sarashina_nikki

#Purrcy was both happy and regal, sitting in my seat on the sofa with the sun coming the skylight on it. See how he smiles at me in Cat!
#cats #CatsOfBluesky

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

I sat out on the porch to eat breakfast today, and the local hive of feral honeybees was awake, buzzing about looking for nectar. The crabapple flowers are opening, so they seem to have their timing just right. The carpenter bees were also out, inspecting the eaves. It was really good to have that 1/2 hour, even though it was so late in the morning (I had errands to run before my stomach was ready for breakfast) that I didn't see or hear any migrants.

sholio

As is my usual practice, my latest book as Lauren is available for download for my DW circle for the next week or so!

Download from Bookfunnel.

The download will be up until the book goes live on Amazon on May 2.

(Technically this is Shifter Agents #6, but it's a standalone that shouldn't require any context to read.)

sholio

I will be going back to answer recent comments, but first, one more stray B5 thought with spoilers through 5x18.

( Tying up a loose end )

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the vegetables poll, 90.4% of respondents clicked fresh vegetables (bought), 46.2% clicked frozen vegetables, and 44.2% clicked fresh vegetables (homegrown). I was surprised; I thought more people would go frozen for the convenience. (I wonder what that says, if anything, about Dreamwidth demographics.)

In ticky-boxes, hugs came first with 78.8%, followed by a tie between "hanging in there until things settle down and I can sort my life out" and "sunbeams playing in a tree, daring each other to peek around the shadowed side" with 63.5% each. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
Still going on The Horse and His Boy (I am slow and distractable) and the Guardian novel read-along (it's on a schedule). Nothing in audio.

Kdramas
We started Tale of the Nine Tailed, a sweeping epic about a powerful immortal, the reincarnated love of his life, and his bratty younger brother. (Nothing at all like Guardian the novel, why do you ask?) I'm hoping it has enough plot and worldbuilding to hold Andrew's interest; he gets bored during extended romance scenes.

More of Sell Your Haunted House with Pru. And in solo-watching, I started Heesu in Class 2; it's pretty adorable, but also Heesu is the living embodiment of Idiots In Love, and sometimes I have to watch through my fingers.

Other TV
This week's Doctor Who

was very silly and meta, set against a background of ominous racism. Hm. But I did enjoy the jokes, and Belinda is great.

Episode 1 of Sherlock & Daughter. We were just going to try out the first ten minutes to get a sense of it, but we ended up watching the whole episode. I can forgive Holmes for being a grumpy old man when he has a reason for it.

Our Deadloch rewatch-with-a-friend continues, plus Jentry Chau vs the Underworld, about which I still have no opinion.

My sister and I watched Into the Night (1985 film; Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeff Goldblum, and a vast number of film directors as extras, the only one of whom I knew on sight was Jim Henson). The caper was silly, and the romance plotline was very thin, but Goldblum and Pfeiffer are so watchable that it hung together despite the weird pacing when it lingered on random extras we were supposed to recognise. Lovely to see David Bowie in a small (albeit violently psychotic) role.

Guardian/Fandom
I archived my Murderbot flashficlet, and wow, Murderbot fans are generous with their kudosing. *hearts so much* (In my experience, some fandoms are just more kudosy than others.)

Audio entertainment
I listened my way through all of The Setup, a romance audiodrama about Juan, an anxious art museum curator in NYC, and Fernando, the con artist who's trying to steal a painting. It's great! I'm really into it. And then I got to the end of the available episodes and realised it's not finished yet, ahhhhh! I need to check these things before I start!

(Is it just me or are depictions of anxiety becoming more common in romances? I feel like there's some wish fulfilment going on: people longing to meet The One who is hot, super into them, and will also be incredibly kind and patient and give them effective tips for handling their panic attacks. Not that romances aren't all about wish fulfilment, so why not? Add dimensions to your dream partner!)

Writing/making things
My little 4k exchange fic is becoming somewhat tortured by all the writing advice I'm trying to enact on it. Hopefully I'm not engineering the spark out of the thing. Also, hopefully I emerge from this process wiser and more capable. (It could happen!) Note to self: this story still doesn't have an ending, oops.

Other than that, I'm spending a lot of my life rolling around in meta discussions, yay!

Life/health/mental state things
Oh, look, let's not even talk about it. /o\

Note to self: I had a flu jab on Saturday.

