather than the good old $6 BigFishGames pay once and you have a whole game forever that I relied on as a teen.

The Westward games, if you're not familiar, are like... RPG town building strategy sim? You play a main character who goes through a quest line, and basically every main part of the quest line is 'run around gathering resources and building up this new town to recruit townspeople to gather resources to build up the town with occasional fighting of bandits'. I love them dearly but I've played them like, a lot, and I'd like a little novelty in the formula, you know? They were by Sandlot Games, which made a bunch of random BigFishGames stuff and none of the others are anything like Westward (I find Tradewinds both extremely difficult and violently boring, for instance, and Cake Mania was a decent example of the Diner Dash knockoff genre that I do like, witness my copy of Mystic Inn, but that's got nothing in common with Westward) and they're not making Westward (or uh, anything) anymore. (Also, there was a Westward Kingdoms that kind of nosedived into a more modern mobile game style and sucked in comparison to previous entries like Westward III: Gold Rush.) Virtual Villagers (and its knockoffs, like My Tribe) were also reasonably close to this formula, but it seems like it's gone out of fashion and nobody makes this kind of game before. (I certainly no longer feel like I'm drowning in Virtual Villagers clones. Kids these days are playing Fortnite instead, I guess? Man, remember Virtual Villagers. I only have one of the later sequels and the aforementioned knockoff and I kind of regret not having the original instead.) And I just run around buying things like Cities Skylines and wishing really hard that I didn't find Cities Skylines difficult and kind of tedious even though it seems like it should be a fun combination of Westward and my best beloved Sim Tower. (Sim Tower, at least, has a couple of modern imitators. Project Highrise is a pretty decent Sim Tower clone/update.) Or Stardew Valley, which I also find kind of tedious--manually farming in games is just not my jam, I made a farm in Starbound and immediately got aggressively bored of maintaining it and am now studiously ignoring it and avoiding visiting that planet.

Alas for me imprinting on transient gaming fads from cheap sweatshop studios of the mid to late 00s, I guess.

(If you know any games like Westward or that sound like my description of Westward, or know a handy genre label I've missed, please do tell!)

Recettear is an unexpectedly completely addictive game, it turns out. I grabbed it on impulse because I had that formless desire to play A Video Game, But Not Any Of The Dozens In This List I Already Own, and it had a curator recommendation on steam from Dodger, and also it was on sale for like four dollars.

It's fun! The mechanics make sense to me, even though I normally violently despise things where I'm supposed to keep track of a market and cater to its whims to profit! I'm actually spending more time on the shop part than the dungeon crawling part, which is not what I would have expected from me! The naive young cloudcuckoolander+jaded tsundere dynamic of the main characters is a bit dull, but now that I have, uh, completed the main plot and am starting to meet more of the NPCs, I'm meeting other, more interesting characters! Like a hot lady thief who might be a runaway princess and I definitely need to become better friends with her so I can find out!

Charme, Lady Thief

(She popped up and I went HEY I'M GAY AND SUDDENLY SIGNIFICANTLY MORE INTERESTED)

I had to make myself shut it down so I would do something other than play Recettear today, but odds are fairly good I'll go back to it again. (I unlocked Endless mode! Also Survival and New Game Plus but I'm not sure I'll ever want those--skipping past all the mechanics tutorials was annoying enough when I had to start over because I forgot to save money for my loan payment.) My first session I played two hours and then fucked up and got a game over, but when it makes you start over after that you get a sort of new game plus mode, so that eased the sting of having forgotten to ever save. (I am definitely saving now. It's my own fault, but also, before this I was playing My Time at Portia, which has an autosave system and no manual saving at all, so it's perhaps understandable that I didn't think of it until the worst happened.) But I'm looking forward to finding out more of the plot, because I found a kind of tiny amount of it before I 'finished' the game and the credits rolled. (The credits were spoiling me with flashing up stills from cutscenes I hadn't gotten with characters I hadn't met, I had to tab out so I wouldn't keep being spoiled. Possibly I was meant to play in a different style than I did...)

My friend Jared wrote a post on eir outlining method, which is interesting. I'm not sure I'm like, disciplined enough to use it? By which I mean I am pretty sure I would accidentally start writing prose while trying to do the prose outline, judging by the half-prose state of my current outline attempt, which keeps growing dialog.

Clearly works for em, though--if I recall correctly ey wrote 16k in one day with this method to finish a fic in time for an exchange once. I guess I get struck by a sort of writing FOMO, if you'll forgive the term, except it actually has a basis in reality, because my memory is famously terrible and if I think of a line of prose I want to include and don't write it down, I almost certainly will forget it.

What do y'all think? Useful for you, too much, interesting?

I was very much done with not having a cat since Tabby and Bluebell died, so we went to check out the adoptable cats at the shelter and the petsmart. At the petsmart was an absolute sweetheart black boy who yelled at us to pet him and licked our fingers and we decided to take him home. His paperwork said his name was Shades but that's boring, we have provisionally renamed him Koschei.

All of my pictures thus far are terrible, because he is a rarely-still void and has not progressed to hanging out close to us yet, but they are nonetheless in this imgur album. (He's currently under the dining room table, lying on an S shaped scratching pad post object thingy and washing himself.)

