It's been a while, kittens, and much has happened! Last weekend was my friend's bachelorette celebrations, which took me to St. Louis (where she lives) and then to Chicago (where I'd never been before) and included much sight-seeing and drinks and dancing and horrible terrible blisters on the bottoms of my feet from shoes that had never failed me before, all bookended by hours upon hours in the car. It's about 4 1/2 hours from home to her place in St. Louis, then that again to Chicago; on Sunday, I rode from Chicago to St. Louis then drove myself home and was then TIRED OF SITTING IN THE FUCKING CAR. But, all in all, it was so much fun and I love her face, so worth it.

This weekend was my mom's birthday, so my parents are camping (in their fancy motorhome) at the lake, and I drove down there Sunday and yesterday to spend some time in the water and on the boat. They'll be at the lake for two more days, but I think I'm done; I'm going to take advantage of a few days away from work to do some things just for me. An hours-long bath, writing some words, reading a book or two....

Now, onto the rest!


I'm not particularly fannish about anything I've been watching recently, though there is a lot. I miss Orphan Black. But there are a few shows that I watch each summer, Covert Affairs and So You Think You Can Dance being the most important. I just never get tired of SYTYCD. The Fosters is back, and I'm liking this season (is it still a season when they do them twice a year? is it a half-season? I do not know how to refer to each block of episodes) more than the last. Moving past the Callie/Brandon romance while not pretending that it never happened is a good choice, I think.

Finding Carter has a really interesting premise, and while I'm not sure that they've done that premise justice, I'm still watching. The same red-headed kid is on this show and The Fosters and I find him oddly endearing.

Graceland is probably the thing I'm watching that I'm enjoying the most. Mike and Paige! I'm really happy to see Paige have her own stuff to do this season, and Johnny, too, and I am very invested in what is happening with both of them.



Writing more means reading less, at least for me. While I was reading three or four books a week a couple of months ago, I've slowed down majorly. First, I've been doing a very, very slow reread of A Game of Thrones and catching all sorts of things that I glossed over the first time. But I also keep picking it up at oh, two in the morning when I'm lying on the couch, so I read a chapter or so and then fall asleep with my fingers between the pages.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han was disappointing, if I'm being completely honest. Lara Jean was the sixteen-year-old protagonist, but read like she was twelve or younger. And I'm not saying that there aren't girls that age who have a voice that is that immature - because they are that immature, which is not necessarily a problem - but that isn't a voice that I'm personally invested in. And that put a major damper on my enjoyment of one of my favorite tropes: pretend dating! I think this fits on the YA shelf in the space reserved for a young, strong reader: a less mature story written for someone with a higher reading level. (That is, the sixth-grader reading at a high school level.)

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour was much more enjoyable. Emi is a new high school graduate working as a set designer who finds a letter from an old Hollywood star to his long-lost daughter when she buys a record from an estate sale. She decides to track down the daughter, finds the granddaughter instead, and falls in love with her. This book is about girls in love and never makes a big deal about it, which is super fantastic. It's quiet and charming and it feels like a perfect summer book not because it's "light" and "breezy" (ugh, buzzwords), but because it takes place in the summer and has that sort of unstructured, untethered feel to it.

Gayle Forman's Just One Year was fine, though I enjoyed it less than Just One Day. It's not that I didn't like Willem, the protagonist, but I was far more invested in Allyson's life in the first novel than I was in his in this one. Generally, I am far less invested in stories about boys - young men, whatever - than in stories about young women lately, and I'm not apologizing for that.

<i>Amy and Roger's Epic Detour</i> by Morgan Matson was a fun, slightly unrealistic summer road trip story that, while enjoyable (it included tracklists to various "road mixes" and little scrapbook-type details that added to the story, I think), it mostly just made me want to read and write road trip fic in various fandoms. (I wrote one once. Why not write another?)



I'm still working on the matriarchy fic! I'm about two-thirds of the way through my outline, and I have 60k+ words of ASoIaF matriarchal AU to show for it. A few weeks back, I made a literally impossible deadline for myself of this weekend, but since there is (and was) no way that I'm going to make it, I'm giving myself another...let's say three weeks to finish this first draft before I get into the editing. And then, posting! \o/

I'm actually really ready to start posting this because I've been working on it for a while and I'm dying to start actually talking about it.



Generally speaking, I like to cook and bake a lot, but I go in spells. Sometimes, I subsist entirely on things like frozen burritos and chips for weeks at a time before going on a jag where I make everything from scratch. Lately, I've been on a from-scratch kick.

First, I found this recipe for raspberry buttermilk cake, which I have made with all the berries except for raspberries and with peaches with A+ results. It's really easy and I definitely recommend it.

Then, I broke in my new ice cream maker with strawberry lemonade frozen yogurt, which is one of the tastiest, easiest things I've ever made (and I've made a lot of tasty, easy things). I will make more of this, oh yes.