Online life
I'm switching ISPs on Friday. Wish me luck! If I disappear off the face of the internet, that will be why.

Food
Today marks my first attempt at baked potatoes in the slow cooker. *fingers crossed* I forgot to prickle them with a fork before I wrapped them in foil, so who knows.

Good things
Fandom. Writing. Lunchtime dumplings on the back deck. Cephalopod plushies. Queer audiodramas. Friends coming over to watch stuff. Guardian. Home-made salsa. Trivia quizzes. Music and kindness and laughter and love.

Poll #33020 face blindness extrapolation

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

Do you have face-blindness?

View Answers

yes
2 (4.9%)

technically no, but it's not unusual for me to get people confused
23 (56.1%)

especially when they're dressed the same
13 (31.7%)

no
11 (26.8%)

I mix up similar usernames
13 (31.7%)

honestly, they don't have to be that similar
11 (26.8%)

other
1 (2.4%)

ticky-box full of black cats slinking mysteriously in the shadows
27 (65.9%)

ticky-box full of starting a howl
14 (34.1%)

ticky-box of overthinking
20 (48.8%)

ticky-box full of squirrel-dragons with floofy tails, guarding their golden acorns
21 (51.2%)

ticky-box full of hugs
32 (78.0%)

china_shop

( One link behind the cut )

rachelmanija

In this YA novel published in 1990, six fourteen-year-olds face their inner dragons while they're in an accelerated academic program which includes a class on Beowulf.

I read this when it first came out, so when I saw a copy at a library book sale, I grabbed it to re-read. It largely holds up, though I'd completely forgotten the main plot and only recalled the theme and the subplot.

My recollection of the book was that the six teenagers are inspired by class discussions on Beowulf to face their personal fears. This is correct. I also recalled that one of the girls was a gymnast with an eating disorder and one of the boys was an athlete partially paralyzed in an accident, and those two bonded over their love of sports and current conflicted/damaging relationship to sports and their bodies, and ended up dating. This is also correct.

What I'd completely forgotten was the main plot, which was about the narrator, Eric, who idolized his best friend, Paul, and had an idealized crush on one of the girls in the class, who he was correctly convinced had a crush on Paul, and incorrectly convinced Paul was mutually attracted to. Paul, who is charming and outgoing, convinces Eric, who is shy, to do a speech class with him, where Eric surprisingly excels. The main plot is about the Eric/Paul relationship, how Eric's jealousy nearly wrecks it, and how the boys both end up facing their dragons and fixing their friendship.

Paul's dragon is that he's secretly gay. The speech teacher takes a dislike to him, promotes Eric to the debate team when Paul deserves it more (and tells Eric this in private), and finally tries to destroy Paul in front of the whole class by accusing him of being gay! Eric defends Paul, Paul confesses his secret to him, and the boys repair their friendship.

While a bit dated/historical, especially in terms of both boys knowing literally nothing about what being gay actually means in terms of living your life, it's a very nicely done novel with lots of good character sketches. The teachers are all real characters, as are the six kids - all of whom have their own journeys. The crush object, for instance, is a pretty rich girl who's been crammed into a narrow box of traditional femininity, and her journey is to destroy the idealized image that Eric is in love with and her parents have imposed on her - and part of Eric's journey is to accept the role of being her supportive friend who helps her do it.

I was surprised and pleased to discover that this and other Sweeney books are currently available as ebooks. I will check some out.

glitteryv

Expectations had been HIGH ever since it was announced that Coldplay would perform in Seoul for 6 sold out shows. They had TWICE during the first show (and then dropped an annoucement of a collabo they're doing with them.)

PPL were like OJO to the max cuz it was a fact that Jin was gonna show up. After all, he'd released "The Astronaut", a pop rock "I'm going into the military, but I'll be back" song that featured Coldplay. AND, shortly before enlisting, he'd flown something like 40 hrs from SK to perform the song live at what ARMYs affectionately call ArJINtina back in 2022.

The reunion happened this past Saturday and everyone was floating on cloud nine...

NB: these two videos (though filmed in HD) are fancams. As such, there's a lot of v. happy screaming, plenty of flashing lights from the stage, etc. BigHit will most deffo release a couple of Bangtan Bombs abt these two performances at some point in the future. But this is what we've got right now, so that's what I'm sharing with y'all. :DDD

Watch on YouTube

twosen

(oops it's been a while)

Documenting for my own benefit, but if anyone's interested...