(Spoilers all in rot13.)

I just got home from seeing Into The Spider-Verse with Alex, and now I am SUFFERING because AO3 is down and I can't see if there's fic for [spoilers maybe?] Yvi/Znl. It took exactly one syllable to make me ship it like burning and I NEED MY [spoilers?] ZVQQYR NTRQ NPEVZBAVBHF RATVARRE LESBIANS NOW THANKS.

A friend did link me a bunch of art of them, so I have that to tide me over. That and pondering how I might want to set up my own [spoilers] gragnpyr cbea orpnhfr tbq uryc zr Qbp Bpx arrqf gb gragnpyrshpx FBZROBQL. V'q or tbbq jvgu Znl be Tjra be uryy rira Inarffn. Yvi/Inarffn jbhyq or snfpvangvat, npghnyyl. Zhghny natre ng Jvyfba? Yvi orgenlrq ol Jvyfba va fbzrguvat naq hfvat Inarffn nf eriratr ntnvafg uvz?

Definitely spoilers, here's the links:
https://twitter.com/hattersarts/status/1076611174463090688?s=21
https://twitter.com/karoselkie/status/1077915685311926272?s=21
https://twitter.com/karoselkie/status/1077594293991288832?s=21
https://twitter.com/karoselkie/status/1077273383455330305?s=21
https://twitter.com/karoselkie/status/1075257731991388160?s=21

Talk to me talk to me if you saw it! I'm also in love with Gwen, she was SO CUTE, UNDERCUT AND FRECKLES, I AM TOO GAY FOR THIS

(PS: Oh man, the Stan Lee cameo.)

silver-tipped swallow: "scene" by Topaz Winters is haunting and lyrical and heartbroken and I adored it. But my god, her hands made me want to play the piano again. That’s always how I know I’m fucked, when their hands are something music.

Aubade For a Nonexistent Child at Half Mystic Press is full of bloody, violent grief and terror, and it's beautiful.

Topaz Winters again, The Year We Fell In Love & the Forest Happened Around It is a fairy tale and a love story and girls finding their own way somewhere new and it's gorgeous. & maybe I’d always had a bit of crush on her, older girl with fresh bruises, smoking cigarettes I was never allowed to touch, pink & fractured, eating boys’ hearts with a side of fries. I was all clean-cut quiet sun, but she was a dangerous thing, gun before the firing, smile like a promise or a warning: go ahead. Underestimate me.

I subscribed to Jane Yolen's Poem A Day newsletter, and I'm amazed all over again at how prolific she is. I have entirely lost the page where I signed up, but I'll try and track it down if anyone is interested. She does ask that if you subscribe you commit to either buy one of her books or check one out from a library every month. December 14th's, Sarai/Sarah, is short but brutal/lovely.

Speaking of daily poems, I am quite desperately behind on Seanan McGuire's patreon poetry. Perhaps I'll catch up on that after I go home. They're wonderful and I highly recommend, I'm just a disorganized mess, and after she moved them onto their own site I completely lost the plot.

Elegy for Our Impossible Lesbian Wedding at The Brown Orient (third one down on the page) is a gorgeous lyrical queer heartbreak, all three of Gita's poems are wonderful. The works in this issue of The Brown Orient will be taken offline when the physical issues come out in mid-January, so read before then if you're going to.

Proserpina is a petal-soft, sad, sweet queer take on Persephone and who she leaves behind.

I was on a plane and bored and I have Scrivener on my phone, so I was thinking about things

jamethiel and

havocthecat said about plotting, and I decided to try outlining on one of my fics (specifically a stalled pine-y Severus/Regulus thing) and instead of frustratedly going 'what is a plot and how do they happen' or 'what Bad Things should happen to characters', I focused on 'I like when characters have perceived or actual betrayals of trust and are sad about it', so I picked around at ways to make the two idiots stop talking to each other and pine tragically, and I think it worked and I have 2500 words of outline (that has a lot of chunks of prose and dialog in it). And that basically resulted in a plot by accident. (Actually I think there's even a B plot somehow.)

I have no idea if I can reproduce this, but I am quite pleased!

I love following AI Weidness, Janelle makes really great machine learning humor. Her post on neural net Christmas carols is true to form in weird.

The 19th Century Trope Generator is great fun, and has some quite interesting ideas, actually.

Guidelines For Female Protagonists In Hallmark Christmas Movies at McSweeney's is great--I avoid watching movies in almost all circumstances because I find plot stressful, but McSweeney's is always hilarious, and judging by the like four people I'm following on twitter who keep livetweeting Hallmark movies, this sounds pretty on the nose. Regardless, it's funny.

More

sciatrix, this time older links stumbled across on

girlgay, on struggling to learn to write f/f smut even when one knows how to have f/f sex at f/f writing gripe of the night and a collection of links associated with that topic and trying to work out an answer to it.

A list of f/f communities on dreamwidth.