For my mom's birthday this weekend, I made pineapple upside-down cupcakes because yum, and in the process of browsing recipes, found one for pineapple upside-down jelly shots, which I also made and are pretty and delicious. I blame my friend's bachelorette festivities last week for the jelly shot idea; we started taking them at 7:30 am when we departed St. Louis for Chicago and spent the whole drive having more drinks. But they're so tasty!


(This list is longer because it's been a while since I've made one. There are worse things.)

♥ long days at the lake ♥ blueberry green tea with lemonade ♥ long catching-up chats ♥ small favors ♥ endlessly rearranging my books ♥ winged eyeliner ♥ choosing not to do things ♥ descaling the Keurig ♥ Watercolors on my phone - I'm crazily addicted to this game, literally the only one I've ever downloaded ♥ saving bits and pieces of inspiration for later, and finally creating a tag for all of those images that have been languishing in my Tumblr likes ♥ planning things - the bachelorette's bridal shower is in a couple of weeks and I'm still coming up with food ideas ♥ Tablespoon - they have some of the best recipe categories I've seen yet ♥ finding sparkly "diamond" rings to decorate a Cracker Jacks-themed cupcake for the aforementioned bridal shower ♥ healthy, happy Marilyn (and Puck, of course) ♥ unexpected, blessedly cool days in the middle of summer ♥ my new Avengers tank (I'm using it as a cover-up since the back of it is all lace) ♥ air conditioning that works really, really well ♥ blueberry green tea lemonade ♥ explaining to someone that I am sex positive (and what that means) and having her tell me the "kinky" thing that she and her husband do; it's just funny to me, because it shows that as soon as you remove a taboo from something, people will want to talk about it ♥ introducing someone to the world of fanfiction (the same person, incidentally) when she mentioned that she thought she wanted to read Fifty Shades of Grey ♥ kittens and basically everything about them ♥ the way holographic glitter in nail polish looks underwater ♥ doing way too much research into crowns and tiaras ♥ choosing wedding gifts ♥ collecting names for fictional places ♥ pink lemonade slushes ♥ Harry Potter - I've been having a moment lately, finding graphics and art and reading articles and such ♥ Post-Its ♥ cute, cheap dresses ♥ puppy love ♥ driving the boat ♥ iced coffee ♥ fairytale tropes ♥ "Seven Virgins"

Between this week and last, I've read a lot of books with French references and settings - The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender with its French-style bakery and Anna and the French Kiss and Just One Day being set in Paris - and as a result had to purchase baguettes and macarons. I regret nothing.

Herewith, some things that have brightened my week.


So You Think You Can Dance is back! I don't get fannish about it - I'm generally a passive viewer of competition reality shows - but I enjoy it so much.

But more importantly, holy shit, Orphan Black. One of the things I love so much about this show is how it can, in the same episode, completely horrify me with things like taking stem cells from Kira's tooth, acquired through means questionable at best, and giving them to Cosima without allowing her to make a fully informed decision, and in the next scene completely crack me up with the hijinks surrounding Felix, Alison, Sarah, and Vick. This episode made me feel a lot of feels though. (The following should be regarded like bullet points rather than anything coherent.) It's completely correct to me that while Donnie is Alison's monitor, he has no fucking clue what's actually going on. Sarah impersonating Alison is still delightful. As time goes on, I actually trust Cal more (cautiously, as it will likely bite me in the ass), and the bit where Kira pulls her own tooth was...sheesh, this poor baby. I'm pretty sure that I don't trust Siobhan but find her totally badass, and I was oddly pleased to see that Ethan Duncan hasn't lost it completely. And Rachel feels, where did you come from? Her and Leekie, nurture over nature, ack! Cosima felt like the mouthpiece for this episode, particularly in her words to Delphine regarding her life, her body, her biology - it hurt, but I loved her telling Delphine to get out of the lab. And holy shit, the last scene. Again I say, carry on, show.


My last week away from work meant that I had time to read plenty. I've already talked about Looking for Alaska and my general disappointment with it here.

Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara is a painful look into grief, loss, and guilt with lovely prose. The romance read as a bit false to me - too fast with too little foundation - but I can manage a little suspension of disbelief in exchange for the emotional resonance. Not a book for everyone, but perfect for my preoccupation with narratives that explore themes of death and grief.

Just One Day by Gayle Forman was delightful, as expected. Forman wrote a pair of my very favorites - If I Stay and Where She Went - so I bought Just One Day when it was released a year ago. I've been waiting to read it until the right mood struck, and I'm glad. Rule-following "good girl" Allyson takes a chance and leaves her supervised post-high school European group tour to spend one day in Paris with a handsome Shakespearean actor she just met. Cue travel porn, romance, and misunderstandings. Thinking he ditched her, she spends the next year in a funk, not simply because she lost this boy but because she lost this new, adventurous version of herself. Then she goes back to find him and, in the process, herself. It's a romance, yes, but it's more a story about a young woman finding herself and learning who she is, and I am here for those stories.

