This is one of those times when I just ran off with the prompt as inspiration and it's not actually whumpy at all. (At least not in any way except the most incredibly minor petty way.)
No. 2: “You’ve got a lot of nerve to dredge up all my fears.” Prophecy | Sewer | Taking Accountability
Murderbot, 380 wds, gen, could be TV-verse or bookverse somewhere post-Exit Strategy Also posted on Tumblr.
I am v tired so my descriptions are a bit thin tonight. What I’ve Read Strong Poison – Dorothy Sayers – Our heroine is finally introduced! It’s so good, but it’s also meaningfully unfinished in terms of their relationship. The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin – This book moved me – I had read it last in high school and what stayed with me was etched deep. But, there was a lot that I honestly forgot and the ending hit me like a truck.
What I’m Reading
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers The Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould Mimesis – Erich Auerbach What I’ll Read Next Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison
Parker: Buffy. Buffy I I dunno how to say this. I'm sorry for how I
treated you before. It was wrong of me and I'm sorry. You were great
tonight, really. I might not deserve this but do you think that you
could forgive me?
*Buffy wacks him with the club again and knocks him out*
~~~~
The Sunnydale Herald is looking for at least one new editor. Contributing to the Herald is a great way to get your Buffy on! Find out more here.
Charlie Morningstar, Princess of Hell, opens the titular hotel with the goal of “helping demons workshop their way to earning a spot in Heaven.” Most demons aren’t even interested, the handful that show up all have ulterior motives, and the other plot threads happening around it involve murder, genocide, hard drugs, and sex slavery. Watch Charlie flail her way through the hopelessly-doomed prospect of coaching this crowd to “do trust falls with each other” and “sing songs about how to apologize”!
Accurately described as “what if somebody got to make a professionally-animated TV series with all her 2000s-era DeviantArt OCs?” That’s not a complaint — they are good designs, aesthetically pleasing, fun to watch — it’s just a description of this very specific energy they bring.
Based on fandom osmosis, I was expecting a good amount of darkness and irreverence, with a generous serving of sexy iddiness. (Of the two characters whose names I knew before I started watching, one of them is the gay porn star who presents himself as sassy and slutty but is hiding a deep vulnerability in his soul. Obviously fandom loves him.)
I didn’t realize it was going to do all that and try to have fully, unironically earnest messages about love and redemption. Charlie’s quest is not hopelessly doomed! And the show does actually want you to get on board with that! One minute you’re getting a totally-serious song about the power of fighting for love (did I mention this is also a musical?), the next you’re getting a comically-bloody scene about the demon whose gimmick is indiscriminate stabbing!
It mostly works, too. You would really expect this to fall apart, and there are points where it teeters, but overall it holds together as it soars through the first season and sticks the landing.
Weird and enjoyable. Looking forward to season 2.
Marvel Zombies:
A very short (4 half-hour episodes) expansion of that one What If…? episode. I never like zombie stuff, but I do like post-apocalyptic survival stuff…and, listen, it had some new tidbits of Moon Knight stuff. So I had to catch it at some point.
I liked all the scenes that focused on “here’s a handful of disparate MCU characters who got thrown together by the weird circumstances, let’s watch them wrangle the apocalypse as a team.” In general, it felt like the character interactions were written by people who liked them, and put some thought into them. (After that disappointing s3 episode with Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop, it’s extra-refreshing to see an AU where Shang-Chi and Katy’s friendship gets to shine, and Kate gets a subplot with a trick arrow.)
But then the show tried to have an over-arching plot. And it felt like the plot was written by people who thought “Wanda makes a cool and terrifying villain, so our priority is to make her a cool villain, and we don’t really care how she got to that point or whether her motives make any sense.”
The MK content was “in this AU, Marc and company got zombie’d early in the outbreak, and their buddy Blade was recruited as next Moon Knight.” This is the MCU version of Blade, who suffers from a bad case of His Main-Timeline Debut Hasn’t Actually Happened Yet. So I don’t blame these writers at all for not knowing what to do with him. (The guy is half-vampire, there should be all kinds of questions to explore about how that interacts with a mostly-zombified world — and this show has no interest in any of them.)