The Bad Sex Awards
Warning: one of the quoted sex scenes contains a man having sex with (raping? unclear from minimal context available) a woman who is asleep and unaware that it is happening
As usual, they leave me going '...surely these authors have to do this on purpose. How can anyone possibly put together words this exquisitely unsexy by accident, while trying to write good sex.' Her vaginal ratchet moved in concertina-like waves, slowly chugging my organ as a boa constrictor swallows its prey. Soon I was locked in, balls deep, ready to be ground down by the enamelled pepper mill within her. Really? Really. Pepper mill? *Enamelled* pepper mill?!

Dinosaur Comics on "concealed shoes"

A twitter thread imagining a Muppet Les Miserables. It's so on the nose and I'm in love. Sam the Eagle IS perfect as Javert! Miss Piggy singing On My Own would be HILARIOUS! I wasn't quite on board with Cosette being Camilla until we got to 'Marius is Gonzo' and then I was '...yeah, okay'. Rizzo in Master of the House, omg, that wasn't dwelt on but I'm imagining it and filled with glee.

I decided that two days before christmas was a good time to break out the Venture Bros Holiday Singles playlist, and discovered that there was A NEW ONE IN 2015 THAT I NEVER HEARD, OMG. It's like the most Alex thing to ever exist in the world, too, because it's Heat Miser and Cold Miser from his favorite Christmas movie I've never seen. I haven't listened to them since last year, so I'm just sitting here clutching my chest and wailing internally. 21 and 24 together betfore 24 died! The Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch before they married, when their relationship was imploding! The Monarch in prison after it imploded! Col. Gathers and Shore Leave from when they were still SPHINX! Pete and Billy being Pete and Billy! Dermott scornfully calling Hank "Venture"! (IF YOU ONLY KNEW, DERMOTT.) The references to David Bowie being the Sovereign! (Just some bloke who wanted to be anyone but himself. GOD.) Drags hands down face. I love every terrible person in this terrible show and I have GOT to finish rewatching season six so I can watch season seven already, damn my anxiety making me too stressed to watch things with plots.

This is pretty much the only Christmas music I intentionally seek out. What's yours? There was a poll on my twitter feed earlier about the worst Christmas song, with contenders mostly being there for being overplayed. I just hate the 'my name is Christmas Carol I was born on Christmas Day' one because it's so... twee. And probably it was overplayed around Christmas back when I still listened to the radio, to be fair, since it's a country Christmas song and I listened to country radio.

Current Music: Venture Aid 2006 - Venture Industries & Friends & Enemies

I just read this article about the small subset of the population who never experiences mental illness (based on a study with a fairly small sample size), and it absolutely needs to stop assuming causation when all it knows is correlation. Maybe the causation is the other way around! Maybe they aren't mentally healthy because they do xyz, maybe they are capable of doing xyz because they are mentally healthy! I'm also just generally annoyed at it. "But is complete freedom from mental disorder the unalloyed triumph it first seems? [...] 'depression seems more like the vertebrate eye – an intricate, highly organised piece of machinery that performs a specific function.'" A specific function of making me never want to do literally anything, including feed myself or generally be alive. Sure. That's very evolutionarily optimized. Perhaps consider going to hell and ceasing to tell me I should be grateful I'm depressed. Oh, I see, the author had a single episode of depression and it activated their compassion. Not fucking well enough, it seems, and my lifelong chronically depressed as will fight you behind the Denny's, as soon as I get some antidepressants so I can bring myself to take any action whatsoever. I can't even make myself do things I want to do and actively enjoy. Aaaand now it's praising, basically, inspiration porn. God I just completely despise people who lump together transient acute mental health episodes that--this is the important part--at some point end, with lifelong disabling conditions. (My dad does it all the time. "I read on a forum on the internet that people stop taking antidepressants after six months and they're cured, when are you going to stop taking yours?" I DON'T HAVE SITUATIONAL DEPRESSION I HAVE LIFELONG CHRONIC DEPRESSION. IT WILL NEVER BE 'CURED', ONLY MANAGED.) Ughhhhh. Yeah, hated that.

Misc

I highly recommend this twitter thread wherein Ursula Vernon, with increasing incredulity, livetweets reading an unnamed and truly bizarre sounding medieval romance that apparently involves sexy falconry roleplay. That's a new one on me.

in which I am greedy by

sciatrix, an older post complaining about the Pure and Wholesome femslash brigade. I have definitely felt the same frustrations.

ON WRITING: Part 1. Editing. by

jamethiel, because Jame's a great friend and I'm always happy to think about the nitty gritty of language. And I love editing. I've been too much of a mess for a while to beta anything, but I miss it. I am also left musing--after reading the comments--on the fact that I'm quite useless as a structure/plot beta, and I don't know how to develop that skillset.

I saw Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury biopic, on Tuesday night. It was goddamn incredible. I fumbled out a notebook in the dark in the middle of the movie and started scribbling poetry. That was a religious experience of a movie. If you like music or art or Queen or... You should see it. It's so so good. And they didn't erase his sexuality, he said the word bisexual and everything. I had so many feelings and I'm listening to Queen right now and Queen has been stuck in my head for the last three days.