I also reread a couple of Nora Roberts' romance novels because I like them and who's going to stop me? I like Roberts' style, and there's something soothing about the familiar rhythms of her novels, just like in any genre fiction. And yes, her characters rely on common tropes but are still imbued with enough individuality that they feel like actual people - people you care about.


♥ proper time off from work ♥ really adorable couples ♥ glitter ♥ coffee - extra delicious after a week without it due to illness, and my new English Toffee flavor is to die for ♥ bubble baths with bonus cat-digging-through-bubbles ♥ EOS shave cream ♥ sleeping in ♥ cats sleeping in boxes that are much too small for them ♥ macarons ♥ just-washed bedding ♥ the feeling that comes with rereading a book you enjoy ♥ smoothies ♥ new shoes ♥ Graze boxes - I still have US codes if anyone wants to try ♥ kind, helpful veterinarians ♥ making lists of AU ideas (and planning a couple to write)

Tell me, kittens, what is making your week? Alternatively, ask me fandom-type questions as you like.

I read a lot of YA lit. I have better success with going and choosing a book from the shelf in the YA section than I do in literary fiction, and frankly, I'm here for great characters and great stories told through great writing, not for novels of great writing with the flat characters and go-nowhere plots that I find dominate literary fiction. Lit fic is very hit-or-miss where YA is more often a sure thing. Plus, I care far more about teenagers learning to be people than I do about the so-called adult problems explored in literary fiction.

Occasionally - less often than you might think - I run across a YA novel that makes me think about how different my reaction to it would have been ten or fifteen years ago when I was still a teenager. Specifically, books to which Teenage!Nic would have had a stronger, more positive reaction, books that Teenage!Nic would have loved and lived by in a way that Adult!Nic almost wants to roll her eyes at. (Because who among us isn't rolling their eyes at their teenage self?) John Green's Looking for Alaska, which I just finished, is one such book, and that's disappointing, because I'd heard such good things.

I've found that these books are typically written and narrated by men. So the question becomes: Is it my maturity that balks at the story or my more well-defined and almost indignant feminism? I think it's the latter.

( Discussion and lots of recommendations under the cut.Collapse )

I am sick and it sucks, but that's no reason not to go ahead and make a list of things that didn't suck this week. And then I'm going to make some soup and lie on the couch.

When I sub, any time a student asks why when I tell them to do - or not do - something, my answer is, "Because I'm mean." Now, I'm not actually mean, but I'm a teacher who takes no shit and means what she says, which some students perceive as mean, and that's fine. I sincerely don't mind; I'd rather be "mean" and effective than spend my days fighting to get students to do the most basic things. But seeing a preschooler look at a classmate who asked why and say, "Because Miss Nic said so and she's mean," basically made my week.


Oh, Game of Thrones. After reading some analysis of Dany's Meereen arc, I find myself less annoyed by her current storyline on the show (uncomfortable racial implications aside). This episode's scene between her and Jorah was one of their most enjoyable in a long time, maybe since season one.

But oh, Sansa Stark, you own my heart. Show!Winterfell and all that went with it lived up to my expectations. Sophie Turner is just the loveliest and she's doing beautiful things this season, and I get an excessive amount of enjoyment over the fact that she's apparently taller than Aidan Gillan. But the slap and "Cat" and the push and just - yum. So, so good.

The Dancing with the Stars finale convinced me without doubt that Meryl Davis is an Actual Disney Princess.

And Orphan Black! Sarah and Helena on a road trip! Tatiana Maslany continues to have excellent chemistry with herself (or, more likely, with Kathryn Alexandre), and they're so delightful together. Grace is now just as creepy and manipulative as the rest of her family, and Mrs. S Knows Things and I want to see how it all plays out. And holy shit, Dr. Duncan seems very sad and broken, but there's a lot of creepy going on in the way that he looks at the clones and what he's done. As I've said before, carry on, show.


First this week was Panic by Lauren Oliver, which is sadly my least favorite of her YA novels. The basic premise is following two teenagers who are participating in this thing that takes place in their home town each year called Panic. Throughout the school year, every student donates a dollar a day into the pot for the final prize, and just-graduated seniors are then able to compete in increasingly dangerous contests. At the end, the last person standing takes the money. Maybe if I was still a teenager I'd see this as exciting, but I'm an adult and find it stupid and reckless, and the characters weren't engaging enough to make up or it. Plus, tigers were introduced very early on in the story and I then spent the rest of the novel worrying about them.

