stranger than fiction

Festivids recs 2019-2020

2020-02-01T13:42:27Z

So much to catch up on. Let's start with @Festivids recs. These were my faves besides the ones made for or by me:

Horror vids are killin' it this year, pun intended. Heed all the warnings:

Tag, You're It by @winterevanesce a.k.a. Kitty (Tag/Real Onigokko)

Raising Hell by @bingeling (Ready or Not)

Let Me In by @trelkez (Train to Busan) - made me cry

Good as Hell by @findmeinthealps.twitter (Midsommar)

<3 and/or energizing/inspiring:

The Fire by @dirty_diana (American Ninja Warrior)

Body Talks by @odessie (Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies)

Garden of Your Mind by @sandalwoodbox.ao3 (Critical Role/Dungeons and Dragons) - I did not know the musician behind Symphony of Science did a similar compilation with Mr. Rogers audio clips! Oh no, feelings about a source I barely know

Try Everything by @walkthegale.twitter (Bon Appetit Test Kitchen/Gourmet Makes) - The other Gourmet Makes vid got lots of attention but this one spoke more to me, about trying things even if they're not guaranteed to work

Relationships:

Queens by @thingswithwings (Killjoys) - Aneela/Delle Seyah. I got worried when the first few clips cut off in weird places or had talkyface, but wow, did it pay off to keep going

Children's Work by @trelkez (Star Trek: Discovery) - Michael and Spock, then and now

:D

Untitled Goose Vid by @eruthros and @thingswithwings - Well structured and well cut for maximum enjoyment

Thinky:

Dance Monkeys by @cupidsbow (Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies) - This vid leveled up when the vidder confirmed that the edge of creepiness in the song choice was intentional. ETA: Definitely read the AO3 notes that were posted after reveals.

what's to come by @skygiants (Jesus Christ Superstar live telecast) - I only know the basics about the story and the production but the song and the editing make it clear there's a lot churning between these two and their frenemyship and power dynamics and desired vs. actual legacies

Also:

Cut Me Down by @seinmit.ao3 (Us) - Did I mention how many good horror vids there are this year?

seven devils by @quizkwatsh (Fantastic Four) - Really interesting focus on the horror of the quartet's body transformations and the power other people have -- or had -- over them

D&D 101 by @silly_cleo.ao3 (Critical Role/Handbooker Helper) - Still a sucker for a well-structured vid. Cute and clever and yes, educational

Money Good by @sisabet (Hustlers) - This will gain depth after I see the movie, but for now, great rhythm and sexy dangerous ladies mood

An American Primer by @JinkyO.ao3 (James Baldwin RPF) - Fascinating both in form and subject matter. The captions were helpful.

Also I think we hit the Vidders' Favorite Singers trifecta this year of Vienna Teng, Florence + the Machine and Dessa. Plus Billie Eilish, so maybe it's four now. Almost a Bingo.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/394695.html, where there are comments.

2019 Fannish year in review

2020-01-01T19:12:16Z

Previous Roundups
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006

Vids

For a while there, I was on track to make a vid or vidlet every month. Then… the summer happened. I'm picking it back up now, though. There's the Festivid in progress, and I'd like to finish some of the WsIP that've been hanging around semi-edited or in my head. Oh, and I made two playlists of my vids for @trelkez's community project.

Jan. 2
Hey, Brother (Longmire)
3:07

Jan. 20
Part of That World (It Came from Beneath the Sea)
2:30

Feb. 18
Squares Are Everywhere ("Absolute unit" livestock meme)
0:41

Mar. 24
Come Away With Me (Northern Exposure)
2:15

Apr. 20
Ever Fallen in Love (Northern Exposure)
1:21

Dec.
Festivid(s) in progress

Total: 9.9 minutes – actually a little more than last year

Gen: 2
M/F: 1
M/M: 1
Monster/everybody: 1
Fandoms: 4

Favorite: "Hey, Brother," followed by "Come Away With Me." Both of them quiet and earnest and bittersweet, hm.

Most successful: According to AO3 kudos, "Part of That World," followed by "Squares Are Everywhere." Both humor vids for obscure fandoms, hm.

Writing

In which I continued the tradition of writing original fics as treats for exchanges. I would've liked to have written more, both for my fic WsIP (Red Road! Jinni crossover!) and my Mary Sues, but, as above, the summer happened. I'm actually shocked this year's word count is as high as it is.

Fic

June 24
Catch and Release (Original Work – merman/sailor)
2,240 words

June 29
The Chemistry Between Us (Original Work – teacher/student)
6,640 words

Mary Sue

Kashra (Stargate 1993)
+1,178 words

Karin's in her room (DS9)
+53 words

Alastair leave her alone (OCs)
+359 words

Meredith in the car (OCs)
+811 words

First time - revised (DS9)
+375 words

Total: 8,900 posted fic + 2,800 Mary Sue = 11,700, a little less than last year
(Plus ~28,000 words for work, two-thirds of last year's count, note to self)

Favorite: Of the posted stuff, "The Chemistry Between Us." Of the Mary Sues, oh, it's hard to choose. I guess the Stargate one. But also the OCs. But also the DS9! They are all my favorites and that's why I keep coming back to them.

Most successful: "The Chemistry Between Us" by an order of magnitude.

Fanwork goals:

Everything went out the window after June. I did squeeze out one post of a planned series for my 10-year vidding anniversary, which helped provide structure for the @Fanworks panel I co-modded with @killabeez, plus another I never actually posted. I did get that paid Spotify account to boost my music intake for vidding and for enjoyment, which has been fantastic. And I did go to the inaugural @FanWorks con in August, even though I never wrote it up here.

In 2020, I simultaneously want to make more than I did last year and take it easy and only vid/write when I feel like it. It's harder to strike that balance when it's not always clear when lack of creative energy and general feeling of "whatever" stems from anxiety/depression rather than a simple lying-fallow. It will be interesting how this plays out.

If I have vidding goals, they are: Can I make the Zahn McClarnon multivid? In time for @WisCon_vidparty? Can I finish the sports movie vid? In time for the @Fanworks dance party? Can I make @deelaundry's extremely belated auction vid?

Other goals transplanted from last year:

- Caption remaining uncaptioned vids
- Finish the Red Road story
- Finish the Jinni/Dustfinger crossover

Most significant posts of the year

Reflections on kindness and on my absorption of Native-produced or -related media

Student/teacher and other authority figures in fic (below spoilery review of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women)

In memoriam: nightdog_barks

"Saints of Star Wars" gallery opening

Vidiversary post #1: Audio editing

Moving

Favorite media of the year

Books

Faves:
- Into Thin Air
- A History of the Present Illness
- Everything I Never Told You
- The Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
- The Graveyard Book

Also notable:
- Life of Pi
- The romance novel project
- Mr. Burns: a post-electric play
- 'Salem's Lot & Doctor Sleep
- Sovereign Bones: New Native American Writing volume II & first half of Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing (volume I)
- Death: The Art of Living & Staring at the Sun: Confronting the terror of death
- Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now

Movies

Faves:
- Bee Nation
- Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
- Parasite
- The Lighthouse & The Witch (rewatch)
- Yomeddine
- The Blob (1958)
- The Ghoul (1933)
- The Cakemaker/Die Kuchenmacher (maybe???)
- batch of old Bruce Greenwood movies

Also notable:
- What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Winter in the Blood, Rhymes for Young Ghouls, Mekko
- Embrace of the Serpent
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
- Pottersville
- Room
- Hold the Dark & Mute

TV

New to me faves:
- Rilakkuma and Kaoru
- Green Frontier (Frontera Verde)
- Northern Exposure

Continuing faves:
- The Good Place
- Game of Thrones S8
- American Gods S2
- [redacted – Festivids]

Events

- Akhnaten opera
- Les 7 Doigts de la Main
- HR Giger museum in Gruyères, Switzerland
- "Saints of Star Wars" gallery opening
- Werner Herzog talk
- Fanworks con

And, of course, people old and new. This year I met @zulu and @bell in person after many years of online acquaintance and introduced myself to @sovay similarly. At @fanworks I met lots of interesting fanpeeps, including but not limited to @dirty_diana, @absternr, @jellogwello.twitter, @libraralien.twitter, @rhythmelia.twitter, @marmolita.ao3 and Liz. Who did I forget?

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/394432.html, where there are comments.

Movies & TV watched, Jun-Dec

2020-01-01T17:07:26Z

Continued from here.

MOVIES

Aquaman
The Lego Movie 2
Baywatch
Rampage
Ready Player One
The Dark Crystal
In Bruges ♥
#Roxy -- bailed
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Inkheart (rewatch)
As Good As It Gets (rewatch)
Jumanji (2018)
The Lake House
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
Robocop
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Night of the Comet
More than Frybread
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (rewatch)
*What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Margin Call (rewatch) ♥
Wildlike (rewatch) ♥
The Ghoul (1933) ♥
*Rumble: The Native Americans who Rocked the World (rewatch)
Pitch Black (rewatch)
Creature from the Haunted Sea
Logan Lucky
Tom of Finland
Ghost World (rewatch)
Amélie (rewatch)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
A Walk in the Clouds
The Favourite
Trick or Treat
Fast Color ♥
[redacted - Festivids]
Parasite ♥
Doctor Sleep
The Lighthouse ♥
The Witch (rewatch) ♥
Of Love and Shadows -- skim
Adrift (1993)
Treacherous Beauties
Captain Marvel
Free Willy (rewatch)
Hellboy II (rewatch)
Life of Pi
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby
The Knight Before Christmas
Falling Inn Love
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Yomeddine (Judgment Day) ♥
The Cakemaker (Die Kuchenmacher) ♥
Room (second half) ♥

Green Frontier (Frontera Verde) ♥
Stranger Things S3
Good Omens
True Detective S3 ♥
Los Espookys S1
*Great British Bake-Off/Baking Show S10
The Good Place S4 first half
[redacted - Festivids]
*Nailed It! France
*Native America
*Making It S2
*Blown Away
*Travel Man
His Dark Materials

Seen in theaters
*Documentary/nonfiction

Hm. A lackluster second half of the year movie-wise except for that burst of theater-going in October/November and the few I watched this week. Here's to a better future.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/393757.html, where there are comments.

Books read, Jun-Dec

2020-01-01T16:55:25Z

Continued from here.

Mapping the Interior - Stephen Graham Jones ♥
✓ 'Salem's Lot - Stephen King ♥
Orange World - Karen Russell
Stories from the Nebula Awards Showcase collections 2002-2007 - ed. various
✓ *Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer ♥
✓ A History of the Present Illness - Louise Aronson ♥

**Start of Autumn Reading Challenge**

here

Bunnicula: a rabbit-tale of mystery - Deborah and James Howe, ill. Alan Daniel
Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Morena-Garcia
Tiny T-Rex and the Impossible Hug - Jonathan Stutzman, ill. Jay Fleck
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman, ill. Dave McKean ♥
Howliday Inn - James Howe, ill. Lynn Munsinger
The Celery Stalks at Midnight - James Howe, ill. Leslie Morrill
Mr. Burns: a post-electric play - Anne Washburn
Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat: A Graphic Novel - Faye Perozich and Daerick Gross
How We Became Human: New and Collected Poems - Joy Harjo
The Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice (reread)
Doctor Sleep - Stephen King
Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
✓ Our Town - Thornton Wilder
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng ♥
✓ Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton -- bailed
Trapped by the Wolf - Juno Blake
Slow Heat - Leta Blake
The Girl Who Drank the Moon - Kelly Barnhill
Brown Girl in the Ring - Nalo Hopkinson
Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection vol. 2 - ed. Hope Nicholson
Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection vol. 3 - ed. Elizabeth LaPensée & Michael Sheyahshe
*Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race - Rukmini Pande
The Deep - Rivers Solomon
✓ Montana 1948 - Larry Watson
✓ Life of Pi - Yann Martel
**End of Autumn Reading Challenge**
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (reread) -- ~half
*Draft No. 4 - John McPhee

*nonfiction
✓ Operation Read More Books You've Owned For Ages

By the numbers
Novels: 13 + 1 partial + 1 reread, + 4 kids, + 1 self-pub
Novellas: 2
Nonfiction/essays: 3
Graphic novels: 3
Short stories: 3
Plays: 2
Poetry: 1

So that's about 62 books for the year, including many non-challenging ones in the form of kids' books and romances. Not bad, especially considering the mid-year wackiness and ensuing slump. More than my previous yearly average of 50; less than last year's Autumn Reading Challenge-spurred extravaganza.

Currently reading: Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing (vol. 1, having read vol. 2 last January), ed. MariJo Moore - halfway done

Up next: Best American SF/F 2019, ed. Carmen Maria Machado; Wilder Girls, Rory Power

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/393559.html, where there are comments.

Fall into winter, part two: reading

2019-12-20T20:05:44Z

@disgruntled-owl reprised last year's autumn reading challenge, much to our friend group's delight. This is where participants rack up points for pages read and for completing Bingo- and/or Yahtzee-style boards and then trade them in for small prizes at a pizza party because we miss the '80s. After reading almost nothing during this summer's chaos, I finished 24 books over the 11-week game. One short of a Bingo card blackout, but that's all right.

That's a lot of books (for you), you might say, especially since in the previous 11 weeks I'd read about four. And you would be correct. We are looking at the consequences of depression/moving recovery, obsessiveness and the motivation that arises from gamification. Also, a few of the books were for young readers.

Favorite read: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Runner up: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Least favorite: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (DNF)
Timely reads: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Took the most concentration: Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race by Rukmini Pande
Featured the most butts: Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat: A Graphic Novel by Faye Perozich and Daerick Gross
Chewiest: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Consuming that much media in that short a time generated some interesting comparisons. Like between Life of Pi and the movie The Lighthouse: mirror souls/shadow selves, which story is "true," whether "the truth" matters. Or The Deep by Rivers Solomon and The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill: the problems that arise from loss of collective vs. individual memory.

Here are my thoughts on all the books, if you want them! Summaries are adapted from our communal reading spreadsheet.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

When a friend recommended this, I laughed because it sounded like the result of one of those "find out the title of your fantasy book!" memes. But it featured a sexy god of death, so I was happy.

Much more a romance than expected, with an interesting compromise of an ending. The last few chapters reminded me of last year's read, The Smoking Mirror, for its YA journey through the underworld, which proved apt because this author then thanked that author, David Bowles, in the acknowledgements. I liked the theme of forgiveness over cycles of revenge.

Recommended for: People who like Death as a character and/or romances involving reticent supernatural men and mortal women and/or contemporary takes on Mayan mythology.

Bunnicula: a rabbit-tale of mystery by Deborah and James Howe

Dog reports on cat who suspects rabbit is a vampire, sucking the juice out of vegetables! Oh no!

Howliday Inn by James Howe

Could the pair of dachshunds at the boarding house be... werewolves???? Also: a murder mystery. Also: not very charming, alas.

The Celery Stalks at Midnight by James Howe

The cat sets his sights on staking all the vegetables Bunnicula drained before they turn into minions. Joke has gotten old. Worth it only for the Telltale Heart reference at the end.

Mr. Burns: a post-electric play by Anne Washburn

I was expecting brilliance based on reviews; it was good, but not that good. Fun exploration of the dynamics of oral storytelling tradition and how pop culture items transform through generations, accelerating against a postapocalyptic near-future backdrop in this case. Ended up also being a commentary on how "high" culture and folk heroes can evolve from silly beginnings and/or from unknowing mashups of multiple origin sources.