On Wednesday afternoon, I saw a live performance of The Music Man with my mother, which I cannot recommend you attend unless you live in an area serviced by the Arizona Theatre Company, but it was a great show. The actors were all fabulous. Good sets, too. According to my mother (who also saw it in previews) the set designer has won seven Tonys. Also I discovered the actress who played Eulalie Shinn toured in Fiddler on the Roof with Topol! (Also she was apparently in Red Dead Redemption 2, that was weird to read in a play program. Crossing the streams or something.)

Fanfic

I've been visiting my parents and spending this week with my mom and have had very little time to read, so I'm still slowly picking at An Aunt's Love, which continues to be really engaging and also just increasingly batshit. Mental institution! Good Petunia! Merlin's teacher! Dracula! For some reason the thing I'm having the hardest time with is Harry forgiving Albus Dumbledore, probably because the author has not bothered to explain this decision on his part and I have no idea why he's done a 180 on that point! Please include your character's internal motivations if they're going to start calling a primary antagonist 'granddad', thanks! (I am still enjoying it, I'm just really fucking baffled by that choice. And I haven't had time to read farther past it to get distracted by a new batshit so I'm hung up on that one.)

Before that I read Calculation, which was an even weirder 'the Sorting Hat sorts Harry real special' than I usually encounter. It sorted him as... Headmaster. 11yo Harry whose only difference from canon is supposedly that he likes math, and now he's in charge of (and apparently wildly competent at) managing an entire school, and also he acts like a 50yo accountant with paranoia. It was very strange. But only 18k, so eh. Not very long to spend going 'wait, what?!'

I also caught up on, by which I mean reread the first two chapters so I could read the new third while having any idea what was going on because my memory is garbage and I cannot keep track of WIPs, inwardtransience's A Crash Course in Enchanting and Interdimensional Mechanics. I watched like two episodes of RWBY shortly after it came out and I remember nothing, so I'm going to be learning about this world alongside Ellie, I guess! I love inwardtransience's f!Harrys, but I don't know if this fic would appeal if you don't? Ellie's not as sociopathic as Charissa or as repressed as Melantha, but she's still pretty cold. I'm having fun, though, anyway. I haven't read her Star Wars stuff yet because I don't like Star Wars but I'll probably read it eventually anyway because... inwardtransience. I love her overwrought worldbuilding and linguistic rejiggering! (Which are definitely on display in her Dragon Age fic, which I did read.)

I read Almagest, but I have basically no idea what I thought of that. It was very dark and intricate and confusing and Harry was fucking Voldemort who used to fuck Albus and Voldemort and Albus were trying to go to the moon to... something about destroying state surveillance? I really have no idea what happened in that fic.

Benefits of Old Laws has updated but given my aforementioned rotten memory for WIPs I'm going to have to reread the whole thing to read any new content, so I should probably just wait for more updates and also for my trip to finish so I have like... any time to read. But it's fantastic and recommended. I started going on rereading it but then I got sidetracked by An Aunt's Love (thanks for that, lethe) and totally lost track, so. Later.

Profic

In the realm of profic, I reread Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown, The Blue Sword, and Spindle's End while flying. I started The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert (on a recommendation from

jamethiel) but I was in my dad's hot tub reading on my phone and then it got dark and I had to get out and go inside and take a shower and I got sidetracked and my ebook loan ran out, but I'll probably take it out again and finish it. During the day. Really, probably after I'm home and can hug my dog and be in a room with Alex.

I snagged Jane Yolen's Finding Baba Yaga and enjoyed it quite a bit, though as it was my first verse novel I didn't realize they went by quite so fast. (Especially at my reading speed.)

Short fiction... lord, I definitely need to start keeping track of this, because I can't even think what I've read recently, and I know I've read stuff. Combing back through my history and my twitter to jog my memory. (Unfortunately, I think a fair portion of it was clicking links in twitter on my phone. Note to self: in the future, if you do this, retweet the story.)

I read Talk to your Children About Two-Tongued Jeremy in November. Well written and thoroughly disturbing. And all too real feeling. There's no room for ethics in a results-focused algorithm, as we would all do well to remember.

Monologue by an unnamed mage, recorded at the brink of the end was lovely, Cassandra Khaw is great. Very interesting POV.

The Thing About Ghost Stories felt incredibly real, the details were beautifully rendered and the end was incredibly satisfying.

Say It With Mastodons was a really sweet science fiction love story, surprisingly found in the journal Nature. Do they usually publish spec fic and I didn't know about it? So it seems. I need to check out more of that later.

Blessings by Naomi Novik is a fun little brief thing, though I'm kind of surprised it didn't explicitly have the child turn out some kind of dark overlord. I mean, clearly she still could, but it's not text. It was clearly meant to be open-ended, but it just felt kind of un-ended to me? Or like the setup for a much more interesting story. Hm.

The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society is a delight, but really, has Ursula Vernon ever written anything that isn't? I've never seen the cold hillside turned on its head like that and I am just quite thoroughly pleased by it.

Theodora Goss's poem The Gold Spinner is an incredibly satisfying take on Rumplestiltskin.

Dusting off one of my too-many dreanwidth accounts (I always end up with too many accounts on everything, really) and am going to attempt to use it, now that it's maybe getting a surge of life with the tumblr fuckery. Will be adding people with active accounts that I had, er, encircled? from my old account, the posts of which I wish to let fade quietly into the night, and anyway I don't want to associate my new fandom presence with my legal name.