At least we got a cool new MK suit design out of it. And a fun scene of Khonshu having an argument with Valkyrie.
Knights of Guinevere:
Sci-fi psychological horror, which is also a scathing commentary on the creator’s career as a Disney animator. Follows a couple of friends who live and work in the garbage-strewn shadow of a planet-sized theme park, and a broken android (?) mascot who could really use their help.
Only the first episode is finished right now, so there’s a lot we can’t know, but it’s so rich and dense with worldbuilding info that there’s a ton of possibilities to speculate about. At this point I’ve seen multiple “breakdown of all the little things you missed in the Knights of Guinevere pilot!” videos, and haven’t stopped picking up new details yet.
Very excited to see where the rest of the series goes.
1. The main downside of this cold is that I am fucking exhausted from lack of sleep. I did get more sleep last night, but still tossed and turned a lot. Today I am much less stuffed up, so hopefully it will be easier to sleep tonight. Carla was so miserable when she was sick, though, so I'm very glad I didn't get it as bad as her.
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday, October 1, to midnight on Thursday, October 2. (8pm Eastern Time).
I think that Cruz may have wanted to say "pedophilia" to match "murders" and "rape", but that's a rare word that he didn't quite know what it meant or how to handle it, so he made the quick switcheroo with the parallelism of the other preceding two phrases.
Many psychologists recommend against using the term pedophilia to denote sexual activities with children, because not all people with a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children (i.e., pedophilia) commit such acts, and child molesters often lack a strong sexual interest in prepubescent children.[1][2] Furthermore, psychological texts define pedophilia as a primary or exclusive attraction towards specifically prepubescent children;[3] attraction towards pubescent children is known as hebephilia and towards post-pubescent adolescents as ephebophilia. See Wikipedia for more information.
As always, you can interpret the prompt literally or figuratively, in whatever way works for you.
Each work created for this challenge should be posted as a new entry to the comm. Posting starts now and continues up until the challenge ends at 4pm Pacific Time on Friday, 10th October. No sign-up required.
Mods will tag your work with fandom and challenge. When you've posted entries to three consecutive challenges, you will earn a name tag, and we'll go back and tag all your previous entries with your name.
All kinds of fanworks in all fandoms are welcome. Please have a look at our guidelines before you play. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact a mod. And if you have any suggestions for future challenges, you can leave them in the comments of this post.
Also, keep an eye out for the next ffw_social post, which will go up in the next couple of days. If you haven't joined the ffw_social comm, it's never too late to come and check it out. (Posts are locked, which means you have to join to see them.)
Also, congratulations to those who earned badges and name tags this round:
china_shop earned 25 Challenge Streak (SILVER), The Map Maker, The Map Maker (SILVER), The Prognosticator (SILVER), The Prognosticator (GOLD), and The Time Turner.
\o/ \o/ \o/
Thank you to everyone who participated! You're now free to post your entries to your journal or wherever else you'd like. If you're archiving on AO3, you can add your work to our fan_flashworks collection there.
According to the dentist, my teeth are mostly fine but another old filling has started to crack so he wants to take it out and put a crown on it. Since I have money in my FSA because I didn't order new glasses, I said let's do it! So as long as he gets the approval from my insurance, I should be having that done on 10/22. I'll probably still have to pay about $500 out of pocket, but that's better than the whole $1500. As always, he marveled about the Maryland bridge I have, which has been in place since 1994; even when I got it, my dentist at the time said it would probably only last 5 years, so it's quite impressive. "Those dentists back then knew what they were doing!" he told me today, and I wanted to be like, "1994 wasn't that long ago," but it was 31 years ago apparently. That just seems wrong.
Anyway, I could barely stay awake on my way home, so I crawled into bed and ended up sleeping for THREE HOURS, which I was not expecting. I will take it though.