Recommended for: People who like stories about transformative work and/or metanarratives and/or vague apocalypses (plague + power grid failure) and/or The Simpsons and/or Gilbert & Sullivan.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean ♥

Hugo/Newbery/Campbell award winner, and Halloween appropriate, being about a boy raised by ghosts in a cemetery. It's reminiscent of Lincoln in the Bardo in that way, only not as clever. Gaiman says he was inspired by The Jungle Book. Each chapter features An Adventure. My favorite character was Silas, who's basically half professor and half Grim Reaper. Much creativity, although it didn't speak to me personally for most of the book. Then it did get me, all adults-fighting-to-protect-the-child and child-grows-up-and-wants-to-live-life. <3 <3 :,)

Recommended for: Kids who like ghosts and adventures. Adults who like ghosts and Harry Potter-style "protection of the chosen one" stuff. People who have feelings about how good parenting means letting go.

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 by Joy Harjo

Good excuse to get to know Harjo's poetry properly! Now that she is U.S. poet laureate and all. I learned that her work isn't my favorite, but I'm glad to have read the sampling. Favorites: I'm a sucker for prose poems that sound like sestinas, and "Grace" is no exception. Text at PoetryFoundation.org. Also particularly liked "Anchorage" and "Never."

Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat: A Graphic Novel by Faye Perozich & Daerick Gross

Oh, Lestat & co <3. Impressive distillation of the novel into comics-style narrative and dialogue, with most text taken from the source verbatim. Different art styles in different sections. The watercolors during the wolf hunt were my faves. Lestat looked like Rutger Hauer, as Armand said in The Queen of the Damned. Armand himself had a Trouser Problem similar to Jareth's in Labyrinth. As previously mentioned, there were a lot of butts.

Recommended if: you like muscly male butts and often inappropriate makeouts; millennia-old characters who never learn. Final butt count: 28 + 1 grab, and at least 3 full-frontals, also all men; not counting gratuitous crotch shots.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Because my crush Zahn McClarnon had a minor role in the then-forthcoming movie and because I'm on a Stephen King kick this year. A very readable ~600 pages, with two complaints: the beginning (too gross, even though the grossness was intended to make a point about the nadir of an alcoholic) and the climactic battle (villains too dumb).

Recommended for: Stephen King fans. People who have tried to overcome problems with fathers, alcohol, anger.

The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

I should have known that reading the Vampire Lestat graphic novel would make me want more Vampire Chronicles. At least rereading the sequel filled the "Q" slot for our group challenge to complete the alphabet using the titles of books we read.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I would say that although this didn't live up to the hype, and although it featured tone whiplash that did not always work for me, overall it's a solid and memorable story, and the more I thought about it the more I saw how and why it works. Not least, despite being a first installment in a fantasy trilogy, it actually has a beginning, middle and END, and it's a good length. Too bad the initial responses to sequel Harrow the Ninth haven't been enthusiastic.

Recommended if you like: bones and necromancy, morbid jokes and sarcasm, unremarked-upon non-heterosexual and possibly non-monogamous characters, SF/F worldbuilding, genre mashups of horror and mystery and humor.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Hm. I expected this to be more profound. The 'ghost who comes back to watch over her town' conceit, which was all I really knew about it besides Aaron Copland's score, comprised only a portion of the third act. The rest was about mundane small-town life as microcosm of human experience, only maybe we've had so much literature like this in the 20th century that Our Town no longer hits home quite the same way. Also super normative. Can definitely imagine it as over-serious high school drama production, thanks to a lengthy note at the beginning about how to license performance rights. I guess my favorite part was some fourth-wall breaking in Act I, such as lines from "Belligerent Man In Back of Theater."

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng ♥

Loved this. It's like a round robin through the POVs of each family member, from paragraph to paragraph or chapter to chapter, revealing all the ordinary secrets everyone keeps from one another before and after the mysterious death of the middle child. Ribboned with the everyday racism experienced by members of a mixed-race family (Chinese American & white American) in the midwest in the '70s. I cried through the last several chapters, in a good way.

Recommended for: People who like writing fic about miscommunication should read this as a master class. Also good if you like the intricacies of family relationships, good and bad, and the ways parents try to fix their own lives through their children's.

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

A boy and his dogs and a lot of hunted raccoons. Idealized rural life. It reads very much like "a classic." I'm glad to have read it in any case, and maybe now I'll stop confusing it with A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, which I've also never read.

Trapped by the Wolf by Juno Blake

By the author who wrote my favorite story in last year's m/m/f dragon collection. Sorry to report that the dragon story was better.

Slow Heat by Leta Blake

A/B/O original fiction recced on Twitter a while back by a friend. Unfortunately, not only was it not my thing, it was sometimes the opposite of my thing. I guess I can thank it for helping me articulate those preferences. I found it alternately boring and gross. The most joy it brought me was that i got to explain A/B/O to my editor while i expressed my disappointment in the book.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Started out as a simple, if dark, fairy tale and turned into quite the mystery, including institutional conspiracies and magically enforced amnesia. And oh no, it became about FEELINGS and how walling yourself off from sadness flattens everything.

Favorite line: "My love is not divided," she said. "It is multiplied."

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

Eh. Conceptually, culturally and linguistically it was cool, Afro-Caribbean mythology (?) in post-apocalyptic Toronto with much of the dialogue written in dialect, but it was hard to get into the main character's head, the story didn't grab me, and the pacing felt way off. Does this say more about the book, which won publication through a first novel/new author discovery contest, or about my own culturally shaped narrative expectations?

Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race by Rukmini Pande

Very much an adapted thesis concerned with which theoretical frameworks are most appropriate for considering the many ways in which race impacts fannishness and fandom studies. Many useful/illuminating arguments and case studies, but some stuff I wish had gone deeper, i.e. chapter on race and kink memes. Need to read this a second time and take notes, but had to return it to the library after maximum number of renewals, and new copies run $60+.

Recommended for: Acafans, and non-aca fans who want to deepen knowledge in this area, maybe especially white U.S. fans.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Based on a song by clipping., a rap group that includes Daveed Diggs. Lyrics song.

Strange, experimental-seeming novella that's like 75% backstory and 25% plot/characterization. Autism-coded queer protagonist as in Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts. Interesting theme of what happens when you connect too much or too little to a painful collective history. Compare to The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which was about risk of ignoring individual memory/history.

Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection vol. 2 ed. Hope Nicholson*

Great read, worth taking time over. Some gorgeous art, too. Made me want to revisit vol. 1, which I don't remember having been super into. The last comic was well placed in the collection, with a space launch compared to a canoe journey. Look at this loveliness by comics industry illustrator Jeffrey Veregge!

Fascinating note in the afterword about the production team having consulted with various tribal elders to discuss which stories could be told in a public forum like this.

*Since revealed to be not a great person, sigh.

Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection vol. 3 ed. Elizabeth LaPensée and Michael Sheyahshe

Indigenous futurisms in comic form! Way cool. Fave line: "Her anger was a passing spark against the timeless things that lived in him."

Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

A (white) family breaks apart when an abuse (of Native women) is revealed. Good read, clean prose, disappointing resolution, though the last lines were great. Smart afterword about demythologizing the cowboy/conquest of the West.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Man Booker Prize winner. I was put off and/or bored enough by the intro and first page that I didn't come back to this for two months, but then a single paragraph on page two made me laugh no less than five times, and things proceeded well from there. (It's the third long paragraph in this excerpt.) Then I hit the last section and went, oh. It's not just about animals and zoos and the shocking extremes to which the will to live takes people and how "God provides"/how faith can keep someone going in extreme circumstances; it's also a multilayered allegory about religion and (ir)rationality and aspects of human personality and the mind cracking when confronted with unspeakable trauma, and the essential sameness of animals and people, and "truth" and storytelling. As the meme goes on Twitter: *galaxy brain*

It did not, as the tag line promised, make me believe in God, but it did reinforce my appreciation of what faith can do for people—as well as what an author can do with a single narrative. When I finished, I actually went and read SparkNotes for greater insight, learning about Martel's color symbolism with Hinduism and hope as orange, that the ship name Tsimtsum comes from a kabbalistic term for the space God left in which the world could form, etc., and then flipped right back to the beginning of the novel and started again, a thing I could not tell you the last time I did. There was lots more to pick up on second read, down to individual word choices. Everything had been right there the whole time. Passages I had not spent much time on during the first go-round proved critical thematically even though they did not always advance the plot, like the choruses in ancient Greek plays. The "author's note" grated much less once I learned that it was meant to have come from the (semi-)fictional biographer within the story itself, as did the first words of the official story, "My suffering," considering that it reads like a Biblical tale of someone who in addition struggled to understand the suffering of Jesus. Is Pi (a) God, a Job, a Jonah, an Eve in Eden, a Noah, a Crusoe, an ordinary practitioner struggling to maintain his faith, all of the above? These sorts of themes and questions don't really grab me at my core, but as an intellectual reading experience, it's been memorable.

My sketchy notes are like:

Zoos/animals ~ religion
- "intense territoriality of animals" = interfaith "dialogue"
- Sparknotes: tiger viciousness ~ 'religious conflicts'
- habit and ritual
- family "bolts" from India like animals fleeing discomfort
Kumar and Kumar, dovetailing of science and spirituality
Ocean, baptism
He didn't mourn his loss in the ship-sinking chapter because the enormity of it broke him – told tale of animals instead
Zebra = black and white (thinking, morality). It goes first.
Animals in lifeboat ~ pain (zebra), fear/panic/gluttony (hyena), shock (orangutan), will/savagery (tiger)
Things in the way of salvation
Pi is an irrational number, Pi abhors slaves to logic
Richard Parker abandons him without ceremony because returning to civilization means hiding savagery

Recommended for: People who like animal facts but are OK with occasional animal harm. People who like literary fiction that flirts with the ridiculous. People interested in faith and fable and extreme survival measures and, to an extent, comparative religion.

DNFs:

Sweet by Uzuri Wilkerson

Bostonian vampires by a local author! Alas, it quickly proved the sort of book that reminds you that all you need to do to publish a book is write a book; it doesn't matter if it's any good. Boring/annoying/simplistic characters, mediocre writing, love triangle, etc.

Recommended: If you like sentences such as "He used his fingers to taste her wetness first." Or "'Inconvenience' was spelled incorrectly because Bobby hadn't notice." [sic]

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Guy wakes up in the body of a different English country house guest each morning and has to solve a murder before he runs out of hosts; otherwise his memory gets wiped and he has to start again. Cool concept, terrible execution. First person narration, and the protagonist had almost zero interest in figuring out who he was and how the mystery "game" worked. Unrelenting fatphobia in one section. Nobody was likeable. I skipped to the last section just to find out what happened, and not even that satisfied.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/393039.html, where there are comments.

Fall into winter, part one

2019-12-12T01:19:07Z

Two months since last update, oops.

For a while there, writing in any form felt onerous. It took longer than expected to recover from the summer. I kept thinking the move shouldn't have rattled me as much as it did, but emotions are emotions, and life needed time to return to normal, aided by a meds switch. And then things got busy. And now it is now.

Let's catch up in increments.

Thanksgiving

For the first time in my nearly 40 years, I did not spend the holiday with family. I was worried I'd regret it, but forgoing travel proved the correct choice. I was able to visit friends for the holiday proper, host friends the day after and see my dad and stepmom this past weekend instead; soon I'll be spending winter break with my mom and her bf.

Our first snow came early and deep this year, starting at the tail end of Thanksgiving weekend. I used the quiet time to cook ahead, read a book and experiment with making caramels. The first batch of Smitten Kitchen's apple cider ones came out all right, so I tried the more time-consuming recipe from King Arthur Flour, which proved outstanding. I am so pleased. Making both of those taught me enough to do a better job when I made the second batch of the ciders. Now the fridge is packed with almost 400 caramels wrapped in cute polka-dot waxed paper and ready to be gifted.

New York

Two days after the storm, I drove to NY. I helped my dad around the house, including shoring up his ridiculous chipmunk-proof PVC pipe and chicken wire garden enclosure for the winter with a series of two-by-fours. He helped me with a couple of tricky tasks for my apartment: building aluminum air vent deflectors to stop the heat from blowing directly on the bed and living room chair, and cobbling together a weatherstripping getup to prevent said heat from being sucked straight out the gaps between the front door and the door jamb/door stop, since those gaps have been making an impressive vacuum sound as they pull my utility bill payments into the stairwell. I also cleaned out a bunch of books and paperwork that still remained in my old room. Best find: late '80s/early '90s sticker collection. Fuzzies! Oilies! Holograms! Neons! No scratch-and-sniffs, alas.

The highlight, though, was meeting my college friend S. in the city to see the Philip Glass opera Akhnaten at the Met, about the mysterious-bodied ancient Egyptian pharaoh, husband of Nefertiti and father of Tutankhamun, who upheaved hundreds—thousands?—of years of artistic and religious tradition only to have his changes and his legacy buried along with him. I like a subset of Philip Glass, and I'd loved learning about Akhenaten in school and on those early Discovery/History Channel shows because he was so distinctive, so I was really looking forward to this production.

It was as weird and beautiful as hoped! I loved it! Heavy on the spectacle, with gorgeous sets and costumes. The classic Glassian soundscape with repetitive and slowly progressive chords, here interspersed with hand-struck drums. One thing I did not expect was the circus arts. There was a LOT of juggling. It verged on the silly after a while—audience members gave little puffs of laughter each time the troupe started up again—but it did serve as a mesmerizing visual representation of the score, an oscilloscope of sorts, as well as a form of ritual like the ones Akhnaten both struck down and introduced, and the balls of various sizes, all white, echoed the sun he worshipped and the mirroring moon. Sometimes the opera was transcendent and sometimes it seemed like a parody of experimental theater done by professionals: a single repeating chord, a handful of serious singers belting out "hah, hah, hah, hah," a troupe in bark- or cork- or dried mud-patterned unitards alternately rolling around and juggling candlesticks. But I adored everything. Even if three and a half hours in a dark hall with hypnotic music while the main character moved in slow motion tested one's circadian rhythms. Though we chose the matinee for this very reason, S. confessed he briefly fell asleep in Act I, and I had to shake my head a few times to stay alert at the end of Act II (of three), not for lack of interest.

I loved what they did to convey the ambiguous gender of the historical Akhenaten. The actor must begin his performance naked, walking to his coronation and prostrating himself and being turned upside-down and lowered into his finery by the chorus in a way that leaves no doubt that this is a person with a penis; then, a few minutes later, he opens his mouth and out comes a lovely, unexpected countertenor voice, higher than Nefertiti's voice, so that it's hard to pick out who is who during their beautifully blended duets as well as in the trios with the royal mother. [Excerpt from a different production.] And then when the couple grew reclusive to the point of forming a temple cult, Akhnaten wore chest makeup that made his pecs look like the breasts of the women surrounding him.

I also loved something they did that spoke to the artistic revolution he sparked: Akhnaten walked through a line of chorus members holding out straight wings on stiff arms in that famous pose, and as he touched them, they softened and flowed and came alive. I couldn't help but think of that Tumblr cartoon about discovering contraposto, heh.

