I completely forgot to post this during the correct week, so I'm sharing it now; apologies!

Character/s: Professor Yana, Chantho
Rating: G
Summary: Was there anything she could have done?
Notes: Playing fast and loose with episode lore, I suspect.

( Read more... )

I actually remembered the password for this account as I booted up the new laptop.

Time to play recovery with the others...

Don't you hate it when you think of doing something so hard you think you did it and it turns out you didn't, in fact, do it?

Anyway, what sort of weather does your character(s) just love to pieces?

I AM 41.

I AM EMPLOYED.

I HAVE A NEW BIKE.

For real!!

So much has happened!! Things are very good right now! Kpop Demon Hunters holds up well the second time you watch it! Gingko defended me/picked a fight with three asshole dogs behind a fence and is very proud of herself and her battle scars! I am publishing a story either this week or early next week that will make absolutely everybody mad, so I need to figure out how to protect myself on social media! I was finally able to BUY NEW BRAS and I hope they fit???

But yeah... yeah! Birthday last week was really excellent! I have a full-time job now, and it started last week! I have been sleeping so much since that started, just because I think I've been holding a decade's worth of stress about where my next paycheck is coming from and now I just... get to stay. (It is journalism and it is public media, so no, the guarantees are not 100%, but it's an amazing group of people who absolutely adore me and I'm on the softball team and I tested out my biking commute yesterday and it is less than half the time it takes on public transit! Imagine getting more than 15 years of workplace trauma healed with one gig that appreciates you and fights for you!)

I'm just very excited about things now. I'm watching a lot of decent/fun TV (mostly cdramas; League of Noblemen, A Dream Within a Dream, The First Night with the Duke, The Blood of Youth). I finally deep-cleaned and organized my kitchen so that I'm able to cook again, which I did this weekend, hurrah! My DnD party is confronting our Final Boss, and my beautiful dumbass tiefling monk took down the first of the three dragons we'll be fighting. Summer in Chicago is very, very good! I am eager af to make art and write fiction and play music again! Do all these exclamation points sound deranged? I'm just. Very happy right now, and I will ride it out as far as I can! ✶

Mrf. Mondays.

(Sorry I missed last week btw!)

Apropos of nothing, for no reason whatsoever... what does your character cope better with - excess heat or excess cold?

New birds added to the life list while camping at Lake Kegonsa: Osprey, courtesy the nest built on a doubtless purpose-created platform along a local trail. So, so, cool. :D Also least flycatcher, which was a total random chance surprise. :)

Warm fuzzy of the day in a different category entirely, though, was getting love from a rescue puppydog while on the way back to the apartment with a bag of groceries. The groceries were set safely down before the (possible pitty/lab mix, there were characteristics of both for sure, shorter fur and slightly perked ears, but also fluffy double coat and super happy otter tail) got pet. According to her people, I made her day. My reaction was, she made mine! :)

Random post is random.

lest you think that having returned The Pushcart War to its rightful owner I went away with my bookshelves lighter! I did NOT, as she pushed 84, Charing Cross Road into my hands at the airport as I was leaving again with strict instructions to read it ASAP.

This is another one that's been on my list for years -- specifically, since I read Between Silk and Cyanide, as cryptography wunderkind Leo Marks chronicling the desperate heroism and impossible failures of the SOE is of course the son of the owner of Marks & Co., the bookstore featuring in 84, Charing Cross Road, because the whole of England contains approximately fifteen people tops.

84, Charing Cross Road collects the correspondence between jobbing writer Helene Hanff -- who started ordering various idiosyncratic books at Marks & Co. in 1949 -- and the various bookstore employees, primarily but not exclusively chief buyer Frank Doel. Not only does Hanff has strong and funny opinions about the books she wants to read and the editions she's being sent, she also spends much of the late forties and early fifties expressing her appreciation by sending parcels of rationed items to the store employees. A friendship develops, and the store employees enthusiastically invite Hanff to visit them in England, but there always seems to be something that comes up to prevent it. Hanff gets and loses jobs, and some of the staff move on. Rationing ends, and Hanff doesn't send so many parcels, but keeps buying books. Twenty years go by like this.

Since 84, Charing Cross Road was a bestseller in 1970 and subsequently multiply adapted to stage and screen, and Between Silk and Cyanide did not receive publication permission until 1998, I think most people familiar with these two books have read them in the reverse order that I did. I think it did make sort of a difference to feel the shadow of Between Silk and Cyanide hanging over this charming correspondence -- not for the worse, as an experience, just certain elements emphasized. Something about the strength and fragility of a letter or a telegram as a thread to connect people, and how much of a story it does and doesn't tell.

As a sidenote, in looking up specific publication dates I have also learned by way of Wikipedia that there is apparently a Chinese romcom about two people who both independently read 84, Charing Cross Road, decide that the book has ruined their lives for reasons that are obscure to me in the Wikipedia summary, write angry letters to the address 84 Charing Cross Road, and then get matchmade by the man who lives there now. Extremely funny and I kind of do want to watch it.

Challenge #1049 is gumption.

The rules:

• All stories must be 100 words long.
• Please place your story behind a cut if it contains spoilers for the current season.
• Remember, you don't have to use the challenge word or phrase in your story; it's just there for inspiration.
• Please include the challenge word or phrase in the subject line of your post.
• Please use the challenge tag 1049: gumption on any story posted to this challenge.

I mentioned that I did in fact read a couple of good books in my late-June travels to counterbalance the bad ones. One of them was The Pushcart War, which I conveniently discovered in my backpack right as I was heading out to stay with the friend who'd loaned it to me a year ago.

I somehow have spent most of my life under the impression that I had already read The Pushcart War, until the plot was actually described to me, at which point it became clear that I'd either read some other Pushcart or some other War but these actual valiant war heroes were actually brand new to me.

The book is science fiction, of a sort, originally published in 1964 and set in 1976 -- Wikipedia tells me that every reprint has moved the date forward to make sure it stays in the future, which I think is very charming -- and purporting to be a work of history for young readers explaining the conflict between Large Truck Corporations and Pugnacious Pushcart Peddlers over the course of one New York City summer. It's a punchy, defiant little book about corporate interest, collective action, and civil disobedience; there's one chapter in particular in which the leaders of the truck companies meet to discuss their master plan of getting everything but trucks off the streets of New York entirely where the metaphor is Quite Dark and Usefully Unsubtle. Also contains charming illustrations! A good read at any time and I'm glad to have finally experienced it.

HOw does your character(s) deal with folks being angry with them? Is there a difference between when the anger is perceived as warranted or when it is not?