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige was much more enjoyable. Amy Gumm finds herself in Oz the same way that Dorothy Gale did - via tornado. But Oz is different than in the stories, its magic being mined and horded by Dorothy - who has installed herself as the supreme ruler of Oz - with the help of Glinda, who leads the mining efforts; Scarecrow, who performs terrifying experiments on the people of Oz; Lion, who feeds on fear; and the Tin Woodman with his half-metal soldiers, created for him by Scarecrow. Amy becomes a part of the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, witches devoted to defeating Dorothy's rule. It's inventive and engaging, and I do so love a witch story. The magic-corrupt Dorothy is a truly scary villain, and I loved the touches like all of her clothes being made of blue gingham and that the never takes off the magic silver slippers - now six-inch stilettos, naturally.

Last night, I finally picked up Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, which sounds silly but came highly recommended and lived up to the hype. It's sweet and charming without being cloying, Etienne is everything a YA boyfriend should be - including flawed - and Anna is a fun protagonist. Plus, Paris!

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton is one of the most beautiful novels I've read in a while, and I don't just mean the cover (which is definitely the prettiest I've seen in ages). Magical realism with beautiful prose, I loved the history of this family and the way that it incorporated the time period - the turn of the century through the 1950s - without knocking you over the head with it. It was subtle, but very clear, and there are a lot of French bread and pastry references to get you going. It has lovely imagery and deep, complex characters - and those mostly women. This might be the best novel I've read so far this year. 10/10, would recommend.


♥ bottled smoothies - the only thing I can keep down since I've been not feeling well ♥ pale pink manicures with rose gold and holo glitter ♥ long soaks in the tub ♥ tissues ♥ Dark Angel ♥ kittens ♥ packing a lunch box ♥ Garden Salsa Sun Chips ♥ skirts and sandals ♥ preschool naptime when they all actually fall asleep ♥ kids' computer games ♥ antibiotics in pill form for the cat - so. much. easier. ♥ sunscreen ♥ finally watching the finale of RuPaul's Drag Race - my favorite queen won! ♥ savings two snakes in one day, one from the dog and one from my car; this has to be good karma somewhere, right? ♥ hearing that I am valued and appreciated ♥ legal things that work out for the best ♥ long naps with cats

What's making your week, kittens?

Hello again, kittens! I hope you've had a fantastic week. I'm subbing for a pre-k teacher for the last couple of weeks of school while she's on maternity leave, and I really enjoy it even when the tiny people drive me batty. They use first names (Miss Nic, Miss Shannon) because their regular teacher has a last name that is basically unpronounceable to four-year-olds, but it's pretty adorable. This close to the end of the year, they've met all of their benchmark objectives, so their days are mostly structured play and long recesses, and with an hour of specials (art, music, etc.) and an hour nap each day, I basically get paid to spend two hours of every school day reading. I have zero complaints.

But, on to the things that I've enjoyed!


I loved the Once Upon a Time finale. Even with the time- and realm travel, nothing felt contrived about it. And Snow and Charming retained their agency and, yes, charm even with Emma and Hook's necessary interference. Emma finally got to be the fairy tale princess she was literally born to be, there was lots of good stuff for Hook, and a huge personal obstacle for Regina that came back to Storybrooke with them. Carry on as you are next season, show.

I enjoyed the last episode of Game of Thrones as well, but all thoughts about it were eclipsed by anticipatory excitement after seeing Sansa's snow castle in the preview for tonight's episode. Snow!Winterfell is maybe my favorite chapter in the whole series, and I cannot wait to see it play out on the show. Sophie Turner has been breaking my heart in the best way all season, and I don't think this will be any different.

My favorite part of the Agents of SHIELD finale was Melinda May kicking Ward's ass. "Like you were ever on top." Love.

The Vampire Diaries finale was enjoyable. I'm sure the focus going into next season will be on Damon and Bonnie (who are clearly not forever!dead - and neither is anyone else, ever, apparently), but I am way more interested in Tyler, who I understand is not only not a hybrid any more, but just a human with an un-triggered werewolf gene. Give me this. The Reign finale was great, too, though I did want them to drag out Henry's death in a horrible, disgusting way. (Because isn't that how he died in real life? Slowly and in a lot of pain and other horrible pre-modern medicine ways?) BUT how hard do I ship Bash and Kenna? Ugh, I love them.


It gets its own heading because holy shit. The last episodes have been most excellent. I love how Art understood that the Prolethians were Not Good even at a distance, and his tactics for slowing them down after watching Helena run by him. Just...when do you ever see a "heroic" character let the damsel in distress run past him? Or let the people hunting said damsel carry on with their hunting? And how much do I love that this is that show? And then everything with the two of them in his apartment in the last episode was gold.

I'm loving Alison in rehab (I missed her a little in the last episode), though using her kids as leverage makes me hate Donnie more than ever. And Felix! I love Alison and Felix so much.

And I like Cal, even though I don't trust him. He is a presumably straight, white dude, and every one of those has been a duplicitous douchebag at BEST. But I think that Dyad means something to him, and probably has something to do with the technology he developed that I don't understand. As long as he's taking care of Kira though, he can stay.