The opera is thin on plot, as @seekingferret pointed out, and the Met didn't provide translations for much beyond the act and scene titles. Not that there were a lot of lines anyway, and the narration and arguably the most significant aria were in English, but it would have been nice. Anyway, there was a lot of space to fill with ~~juggling and~~ themes, and S. and I weren't sure we grasped everything we were meant to. We definitely got the ephemeral nature of life and mortal achievement, how quickly magnificence and impact fade, Ozymandias-style—well, Akhenaten-style—which was hammered home by a scene featuring university students uninterested in archaeology/history. @seekingferret gleaned more, such as intergenerational transmission of knowledge or failure thereof. Well, this article says not to think too hard about it. :)

The last thing I'd call out is the… intriguing… mashup of cultures and eras in the production design. Iconic pharaonic and queenly adornments and animal god heads were interspersed with furs and jodhpurs and a Victorian necromancer with a skull on his top hat. The NYT review explains that the opera, or at least this production of it—I'm curious how much of what we saw was specified by Philip Glass and how much was the vision of the director—is about not only Akhenaten's reign but also the Victorians who rediscovered him and who "fetishized" the entire culture. The writer goes so far as to call the design steampunk.

To top it all off, Philip Glass appeared onstage at curtain call. He looked frail but happy as he gazed out at the standing ovation for the penultimate performance of the sold-out run.

R.I.P. Odo

That night I was sad to hear of Rene Auberjonois' death. He was such a sweet guy to his fans. I still belong(ed) to his official fan club. It's been both wonderful and difficult to read all the tributes from other Trek actors. When I got home, I watched a bunch of Odo episodes in memoriam.

This is why it takes me forever to post. More to come.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/392490.html, where there are comments.

Dear Festividder 2019-2020

2019-10-26T16:35:15Z

Info about this year's exchange. Signups are open for one more day.

Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat -- complete with sales pitches and pictures:

LONGMIRE (TV)

Sales pitch: Rural Wyoming sheriff's department investigates crimes, often interacting with residents of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation. Lead roles besides the requisite white dude include Katee Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips. Featuring: Heartbreak! Hope! Landscapes! Horses! Boots and hats! Six 10-episode seasons streaming on Netflix; the last season was released a year ago. Based on books by Craig Johnson.

Lots of recurring and guest roles for Native actors include my current crush Zahn McClarnon as the Cheyenne tribal police chief as well as A Martinez, Graham Greene, Julia Jones, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, David Midthunder, Eric Schweig, Raoul Trujillo, Michael and Eddie Spears, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tantoo Cardinal, Rena Owen and Apesanahkwat.

Also take your pick of fan-favorite guests and cameos such as Callum Keith Rennie, Peter Weller, Pete Stormare, Mary Wiseman (Cadet Tilly on Star Trek: Discovery), Gina Rodriguez, Anne Dudek, Richard Speight, Jr., one of the older guys from Brooklyn 99, and more.

Caveats: Male posturing, gradual increase in soap-opera plots over episodic mysteries, insert your opinion here about Lou Diamond Phillips playing a Native American.

Vid ideas:

- I 100% watched Longmire for Mathias, and if you could manage to string together a coherent vid about him, you would make me very happy. It wouldn't be easy, though, with his limited appearances and the fact that he usually looks annoyed, angry or sad because we only get to see him when he's dealing with white people and/or criminals and/or victims. So no worries if this doesn't appeal to you.

- Retell some of the story from a Cheyenne perspective. That's the tack I took last year, heh.

- Who is Jacob Nighthorse, really?

- Walt's department or otherwise: Stuff about teamwork and trying to do what's right to help people. Grappling with grief and hardship. Being there for one another. Struggling for justice.

- Can you reframe so it doesn't look like Cady made bad choices at every turn?

- Want to go 'shippy, or friendshippy, or frenemy-y? I'd enjoy, in no particular order, Walt/Henry, Henry/Cady, Mathias/Walt, Mathias/Henry, Mathias/Cady, Walt/Jacob...

- Pick an episode or arc to focus on. I especially liked the Gab storyline, and Henry/Hector Lives. Maybe Bob and his son.

Things I am less into: Walt/Vic, Walt/Lizzie, Cady/Branch, Ferg/Meg, Walt vs. Branch, the Irish mob plot, the Return of Chance Gilbert plot, the pregnancy plot, Zach's anger management issues, Travis' Nice Guy-ism.

Also not super into Vic vids since there are already so many of these on YouTube.

QUEEN MARGOT (1994)

Sales pitch: Gorgeous costumes! Intricate court politics! Passionate sex like only the French can do! Strife between Catholics and Protestants! A night of stunning bloodshed! Sibling-sibling and mother-son incest, if that's your thing! Isabelle Adjani, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, and even baby Thomas Kretschmann! A Patrice Chereau film, based on the Alexandre Dumas novel.

Caveats: See above re: incest. Also one instance of sexual assault or attempted/implied sexual assault, depending on which version of the film you see.

Vid request: This movie has such beautiful, rich imagery that it just begs for vidding. Anything you make will make me happy, including a whirlwind portrait of the color and blood and passion and perversion and deviousness. Personal favorite parts are the massacre, the hatred-to-love story between La Mole and Coconnas, and Anjou's face. Plus, generally, all the homoerotic undercurrents.

THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI (BOOK)

Sales pitch: A woman made of clay meets a man made of fire in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. There's challah baking and desert flashbacks and sexy seduction and supernatural possession, and, just in time for Purim, evil viziers. Beautiful, comforting prose.

Vid request: I still can't talk about this book without drawing little hearts around it. One of the things I loved was its vibrant setting, its creation of an atmosphere I wanted to wrap around myself forever. I think what I'm hoping for in a vid is a sort of mood piece, where you feel like you're in this magical 1900-ish Lower East Side or Central Park, where things are—as much as I make fun of it in movies—teal and gold like the cover of the book. (The closest movie I can think of for visual inspiration of the city is Gangs of New York, but I'm sure there's lots more out there I just haven't seen. The books Forever and Winter's Tale, which held the same sort of early-NY magic, aren't going to be much help, alas.)

And maybe you will give an impression of this large-boned Eastern European woman and this elegant Arab man (I mean, I don't expect our imaginations of Chava and Ahmad to be the same, so I look forward to whomever you choose for your fan-cast, if you fan-cast them). Maybe there will be a bakery and a metalworker's forge, or a desert and a temple, or Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities, or impressions of seduction or murder or enslavement or the clash between subservience/suppression and dominance/recklessness, or maybe there are other aspects of the story you want to highlight, or nothing so complex because it all seems very intimidating. Whatever you make, it's going to be wonderful.

I just ask that you please be sensitive if you choose to cast Schaalman or Schall. No Hollywood stereotypes of giant-eyebrowed, pointy-eared, scheming Jews. Thank you. <3

WILDLIKE (2014)

Sales pitch: Ella Purnell, who played young Maleficent! Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the Star Trek: Reboot movies and was in lots of other stuff! Alaskan landscapes from Juneau to Denali! A hurt/comfort story that progresses to the unlikely connection between a teenage girl and a gruff older backpacker!

Caveats: Molestation of high school-aged girl by uncle; mention of spousal death from cancer.

Vid request: I would be so happy to have a vid of this movie that simply told the story, focusing on Mackenzie and René's developing relationship and taking advantage of the visual splendor of the Alaskan setting. Or whatever focus and structure appeals to you. FWIW, the emotional high point of the movie for me was René's protectiveness once he found out what really happened with Kenzie and her uncle, specifically when René bundled her back into the ferry cabin. I like to think he made good use of the bear spray when he made that stop in Juneau. :)

FRONTERA VERDE / GREEN FRONTIER (TV 2019)

Summary: A murder mystery with supernatural elements set in the Colombian Amazon and featuring two female leads, a white male villain and lots of indigenous characters. Helena Poveda, a detective from Bogotá, is flown out to investigate what first appears to be a quadruple and soon proves to be a quintuple femicide. She gets enmeshed in local police politics/corruption and is drawn deeper into tales of an uncontacted tribe that may be tied to her own childhood. Meanwhile, we follow the story of two members of that tribe, Yua and Ushe, as they try to protect their secrets and their lives. The story moves back and forth in time in a way that is at first confusing but soon comes together. 8 episodes streaming on Netflix. In several languages, mostly Spanish, with English subtitles. Directed by Ciro Guerra, who also made the striking movie Embrace of the Serpent.

Sales pitch: Gorgeous cinematography! Lots of centered compositions, beautiful scenery, lingering shots of faces, visual echoes and juxtapositions. (I wish I could screencap it for you to really show it off, but time constraints mean we are stuck with these promo images.) An engrossing mystery with distinctive characters! A dude and a lady detective team who aren't being shoved into a romantic plotline by the showrunners! A jungle as a character in itself!

Caveats: Graphic violence, discussion and depiction of slavery (rubber plantations) and mistreatment of native people by Catholic missionaries, fatal house fire, pregnancy complications, Nazis. Intertwining of ancient indigeneity and magic. Increasing focus on white savior vs. white villain plot. Strobe lights in the final scenes, IIRC.

Here's the better of two trailers on IMDB:

Vid request: Pretty much anything you do would be lovely. Recruiter vids welcome, as is anything that shows off the beauty of the filming and/or plays up the mystery, hopefully going for intriguing without being totally opaque. There's also lots to play with in the Ushe-Helena connection. I ship Ushe with Helena's parents, if you're into constructing OT3s. :) And with Yua, of course. Feel free to focus on Helena and Reynaldo's partnership, as long as it's not about them being in love or whatever. Character studies also cool, although I don't particularly want a vid that focuses only on Joseph, unless it's from Yua et al's POVs.

THE LESSER BLESSED (2012)

Sales pitch: Larry is a sullen, withdrawn high school student in the Northwest Territories. He likes classmate Juliet. New guy in school Johnny (Kiowa Gordon) likes Juliet too! Larry also likes Johnny! And Juliet likes them both! ~dynamics occur~ Meanwhile, Larry struggles with past trauma and a schoolmate who knows his secrets, and his mom is trying to heal as well. Based on a book by Richard Van Camp, who, like his protagonist, is Dogrib/Dene First Nations.

Caveats: Heavily implied physical and sexual abuse of child by parent, fatal incident involving fire, drug and alcohol use, bullying, discussion of death of an animal.

Vid request: SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE ME A THREESOME VID FOR THIS MOVIE, THANK YOUUUU

Larry/Johnny/Juliet is my dysfunctional OT3. Make use of all those lovely 2+1, 1+2, and 3-shots of them, and mess around with the chronology however you want to make it work.

If that's not your jam, a character study would also be nice.

I realize vidding this movie is a tall order, considering Larry has Donnie Darko face the whole time, but I believe in you, vidder.

Feel free to leave out the stuff about his bio-dad. Unless you want to focus on it; that's okay too.

General notes, if they are helpful:

I like celebrating shows and movies that make me happy, but just as much I like queering texts, whether it's pairing characters who aren't paired in canon or inverting themes or highlighting kink or drawing attention to minor characters or changing the tone or telling a different story using the same footage. I like joyful and I like dark and I like sexy.

Music-wise, I like folk from pretty much any country, rock, classical, instrumental, bluegrass, movie scores, Celtic, "world," choral, country where it intersects with folk and rock, some pop, dance, hip hop, indie... Not fond of ska or reggae or discordant stuff. Possibly one of the only people in vidding fandom who doesn't like Florence + the Machine, sorry. I'm open to spoken word etc., but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.

Thank you for making something for one of these newly or long-loved sources.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/392350.html, where there are comments.

bironic @ 2019-10-12T17:15:00

2019-10-12T21:19:33Z

Ha ha, how's that for synchronicity? An @equinox-exchange vid set to "Evening of Roses"/"Erev Shel Shoshanim": Night of Roses. It is, appropriately, a Shosanna vid from the movie Inglourious Basterds. Ergo, warning for Nazis and violence.

*whispers* @seekingferret, is that you?

Off to watch some other vids in the collection.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/391830.html, where there are comments.

Days of awe(some)

2019-10-08T20:40:25Z

Fic rec: A second chance at firsts by dollylux. A Marius/Armand story set during and after Prince Lestat, a.k.a. the book that introduced ~medical science~ that allows vampires to have sex. I didn't know how much I wanted this story until it appeared before me. Of course the two of them would go to Fareed for a dose. It's true to the voice of the books. And it's one of those rare experiences where the fic actually seems to be living up to its premise, so much that you keep taking breaks so it doesn't go by too quickly. That said, IMO the build is better than the sex scene.

Music rec: Evening of Roses by Sheku Kanneh-Mason, a 20-year-old black British cellist. I heard a snippet of this during a pledge drive on the local classical radio station and managed to track it down. That's when I learned that it's based on a Jewish song, the Hebrew title being Erev Shel Shoshanim. "Oh, no wonder the harmonies attracted me," said I, only to have that sentiment swiftly change to, "Wow, has everyone heard of this except me?" when the internet revealed its 50+ year history of popular and liturgical recordings. Want the original choir version by Josef Hadar? Harp? Hammer dulcimer? You got it. So finally I settled on the "more cake" philosophy, i.e. "Yay, 50 versions to listen to!" ETA: LOL, it's even been vidded. ETA 2: Twice!

My mom visited the weekend before last, over Rosh Hashanah. I told her about the AO3 Hugo debacle because I was drinking out of the "AO3 Hugo Award Winner" mug that I had (1) ordered a few weeks ago because I thought it was funny in an ironic way, (2) canceled the order on because it started to feel not so funny, (3) got the reimbursement for, and then (4) for some reason received in the mail anyway. In any case: We went to Gloucester that afternoon because my mom is a big fan of the reality show "Wicked Tuna," whose fishermen are based there. Over lunch, we watched two seagulls fight over a fish or possibly a slice of pizza. Deadpan, my mom narrated: "'I won the award.' 'No, I won the award.'"

My dad and stepmom visited this past weekend. He helped me fix a bunch of small to middling things in the apartment, from hanging a large mirror the previous tenant left behind to refinishing two water-stained wood countertops. As a break, we went to see Montreal-based contemporary circus/dance troupe Les Sept Doigts de la Main/7 Fingers, performing their show Passagers/Passengers. Fabulous! Funny and engrossing and all about athletics and grace, trust and teamwork, human alienation and connection through the lens of train travel. Here is an atmospheric trailer and here is a peppy one; both are accurate. The eight-person troupe included five men and three women, such that pairing up in various acts gave us three f/m and one m/m couple. Loved that. Also loved the variety of body types, all at peak fitness, from the solidness of the hooper to the lithe height of the tightrope walker.

A sweet new year and an easy fast to fellow Yom Kippur observers.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/391504.html, where there are comments.

A late September made of disparate lines

2019-09-26T01:32:04Z

I know it would be healthier to reduce my need for external validation, but today a professor who's famous in his field gave my work an extended compliment, and I hadn't realized how much I needed that.

The Vampire Lestat graphic novel adaptation from 1991 has a lot of well-muscled bare male butts. Like, a lot. It is quite funny at this ~halfway point how often they appear on page. I am glad the illustrator got to linger on what he enjoyed. (I can only assume.)