Under Construction

Likes:

Kidfic. If you give me something about a ship ending up with a baby somehow - pregnancy, adoption, 'whoops this kid's parents just got killed by bandits and there's no one else around to take it', whatever - I will be delighted. I love stuff about characters parenting.
Makeouts. Someone being pinned against a wall by their partner for makeouts. (Someone being pinned against a wall by the throat for makeouts.)
Flirting. Flirting that causes one or both parties to blush. Flirting that is enthusiastically returned in kind.
BREATHPLAY.
Smoking, if you're writing/drawing a character that might be the type to smoke. (cough Isabela cough)
Art: Flower crowns! Kissing! Pretty clothes! Blushing! OR blood and death and murder!
Smut is welcome but not necessary!

Dislikes:

People angsting about being queer. No sexuality crises or homophobia, please.
Coming out stories.
Dubcon/noncon for these pairings.
Embarassment/humiliation. (Blushing, however, more than fine.)
Drugs/alcohol. (I know DA fandom likes to get everyone drunk, but please don't.)
Setting AUs, especially modern/mundane. (Canon divergence AU is fine, just keep it in Thedas and keep everyone's canon race/species, please.)

Dagna/Lace Harding

I love the idea of Dagna and Scout Harding together. Dwarf girlfriends! They are both adorable and I love them both, so the two of them together is even better. There's a lot of room to play around with them, with cultural differences between lifelong surface dwarf and someone originally from Orzammar. And Dagna's overwhelming enthusiasm is just so much FUN. Harding being dispatched to find materials for Dagna also has a lot of potential mileage! Dagna crafting armor for Harding? Harding giving Dagna presents of things she found out on patrol? Giving each other flowers? Bonding over everything in Skyhold being too goddamn big?

Lace Harding/Josephine Montilyet
Josie sends Harding flowers! What more do you need to build a ship on? Maybe Harding is shy of Josie because she's so worldly and cultured. Maybe Josie appreciates Harding's straightforwardness. Maybe Harding brings back pretty things she finds on missions for Josie. Maybe Josie ends up as Harding's partner in dancing lessons. Maybe Harding tells Josie about all the places she goes, since Josie dreams of traveling. Regardless, they're cute and they'd be cute together.

Valta & Sigrid Guldsdotten

Valta/Sigrid Guldsdotten

I am so fascinated by the concept of this.

Okay, so backstory of this concept: The Avvar are the product of an Alamarri woman who was in love with a spirit, and her friend, a dwarf, who helped her conceive a child--so the Avvar are part dwarf. (At least legendarily, it isn't 100% verified in canon, but it's where I'm coming from for all of my requests involving Avvar.)

SO. The Avvar are extremely connected to spirits and the mountains, and to the spirits in their holdbeasts. What if that connection is a remnant of the dwarven connection to the Stone? And thus, how would Shaper Valta, connected to a Titan as no dwarf has been in centuries, relate to Sigrid and her spirit friend--Sigrid, who can do magic as no dwarf can, but who still perhaps retains stonesense, even if the Avvar no longer recognize what it is?

Romantic or platonic are both great.

group: Sigrun/Hespith
group: Branka/Hespith
group: Bianca Davri & Dagna
group: Bianca Davri/Dagna
group: Branka & Dagna
group: Dagna & Valta
group: Dagna/Lace Harding
group: Dagna/Lace Harding/Bianca Davri
group: Dagna/Lace Harding/Sigrid Guldsdotten
group: Dagna/Original Female Mage
group: Dagna/Sigrid Guldsdotten
group: Dagna/Valta
Female Adaar/Lace Harding
group: Lace Harding/Josephine Montilyet
group: Lace Harding/Sigrid Guldsdotten
group: Sigrun & Sigrid Guldsdotten
group: Sigrun/Sigrid Guldsdotten
group: Valta & Sigrid Guldsdotten
group: Valta/Sigrid Guldsdotten
group: Original Female Dwarf & Original Female Avvar
group: Original Female Dwarf/Original Female Avvar
group: Hendir & Tyrdda Bright-Axe

Under Construction

Likes:

Kidfic. If you give me something about a ship ending up with a baby somehow - pregnancy, adoption, 'whoops this kid's parents just got killed by bandits and there's no one else around to take it', whatever - I will be delighted. I love stuff about characters parenting.
Makeouts. Someone being pinned against a wall by their partner for makeouts. (Someone being pinned against a wall by the throat for makeouts.)
Flirting. Flirting that causes one or both parties to blush. Flirting that is enthusiastically returned in kind.
BREATHPLAY.
Smoking, if you're writing/drawing a character that might be the type to smoke. (cough Isabela cough)
Art: Flower crowns! Kissing! Pretty clothes! OR blood and death and murder!
Smut is welcome but not necessary!