And oh my god, Helena is Sarah's angel! That scene in the bathroom was AMAZING. Helena being a "welcomed" part of Sarah's life - in Felix's apartment, "brother sestra", eating all of Art's food, "do not call me this" - I love it so, so much. Invoking Helena as a threat is Serious Business, and I love Sarah and Helena together so much. Murder twins, ftw!

And the Rachel stuff is fascinating and a little terrible (what happened with Paul was decidedly Not Okay, but says so, so much about her), and I'm actually glad Helena didn't kill her. Imagine that.

As an aside, I am totally going to start hissing at people a la Helena just to freak them out.


Between substitute teaching and bubble baths, I've read a lot this week. I'm still finding my way out of the ASoIaF theory and analysis rabbit hole (I love this one a lot), but books! I would definitely recommend Wendy Wunder's The Probability of Miracles to anyone who enjoyed The Fault in Our Stars. (Especially if, like me, you're a little annoyed by John Green's veneration in a segment of publishing where most of the authors are women writing for other young women.) The subtle touches of magic and the unexplained are gret, but grounded within a balanced reality.

A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron is about a dog who is repeatedly reincarnated who decides that it must be because he is supposed to fulfill some purpose. So-called "animal books" don't always work for me, recent evidence to the contrary, but this was recommended by a friend and it didn't disappoint. It definitely kept me reading, and I'm glad that I waited to finish it until I left school. (Because tears.)

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black was a truly original vampire story and didn't include a love triangle! Also, a trans character who was treated as a person instead of The Trans Character! Very enjoyable, do recommend to anyone who has an interest in the vampire narrative. (I really think that if this had come out a few years ago, it would have been wildly popular, but now it may have missed the vampire boat. IDK.)

Yesterday, I bought and read e. lockhart's We Were Liars in about three hours because it is So Good. I cannot recommend e. lockhart enough, truthfully - everything she writes is excellent. (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is one of my all-time favorites and should be required reading for teenage girls, IMO.) Read it ASAP, you will not regret it. (And if you haven't already read, The Disreputable History, read that now, too, please, and then come talk to me about it.)

You can keep up with what I'm reading on Goodreads.

♥ breakfast sandwiches ♥ library books ♥ Lenny the Lizard, the happiest classroom pet I've ever seen (I visit him in the kindergarten classroom when I'm in the building) ♥ "I drew it for you, Miss Nic." ♥ magazines called "The Food Issue" ♥ puppy love - that is, love from puppies ♥ finding the balance ♥ choosing a new summer slush flavor for my parents' restaurant - I'm leaning toward pink lemonade ♥ not feeling so tired I desperately guzzle anything caffeinated ♥ buying the ingredients to copy Panera's strawberry poppyseed salad, my favorite ♥ bubble baths ♥ season finales - I still have Criminal Minds and Glee (I know) waiting on the DVR ♥ I finally started writing the matriarchal fic I've been planning for weeks \o/ ♥ Zoya Odette ♥ grocery shopping ♥ Sophie Turner and her Sansa stanning - I agree with basically everything she says ♥ kittens

Tell me, what has hearts in your eyes this week?

Hello, dolls! It is time again for a list of things I love!


I read Matched by Ally Condie this week, the first novel in another dystopian YA trilogy. In this world, people are paired up with their ideal genetic and personality match in arranged marriages. Our protagonist, Cassia, is matched with her childhood best friend, an all but unheard of occurence. But when she views the information she's given after their match is made, she sees another boy's face - another boy that she grew up with. Cue doubts about her society's system, etc., etc. This is one of the less-compelling YA dystopias that I've read in the last few years. Of course, essentially everything pales in comparison to The Hunger Games, but Marie Lu's Legend (of which I've only read the first book) and Lauren Oliver's Delirium are far more successful for me. It wasn't bad, but I probably won't go to the trouble of finishing the trilogy if the books don't fall into my lap.

I also read Words With Wings by Nikki Grimes, a children's novel written in verse (like Ellen Hopkins YA novels but without all of the terrifying drugs; that's right, drugs freak me the hell out). It's about a little girl who has a problem focusing in school, getting caught up in her daydreams. It was super-quick (I was reading it during commercials while watching the New Girl and The Mindy Project finales) but delightful.

And then I fell down a rabbit hole of A Song of Ice and Fire theories. It is a deep, sprawling rabbit hole and I may never come out. Send coffee. (For those interested, I started here. I'm particularly impressed with what's called the Grand Northern Conspiracy because it just makes so much damn sense. And while I'm generally not a big fan of reddit, this subreddit has far less trolling and obnoxious bullshit than a lot of other places on the internet, at least in the threads that I've been reading through.)

This week I also bought Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige and The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton (which is one of the prettiest books I've laid my hands on in a while) and picked up A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron and The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder at the library. My stack of books to read is close to out of control, but I've just started a couple of weeks of vacation. I read ten books during my last two-week vacation, so I think I can whittle things down a bit.