The anticipated post-travel, post-move mood crash has arrived. I have been feeling sad a lot, and flat a lot, and for most of the last month I've woken up after a full night's sleep feeling like I haven't rested. Plus side: I've been churning through books and listening to music, and I watched a couple of TV seasons. Minus side: That's because the day-to-day often feels empty and my compulsive tendencies are kicking up -- I play the songs on repeat, and the books are driven by a perhaps unhealthy need to fill out my Bingo card for the local friend group's fall reading challenge. And I may be overcompensating at social gatherings by talking too much? Filters lowered? Not sure.

Could be a simple hormone/meds thing. TBD at a doctor's appointment tomorrow.

Season 3 of True Detective was good. Maybe not as smart as it tried to be with its braided-timeline format and memory theme, but still good. I haven't seen the earlier seasons despite high praise for season 1, but Michael Greyeyes had a small role in this one and it looked like each season stands alone, so I started here. Mahershala Ali's performance was as great as people said. Co-star Stephen Dorff alternated between looking like Dennis Quaid, Jack Nicholson and someone else I've already forgotten. Christian Slater, maybe.

Is dipping back in to the old Vampire Chronicles love to blame for how, in the middle of the meeting with that professor today, I took in his shorter-cut salt-and-pepper hair and new beard and tried to articulate what it evoked in me and realized the word I sought was "sexy"? These are moments that make me think "gray ace" is more like "het in hibernation." Except it isn't like I would act on it, even if he weren't unavailable. So back to wondering.

At @fanworks last month, @bethofalltrades.twitter gifted me one of her Space Ace pins. She remembered the last time I posted a glancing reference to the question. That meant a lot. Also: space.

I watched the Deep Space Nine documentary on DVD. I'd expected it to elicit deep feelings about the show and what it was like to watch it for the first time. Instead, I mostly felt distaste at listening to and learning more about the bunch of dislikeable straight white dudes who ran the show. It hadn't sunk in until then just how straight-white-dude the whole thing was. They did so much I loved loved loved, yet it also explains many of the show's shortcomings. They don't seem to have internalized any lessons about the value of diversity in the intervening years, given, for example, the proportion of dude fans they gave screen time to, most of the women fans having been relegated to the section about being grateful for Kira and Dax. The writers' brainstorm about a season eight plot managed to make me glad they never produced one. They also didn't spend enough time on most topics, even though the whole thing ran almost two hours. Too broad a scope for that, I suppose. But it was nice to see the cast, filmed not long after @ignazwisdom and I saw them at the NYC con; Armin Shimerman remains a class act; Alexander Siddig remains unfairly handsome; Andy Robinson is obviously glad to be able to declare the carnal nature of Garak's interest in Bashir to all who will listen; and it provided some amusing anecdotes, such as how Avery Brooks socked Marc Alaimo while they were filming their fire cave fight and Alaimo had to go to the hospital in full Dukat makeup.

We got a new director at work this month, out of the blue. Within a few hours, boss's boss gone, new temporary person in place. It remains unclear whether boss's boss got promoted or put out to pasture in her new role until retirement. Either way, we all know the temporary person and she is great. Already, things are improving. It's amazing what good management looks like after six years of... not that.

My favorite poem so far from this collection of Joy Harjo's poetry -- How We Became Human, 1975-2002 -- is called "Grace." I am forever a sucker for prose poems that sound like sestinas. Here is the text, and here is Harjo performing it.

This is a weird post. Hm.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/390946.html, where there are comments.

Listening

2019-09-17T01:27:31Z

Today Spotify introduced me to The Highwomen (Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris and Amanda Shires, plus collaborators), a country supergroup modeled after the earlier country supergroup The Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson). Specifically, it played the titular song with guest vocalist Yola Carter, a direct response to "The Highwaymen" that uses the same melody and structure but with a modern and feminist/humanist take on the content. Hadn't thought of the original in years. It's still good, and I recommend the new one too! Looking forward to listening to the rest of the album.

Other likes from recent "Discover Weekly" playlists, heavy on the sad/dark indie that Spotify is convinced is the only thing I like despite the array of international folk and dance, rock, classical, contemporary instrumental, etc. in my Favorites:

State of Mind by Rob de Boer
Suspirium by Thom Yorke
The Colony by Vera Sola, a little goth, a little Latin
Dog in a Manger by Smooth Hound Smith, chill
Fool by Mick Flannery
Song that I Heard by The Barr Brothers if you enjoy nouveau Simon & Garfunkel
Still There by Dirtwire for trad-folk with a dance beat
Waiting Around to Die by Michael Kiwanuka for more of a blues flavor

Warning, I haven't watched any of these music videos, just wanted to find handy links for you.

If you have 7 minutes and a pair of headphones, would also highly rec this spectacular explosion of a song from a Spotify Pride Month playlist: Two Men in Love by The Irrepressibles. It makes me wonder if anyone could ever find a pairing and editing style powerful enough to live up to the music for a vid.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/390813.html, where there are comments.

Nightdog_barks

2019-09-04T01:41:59Z

@nightdog_barks was one of the first online friends I made, back in 2006 when a bunch of us got into House fandom. She wrote great fic. She gave great feedback. She formed the core of a writers and watchers group that has lasted more than a decade. (I was not really a part of it, but several friends have remained the whole time.) She read book after book and posted insightful reviews. Several of the books I read and the movies I watched on her recommendation, or the conversations we had after she read or watched something on my rec, have stayed and will stay with me for a long time. She shared regular observations of the birds and other wildlife in her backyard, as well as the antics of her dogs. On Twitter at @NDBarks.twitter, she RT'd tidbits of literature and art and antiques/antiquities. She gave wise and caring advice.

I wrote her a story once for her birthday, a loving, spoofy, meta take on a particular portion of her body of House fic. I believe it remains the only time I've posted a work in progress. It's definitely the longest fic I've put online. If you're curious: originally on Livejournal, now on AO3.

Last night/this morning, as those of you who knew her have probably already heard, she succumbed to the resurgence of the breast cancer she'd had many years back. This time it hit her lungs and liver. It sounds like either the cancer itself or the chemotherapy proved too much.

She only got the diagnosis two months ago. She was 61.

I just wrote a lengthy condolence card to her husband. That was awful. I wish I'd said these things to her before she died, but who wants to sound so morbid when the patient is feeling optimistic?

So here we are, and it sucks. But it helps to share this condensed version of our relationship with you. So maybe a few more people will know what she was like in our community.

From @blackmare here and here.

From @pwcorgigirl here.

From @perspi here.

From @deelaundry here.

From @cuddyclothes here.

From @hannah here, including a @nightdog_barks recipe and a fitting reference to Neko Case.

From @topaz_eyes here.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/390509.html, where there are comments.

Next 10 movie reviews

2019-08-28T00:00:44Z

Continued from here. The same disclaimer applies.

Even the Rain (Tambien la Lluvia) (2010) (rewatch) ♥

This movie has, as we say, problematic elements, but it's also thinky and a personal comfort watch. It features multiple good-looking people and it clued me in to the Cochabamba Water War.

Deadpool 2 (2018)

Bleh. I remember enjoying the first movie's irreverent and meta humor, but this one was just gross and mean and—weird as it feels to say—had bad morals. Good to see that kid from Taika Waititi's movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople on a broader stage, at least. Julian Dennison.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Watched in preparation for attending a talk with Werner Herzog. His usual dreamlike introspection, plus some interesting choices of interview snippets and inclusion of an un-miked question. Gorgeous lingering shots of the preserved cave paintings in Chauvet, France.

A Ghost Story (2017) ♥

I held off on watching this because I couldn't tell from the theatrical trailer whether it was going to be insufferable or deep and moving. The answer: both. All you probably need to know is:

- Stars Casey Affleck and, less so, Rooney Mara

- Affleck's character dies early on and becomes a bedsheet ghost who haunts the house for many years

- Mara's grieving character eats a pie and cries in a single take for literally five minutes

- The largely dialogue-free story ruminates on things like the brevity of existence, the persistence of art across lifetimes (in a way reminiscent of Cloud Atlas; insert your feelings about that book/movie here), the temporal limitations of memory and the horror of immortality (in a way reminiscent of the ending of A.I.; insert your feelings about that movie here), and why poltergeists develop

- There are two or three jump scares and one of them got me

- One part is genuinely creepy

As it happens, teeeeeechnically there are Native characters in this movie, in the sense that some settlers in a flashback get shot full of arrows between scenes. But the assailants are unseen, unnamed, undeveloped, which I'm sure I'd have something more profound to say about if I'd gotten further in reading Renee Bergland's The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. To make a bad pun on the movie's theme: boo.

Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente) (2015) ♥

I missed this at our local indie theater when it came out and then I missed it at our other local indie theater and then I missed it when the second theater showed it again in an annual retrospective, but now we have access to Kanopy.com through our library and our employer, and there it was, at last.

Worth the wait! Beautiful movie in both cinematography and rumination, though its subject matter was not beautiful. A German and an American enter the jungle 30 years apart and seek the help of the same shaman to hunt down a rare plant with psychedelic and healing properties. Loosely based on history. I'm sure I had more to say about this right after I watched it, and I know it will reward rewatching. For now, here's a Wikipedia note about the extent of involvement of local indigenous people in production aspects including translation and cultural advisement.

Related article: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/08/embrace-of-the-serpent-star-my-tribe-is-nearly-extinct

P.S. It took so long to finish this post that the director, Ciro Guerra, has since released the miniseries Green Frontier/Frontera Verde on Netflix, also set in the Colombian Amazon and focusing on clashes between white and indigenous peoples. Ask me how long it took to discover the connection even after noting similarities such as references to the harms done by rubber exploitation and missionaries and the casting of Antonio Bolívar with his memorable face.

Juanita (2019) ♥

Alfre Woodard has a midlife crisis, takes a bus trip to Montana, is befriended by a fat butch truck driver, and shacks up with Adam Beach after they argue about whether people want fancy or plain eggs: what's not to love? Well, maybe the thing where Juanita gets to go on a Very Special Spiritual Journey at a local powwow, or when she ameliorates a military veteran's survival-guilt-induced alcohol problem after family and community members have failed. But whatever, this movie is not concerned about being complex or deep. Co-starring Blair Underwood as Blair Underwood.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013)

I'd put off watching this for years because it sounded scary: zombies in a residential school, a girl wearing a hoodie and a gas mask, that sort of thing. There is a zombie, sort of, but the story turns out to be about a different sort of horror: the everyday kind, where poverty and depression and substance use and institutionalized racism and abusive religious organizations and police corruption combine to make life extremely hard. So, all the warnings, but it's as good as people say.

The movie I'd thought this one was going to be like, Older Than America, about the ghosts of children killed in a residential school, was more traditionally scary, but also more… template-y? Had more genre markers, maybe.

Starring Devery Jacobs, last reviewed in The Sun at Midnight and last spotted in the second season of American Gods. See Indian Country Today interview.

Pottersville (2017)

Michael Shannon accidentally becomes Bigfoot, a monster-chase reality TV crew shows up in town, and there are furries in the woods. A modern Christmas classic. I want to vid this movie just to make people go "WTF?"

Christopher Robin (2018)

I don't know how to feel about this live-action/CG follow-up to the Winnie the Pooh stories in which Ewan McGregor as Christopher Robin plays a role like Robin Williams' in Hook, all grown up and having lost his way. IDK, IDK. It's strange. Piglet looks amazing. Eeyore is funny. The main plot involves post-war luggage marketing.

The Blob (1958) ♥

A B-movie classic that is more about the pop culture invention of the American teenager than the blob, although the blob is fabulous. Why won't the adults listen to the teens when the townspeople's lives are on the line??? Featuring a super catchy title song by Burt Bacharach.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/390269.html, where there are comments.

Whew

2019-08-27T19:56:59Z

Lo, I am moved!

Two solid months of go, go, go: Switzerland trip, apartment hunting, lease signing, packing, beach vacation, more packing, offloading extra items, panel prep & travel to @Fanworks, cleaning, moving, unpacking. A little more than two months if you count the crunch to finish those @nonconathon fics beforehand.

Plus, it was like, Oh, you think you've got this managed? Let's toss one more wrench into the works! Like returning from the Cape to discover that a power repair issue on our street had fried my modem, router and TV antenna, necessitating rapid replacement and a battle with the utility company to reimburse. (They did. At least I didn't lose major appliances, as neighbors did.) Or the moths infesting the pantry in the new apartment, which at least I discovered before moving in so I could buy pheromone traps and airtight containers for the dry goods not already in some. $$$ Or the piles of stuff the previous tenant left behind that I had to either throw out or find new homes for before the con.

Let us never do those eight weeks again. Seven days post-move, I am only now beginning to recover from the emotional and physical exhaustion. And that was with the help of friends, sister and movers.

Of the good: There is more space here than in the last apartment, even if everything having been designed in a European style means storage is lacking. (Lots of hooks, some open shelves, a couple of awkward closets; I am figuring out modifications that make sense for my needs.) The "study" nook now houses my vidding computer—vidding! remember vidding?—beside the built-in bookcase that I keep staring at. It holds so many books that it freed up three bookcases for things like DVDs and entertaining supplies that don't fit in the kitchen. I have ordered cheery yellow gingham curtains for the kitchen and a doorstop for the bedroom shaped like a smiling shark head.

My commute does appear to be 45 minutes now instead of 60, which is also nice. I've only done it two days so far but the weather has been suddenly gorgeous enough to test out my plan of biking to and from the bus. So far so lovely. Excessive heat warnings last week but now a most welcome fall edge to the air. Hope it lasts. Autumn is the best of seasons. (And this apartment needs some airing out.)

There is more work to be done, but guess what I'm doing this weekend? N o t h i n g.

Signing off to the sound of crickets, a breeze in the leaves and a distant clock chime.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/389894.html, where there are comments.

Movies & TV, Jan-Jun

2019-07-29T19:53:07Z

Continued from here.

~60 movies

Road to Paloma
Dance Me Outside
Drunktown's Finest ♥
*Bee Nation ♥
Te Ata
Horror of Dracula
Beezus and Ramona
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs ♥
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ♥
Ocean's 8
Dreamkeeper
Before Tomorrow (Le jour avant le lendemain)
*Chiefs (2002)
Winter in the Blood
The Sun at Midnight
Rain in the Mountains
Hold the Dark
The Innocents
Mute
Fargo (rewatch)
*Keepers of the Game
*Up Heartbreak Hill
The Crow (rewatch)
Justice League
Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Animated
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
Chinatown
Our Shining Days
Even the Rain (Tambien la Lluvia) (rewatch) ♥
Deadpool 2
[batch of sports movies semi-skim: Lagaan, First Match, Futuresport, Rollerball (2002), The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings, The Iron Ladies]
*Cave of Forgotten Dreams
A Ghost Story ♥
Embrace of the Serpent ♥
Skate Kitchen
Shelter
Juanita ♥
Rhymes for young ghouls
Sami Blood (Same Blod) ♥
Pottersville
Christopher Robin
*Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World ♥
The Blob (1958) ♥
The Dead Lands
Fate of the Furious
Rounds
Moomins and the Comet Chase
In Embryo -- skim
Lost Fare ♥
As If I Was Not There
The Raven (1963) (rewatch)
Rafiki
*Kedi ♥
Mekko
*Reel Injun (rewatch) ♥
*Shadow Nation
Eagle vs. Shark
Boy
Always Be My Maybe
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women ♥

~16 seasons of TV

The Good Place S3 part 2 ♥
Northern Exposure S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6
Star Trek: Discovery S2
Game of Thrones S8 ♥ + documentary
(Most of) HIStory3: Trapped
American Gods S2
Rilakkuma and Kaoru ♥
Brooklyn Nine-Nine S6
(Most of) What We Do in the Shadows S1
Enough Drunk History to comprise a season
Enough Key & Peele to comprise a season

Seen in theaters
*Documentary/nonfiction

Gotta pick up where the last batch of reviews left off, too. Let's see what the last draft of that Word document looks like...