Dislikes:

People angsting about being queer. No sexuality crises or homophobia, please.
Coming out stories.
Dubcon/noncon for these pairings.
Embarassment/humiliation. (Blushing, however, more than fine.)
Drugs/alcohol. (I know DA fandom likes to get everyone drunk, but please don't.)
Setting AUs, especially modern. (Canon divergence AU is fine, just keep it in Thedas, please.)

Avexis/Minaeve
Fanart, Fanfiction
Avexis is such an interesting character--no one else in Thedas seems to have even vaguely similar powers to her. Something using her powers would be interesting. But the main point here is her with Minaeve! Which basically requires that she be transferred to Kinloch Hold for some reason--maybe for anonymity, to keep her away from Maleficar plots in Orlais? Anyway, Avexis and Minaeve in the same circle. There are two main directions for this: Either they're apprentices together and friends and it's fluffy and cute, or it's darkfic where Avexis is made Tranquil (either before or after arriving at the Circle) because her gift is seen as too dangerous--this because of Minaeve's attachment to the Tranquil. Maybe it's because of one specific Tranquil? Anyway, MY GIRLS.

Dagna/Lace Harding
Fanfiction

I love the idea of Dagna and Scout Harding together. Dwarf girlfriends! They are both adorable and I love them both, so the two of them together is even better. There's a lot of room to play around with them, with cultural differences between lifelong surface dwarf and someone originally from Orzammar. And Dagna's overwhelming enthusiasm is just so much FUN. Harding being dispatched to find materials for Dagna also has a lot of potential mileage! Dagna crafting armor for Harding? Harding giving Dagna presents of things she found out on patrol? Giving each other flowers?Bonding over everything in Skyhold being too goddamn big?

Sera/Tallis
Fanart, Fanfiction

OKAY JUST LISTEN OKAY. I think this ship has so much potential. They're both super good at getting into and out of places they're not supposed to be, and they both care about helping people, and they could meet accidentally while on various 'jobs', and I think the Qun could appeal to Sera under the right (probably pregame) circumstances - the way Tallis talks about it, somewhere to fit, to know where you belong and the sense of rightness that she's searching for? I think that could appeal to Sera a lot. Not to mention that the Qunari don't have nobles. ALTERNATIVELY, Tallis is clearly struggling with the Qun in Mark Of The Assassin, and I believe there's some canon that says she gets demoted for her actions in MotA and generally punished by the Qun for being an imperfect Viddathari, so Sera convincing her to leave the Qun would also be interesting. (I think there are some papers in Trespasser that refer to Tallis, which could be used as a hook to get Sera's attention on her, especially if she'd heard Hawke mention the hot redhead before?) Or they could just happen to cooperate on a Red Jenny operation! And then FLIRTING and MAKEOUTS. Maybe Tallis ends up with something shiny she has no need for and she gives it to Sera. Maybe things go totally AU and Tallis goes to the Jennies for help with the Heart of the Many and Sera goes through MOTA with her.

Lace Harding/Josephine Montilyet
Fanart, Fanfiction
Josie sends Harding flowers! What more do you need to build a ship on? Maybe Harding is shy of Josie because she's so worldly and cultured. Maybe Josie appreciates Harding's straightforwardness. Maybe Harding brings back pretty things she finds on missions for Josie. Maybe Josie ends up as Harding's partner in dancing lessons. Maybe Harding tells Josie about all the places she goes, since Josie dreams of traveling. Regardless, they're cute and they'd be cute together.

Alistair/Anora Mac Tir/Female Cousland
Fanfiction
I love this OT3! It can be super political, or super bedroom focused, or super emotion focused, I am good with any of these. The most obvious way to do it is to have Alistair and Anora politically married and Cousland with both and not on the throne, but if you think you can work it out logistically with some other combination on the throne, I'm totally open to it! (Including Political Marriage Anora/F!Cousland. Queens!) Do they have to negotiate their relationship, or does it come easily? Does someone have to admit their feelings for someone(s) else? No pegging and no societal disapproval of the relationship, please.

Hello! I'm so excited about this exchange - I love the female characters of Dragon Age so much :)

(I've copied a fair amount of this from my letter last year, because requests are hard. I've at least expanded on the things I copied, though!)

My tumblr is here, my AO3 is here.

Likes:

Kidfic. If you give me something about a ship ending up with a baby somehow - pregnancy, adoption, 'whoops this kid's parents just got killed by bandits and there's no one else around to take it', whatever - I will be delighted. I love stuff about characters parenting.

Makeouts. Someone being pinned against a wall by their partner for makeouts. (Someone being pinned against a wall by the throat for makeouts.)

Flirting. Flirting that causes one or both parties to blush. Flirting that is enthusiastically returned in kind.

BREATHPLAY.

Smoking, if you're writing/drawing a character that might be the type to smoke. (cough Isabela cough)

Art: Flower crowns! Kissing! Pretty clothes! OR blood and death and murder!

Smut is welcome but not necessary!

Dislikes:

People angsting about being queer. No sexuality crises or homophobia, please.

Coming out stories.

Dubcon/noncon for these pairings.

Embarassment/humiliation. (Blushing, however, more than fine.)

Drugs/alcohol. (I know DA fandom likes to get everyone drunk, but please don't.)

Setting AUs, especially modern. (Canon divergence AU is fine, just keep it in Thedas, please.)