Snow Man 1st Stadium LIVE Snow World 2025: Fan Reports
NATIONAL STADIUM
NISSAN STADIUM
Snow World logo

Still a WIP and will update throughout the tour, so check back later!

china_shop

The Writing Excuses podcast is doing a series on voice (first, third limited, third omniscient), and mostly their discussions have been great. I've enjoyed them a lot. But I found today's episode on second person (2ndPOV) unsatisfying. They got distracted talking about video games, TTRPG, online recipe essays, and Youtube influencers, and when they did discuss fictional prose, they seemed to think the "you" character had to be a reader stand-in. (Or maybe I misunderstood? Quite possible!) Anyway, now I'm itching to ~~procrastinate on my story~~ talk with like-minded souls about the joys of second person.

Note: If you not into 2ndPOV, that's totally cool. Each to their own! But please don't chime in to tell me or explain why; I'm not interested in defending it today.

( Rambling, so much rambling. )

ION, Andrew sent me a link to Secrets of Writing Snappy Dialogue (Banter) (Youtube video). At first I was resistant, but then I watched it and now I'm overhauling my 4k fic AGAIN. This is killing me, lol.

marinarusalka

I'm sitting in the airport waiting to board my plane to Bermuda. Or rather, my plane to Charlotte, where I get to twiddle my thumbs for six freaking hours before taking my connection to Bermuda. Apparently there's just no good way to get from San Diego to Bermuda, at least not this weekend.

I'm going for work, so I won't have a lot of downtime during the meeting, but I did tack on an extra two days at the end, so I'm hoping to get in some beach time and a scuba dive. I also have knitting with me -- I'm trying to finish a rather complicated double-knit blanket in time to submit it to the county fair, and it's going to be a close call. But I'll certainly have a lot of time to work on it in the evenings at my hotel, as well as my two stupid long flight layovers.

An hour until boarding, whee...

Current Mood: bored

mecurtin

In general Purrcy is *not* allowed on the kitchen counters. But he seemed extremely interested in the back corner here, so I let him jump up and poke around as part of his Rodent Control Officer duties. No results at this time, but Constant Vigilance! is his watchword.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks back at the camera over his shoulder from where he stands in the corner between a tile wall and an uneven stone one. Plastic containers can be seen next to him. He looks quite concerned, but his eyes are a beautiful gray-green.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks back at the camera over his shoulder from where he stands in the corner between a tile wall and an uneven stone one. Plastic containers can be seen next to him. He looks quite concerned, but his eyes are a beautiful gray-green.

Purrcy jumped up on the kitchen Chair O Love and he was feeling *feisty*! He discovered a gap between the blanket & the chair, explored it, and saw that it was Good.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches on a gray-green blanket-covered chair in a kitchen, looking a little wild.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches on a gray-green blanket-covered chair in a kitchen, looking a little wild.

A gray-green blanket is draped across a chair. The white-furred nose of a tabby cat peaks out the bottom, whiskers spread but eyes invisible.

A close-up of Purrcy the tuxedo tabby's face as he peers out from under a gray-green blanket on a worn brown vinyl chair. Only his eyes, little pink nose, and wide-spread whiskers can be seen.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby peeks out from where he crouches in a nook made by a gray-green blanket draped over a worn brown vinyl chair. His eyes look very large and solemn, his paws very small.

People on Bluesky were discussing a tweet by a TERF called June Slater, who posted:

These trans women. Do they ever do things like women actually do, run a home, cook, put the washer on, get the kids to school, visit relatives in care homes, budget the bills, clean the house, chauffeur kids about? You know the reality of being a woman!

One of the boggling aspects of this "thinking", to me, is the way she doesn't seem to be able to conceive of MEN cooking or taking care of children or living spaces.

Katherine Dickinson said

there’s a weird expectation of childishness in men among these women to the point it’s like these women aren’t attracted to functioning adults and it’s like two steps from Why Don’t You Take A Seat With Chris Hansen territory

And I remember things I'd read about the history of housekeeping and service work that I wrote up here, and wondered:

Compared to the US & the Continent, Brits tended to be resistant to labo(u)r-saving home tech & reliant on servants for the middle-to-upper classes right up to WW2. After the War, *huge* shock of not having servants like before, & I think maybe upper-middle/upper-class men just ...use their wives?

bcuz before the War they were certainly childishly dependent, by US standards. e.g. Gentleman's service flats, in UK, were bachelor apts with cleaning, cooking, and personal valet services provided. No equiv in US AFAIK

I looked at some stats about household work, but there's basically nothing about how the lives of upper-middle-class or richer people live in different countries.