Orphan Black! Oh man, this show. I love it so. Kira's dad! Dead clone autopsy! Felix and Sarah, my cries! Alison walks off the stage! HELENA! (But really, where did all of these Helena feelings come from? Sheesh.) Basically, I just have a lot of incoherent love for this show and everything it chooses to be. Carry on, show.

The second half of this season of Once Upon a Time has been golden. I'm enjoying the show and looking forward to new episodes like I did back at the beginning of the first season, I think because Rumplestiltskin as a villain has lost some of its appeal for me, like maybe I'm just over him? IDK, but I've loved Regina's arc this season, and having her use light magic to defeat Zelena and then fully trust Belle with the dagger was excellent, particularly given her past treatment of Belle. (And okay, it blew up in their faces, but that wasn't Regina's goal this time, nor was it her fault.) I am VERY MUCH looking forward to the finale tomorrow.

The last episode of Game of Thrones was my favorite so far this season. I've said it before, but the Sansa-in-the-Eyrie stuff is some of my favorite of the whole series. I really think the actress playing Lysa is killing it with the mood swings, Petyr remains appropriately creepy (how much do I love that Sophie Turner is actually taller than him? so much, I cannot even), Sophie Turner is a DOLL, and I'm not sure if it's more or less creepy that Robin Arryn is so much older now, but either way it works for me. I want all of this and more. Arya and the Hound were more enjoyable to me than usual, because I love that he's actually a little freaked out by her - because he should be. And Margaery and Cersei! And Jon's reunion with Ghost! And Dany's finally wearing a new dress!

Other things: The finale of The Mindy Project was really lovely and sweet and very much in the spirit of the romantic comedy genre that the show emulates. I liked it very much. The Howling Commandos-era spycraft on Agents of SHIELD was great, and made better by Coulson and May playing Fitz and Simmons and the file transfer by window. Ward continues to be more interesting as a villain than a good guy, but if I was supposed to be moved to sympathy by his backstory, the show failed. Stefan died on The Vampire Diaries. I laughed, which was probably not what I was supposed to do, but does anyone actually think he's going to stay dead? It's hard to be emotional about something you know won't stick. I'm also still enjoying Reign. Catherine and Mary trying to kill Henry? Yes, please. Bash bringing the kid who watched him kill a man into his own house because Kenna is the only person that the kid trusts? Yes, please. It looks like Henry might receive his fatal wound next week (this is not a spoiler, kittens, it's history), which I'm eager to see play out in this 'verse.


"Say Something" ♥ FINALLY finishing an outline for my matriarchal fic; once I climb out of the theoretical rabbit hole I intend to get to work on this in earnest, and to finish it in a reasonable amount of time since it's significantly less expansive and ambitious than my last (as yet unfinished) project ♥ this theory about just what is in the crypts in Winterfell ♥ slushes ♥ tiny kittens ♥ thunderstorms ♥ blooming iris ♥ Mean Girls - it came up on the guide about five minutes after it started this morning, so of course I had to watch ♥ new notebooks ♥ excellent salads ♥ rhodonite ♥ hazelnut macchiatos ♥ finding a box of my favorite "every day" coffee on clearance at Target ♥ fishtail and four-strand braids ♥ all-over sticky Post-Its ♥ the promise of Agent Carter (it's being run by two women, yay!) ♥ Sansa Stark ♥ dogs who bark in their sleep ♥ this ♥ air conditioning, without which I would be a miserable cunt for six months out of the year ♥ vacation - I'm not going anywhere, but being away from work is enough for me


Tell me, loves, what's making your life better this week? Additionally, a meme, taken from waltzmatildah

[1] Make a list of fifteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment.

[2] Ask your f-list to post questions in the comments. For example: "One, nine, and fifteen are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from four. Do they succeed?", "Under what circumstances might five and fourteen fall in love?", "Which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?"

[3] After your f-list has stopped asking questions, round them up and answer them using the fifteen characters you selected beforehand, then post them.

I hope you've all been having a most excellent week! Herein, some things that have made me happy.


Orphan Black! I just love this show so much. Kira's excellent intuition - and how much do I love that they aren't painting it as a "special" thing but the actually totally normal little kid thing that it is? And Alison and Felix and Alison and Mrs. S and oh how I have all of the feelings.

I think what I'm most enjoying on Game of Thrones is Sansa's storyline, and I'm so looking forward to what's coming at the Eyrie. I'm also curious to see how Brienne's journey plays out. And finally, I continue to want to be Olenna Tyrell when I grow up.

This season of Once Upon a Time has probably been my favorite so far overall (though I really loved the storylines they've had for Red, Graham, Jefferson, and Aurora and Mulan previously), and this last episode showed a lot of why. The explanation of who cast the current curse was fantastic, as was the payoff of Snow and Charming sharing Snow's heart (which sounds like it doesn't work because schmoop, but totally works). Regina's kiss to Henry breaking the curse with true love was excellent, and I really appreciate that Emma isn't letting Hook off for not telling her what he knew. Carry on doing what you're doing, show.