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/389737.html, where there are comments.

Books read, Jan-Jun

2019-07-29T19:50:51Z

Gotta post these before another month goes by. Continued from here.

~30 books

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven - Sherman Alexie ♥
*Sovereign Bones: New Native American Writing volume II - ed. Eric Gansworth
*Fodor's Essential Switzerland, *Lonely Planet Switzerland
*The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects - Renee Bergland -- incomplete
The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
Alif the Unseen - G. Willow Wilson
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee (fan friend)
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night - Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma (fan friends) ♥
*Death: The Art of Living - Todd May
*Native Americans in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present - Michael Hilger
✓ A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.
*Staring at the Sun: Confronting the terror of death - Irvin Yalom
New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color - ed. Nisi Shawl
Nimona - Noelle Stevenson ♥
Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 - ed. N.K. Jemison and John Joseph Adams
The Raven Tower - Ann Leckie
The True Queen - Zen Cho
Storm of Locusts - Rebecca Roanhorse
IRL - Tommy Pico
Nature Poem - Tommy Pico
Trade Me - Courtney Milan
Catalysts (Scientific Method #1) - Kris Ripper ♥
The Duchess War - Courtney Milan
Wanted, a gentleman - KJ Charles
The Magpie Lord - KJ Charles
A Case of Possession - KJ Charles
The Ruin of a Rake - Cat Sebastian
The Lawrence Browne Affair - Cat Sebastian -- incomplete
*Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now - Jane Burka & Lenora Yuen
Training Mac/Teasing Mac/Taking Mac (Erotic Gym #1-3) - Kris Ripper
*The Scalpel and the Silver Bear - Lori Arviso Alvord
Red, White, and Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston -- incomplete

*nonfiction
✓ Operation Read More Books You've Owned For Ages

By the numbers:
16 novels + 2 incomplete, 10 of which were part of a project to check out popular authors of non-paranormal romance, since several friends are into them
1 novella
3 short story collections
7 nonfictions + 1 incomplete
1 graphic novel
2 poetry collections

Want to post in more detail about several of these. One day, one day. Until then, feel free to ask.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/389540.html, where there are comments.

A room of one's own, for a price

2019-07-29T15:42:33Z

I have a new place to live! An extra relief after seeing so many places that were either dirty/cramped/outdated/inconvenient or off the market by the time I arranged to see them. It is bigger than my current apartment and on the top floor of a standard Boston-area triple-decker house, which hopefully means it will be quiet, though costlier to heat and cool. It's got light and trees and a tiny study off the living room that has a built-in bookcase and will fit my vidding computer desk. It also ought to make my commute more straightforward; TBD. Of course, it is substantially more expensive, in part because it's been six years since I rented at market rate and in part because of the square footage and location.

I've been having more feelings about it than expected. Excitement, curiosity, regret, fear (money, the unknown), pride, guilt, etc. There are so many things to second-guess. I want to move already and tackle what needs to be tackled instead of worrying about what might need tackling. Then settle in and, please please please, be content. Fall is coming, and rumor has it the new street is a trick-or-treating hot spot, which would be amazing.

The whole unplanned and rapid process was stressful and lonely; would not recommend. I will miss my current apartment, imperfect as it is. However, friends are wonderful, offering sympathy and advice and boxes as well as couch space if things had come to that. My mom made me cry a few days ago when she called to say she was sending a check to cover the movers' fee, unasked-for. I've worked hard in the 15+ years since college to be independent and not ask anything of my parents—would not have rented this apartment and hired movers if I couldn't make the budget work—and this moment of being taken care of just sort of broke me, in the good way.

Another delicate moment on Friday, my birthday, when, at the office party we hold for every such occasion, my editor chose to cater with an ice cream treat I'd once told her my sister and I used to get when we were kids: Baskin Robbins clown cones. She drove several towns out of her way that day to the store that makes them. :,)

Now it is time to take a breath. Having booked it months and months ago, I have joined a handful of local friends in a rental house on Cape Cod; first time visiting there after almost 11 years (noncontinuous) of living in Boston. Nothing on the to-do list besides read, write, cook, sit by the shore. I went to a vidder friend's wedding on Saturday a few towns over from the rental, which was a backyard affair and really lovely. When we return, a week and a half of regular life. Then @fanworks. Then move-in.

If you have my old/current address and I haven't sent you the new one yet, feel free to ping me.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/389291.html, where there are comments.

New fic! "Catch and Release," original work for Nonconathon

2019-07-14T15:27:46Z

Catch and Release (2243 words) by bironic
Fandom: Original Work
Relationships: Merman/Sailor Who Has Fallen Overboard
Rating: Explicit
Content notes: Noncon, threat of drowning, underwater sex, rope bondage, breathplay, objectifying pronouns, comparative anatomy, interspecies sex
A/N: Another @nonconathon treat for @monsoon_moon.ao3, whose prompts were very inspiring! All credit to Disney's The Little Mermaid and to Hook for concepts exploited in this fic.

Summary: Already, this human radiated distress, its struggles desperate, its face pinched. It no longer released any bubbles. So the first thing I did after I grasped its bound arms and halted its descent was press my mouth to its own.

The fire caught our attention one evening in midsummer.

Flame being, of course, so exotic to us sea-dwellers, our group of friends swam closer to see. Not too close—"when fire appears, humans are near," as the warning goes, and although we were perhaps more susceptible than most to the lure of the forbidden, no one especially wanted to be brought before the council on charges of human contact—but near enough to discern that a passing ship had caught ablaze.

The waters churned and foamed near the surface, and light flashed across the sky above; a stormy night for the creatures who lived where water met air. Doubtless such a bolt had caused the ship's distress. Between the waves came glimpses of burning sails and rigging.

A body plunged into the water in a burst of bubbles. Another followed, further off. Then a third. The humans were abandoning their vessel.

Most kicked their way back to the surface with ungainly legs, weighed down by clothes and in some instances shoes. One, however, continued to sink.

I knew my friends shared my fascination, but I was the only one who ventured closer, confident the chaos would prevent the other humans from noticing me.

This particular human had become tangled in ropes and torn bits of sailcloth. Though it thrashed, its limbs remained trapped. Blackened edges suggested its clothes and trappings had smoldered before entering the water.

A wonderful, terrible idea came to me.

I dared to swim nearer still—Markos called out my name—until I hovered but a few arm's lengths away. Only then did the target of my interest register my presence. Its eyes flew wide despite the pain the sea salt surely caused it.

Every child learns early on that although humans resemble us in body, they are more closely related to whales and porpoises, in that they can't extract oxygen from the water. Yet they lack those animals' efficiency, unable to last more than a few minutes below the surface.

Already, this human radiated distress, its struggles desperate, its face pinched. It no longer released any bubbles. So the first thing I did after I grasped its bound arms and halted its descent was press my mouth to its own.

It jerked away from me as if shocked by an eel, looking, if possible, even more alarmed than before. I frowned at it. Surely its exertions meant it did not want to die? I clutched a handful of the dark hair at the back of its head and pressed again. This time I was able to part its lips and force into its lungs the oxygen I drew in through my gills.

The human caught on quickly; it allowed me to deliver several long breaths that went some way toward easing its panic. Good. I wouldn't need to return it to the surface before I had the opportunity to try what I wanted.

We fell into a rhythm where each time it exhaled into the water, I took a needed breath of my own. Slow sweeps of my tail held us at our current depth.

Holding the human by one arm, I slid the shell blade from my belt: the only item I wore besides my arm bands, the water being so warm this time of year. I drew away to see what I was doing. The human stiffened when it saw what I wielded, then subsided when I began to saw at a rope that crossed below its torso, where, beneath its billowing clothes, its body mysteriously transitioned into legs rather than a tail. I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to know what it felt like. Was it as erogenous a zone for humans as rumors suggested?

The last fibers of the rope gave way. The human wriggled, but I hadn't loosened enough to release it from its predicament. I delivered another breath as I tugged the newly exposed portion of its lower garment away from its skin. Then I cut an opening over its genitals. Ah—a male, then.

The human bucked backward in a spray of bubbles. I let it go, giving it time to remember that it—he—would sink and perish without me. In the meantime I reholstered my blade and studied the small tubular appendage that floated against a backdrop of dark hair.

Sure enough, after several long moments staring at me and trying once more to escape its bonds like a fish caught in one of its own people's nets, it—he—flexed toward me and strained for my mouth.

I gave him what he needed while I explored the unfamiliar contours at the apex of his bound legs. Such softness, such warmth. Such a strange and intriguing texture, this hair everywhere, in contrast to my own people's smooth skin and scales except at the scalp. The phallus was reminiscent of a seal's, yet not much larger than my hand when I closed my fingers around it. Oh!—it pulsed in my grasp and seemed to grow firmer. The human arched his lower body away from me, but he couldn't move beyond my reach without disrupting our lifeline. Soon he gave in to gravity once more.

Behind the phallus was a pouch of sorts, delicate skin enclosing something that felt slippery and spherical. The human's flinch instructed me not to probe too firmly.

The currents around us shifted beyond the effects of the storm and struggling bodies above.

My friends had joined us.

They gathered in a loose circle. Although they hung back at first, already the electric frisson of their arousal was strong enough to make my skin tingle. I met Timaios' golden eyes without breaking my pseudo-kiss with the human. His lips parted as he watched.

Markos rested a hand on my shoulder. At his silent request, I moved aside, though I kept hold of my human by one bound arm as before. Markos clasped the human's head between both hands and pressed a breath into him. My own excitement surged at the sight, mixed with a surprising hint of jealousy.

Markos drew back, then grinned at me. The human didn't seem to know where to turn. His frantic gaze fell on me as though seeking protection, despite all I had already done to him. The front of my tail throbbed with pleasure.

We looked at one another—Timaios, Iason, Markos, Alexios, and I, Theron—and made the unspoken pact: I won't tell if you won't.

Together, we made quick work of the human.

A few words and gestures, a bit of jostling, and soon we'd stripped him of the ropes below his waist, using the excess to ensure his arms remained secure behind his back. We tugged off his boots, held his legs wide and rent his lower garment along the gap I'd created, baring all.

Everyone wanted to touch, but to be fair, we took turns providing his oxygen and containing his thrashing in between investigating all the differences between his lower body and ours: the divot in the middle of his abdomen, the fat and muscle at his rear, the hair that continued all the way down to the knobby joints where his legs became feet, the curves and ligaments and toes there, and of course in particular the reproductive and excretory organs, at first with our hands and then, as we grew bolder, with our noses and mouths as well. The waters zinged with our arousal.

To my delight, despite his continuing struggles the human did not seem unmoved by our explorations either. As we tongued his soft sac and stroked the pliable flesh behind it, his phallus swelled and lifted higher. When Markos tried pushing the tip of one finger into the anal opening further back, the human vocalized for the first time and bucked in our grip, but as I was the one giving him breath at the time, I saw how his eyes darkened while his phallus bobbed, so I surmised he did not mind the intrusion as much as he pretended. I stroked his hair and sealed my mouth over his once more as I traced my fingers around the rim of my awakening cloaca, the ache growing deliciously unbearable.

An uptick in commotion far above: one of the ship's masts had cracked and crashed into the sea. The hull listed and groaned. Lightning illuminated several smaller, dark shapes. Humans swam toward them before disappearing with a splash. Ah; emergency craft.

I could have played with our human all night, but I knew we had limited time before his reappearance alive among his shipmates could no longer be explained.

A competition, then. After a brief conferral amongst ourselves, we fell on him with renewed intent. Would Iason's fingers in his anus be the act that pushed the human over into climax? Would it be Timaios tugging at his phallus and sac? Or Alexios teasing the accessible strips of chest and arms and back between the ropes while their mouths locked?

When my turn came, I hooked my arms around the human's thighs from beneath, spreading his legs wider than Alexios and Markos already held them, and took his phallus into my mouth. The position gave me extra room to prod here and there, where the human had so far protested most vigorously, while I tongued at the now quite hard organ. I paused to lick higher, along the smooth skin of his hips where his dorsal fins ought to have been, teasing at the edge of his upper garment where the ropes cut off our access. The human twisted and shook in our grasp. Selfishly, I wanted it to be me he gave in to. Alas, my allotted few moments finished before he did.

Nevertheless, there were advantanges to watching. Straining now in a way that allowed me to fantasize that he was trying to reach completion beneath our touches rather than wrest free, the human leaned forward to meet the breath-kiss of each new partner, his demand for oxygen wearing us out faster than at the start. His face had darkened and his hands clenched behind his back. Had his arms been free, I like to think he would have clung to us.

I was not the only one whose free hand rubbed at their cloaca with growing urgency.

In the end, I was gifted with the best of both worlds. With me sharing my breath and pulling on his phallus, Markos pressing his nose and tongue between his legs from behind, Timaios and Iason holding his knees open, and Alexios tracing the contours of one foot, the poor conflicted human arched and climaxed in my arms, shouting bubbles into my mouth.

I couldn't help it: his surrender, his thrumming body, the hot cloud of his sperm blooming against my tail triggered my own climax. I stroked myself through the last contractions with a groan, unable to remember the last time an encounter had felt so satisfying, so intense. From the sound and electrical charge of it, Markos agreed.

The human bumped at my mouth, insistent. Ah—I'd neglected him while distracted. Fortunately, Markos relieved me and allowed me to catch my breath.

The others shot their release into the increasingly cloudy waters. At least the lack of women meant we didn't need to worry about anything becoming fertilized.

The doomed ship with its dangling mast gave a final, massive groan, and with a great swirling suction at the surface, it began to sink toward us. We swam the short distance required to remove ourselves from harm's way, toting the human along.

It would doubtless be safer for us to let him sink as well, as he'd been destined to at the beginning, but there was no way I could do that now. So when we'd recovered enough, Markos and I cut away the remaining ropes and twists of sailcloth, and everyone let go.

The human immediately kicked away from us. I was no expert, but it seemed to me that his expression cycled through anger, disgust, confusion and relief. Did I imagine the remnants of arousal there as well? He rolled his shoulders, regaining enough range of motion to maintain his depth. We all watched his awkward kicking and sweeping arm movements with fascination and not a little amusement. His loose, exposed genitals didn't help.

Finally, he swam back to me—I couldn't help but feel a swell of pleasure that he chose me of his own volition—and grabbed two handfuls of my hair. Intrigued by his attempt to assert dominance, I let him; I waved off Markos, who'd reached out to separate us. The human's brown eyes narrowed, searching mine. I gave him—or should I say, I allowed him to believe he took from me—a few final, deep breaths. Then he pushed off from my shoulders and swam hard, half-naked, for one of the rescue boats.

Markos laughed and turned a quick loop. I understood his need to find a release for this fizzing thrill. Alexios teased Iason for having been the last to climax. High from our unexpected adventure and our shared secret, we joked and jostled one another as we glided toward home before anyone, human or mer, decided to investigate.