Ach, I shall quit this now and finish my Andor re-watch, so Dirk and I can watch the new eps when they drop on Tuesday.

scaramouche

I made a mistake when I last reported otherwise, because this should be the last book from the bunch I got during my UK trip two years ago. (The stack on the shelf is shrinking but... there's still so many. T_T) I think I wanted to pick up at least one celeb autobiography so I didn't look at it too closely, so it turns out that Nick Frost's A Slice of Fried Gold: Taste My Memories is 70% cookbook, 30% stream-of-consciousness partial autobiography. I did not start reading this book just because of the news of the Frost's casting in a certain franchise (welp), that's just another coincidence.

Frost loves to cook! (I did not know this.) He can do some pretty complicated dishes, and associates so many feelings (his own, and others) with cooking, that this book, though only technically a cookbook, is more about using time of the initial covid-19 lockdown to capture those feelings for those he would like to remember him by, is my impression.

I'm only a passable cook, with just enough skills to feed myself, though I've sometimes made slightly more complicated dishes based on recipes (I made lasagna once!) when I had a phase of being Determined to learn how to cook some years ago. That phase has passed. So while there are quite a few interesting dishes in Frost's book, there's only maybe 2 simple ones that I would try to do myself, though I'd look up a recipe with proper instructions because Frost's writing style runs on ADHD-fueled vibes and frantic expression. He's pretty up front about his mental state and struggles with depression, anxiety and food issues which paint every single page with feels and distracted humour.

There are some interesting industry anecdotes sprinkled in there, like I did not know how catering works for movies and TV, but of course Frost has strong feelings about food being SO important in order to make the work good. But the most of it is Frost working through his own feelings of food as the channel through which he express love, anger and sadness.

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: Adele - Send My Love

sholio

Now that I've processed a bit, a few more random comments.

( Mostly about You Know and Who, obviously )

sholio

Watch Babylon 5, she said. It will be fun, she said.

( Babylon 5 episodes 5x17-18 )

buttonsbeadslace

1. I read "Stars in my pockets like grains of sand" by Samuel R. Delany because someone was talking about it on Tumblr and I also wrote a bit about it on Storygraph. Impossible to describe how wild this book is but maybe I will try later.

2. Randomly remembered this album that I used to have in itunes on my old laptop & hadn't listened to since.

sholio

After the cavalcade of pain in recent episodes, I had a need for some comfort.

Safeguard - 1200 wds, light hurt/comfort, slight AU of the hallway fight in 5x09.
Also posted on AO3.

( Safeguard )

tinny

The anniversary 40th round at

icons10in20 was a Monopoly game! That was so much fun! I decided - no surprise there - to make it an HPI set. Okay, two of them are actor pics of the HPI actors, but who's counting?

Teasers:

( 20 HPI icons )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

Previous icon posts:

sholio

Now that the primary thoughts/screaming are done, a few more random items.

( More on 5x16 )

sholio

( SCREM )

sholio

I have just watched through Babylon 5 5x16 and

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT JMS

I thought I was prepared but I was not prepared for the emotional roller coaster I have just been on.

I will write a post about that but first I think I need to lie down for a few minutes.

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Sarashina Nikki

March 2019

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Page generated Apr. 23rd, 2025 10:22 am

that night of softly falling rain

Reading

Purrcy, bees

Red Boar's Baby

Another thought about B5 5x18

Me-and-media update

US politics

Face the Dragon, by Joyce Sweeney

Fannish 50 S3 Post 10: Jin and Coldplay REUNITED!!

Happy 5th Anniversary!

Come speak to me of Second Person POV

Off I go...

Two Purrcys; housework

Book Log: A Slice of Fried Gold

Yet more thoughts on B5 5x17-18

Babylon 5 5x17-18

Two quick things

Babylon 5 fic: Safeguard

20 HPI icons for the Monopoly round at icons10in20

Babylon 5 5x16 (more)

Babylon 5 through 5x16 "And All My Dreams Torn Asunder"

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March 2019

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