Also, when did Reign become a show I watch instead of just a show that's on the TV when I make dinner? (I actually know the answer to this: When Henry made Bash and Kenna get married, that's when.) But I'm liking it in all of it's historically inaccurate glory. And on a more superficial level, I'm actually glad that Torrance Coombs is playing a character who isn't completely loathsome like Thomas Culpepper was on The Tudors. It's nice not to entirely hate an actor for the character he played. (See also: my gratitude that I'd seen Misfits before Iwan Rheon showed up on Game of Thrones.)


The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is definitely going back to the library next week; I am just not in the right mood for it lately. Instead, I've been reading a lot of fic in a couple of different fandoms. I spent a whole afternoon reading about crystals after running across a blog post, and Reign and other incidents in my day-to-day life have led me to do some brushing up on some of my favorite historical queens. Eleanor of Aquitaine may still be my favorite (a book about was my first-ever historical fiction, and I've not lost my taste for similar pieces), but I really gravitate toward Tudor-era ladies. I'm having a moment, okay, and it also led to spending an entire evening reading about heraldry. Oops?


♥ getting shit done ♥ my determination re: not turning my heat back on even though it got down into the 30s again this week ♥ rainbows ♥ having all of this weekend's scary storms skip right past my town ♥ RuPaul's Drag Race - I watch this and find it so enjoyable even if I don't have a lot to say about it; I also never watch it when it airs, but like three episodes at a time in marathon form, yay! ♥ walking harnesses for dogs so they can't nearly dislocate your shoulder when they go after critters ♥ kittens ♥ lilacs still (and forever) ♥ more matriarchal plotting - there is fic coming at the end of all of this, I swear (no, I don't want to talk about it) ♥ finding lovely icons and hoarding them for later (okay, I uploaded a few) ♥ grocery shopping ♥ Golden French Toast coffee because it is so delicious and my favorite ♥ Mindy Kaling's Instagram ♥ Ben and Jerry's Hazed and Confused ice cream ♥ Mean Girls tenth anniversary ♥ Sue Heck ♥ slider buns ♥ my new coffee mug covered in nice words ♥ perfect phrases when you need them ♥ I haven't watched the Little Mix "Salute" video yet but I bet I'm going to love it, so on the list it goes ♥ vacation is coming... ♥ sleeping in ♥ waking up from dreams I don't remember but having a really good feeling about them

Tell me, bunnies, what's been making you hop this week? Alternatively, I will do this meme taken from wheatear (who I didn't leave a fandom for because I was too late, I'm sorry!)

Give me a fandom and I'll tell you which characters I would:

# Push off a cliff
# Have sexual relations with
# Marry
# Set on fire
# Wrap a blanket around
# Be roommates with

And if I’m not in the fandom, I’ll go by what I’ve learned from tumblr

I've been reading Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but every time I pick it up, I read two paragraphs and fall asleep on my couch, so...that one may go back to the library until I find my attention span.

I did read Love Saves the Day by Gwen Cooper on Sunday afternoon. It's a story about a mother and her adult daughter and their relationship told mostly from the point of view of the mother's cat - and I swear it isn't as ridiculous as that makes it sound. The mother-daughter relationship was really engaging, the New York City where it was set was entertaining, and the cat-narration was right up there with the sort of charmingly precocious that you get from novels that successfully utilize child narrators. Also, I cried through basically the entire thing, in a good way.


I watched all of the first season of Orphan Black so I could watch the second season when it began, and I might be in love with a pack of clones. I originally didn't watch because the premise ("clones" was all I got out of the pre-pilot press) held zero appeal for me, but I watched at the urging of people whose opinions I trust and I've seen the error of my ways. Coming out of the season two premiere, I'm looking forward to learning more about Rachel. And Helena! She's alive and I didn't even know I wanted that! Basically, just don't ask me to pick a favorite clone because I can't. (It's Alison. Or Cosima. Or Sarah.)

There was also a lot to love about this week's Game of Thrones (and I'm going to leave out the things I did not enjoy because this is about positivity, okay?). I really like Shireen in the books (she's one of those characters that I wanted to get more of when I was reading), so I love what they've done with her in the show, particularly with her and Davos. I'm really looking forward to what's coming for Sansa. I've been watching the show with a guy friend of mine who didn't really get Sansa at first, in that he was the sort who felt that Sansa ratted out Ned to Cersei and truly didn't understand why she didn't make an effort to get out of King's Landing with Littlefinger or the Hound until I pointed out the things that I thought were obvious (she's a terrified teenage girl who can trust literally no one in her life). He's now looking forward to what comes for her almost as much as I am. After saying that he's given up trying to predict the show (because he hasn't read the books) when I asked who he thought was responsible for Joffrey's death, he said, "But I'm almost positive that Sansa's going to end up being important." It warmed my heart.