I wondered what tale the human would tell his shipmates.

I wondered if he would ever choose to return.

I wondered what new tricks we could devise if he did.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/389117.html, where there are comments.

New fic! "The Chemistry Between Us," original work for Nonconathon

2019-07-14T15:21:00Z

a.k.a. The other reason I was thinking about student/teacher relationships.

The Chemistry Between Us (6640 words) by bironic
Fandom: Original Work
Relationships: Popular male teacher/Teenage girl who never fell for the hype
Rating: Explicit
Content notes: Noncon, blackmail, underage if you want it to be, object insertion, abuse of authority, abuse of lab equipment, math, evil bi (sorry), multiple POV, virginity
A/N: Written for @monsoon_moon.ao3's nonconathon prompt. I think this meets about nine of their specific requests?

Summary: "You're one of the only students who doesn't seem to like me," Mr. Q murmured. His gaze dropped, she swore, to her parted lips before rising again.

"Come see me after school, Liv, all right? We need to talk about your final lab report."

Olivia fretted about those ominous two sentences the rest of the day. All through sixth period, seventh, and finally eighth, she replayed Mr. Q's words, his serious gaze and pursed lips, as the knot of dread tightened in her stomach.

What had gone wrong? She'd been carrying an 85 unweighted average in chemistry all year, not as great as most of her other classes, and she'd struggled more than usual to earn it. This time she must've really screwed something up.

She made her way to Mr. Q's classroom after the final bell had rung and she'd said goodbye to her friends at their lockers. She could catch the late bus today.

As usual, a gaggle of girls had parked on chair-desks and lab benches, laughing and draping themselves into various poses and generally being shameless flirts. Liv mentally rolled her eyes. Dale Quackenbush may have been voted "sexiest male teacher" in the unofficial supplement to the senior class yearbook—the straight girls and gay guys loved his smooth olive skin and sensual mouth and the asymmetrical hairstyle that meant he was forever tucking a sleek black lock behind one ear, the jocks admired his workout regimen and encyclopedic knowledge of NFL and NBA stats, the hardcore nerds appreciated how he let them mess around in the lab under his supervision after school, and overall he was regarded as too cool to be teased about his last name—but Olivia wasn't here to worship celebrities; she just wanted to do well in her classes and move away to college in the fall.

She waited by the door for the fan club to disperse. When it became clear after a few minutes that they weren't going anywhere, she knocked. Pointedly.

"Liv!" said Mr. Q. "Good. Excuse me, ladies, I need to speak with Olivia."

The groupies filed out with groans of disappointment and a chorus of "Bye, Q!"s.

"Come on in. Close the door, if you don't mind."

Her stomach twisted again. If he didn't want passersby to hear their conversation, it was gonna be bad. Still, she tried to keep her expression light.

Mr. Q leaned against his desk, ankles crossed. He waved at the rows of chair-desks that made up half the classroom. "Put your things down. This is going to take a minute."

She swallowed and lowered her backpack to a chair. "You said… Is there a problem with my report?"

"I'm afraid there is. And it may be serious."

Oh, God. This close to graduation, this much of her total chemistry grade, and the merit scholarship that would allow her to attend her first-choice college, contingent on her final report card, could be in jeopardy.

"What—what happened?"

"I was hoping you could tell me." He folded his arms. "Your numbers don't add up, and you made some pretty basic mistakes with your terminology."

Oh, no. She'd double-checked the calculations with her lab partner, but they must have missed something. And the vocab… she must've made careless errors in the stress-fueled rush of the end of the school year.

"Oh," she said in a small voice.

"You could be looking at a failing grade, Liv," he said.

Her throat was tight, her eyes hot. Please, please don't let her cry in front of a teacher.

Mr. Q pushed himself upright. "Now, I'm not supposed to adjust grades once final assignments are turned in. It's against district rules." He took a step toward her, and the crossing of that small distance made him feel suddenly very close. Olivia's heart beat faster. "But I'm considering making an exception in your case. I know this carelessness isn't like you."

Hope rose in her chest. Just as quickly, though, it got tangled up with fear as Mr. Q took another step, nearly invading her personal space. She stepped back instinctively and bumped into a desk. What was happening here? She edged to the side instead, toward the wall.

"I…" she tried, even as he continued to come forward and she retreated. She shoved down the desire to panic. He couldn't mean to threaten her, or to touch her, as his behavior implied. She must have been misunderstanding something, like she'd done in her report. "Thank you."

"I haven't decided yet," Mr. Q clarified.

Her back hit the wall.

He boxed her in with a hand to each side.

She threw a desperate look over Mr. Q's shoulder at the door. Surely more girls would stop by to flirt, or someone, at least, would pass through the hall and glance inside. But no, she'd forgotten that an Einstein poster covered the door's glass panel, sticking out its tongue at her.

Mr. Q was so close she could feel his body heat, could smell the faint cologne that Ava and Jeannette had spent way too many lunch periods trying to identify. She stared up at him, breaths coming short and ragged through her mouth.

"You're one of the only students who doesn't seem to like me," Mr. Q murmured. His gaze dropped, she swore, to her parted lips before rising again.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. It couldn't. He wasn't. Her gut churned with fear and denial and confusion and an excitement she didn't want to examine too closely.

Somehow, she found her voice. "I like you fine," she managed. "You're—a good teacher." Or he had been, until now.

"You never drop by outside of class," he pointed out. She couldn't look away from the intensity in his eyes. "You don't blush when I call on you."

"I'm sorry?" She hadn't meant for it to sound like a question, but she didn't know what to say, what to do. She'd left her backpack too far away, and there was nothing to grab over here besides spiral-notebook art of the periodic table taped to the wall, even if she thought she could take a swing at her teacher and run for it, which she doubted.

"Olivia Johnson," he mused. He smoothed back a few strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail. Her whole body started to shake. "Honor society, principal's list, attendance award, study hall monitor. All work and no pleasure."

He cupped the side of her face and stroked her cheek with his thumb. She stood there, petrified.

Then Mr. Q leaned in and kissed her.

So Liv shared her second-ever kiss, after her first at senior prom, with her chemistry teacher. His lips were strong and dry. He didn't shove his tongue in or anything, just pressed their mouths together before taking her upper lip, then her lower, between his own. She didn't kiss back, although her lips twitched as her muscles continued to freak out about this whole unreal situation. She'd shut her eyes. Her mind and pulse raced. In a crazy flash, it occurred to her how many classmates would kill to trade places with her.

It wasn't until he pulled away and she sucked in a lungful of air that she realized she'd been holding her breath.

"That wasn't so bad, yeah?" Mr. Q asked, sounding like when he collected everyone's tests. "Nothing to be scared of."

What were they even talking about anymore? "I don't understand." Her voice came out a whisper.

"You need top marks for that scholarship, don't you?"

This was really happening. Her teacher was willing to bend the rules and fix her mistakes, but only if she did… something sexual… with him. The stuff of nightmares and fantasies and after-school specials. At least, she was ninety-nine percent sure that's what he meant. Her pulse pounded in her throat.

"Well, Liv?" he asked, head tilted. His hair swung forward. This time he didn't tuck it behind his ear. "Do you want to ace your final quarter?"

A part of her curled up inside when she said, still so quiet, "What do you want me to d-do?"

Mr. Q touched her cheek again. "I want you to correctly name three pieces of lab equipment I've selected. Can you do that for me?"

Her thoughts stuttered at the unexpected reply. "That's it?"

"More or less."

Right. With a sinking feeling, she wondered what exactly "more" meant.

She should scream. She should run straight to the principal's office and report this outrageous breach of the rules. She should get out of here right now and post online about how everyone's favorite teacher was a blackmailing creep.

But not only were all of those options terrifying, they wouldn't solve the problem of her grade. Her GPA. Her scholarship. Her entire academic future.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

*

It was finally happening.

After months of trying to crack Olivia's all-business façade to no avail, Dale had her right where he wanted her. Metaphorically, anyway. Physically, she'd be in position in a moment; he guided her over to the lab bench and cart he'd prepped for the occasion.

It had been a while since he'd fooled around with a student. Usually he liked them enthusiastic—there was nothing better than getting your dick sucked by a cheerleader eager for someone more mature than the football players or by a science club kid too nervous to experiment with other boys in his class—but once in a while he fell prey to the allure of someone he couldn't have, someone who proved immune to his charms. Someone like Olivia, who'd swallowed his B.S. about wrong answers hook, line and sinker and was now his for the taking. And therein lay an entirely different set of delights.

"Hands on the end of the bench, please," he told her.

She obeyed, even though she kept on shivering like it was midwinter and not a muggy June afternoon. Oh, this was going to be good.

"Take a step back. Another. One more. There you go."

She was bent at about 45 degrees now, ass out in those denim shorts: the perfect height for him to step forward and press his crotch into her. She gasped and curved away.

He tugged her back by the hips. "Stay."

First things first: He slid off her ponytail holder and finger-combed her light brown hair to one side. There—she already looked softer, sexier. Liv wasn't particularly beautiful, but once Dale had started fantasizing about her like this, the littlest things about her drove him wild. Like that line that appeared between her eyebrows as she attacked problem sets. Or the way she absently chewed her pen caps in the front row. Or those memorable few times when she'd worn a sundress and forgotten to cross her legs.

He popped the button on her shorts.

Olivia jerked her arm close to block him. "Mr. Q—"

"Keep your hands on the bench, Liv. Don't make me deduct points for disobedience."

It took a minute, but the reminder about her grade did the trick and she got back into position. Only then did Dale lower her zipper and wriggle his hand inside.

She pressed her thighs together against his questing fingers. "Legs wider, there's a good girl," he coaxed. Again the delay as Liv wrestled with herself, but again she submitted.

Ah, that was better. He stayed outside her underwear for now, tracing over the bump of her clit, the seam of her cunt, through the thin cotton. She drew in a soft breath and squirmed, caught between pushing back into his increasingly apparent erection and pulling away when he'd told her not to. She was hot down there all right, but not wet, not yet.

"Has anyone ever touched you here?" he wondered as he fondled her. Liv didn't strike him as the partying type, and he hadn't seen her hanging out with any particular boy more than others.

She shook her head. "Just—"

When she didn't offer anything more, he prompted, "Just what?"

"Just my doctor," she confessed in a small voice.

Oh, fuck. Delicious. "I'm guessing he doesn't touch you quite like this, mm?" He skittered his fingernails over her clit.

Liv took another shaky breath. "She," was all she got out.

And wasn't that an even prettier picture.

When he'd sufficiently whetted his appetite, Dale pulled his hand out and reached for the cart on his right. Glove first, and lube.

"What are you—?" Olivia craned her neck to see.

"Preparation for our experiment." Holding the elastic waistband out of the way, he pushed his gloved hand into her underwear.

She jumped.

"Shh," he soothed even though he didn't want her to stop. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

She made a sound between a laugh and a sob, and damn if that didn't go straight to his dick.

He could feel so much more detail now, even with the latex. A couple of swipes smeared the lube around her clit and outer lips before he spread her open and started to press his middle finger into her.

Olivia whimpered, tensing and curling into herself. He held her to him with his arm across her hips.

She was just as tight as he'd imagined. Like trying to work a nozzle into rubber tubing. He made himself go slow; he wanted her hot and bothered and begging him, not damaged. As to whether she ended up pleading for him to stop or to keep going, well, he could go either way.

Inch by inch, he got most of his finger in there. He held still at first to let her get used to the intrusion, but eventually he couldn't help himself; he flexed his finger a few times. To make sure the lube got where it needed to go, of course. Liv flinched and made another high-pitched noise. Hot as hell.

Dale slid free. On to the good stuff.

He picked up the first piece of glassware. "All right, Liv, first question. What is this called?"

Olivia looked at what he held, then twisted around further to check with him. And there were those pink cheeks he'd been hoping for. Flushed and confused, she asked, "Is this a trick?"

"Basic terminology," he reminded her, as though she hadn't just turned in her best report of the year. "You do know what this is, right?"

"It's… a test tube."

"Good. Face forward."

He lubed up the round end before stripping off the glove. Then he took the tube by the non-slippery rim, tugged the crotch of her shorts and underwear to one side with his other hand, and pushed the glass into her from below.

Liv whined. Dale had to close his eyes to keep from dropping the act and fucking her over the cart. He couldn't risk leaving behind that kind of evidence.

He let go of the test tube long enough for her muscles to force it out, then pushed it in again. It belonged to one of his smallest sets, and his prep plus the lube did the trick; the glass slid easily where no man besides him had gone before.

"How does that feel?" he asked. Out and in, hold. Out and in, hold.

Liv appeared to be beyond words. Her fingertips had gone white where she clutched the bench, and she'd dropped her head, showing him the long line of her neck. He needed to bite that later when he had better leverage. For now, he repeated his question.

"Cold," she choked out.

"What else?" He held the tube inside her and moved the end in gentle circles.

She made a plaintive noise.

"Come on, Liv, show me those observation skills."

"H-hard."

Reduced to single syllables; excellent. "Which do you like better, the test tube or my finger?"

No response. He gave her several rapid thrusts. He was never going to get tired of those little sounds escaping her throat.

"Neither."

"A or B, Liv."

"I don't know."

"All right, then; let's gather more evidence." He let her push it out for good this time.

"No, I didn't—"

He dropped the tube in the tub of soapy water on the lower shelf of the cart. "Step out of your shorts, please."

She visibly trembled. "Please, no, Mr. Q…"

As if that weren't delightful enough, Olivia's lips parted when she turned to discover him putting on a new glove and applying more lube.

"Do you want to stop?" he asked. "We can stop, but you haven't convinced me yet that you know the material."

Her eyes continued to plead, but she bit her lip, turned her face away and, yep, worked her shorts off. She nudged them in front of her with one sandaled foot. Smart girl didn't even need the reminder to put her hands back on the bench when she finished.

Her panties had tiny rainbow hearts. "Cute." He ran a finger across her ass before reaching around to tug the cloth out of the way again. He could've had her take these off too, of course, but he liked undressing them in stages.

Two fingers this time. Liv bent and straightened her knees, trying to ease his passage, which—bonus—meant she also rubbed against his aching hard-on.

It didn't take long to stretch her out. He turned to prep the next piece of equipment.

"What's this one, Liv?" he asked as he coated the top half liberally.

Her wide-eyed reaction was everything he'd hoped for.

"Gra—" She swallowed. "Graduated c-c-cylinder, oh my God, please don't, please—"

He did.

This time he crouched behind her so he could see what he was doing, letting out a strained breath at the pressure in his pants. Underwear to the side once more, baring the secret pink of her, the little hole that glistened and contracted as he spread her ready. Then he nudged the spout of the cylinder into place.

"Oh God," Liv moaned as he began to work it in. "No, please, it's not—it won't—it's too big—"

The thing was actually narrower than his two fingers had been, but it sure was rounder, colder, unyielding. He kept going, slow but steady against the resistance of muscles she probably hadn't used before today except maybe for tampons, two steps forward and one step back as she fought to relax, until an impressive portion had disappeared inside her. Fuck, he could see a little ways up in there through the lube-smeared glass.

"Look how much you're taking, such a good girl." He kissed her trembling thigh as he stopped pushing; this appeared to be about as much as she could handle for the moment. "You're down to the eighty-milliliter mark."

She whimpered.