Requests:

Dagna/Lace Harding

I love the idea of Dagna and Scout Harding together. Dwarf girlfriends! They are both adorable and I love them both, so the two of them together is even better. There's a lot of room to play around with them, with cultural differences between lifelong surface dwarf and someone originally from Orzammar. And Dagna's overwhelming enthusiasm is just so much FUN. Harding being dispatched to find materials for Dagna also has a lot of potential mileage! Dagna crafting armor for Harding? Harding giving Dagna presents of things she found out on patrol? Giving each other flowers?

Avexis

Avexis!!! There is so much potential for where you can go with her character after or during or before the events of Dawn of the Seeker. She can talk to animals! I can just see her with a daisy garland in her hair and a lap full of fennecs and rabbits and birds. And then there's the horrible parts where she was forced to drink blood and control dragons. Did Galyan look after her after everything came to an end? Was she sent to another Circle where she met some other characters? (Minaeve! I am totally up for Avexis/Minaeve. I have no idea whether they're actually the same age but I'm willing to pretend if you are!) Was she looked after by Leliana or Justinia? Mothered by Wynne? Befriend Bethany in the Kirkwall Circle? *flings confetti* ANYTHING GOES, I love Avexis and I love Dawn of the Seeker and I want DA fandom to pay more attention to it. I am even up for something unbearably tragic where she's made Tranquil because her talents are seen to be too dangerous. (Which could really tie in with Avexis/Minaeve, since Minaeve puts so much effort into taking care of the Tranquil...)

Isabela/Josephine Montilyet

I love this ship, it is delightful. Isabela is such a charming rogue and she would be so much fun charming the pants off of Josie - she'd probably expect her to be somewhat buttoned up, but judging by the games of Wicked Grace, Josie can give as good as she gets. I would be so down for a highly competitive game of Wicked Grace that culminates in hot makeouts/going to bed together. I would also be down for Josie hiring Bela for some legitimate family trade business and getting relentlessly flirted with. Negotiations for the Inquisition to use Isabela's ships for transport? Briefings for Isabela doing some work for the Inquisition? (Like in DAI Multiplayer, where she can go out in groups to do war table-y tasks.) Isabela sending Josephine frilly underthings by runner?

Tallis/Sera

OKAY JUST LISTEN OKAY. I think this ship has so much potential. They're both super good at getting into and out of places they're not supposed to be, and they both care about helping people, and they could meet accidentally while on various 'jobs', and I think the Qun could appeal to Sera under the right (probably pregame) circumstances - the way Tallis talks about it, somewhere to fit, to know where you belong and the sense of rightness that she's searching for? I think that could appeal to Sera a lot. Not to mention that the Qunari don't have nobles. ALTERNATIVELY, Tallis is clearly struggling with the Qun in Mark Of The Assassin, and I believe there's some canon that says she gets demoted for her actions in MotA and generally punished by the Qun for being an imperfect Viddathari, so Sera convincing her to leave the Qun would also be interesting. (I think there are some papers in Trespasser that refer to Tallis, which could be used as a hook to get Sera's attention on her, especially if she'd heard Hawke mention the hot redhead before?) Or they could just happen to cooperate on a Red Jenny operation! And then FLIRTING and MAKEOUTS. Maybe Tallis ends up with something shiny she has no need for and she gives it to Sera. Maybe things go totally AU and Tallis goes to the Jennies for help with the Heart of the Many and Sera goes through MOTA with her.

Shokrakar

THE VALO-KAS. I love the Valo-Kas so much and I would have killed to get to see them in-game instead of just War Table missions. So, Shokrakar! I am down with any f/f ship for her - Shokrakar/F!Adaar, Shokrakar/Sera, Shokrakar/Harding, Josie, Bela, Dagna, anyone! I would love a backstory kind of thing about one of the operations Adaar can tell Josie about, or the story of why she owed Shokrakar for a broken blade. Or something after Adaar was gone, when they get to fight demons! Or Shokrakar coping with Kaariss's poetry. The Valo-Kas meeting and working with the Bull's Chargers? (Shokrakar/Dalish and/or Skinner?) Shokrakar killing demon like a BADASS.

Or hey if you want to combine prompts, Shokrakar being hired to protect Avexis for some reason and being inundated with flower crowns and baby bunnies. (Shokrakar/Avexis!) (My crackshipping heart can never be stopped.)

Hello! If you've offered my requests, clearly you have good taste :) I can't wait to see what you make for me!

Likes:

Makeouts. Someone being pinned against a wall by their partner for makeouts. (Someone being pinned against a wall by the throat for makeouts.)
Flirting. Flirting that causes one or both parties to blush. Flirting that is enthusiastically returned in kind.
BREATHPLAY.

Dislikes:

People angsting about being queer.
Coming out stories.
Embarassment/humiliation. (Blushing, however, more than fine.)
Drugs/alcohol.