I made pancakes for dinner, but as I was mixing up my wet ingredients, I put what I thought was vanilla in the mixing cup, but as soon as I smelled it, I knew it was the wrong bottle. It turned out to be fior di Sicilia, which is lovely and smells like an Italian bakery, but is not what I wanted in my pancakes. Whoops. The vanilla bottle is the same size, so I have now rearranged that shelf so the vanilla remains in front and the fior di Sicilia is back behind a bunch of stuff. I also redid my wet ingredients - it was only an egg and some milk, so not a huge loss to start over.
Now I'm going to watch the new episode of Slow Horses and then later, the season premiere of Abbott Elementary.
*
Current Mood:full
Current Music:Between Two Lungs - Florence + the Machine
Thank you for your engagement with this community during the past month!
Here is the tolkienshortfanworks challenge for October.
Thematic prompt:
Below is an alphabetic list of plants said to grown in Ithilien. Pick at least one plant name to include in your fanwork. The fanwork can be set in Ithilien, but does not need to be.
[Helpful hint, if you are interested in combining this prompt with the SWG's Jumble Sale challenge: this list has a couple of additional plant names that are not included in the bingo card I compiled on the same subject for SWG.]
Formal challenge:
Your fanwork should include one or more set of in-universe instructions; for instance, instructions for tasks in botany, agriculture, cookery, medicine, etc. These could be written or traditional oral instructions.
As usual, these two prompt sets can be filled separately or combined.
Usual reminder that in order to post the fill to this community or to the related collection on AO3 (linked in a sticky post at the top), the fanwork can only have a word count up to 1000 words and must be linked to a Tolkien fandom. Rec lists and podfics can be posted as fills for thematic prompts, as long as the fanworks concerned meet those conditions.
Also we continue to welcome other pieces unrelated to any challenge, of course, including cross-posts and older stories, as long as they meet the criteria!
While June feels like it was just yesterday, October is upon us, taking us into the final month of new Guardian Bonus Bingo prompts. We hope everyone has enjoyed the fest so far. Remember that after this month ends, you’ll still have all of November to catch up on any prompts you might have missed.
You’re also welcome to join us if you’re just now discovering the fest. With the November catch-up month, there’s plenty of time left to fill all prompts even if you’re starting with October.
October (O) Prompts:
Illumination | Worth It | Shameless
You only need to create for one of these prompts to earn a fill for this month, though you’re welcome to create more if you feel so inspired.
While the fest account is located on Tumblr, you don't have to be a Tumblr user to participate or to earn a badge at the end of the fest. (Filling one prompt per month over five months is what matters for earning the badge, not where you post your fills.)
Friendly Fest Reminders:
This is a low-stress fest. The point is to create fan works and have fun.
All modes of creation are accepted!
All ratings, all ships, rpf, Weilan derivatives, and even works based on other Priest novels are accepted. Please tag accordingly.
Three prompts per month instead of one. This is to give people more options. You only need to create for one prompt to earn a fill. (You are, however, welcome to complete or combine all of them if you’d like.)
Prompts are inspiration only – follow them as strictly or as loosely as you’d like
yarning I've been crocheting a lot, making and selling more kickbunnies. (Enough that I may even get my Etsy star seller badge back!) I went to yarn group Sunday and had a nice time. I just finished a purple bunny & an under the door toy. Next is a yellow bunny, though I'm running out of boxes and am waiting on Prime Day to order more, oops. OH! AND! Niece LOVED her globe & moon! I'm so relieved. I still don't know what to make her for xmas, but I'm going to do a reversible octopus for her 2yo brother with a happy face on one side and a frowny face on the other. He's learning the basics of FEELINGS & this may help? I hope so. Might do a reversible rose doll for Niece (one side is a doll from waist up with a big skirt. Flip the skirt over her head and it's a rose. Though I wonder if she already has one. Hrm.
healthcrap I had botox for migraines Friday & the skin clinic Monday. Boo: I've got a badly drooping right eyelid from the botox this time & it's so bad I'm having trouble focusing. Yay: Topical horse dewormer is incredibly effective for rosacea, I'm glad to say. I thought I'd never get rid of the spots on my face, but this works. (Note, it does NOT work for Covid.) Speaking of, I got my Covid & flu jabs today. Fasting labs tmrw, gah, but they have to be done. ( cut for discussion of weight loss )
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