He gave her a few seconds to acclimate before he sprang the question on her. "Okay, Liv, time to test your simple math skills."

"Wh-what?"

"Your test question is: How many inches of this cylinder are inside you right now?"

For the first time, Liv dared to look down at him between her legs. Her face went bright red at the sight of either his arousal or the glassware sticking out of her cunt. Maybe both. She lifted her head again before she asked with a beautiful waver, "Seriously?"

"I'll give you the only two pieces of information you need. The cylinder is nine inches long, and the one hundred-milliliter mark is about two-thirds of the way up."

"I don't—I don't—"

"Come on, I know you're smarter than that. Break down the problem. How do we begin?" he asked in his sing-song "teacher voice."

"Estimate," she parroted from many classes past. He started to rock the cylinder, gently, so gently, just enough to throw her off again. "Ah—"

"Estimate," he confirmed. "If one hundred is two-thirds of the way up, and the length is nine inches, then…"

"Then…" She adjusted her stance, but he doubted she could make what he was doing any less distracting. "Two-thirds of nine is... six."

"But?" he prompted.

"But...?" Her back straightened when she caught on. "But we're measuring from the t-top down. So... so six from nine is three, three inches."

"Good girl. Now refine to eighty milliliters."

"So eighty... eighty... is more, but how much more..." He added a twist to his movements. "I can't do this, I can't think…"

"Yes, you can. You wrote that lab under pressure, too. Show me you can earn that A."

He let her figure it out while he corkscrewed the cylinder in and out, leisurely, maybe half an inch in all. Should he touch her clit too? It was right there, shiny and inviting.

Soon enough, she navigated her way through it, as he knew she would.

"If one hundred is two-thirds," she said slowly, voice strained, "then fifty is one-third, or three inches more. And seventy-five is halfway between fifty and a hundred, so an inch and a half. And eighty is a little closer to the top of the cyl—cylinder, so... three inches plus a little less than an inch and a half is... almost four and a half inches."

"Oh, good job, Liv. I knew you had it in you." He snorted at discovering his own pun. "Literally. And for the record, you're now at seventy-five milliliters, so congratulations, you're taking four and a half inches even."

He did touch her clit, then. She deserved it. So did he. Liv gasped and clenched up, which made the cylinder slip further into her, which made her gasp again and stumble. Dale would bet good money her little loss of balance didn't completely explain why she'd pushed forward into his touch. He circled his thumb over her clitoral hood a few times, then dipped beneath again, riveted by the intimate topography of her. Tender and hot and lube-slick as Liv's control slipped bit by bit, just the way he'd dreamed.

"What do you think," he asked, "does that feel good?"

"N-no." But he heard the edge in her voice, and he felt the way her body was starting to respond.

"You deserve a reward for solving that problem. Your choice: Should I keep going"—he jiggled the cylinder, eliciting another clench—"or take it out?"

"Out."

"Positive?" He drew out the "o" as if hinting to a class that they'd gotten an answer wrong.

"Not funny, Mr. Q," she managed, sounding more like herself than she had in a while. He was both amused and disappointed. Ah, well; they still had a treat or two to enjoy.

"All right. Out we go, then." He worked the cylinder free, pausing to admire the sight it left behind before he stood. God, his knees; he was getting old. He wiped off his finger on her hip, dropped the cylinder in the soapy tub and repeated the prep for the last part of the trifecta.

"I'm going to need you to step one leg out of those adorable panties," he said.

Her head whipped around in alarm and, judging from the fresh flush, embarrassment. Two more cracks in the armor. "That wasn't…"

He raised his eyebrows.

"What if someone—?" she tried.

"No one's coming in here until the six o'clock janitor. It's just you and me and your final-quarter grade. You're almost there, Liv. Don't throw it all away now."

She chewed her lip, studying his gaze, then bent to do as he asked. Score. He drank in the sight of her, naked from the hem of her shirt to her Birkenstocks. If all went well, he'd be seeing even more of her soon.

He directed her to leave her underwear around one ankle. When she straightened back up, he leaned in. "Spead your legs more," he murmured. They were going to need the extra room.

Three fingers from behind, just to be sure the final faux-dildo would wind her up but not actually hurt her. He ungloved for the last time and held up the pièce de résistance with a flourish. "Last but not least."

Liv's expression pinched when she saw it. "Erlenm-meyer flask." Her voice cracked on the "a."

"Well done. Three for three." He would have slow-clapped if his hands hadn't been busy with more entertaining actions. "After this, you're home free. If you want to be."

He was able to push the neck into her with minimal fuss, a gorgeous smooth slide accompanied by her soft intake of breath. Then came the more evil portion as the flask widened. He went slowly again, waiting to find out how much he could get away with.

Olivia rocked up onto the balls of her feet, trying to escape, an awkward endeavor with her legs so far apart to accommodate the flask's full width. Then, as it stretched her a little bit more, she let out an appealing few whimpers. He kept going until she twitched and grabbed at the bench and said, "Ow ow—"

He eased it out a smidge. Not a bad tableau, her bare ass framing the flask half-buried inside her.

Much as he wanted to thrust the thing in and out of her as fast as he could until she came around it with a scream that this whole wing of the school would hear, he kept control and began another gentle rhythm, careful not to push the flask—or Olivia—too far. "How's that?" he asked. Push in, glide out, over and over, the suck and squelch of lube, nothing dramatic, until she relaxed a little, settling on her heels again, some of the tension draining from her back and shoulders. Beautiful. "Hm? How are you feeling? Confused? Scared? Turned on? Like you hate my guts even more now? Like you want to pretend you're still only doing it for your grade? Maybe a little of everything?"

Her breathing had picked up again. "I can't—" she tried. "I can't believe people think you're nice."

He laughed. Was it his imagination, or was she moving with him ever so slightly?

He gave her a few more strokes before he stopped. He'd been hoping for a mew of protest, but her ragged exhalation wasn't bad, considering.

"Work with me here," he said, and holding the flask in place, he helped her step back into her panties. He pulled them up as high as they would go, trapping the flask inside her, the hearts distorted around the bulbous base. He snapped the elastic when he was done, just for fun.

"And that's your math and vocab corrected, as promised," he said. Gambling on a number just low enough that she would go for it, he added, "I'd say we're looking at an 80 now. Would you like a bonus question for extra credit?"

She hesitated, then shook her head.

"No? Are you sure? I think maybe you're not sure."

"I—I have to catch the late bus."

He glanced at the clock. They had more than half an hour. "Plenty of time. Two more identifications, five points each."

No way she would turn down a 90. Not when she didn't know she'd actually earned slightly higher than that.

Yeah, there she went. She turned to see what else lay in store on the cart, considering his offer, but he'd stocked it with more than he was going to use, in part so it hadn't looked suspicious during the day, so she wouldn't know for certain what was coming.

She squinted at him, probably torn between wanting an A and wanting to kick him in the nuts. He was fairly certain part of her wanted him to fuck her with that flask again, too. "Okay."

He smiled, letting some of the edge show.

"Face forward again," he said. When she'd done so, he picked up the first clamp and put it on the bench in front of her. "One."

She took in the metal rod, the two curved grippers with the adjustable screw between them. "Clamp?"

"That's right." He slid her shirt up, slowly, letting his thumb trail over her spine, bump by bump, as he exposed her back. He felt as well as saw the hot, prickling flush that swept over her. Her bra was a plain pink cotton. He pushed the shirt over her shoulders and head and left it hanging around her wrists.

"But do you know what kind?" he added.

She shook her head. He unhooked the bra and let it fall open. She gave a quiet sob.

Peeling back Olivia's defenses one by one… After all these months of tantalizing bra lines visible through her thinner tops and dresses, of glimpses of cleavage on days hot enough for tank tops, he reached around and palmed her breasts. They may have been on the small side—maybe a B cup—but hell if he cared at this point. So soft, god damn.

"Stand up," he said. "Lean back into me."

It took some trial and error with the flask still forcing her legs apart, but soon he had full-body contact. Her head came to just above his chin; he tucked her into his shoulder, sweeping her hair out of the way. He sniffed it as he coaxed her bra down her arms and tossed it onto the bench alongside her shirt. Some kind of herbal shampoo, half bitter and half sensual; very Olivia.

He rolled a nipple between his fingers and gazed down the front of her body. Needing some relief, he pressed his other hand to her lower stomach and rocked into the warm crease of her ass. That got another noise out of her. She didn't seem to know what to do with her hands, reaching to cover her chest or push him away before catching herself. Finally, she left them at her sides. Her nails dug half-moons into her thighs.

"This," he said, retrieving the clamp, "is an extension clip."

He got a decent grip on it so he could start tightening the screw one-handed. Pinching her nipple with his other hand, he told her, so close to her ear, "It's also called flask clip, or a single burette clamp, or a two-prong burette clamp. This type of end is known as a round jaw." The clamps closed around her. "See how each prong is coated with rubber so it doesn't scratch? Nice and easy." He gave the screw another few turns until Olivia twisted in his arms with a whimper.

He let go. The clamp's weight tugged her breast down. Gorgeous. He'd love to take calipers to those nipples, or, yeah, to her clit, but this position wasn't great for it.

"Mr. Q…"

The tension in her voice was divine. If she turned her head, she could kiss his neck. "Yes?"

She clearly wanted to pull the thing off, but there was something else she wanted more. "N-nothing."

Yeah, he thought so.

"And this," he said, picking up the other clamp, "is…?"

He held it in front of them so Olivia could see it, resembling nothing so much as a skinny robot arm with three plasticine-encased fingers.

"I don't know," she admitted.

He tsked, even though there was no reason she should be able to identify it since they hadn't used any this year. "A three-prong clip." It took more maneuvering to get this one closed over her other nipple. He nuzzled her hair while he worked. "It gives you more flexibility with the equipment you can attach to your stand." There: three pretty divots in her breast as the clamp held her in its tiny grip.

He slid his arms across Olivia's belly and gave her a shake that sent the clamps swaying. She made a sweet sound of complaint.

"Can you tell the difference between them now?" he asked. He flicked the clamp over her left breast.

"F-flask," she said.

He flicked the other one.

"Three-prong."

"Good. Are they still bothering you?"

She nodded.

"Too bad." He'd been hoping she would like them, but this worked just as well.

Olivia stiffened. "You—"

"I what?"

"You're such an asshole," she said, all in a rush, like she was afraid she'd get in trouble for swearing at a teacher after every rule they'd broken today.

He only laughed again. "Would an asshole do this?" He tweaked the double-prong clip—he couldn't help himself—then unscrewed it enough to release her.

"Ow," she exclaimed as circulation rushed back in. He tossed the clamp away. "F…frick."

He took the opportunity to massage her breast, taking extra care to soothe the abused nipple. Olivia Johnson nearly dropping the f-bomb; who'd have thought? "I will give you another point if you say what you meant the first time."

That, of all things, appeared to be where she drew the line. "No."

He switched hands on her breast so he could slide his right one down between her legs, into her underwear, playing with her clit, sliding further back to tease where she was stretched tight around the flask. She squirmed and started breathing faster out of her mouth. "Three points if you let me spank you," he tried.

"No."

He knew she'd never agree, but: "Five points if you kiss me."

"No."

He took his hand out of her panties so he could tug them down a couple of inches to make room. He gripped the flask by the base and slid it almost all the way out, pulling the cloth along with it. Then he pushed it in again, stopping before the flare became too much for her. Again. Again. He experimented with firmer strokes than before and was rewarded with a series of soft noises that sounded much more like pleasure than pain.

He pressed his mouth to her temple. "I will give you a 100 mark for this quarter if you come."

Olivia went hot. She didn't answer.

He waited, giving it to her with the flask and cupping her breast. She still didn't say anything.

Well: No news was good news as far as he was concerned.

God, he wished he could just fuck her. He could see it so clearly: rutting into her while he bent her in half over his desk, forcing moans out of her until he had to cover her mouth so no one in the hall would come investigating. But Olivia would be more likely to report him if he did that, plus the evidence would be more damning.

Instead, he angled the flask to try to hit her G-spot, reached around to massage her clit and murmured commentary. She took a slow, deep breath. "I wonder how you'll like to take it when someone finally gets into those buttoned-up pants of yours. Besides me and your lady doctor, that is. Hard or tender, fast or slow? Fucking"—that startled her—"or making love? Will you loosen up enough to suck dick? Wait 'til you feel a mouth on you. Would you let someone do that? Who would you give it up for, hm? Who would you let unravel you?"

Olivia, who'd started rocking into him in the most delicious and frustrating way, found her voice. "Not you."

Oh, it was on. He grabbed her by the back of the neck and bent her forward so she had to grip the bench again for balance. He slid his thigh between her legs and tugged her hips back so he bumped the flask into her. That earned him a wordless cry. He kept moving her forward and back, forward and back, firm but not rough enough to really hurt her, helping himself out in the process as her ass collided with his erection. The second clamp fell off and clattered to the floor. He soaked up her helpless responses. She was no screamer, alas, but she did sound needier by the minute.

He let go of one hip and worked her clit hard through her underwear, pressing the heel of his hand into her pubic bone. She keened.

"You gonna come for me, Olivia?" Her hair swung every which way. Her butt cheeks jiggled with each thrust. He knew her breasts were bouncing too, mottled red from the clamps, even though he couldn't see them. "Go on. Come for that A. Show me how much you like chemistry."

It was a terrible line, but he didn't give a fuck, because Liv went tense and shaky, and her breath stuttered, and—oh, glorious day—she came apart beneath him. He touched the flask with the hand that wasn't rubbing her through her orgasm so he could feel the last clenches pull at it.

When she was finished, he leaned down and nipped the back of that tempting neck.

"Get off me," Olivia panted. She pushed away from him and the bench.

They stood a few feet apart, staring at each other. Dale smelled his fingers, wondering which was better, the heavy musk or the expression on Liv's face when she realized what he was doing. He took a mental photo of her, disheveled and flushed down to her chest, wearing nothing but her flask-distorted underwear and sandals. She seemed to realize how exposed she was at the same time, because she crossed one arm over her breasts and reached for her shirt.

"Come here," he said. "I'll take that out for you."

He may have sounded helpful, but mostly he wanted to get that flask into the safety of the wash bin before she got any ideas.

That done, she turned to get dressed, which was fine, because while she was busy he could finally, finally unfasten his belt and rip open his fly and jerk off before he fucking exploded.

It took all of about ten seconds. He remembered just in time to grab a fresh glove so he didn't jizz across the glassware or the floor where someone could go all CSI on it later.

"Oh my God, ew," Olivia said when she turned back around and saw him. She was fully clothed once more, but her hair was still down and her cheeks were still pink. Nice.

In an ideal world, he wouldn't be too knocked out by an orgasm to summon a witty reply. As it was, he just waved her off.

She went to the desk where she'd left her backpack. She at least let him put himself back together before she said, "You're disgusting."

"That's a minority opinion around here," he pointed out. He tucked away the used gloves in his lab coat; he'd take care of them later.

Another pause before she asked, tentatively this time, "So, 100 for the quarter?"

Olivia to the core. "On condition that what happened doesn't leave this room."

She thought about it.

"And if you're thinking you'll wait until report cards come out and then blab," because she wasn't stupid, "think again, because you'll have to prove your version of events over mine."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean how you came to me after everyone else had gone, found out you weren't going to pass, and tried to convince me to raise your grade by offering sexual favors."