Ever After High
Characters:
Group: Madeline "Maddie" Hatter & Raven Queen
Group: Kitty Cheshire & Cerise Hood
Group: Courtly Jester & Lizzie Hearts
Group: Apple White & Darling Charming

For Maddie and Raven, I love their friendship. At the beginning of the show, they really seemed like they were the only friend the other had, and they were planning to room together before Apple disrupted it. I also ship them, but either way, a focus on how close they are and how they can count on the other to always be there for them. Raven accepts Maddie's oddnesses, and Maddie knows that Raven isn't evil. (Please don't have Raven looking down on Maddie for being 'crazy' - I know the show's been doing it sometimes, but I hate it. I want Raven to accept and love everything about Maddie, Riddlish and mad tea parties and all.)

For Kitty and Cerise, I love Kitty's ridiculous obsession with Cerise in the early show. She puts so much effort into trying to fuck things up for Cerise, and I like interpreting it as Kitty being really romantically interested in her but having no idea how to express that - the only way her mother raised her to interact with people was pranks, the most mean-spirited the better. (She could also just really want to be friends with Cerise, if you don't ship it.) That whole ridiculous 'he's only yanking your pigtails because he likes you' thing. Also, imagine Kitty hanging upside down from a tree by her knees to kiss Cerise.

For Courtly and Lizzie, it's obsession again. Courtly is obsessed with getting Lizzie's destiny, but what if she was also obsessed with Lizzie as a person, in a "I don't know if I want to kiss you or BE you" kind of way, and she's just decided it must be wanting to BE her? Villain-y stuff where Courtly captures Lizzie to steal something from her to help her quest to fake being Lizzie? Courtly deciding to disguise herself as someone else and pretend to be friends with Lizzie to find out more about her so she can fake being her more easily, but she ends up actually becoming friends with her and has no idea what her feelings are doing? (Again, gen is okay if you don't ship it, the obsession is the thing for me.)

For Apple and Darling, it's True Love! Darling's mouth-to-mouth woke Apple up in Dragon Games - just like True Love's First Kiss is supposed to do. Just like Daring's kiss didn't. Clearly, this means that Darling is Apple's True Love. How do the girls feel about that? Do they really know eash other yet? Do they want to get engaged right away, or do they want to get to know each other first? Do they want to try that kiss again while they're both awake and not trying to resuscitate the other?

Monster High
Characters:
Group: Twyla & Howleen Wolf

Twyla and Howleen's relationship is really important to me. I ship them, but gen is okay too - just a focus on how important they are to each other. They're such close friends, and they rely on each other really to the exclusion of anyone else most of the time. Twyla's quiet, and Howleen wants to be the center of attention - but at the end of the day, when everyone else is gone, Twyla's always there.

Crossover Groups
Characters:
Group: Cerise Hood (Ever After High) & Clawdeen Wolf (Monster High)
Group: Isabela (Dragon Age II) & Josephine Montilyet (Dragon Age: Inquisition)

Okay seriously, think about it. Clawdeen has a huge, close-knit, happy family, who are all happy and proud to be werewolves. Cerise needs that kind of influence to help her be less ashamed of her heritage. Ship or gen, either is fine. Werewolves who don't have to be afraid of people hating them for what they are. It hurts my heart how scared Cerise is of people knowing what she is and who her father is. (If you want to include her sister Ramona Badwolf, bonus points!)

Isabela and Josephine would be a delight together. They're both charming rogues, Josie just hides it more. Imagine them playing Wicked Grace. Bela cheats, but Josie wins. Wins Bela's money, Bela's hat, Bela's clothes... Isabela canonically does work for the Inquisition (she's one of the operatives you can play in multiplayer), so it wouldn't be hard to set up the two meeting.

Original Work
Characters:
Original Female Tentacle Monster
Group: Original Female Pyromaniac & Original Female Fire Elemental

Tentacles! I love tentacles.Any kind of female tentacle monster is fine, tbh. Animated liquid, plants, octopus-mermaid, demon, eldritch horror... I love them all. Bondage with tentacles, multiple penetration with tentacles (though not with the main focus on anal, please), gagging, oviposition, overstimulation, nipple suction... honestly, knock yourself out. All the f/f tentacles. Consentacles, dubcon, and noncon are all fine. For dubcon and noncon I like the victim to be unwillingly enjoying it - either protesting/struggling all the way through and trying to ignore how good it geels or giving in and cooperating/begging for more because she can't help herself, either is fine.

Pyromaniac and fire elemental sounds like a match made in heaven. Do they commit arson together, or do they confine themselves to bonfires and other legal activities? Does the pyromaniac sleep next to a fireplace so they can be close? Can they touch? (Can they MAKE OUT?) Did the fire elemental used to be a human too, and the pyromaniac can join her in being elemental fire? Do they dance together? Set off fireworks? I'm so interested by the possibilities!

Kingdoms of Amalur
Characters:
Maid of Windemere

I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THE MAID OF WINDEMERE. I feel so bad for her, all she wanted was the freedom to control her own life instead of being trapped in an endless cycle of destiny. She asked my Fateless One if she wanted to rule at her side, and I was SO MAD that I couldn't say 'hell yes I will rule with you let's make out'. A focus on the Maid's coming to the decision that she has to rebel against the House of Ballads for good would be great, and so would a story about her getting to actually have a relationship with a female Fateless One. I just want her to be happy T_T

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