I'm also really enjoying Once Upon a Time. Regina's arc this season has been one of my favorite things, and it just keeps getting better. Summoning Cora's ghost - which required both her murderer and the murder weapon, excellent - only to have her inhabit Snow to give her all of the memories that explain not only why she gave up Zelena, but why she hated Snow's mother so much. Ugh. So good.


♥ enormous mugs of hot water with honey and lemon when I'm sick ♥ wearing cardigans and cute shoes ♥ adorable text messages ♥  grape hyacinths ♥ plotting, plotting, plotting ♥ sleeping through roofing projects ♥ cats who check on you after you've had a twenty-minute coughing fit ♥ snow flurries ♥ glitter nail polish that satisfies the Tiny Nic who lives inside of me ♥ days at work that fly ♥ getting scheduled to substitute teach in pre-k the last week of school ♥ kittens ♥ drawing fictional family trees (incidentally, if anyone wants to come and talk to me in the comments about what something like matriarchal Westeros would look like, that would be The Best) ♥ lilacs finally blooming - possibly my favorite scent of all time, ever, full stop ♥ Sunday morning cinnamon rolls and lingering over coffee ♥ sweet lemonade-flavored Peeps ♥ my bridesmaids dress is finally on its way! ♥ Sebastian Stan's face. I mean really. ♥ that the neighbor's dogs like me better than they like him ♥ the stuffed tiger I found that sings "I'm Sexy and I Know It" while dancing in erratic circles; it's so funny and I don't know why ♥ Lupita Nyong'o being named People's Most Beautiful Person of 2014 ♥ deleting useless things from my phone ♥ Scarlett Johansson on the latest issues of Vanity Fair ♥ lilacs again because I love them that much

Lovely kittens, please tell me what is making you so happy this week. Or, alternatively, let's do this meme taken from waltzmatildah:

Give me a character (or several) I will tell you:

* How I feel about this character
* All the people I ship romantically with this character
* My non-romantic OTP for this character
* My unpopular opinion about this character
* One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon
* Something about them I consider true, though it's just head canon/fanon

Like a lot of people, my knee-jerk reaction to the scene in which Jaime rapes Cersei in the sept (next to the body of their dead son, naturally) was very much Do Not Want, but I wasn't sure exactly why. It has been suggested that people are mad because they don't want to stan for a rapist, which is supremely insulting and also clearly not true since plenty of people stan for other rapists in this and other fandoms without any issue. It has also been suggested that people are upset that the scene played out differently than it did in the books, which, yes, but not because those people are being pedantic, but because it fundamentally changes both characters and their relationship.

So since I couldn't exactly put my finger on what I hated so much about it (or why I'm still thinking about a single scene in an episode of a show I watched two days ago, which almost never happens), I went looking for someone else who could say what I couldn't quite. Through this post on Tumblr I found this article: Rape of Thrones in which the author picked out one of the things that bothers me most about this particular adaptation choice. Have a few quotes that I found particularly relevant:

So the question is not, exactly, “Why change the books?” Because the answer is clear: Many, many details must be changed, just to make the transition from book series to televised series work. The question is, instead: “Why change this?” Why make a scene from the book that depicts consensual sex into one in the show that depicts rape?

And given that so much of the show is about these characters upending or reinterpreting the rules of their world, it’s hard to follow that a rape scene might say more about the world than it does about its rapist.

It seems more likely that Game Of Thrones is falling into the same trap that so much television does—exploitation for shock value. And, in particular, the exploitation of women’s bodies.

Ultimately, this scene could be the beginning of what areinteresting, sensible (from a characterization standpoint) storylines for both Jaime and Cersei. And I hope that it is. But the thing that worries me is how rarely such a scene has been used for true character growth in a way that isn't exploitative in the past, both on this show and in media generally.

( First, can we talk about Jaime Lannister?Collapse )

( Oh my god, how much time to do you have to read about my feelings?Collapse )

I finished both Insurgent by Veronica Roth and Scarlet by Marissa Meyer. Insurgent is enjoyable enough as a second installment in a trilogy, and I think I actually preferred it to Divergent (in which I have a lot of problems with the world building, mostly that the whole faction system doesn't really make a lot of SENSE; other dystopias, notably Marie Lu's Legend have done a better job with the worldbuilding in this post-Hunger Games YA world). Scarlet is also a second installment in a series, and follows a Red Riding Hood type in her search for her grandmother while the Wolf is at her side. I really loved Cinder (Cinderella is a cyborg, people!) and was happy that she made appearances in this book as well, and I'm really looking forward to the way that this sort of science fiction-fairy tale mashup all plays out. I know the third installment, Cress is available (and follows a Rapunzel character who lives not in a tower but in an Earth-orbiting satellite!), but it might be a while before I get to it.
( have a list with bullet pointsCollapse )

I would love to hear about the things that have been making you happy lately, darlings. Or we can tear apart the things we've enjoyed, whatever.