She stared at him. "That's not…"

He shrugged.

"They won't believe you."

"Are you sure? Everyone knows how much you care about your grades. How much you need that scholarship."

She wavered.

"It's our own little balanced equation," he said. "Win-win. You go to your first-choice college, I get to keep this delightful memory."

"I go to college, you don't get fired," she corrected him. He definitely liked this sassy side of her. "Fine."

"Fine," he mimicked. "See you in class tomorrow."

She hefted her backpack. "Can I have my hair tie back?"

Oh, right. He gave it to her off his wrist.

Ponytail up, armor reestablished, she took a steadying breath and opened the door.

Couldn't let her have the last word.

"Any other classes you need help in?" he offered. "I'm friends with Mr. Laramie in the Social Studies department."

She slammed the door behind her.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/388838.html, where there are comments.

Getting a read on mid-July

2019-07-13T00:23:17Z

Hello! It's been a weird week. Four days ago I was in Switzerland. More on that soon. Since then it's been a headfirst dive into apartment hunting and a work assignment I had a hard time with. At least the assignment is done now.

I.

Trying to find a satisfying new place to live on short notice in peak season in a rent-inflated city is stressful and I do not recommend it. I haven't learned yet how to set manageable goals for the search, i.e. when it's okay to stop each day or each session. I'm also trying to define when a listing is worth compromising on vs. what I've done so far, which is keep holding out for better. Not counting the awesome-looking place that went off the market literally two minutes after I set up an appointment to view it. I am feeling many negative feelings and reminding myself to simply feel them and keep going.

II.

A break in the clouds. Last night @stultiloquentia and I popped down to Readercon's free first evening, since neither of us could make the official con Fri-Sun. I really wanted to hear Stephen Graham Jones, this year's co-Guest of Honor with Tananarive Due, and see if he would sign the copy of Mapping the Interior that @gretchening.twitter sent last year as a gift. (He did!) And as luck would have it, SGJ's Thursday panel included our local writer and film critic @sovay and moderator Darcie Little Badger a.k.a. @shiningcomic.twitter, both of whom I started following a couple of Readercons ago, plus teri.zin and Paul Tremblay.

The topic was "Being Vague to Make Space for Horror," about how ambiguity rather than clarity serves the genre. Different kinds of ambiguity. The horror of not being believed, in life and in fiction. The discomfort of not being able to put names to things, in life and in fiction. How ambiguity can arise from an author struggling with disbelief in the supernatural while writing it. (Tremblay: 'I don't think it'd be a six-foot ghost. I'd try to explain away whatever it was. I'd keep thinking about it later. I'd be unsettled.') Ambiguity as a different thing from confusion or authorial laziness. (SGJ: 'I always commit to one or the other in my head. [i.e. Is this thing real or not?] I pick whichever is more fun. And then I entertain the opposite in the story.') What authors know about their characters and what happens offscreen and before and after the story, and what they don't. What happens in the rarer cases when providing an answer works for the story. (Examples cited: Get Out, Cat People, Scream, Midsommar, Hereditary, Visible Filth.) The satisfaction of dissatisfaction. The value of being unsettled, dislocated, wondering.

The fresh reading of Mapping the Interior proved an excellent lens through which to appreciate the discussion.

I also bumped into @kate_nepveu on the way out and tried to help her right a faltering easel. And that's pretty much everybody I could have hoped to recognize at the con except @yhlee. Sorry to miss you this year. Be safe down there.

Of course, seeing Tananarive Due would have been excellent too. Alas. At least @stultiloquentia was able to go to her panel during the same slot: "Afrofuturism and Solarpunk in Dialogue."

III.

Before jetting off on the work trip, I did finish both stories for @nonconathon! Like, just before jetting off. I cranked out the rest of the second story across something like six hours and two thunderstorms with one break to look at an apartment, posted it, took a shower and left for the airport, where I polished a few rough spots from my phone.

Almost 9,000 words total. I think they both could have used more work, being unplanned first drafts written across multiple sittings. But they exist, and that is what matters. One of them—the down-to-the-wire one—has done quite well. The other, at least the recipient liked, or politely pretended to, heh. Could also be a consequence of being buried toward the back of the 232-story collection.

Reveals are this weekend, I believe. Will post some recs after. I haven't read any fics since returning to work but I did enjoy a bunch on the flight home, pre-downloaded, largely in the Original Works category.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/388600.html, where there are comments.

grrrrrr

2019-06-28T01:23:35Z

HA HA, surprise, my landlady is selling the apartment after all! This news comes 48 hours before I fly overseas for 9 days, plus I am gone the week straddling July and August as well as a long weekend in mid-August for Fanworks, which means I am in for the pre-September crunch I was dreading, minus the month I just lost where I could have been apartment hunting. (I didn't want to apartment hunt if I didn't have to. I've written 6,500 words of fic in that time and had some quality get-togethers with friends. Still.)

At least... I don't have to agonize about the decision anymore, because it's been made for me? The Boyle family way.

Ugh. Gonna try to put it out of mind and focus on conference/vacation. Switzerland!

*

Meanwhile: People are into the Good Omens adaptation. I didn't have many feelings about the book years ago and haven't watched the show yet. Been bookmarking your stories and recs for later, though.

And RIP Billy Drago. :( AV Club story, and Legacy.com. Most recently mentioned at the bottom of the Northern Exposure vid post here.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/388170.html, where there are comments.

Threes and threes

2019-06-15T13:00:59Z

As a cis het, I experience Pride Month as a more concentrated than usual opportunity to celebrate friends*; identification feels like appropriation. Still, I've enjoyed wearing my stealth gray-ace necklace, courtesy of deelaundry, more than usual in June.

*and family and colleagues and strangers, and to help lobby for compassionate treatment of queer people globally and listen and otherwise be an ally

One of these years I'll wrestle out the post that's been tumbling in the back of my head about the ways the "gray asexuality" label does and doesn't fit. It's hard to define something by a partial and possibly temporary, even if longstanding, absence.

*

Either way, the kink remains! Heh.

1) 4,100 words and counting on two nonconathon fills.

2) I finally watched Professor Marston and the Wonder Women and came out of it with a general response of ♥. If I'd known before festivids that it focused so much on long-term polyamory, kink and student/teacher relationships rather than being a straightforward biopic about a comics creator and the women who inspired him, I would have watched it sooner! Or maybe I did know at some point and then forgot, oops.

Of course, a Hollywood biopic is going to be prettier and narratively/emotionally tidier than reality. Curious about how closely it tracks to the actual people and events it purports to depict, I first checked out the NYT film review and the review of Jill Lepore's related book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, that it linked to. Among the major divergences, it was disappointing to hear that William Marston was kind of a sleazebag and that there was another woman in the picture whom the movie never mentioned. It also appears to be a point of contention whether the real Elizabeth and Olive had a romantic and/or sexual relationship independent of William.

That said, I'm not invested in the film's historical accuracy and am fine with viewing it through the lens of "loosely inspired by." So those discoveries mainly gave me a greater appreciation for how the director, Angela Robinson (female, lesbian, black), chose to (re)shape the story. Such as William voluntarily taking a back seat so often, in life and in bed. The vehemence with which he defended feminism and non-normative aspects of sexuality; the sympathy with which the film approached same, albeit with a heavy hand. The intensity of the Elizabeth/Olive dynamics. The beauty of the shot in which William's blurry vision of Elizabeth and Olive resolves into two people. Etc.

One of many Q&As with Robinson digs into the tensions that arise from, for example, crafting a biopic that's more about your own artistic vision without consulting with surviving family members.

How many of you posted about the movie when it came out? Link me?

*

I'd been thinking again about student/teacher and other relationships involving authority figures in fic, which is what led to the above. What I continue to love all these years later about stories like Sickness and Shame by recrudescence (doctor/patient), Bend It by Nellie (coach/athlete) and Maybe I'm Already Crazy by foxxcub (teacher/student)—all Inception, Arthur/Eames, FYI right at the cusp of underage in the U.S.—are that they thread the needle between coming too close to reality and going too far into fantasy.

By which I mean, if you swing too far in the realism direction, then either the adult/authority figure comes off as creepy or outright abusive, like what happens in the vast majority of cases IRL—I'm talking about fic involving consensual relationships in this case; when you're reading or writing noncon, then of course that kind of characterization tends to be the goal—or else the characters talk or think around the ethical issues and don't act on their feelings. (Are there any fics in that second category? Hm. I've struggled with it when writing before. 'Have sex already!' 'But we want to be in character and/or sympathetic, so how do we cross this line?' ETA: Oh, right, that's how things shook out in an old Willow/Giles WIP.)

Whereas if you swing too far in the fantasy direction, then as soon as the characters realize the attraction is mutual, they slide down the magical erotica chute into passionate sexytimes, no bumps along the way. And that's not satisfying for me. I want the characters to confront the issues—the power imbalance, the trickiness of consent, the potential consequences—before finding a way forward together. As you may recall, the glossing over of this stage is what prevented me from fully adoring many of alethia's Michael Burnham/Christopher Pike fics (captain/crew member, Star Trek: Discovery), which are otherwise so close to perfect. IIRC, Dating Wrong and A Light Touch handle it pretty well.

What drove me up the wall about a long fic someone recced the last time I asked around for student/teacher stories, More Than Just a Pair of Sinking Ships by Robespierre (Merlin/Arthur), is that, while student!Merlin is depicted as crushing just as hard as teacher!Arthur, Arthur, the POV character, does soon come across as a creep and loses sight of what is appropriate, adult behavior. If only it hadn't taken those wrong turns (IMO), the pining and catharsis could have been gorgeous.

Forever chasing more of the good ones.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/387867.html, where there are comments.

From digital to physical

2019-06-14T21:53:36Z

zulu and bell hold the current record for length of time between when I made a friend or acquaintance online and when we met in person: 2006ish—the House fandom days—to 2019, or 13 years.

thedeadparrot and I got together with them and their little one when they came down from Canada this past weekend. Although their schedule and my outdoor activity-restricting allergies meant we only shared a couple of hours, and although the presence of a lively four-year-old simplifies the conversation, heh, it was nevertheless a treat to finally meet them "in the flesh." It felt like I already knew them. I mean, of course I did, but sometimes there's a disconnect between your impression of someone from their internet presence and what you experience in person, and that wasn't the case here.

Speaking of first encounters with people you know on Dreamwidth: We ran into sovay (Sonya Taaffe) and spouse spatch while foraging for dinner in a new-ish food market full of hipsters queuing for oysters and beer. Given that we live in adjoining neighborhoods and have overlapping tastes in cultural activities, it was only a matter of time before we crossed paths outside of Readercon. Hopefully I didn't make too much a fool of myself attempting the introduction and small talk! Another time soon, it will be nice to have a more substantive convo.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/387517.html, where there are comments.

Sliding into June

2019-06-07T14:28:24Z

Watching

Did you know there is a Drunk History episode where Adam Beach, Q'orianka Kilcher and Zahn McClarnon do the reenactment/lip synching? It's in the Alcatraz takeover segment of "National Parks," season 6 episode 2. A good time. You can tell that they, along with Dallas Goldtooth as John Trudell, had fun with the swearing and flamboyance. I'd only ever seen Zahn do this brand of comedy before when he played an exaggeratedly effeminate gay stylist in Repo Chick, which evoked a similar mix of delight and uncertainty about whether busting one stereotype mitigates the perpetuation of another.

Wikipedia just informed me that the previous episode focuses on the Frankenstein creation story, with two Woods as two Shelleys: Evan Rachel Wood as Mary and Elijah Wood as Percy. Also Will Ferrell as the creature and Seth Rogen as Frankenstein. This should be interesting.

I'd never seen a whole episode of Drunk History before and hadn't realized how often they cast well-known actors in the reenactment roles. Now I see that is half their schtick.

(As of this spring, paid Spotify subscribers get free Hulu if they didn't have an account before. Hulu archives Drunk History. I've also been catching up on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.)

Vidding

I spent part of last weekend working on the sports movie vid, only to confirm that there's too much left to do before the fanworks deadline. "Do I really want to stress myself out trying to make the other four minutes of a four-and-a-half-minute multivid in a week and a half?" I asked, remembering how I ran on adrenaline and meal delivery to knock out "Starships!" in that amount of time and how it took a solid month to edit "The Greatest" last spring followed by about six months of recovery.

Although it's disappointing not to bring a premiere to the con, I'd rather take my time with this one, especially since the whole idea was to play around with the editing. At this point, or at least in this case, I'd rather the process be fun than the vid be done for the dance party—a definite change from past practice.

Anyway, fresh off that decision on Saturday, I shut down the computer and went to the store and ran into scribe and feedingonwind, which never happens. They also mentioned the vid deadline crunch. So you can imagine my amusement and horror when scribe said she and fiercynn were trying to motivate themselves by saying, "Starships was made in a week!"

(Good luck, friends! Please only use that vidding story as a model if you need encouragement to work like a dog!)

Writing

Just as well, perhaps, since someone's prompts at nonconathon captured my dirtybadwrong imagination and I started two stories! 2,700 words on one so far and a couple hundred on the other. Pretty sure the first one will get done. Yay. It's been five months since I added substantive material to a story and eight since I posted a fic. This serves as an excuse for skimping on work all week. Gotta ride the writing wave when it comes.

The PWP includes about 200 words of math, which makes me laugh.

There is nobody in either fic by this name, but I titled the Word doc "jonathon nonconathon" because I couldn't stop seeing the name in the 'fest title.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/387300.html, where there are comments.

Three-day weekend

2019-05-26T22:36:46Z

Spring green

I don't really go to Starbucks except during a fun period of springtime when pollen and/or antihistamines give me a sore throat in the morning, which iced milky tea relieves on my way to the office. But that gets expensive fast, so this week I bought a gallon of milk and a 14-oz bag of matcha powder from the corner Korean-Japanese market for about the cost of a week of Starbucks. It is delicious and effective, and it will last … a very long time. 14 ounces turns out to be a lot of matcha when you use about one teaspoon per tall glass of latte. If I were a chinchilla, I could take a dust bath in all this matcha. It may be time to unearth some matcha baking recipes.

Adulthood is fun

I had a dream that I was among a handful of people who landed a job/internship at some biotech company in Kendall Square, after arguing a dude into believing that the hiring manager had not in fact dropped me from the candidate pool. The dream included details about productivity expectations, managerial oversight and salary negotiation. This followed a dream the night before that someone at work helped me out with that RL project that got cancelled.

What the heck, brain? You used to dream about vampires and Star Trek and stuff. At least earlier this week there were dreams about Zahn McClarnon (good) and someone who was either Ben Affleck or Paul Rudd's character from Mute (not good).

In other news, in the past 24 hours I successfully coordinated flight plans with a friend to go to fanworks, booked two hotels for the vacation portion of my upcoming business trip to Switzerland (!), and did the math on the 6 short train rides I expect to take throughout said trip. Whew.

Spoiled for choice

Too many options for only one day left in the weekend. Work on the Fanworks vid whose June 4 deadline snuck up? Work on a non-deadline-driven vid? Play with a fic or original story? Sort through extraneous belongings in case I decide to move? Research local brokers? Cook and clean? Combine any of these with friend hangout? Or the likeliest option: Stew in indecision.

Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/386961.html, where there are comments.