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ysilme

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ysilme here: three alibi sentences for the new fic.

senmut

AO3 Link | Distraction from Grief (200 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sandra Wu-San, Dinah Lance
Additional Tags: Double Drabble, +Modern Age (1986-Present), Post-Crisis, [Birds of Prey Vol. 1 - 1999-2009]
Summary:

Shiva pushes, so Dinah can put it behind.

Distraction from Grief

Move. Evaluate. Decide. Commit.

Shiva was making her work through her grief for Sensei in the way that mattered, now that they had foiled Cheshire's plan. Both of them excelled in the Arts, but the difference was being felt in every muscle, joint, and tendon as Dinah worked through the spar.

Shiva was a master, effortless in blending her many forms to always meet any rally that Dinah made, preventing Dinah from winning. Yet, Dinah also recognized that Shiva was having to rely on that blending to keep the upper hand.

In a formal, single style spar, Dinah and Shiva would likely be evenly matched.

Like this?

Dinah had to smile, a genuine one, to be pushed so far, so hard, so long.

Was that what Shiva had been waiting for? As the next move saw Dinah on the mats and Shiva pinning her, full length, hand in knife-strike pose at her throat.

"You choose life, not dwelling on death," Shiva purred, and damned if that didn't make Dinah remember other aspects of living that were worthwhile.

"Care to live a little with me, grab a hot soak, some good food?"

"Sensualist."

And yet, they moved together in that plan.

cosmolinguist

On a single tube train alone the other day, I saw two people in black thin-rimmed aviators and all I could thin was well now I know what I want my next pair of glasses to look like!

Never felt so much like a dad, possibly because that style always reminded me of my dad since that's what he wore when I was a little kid.

But one of these two people was a young person of ambiguous gender presentation, so I have hope that such things can become fashionable among the queers.

I'm due an eye test, and presumably new glasses, so I've been keeping an eye out for what kind of frames I might want (since the narrow rectangular thick-framed "hipster glasses" that seem to suit me best are not as readily available as they once were! the frames I have now are boring as hell, too big and too round for me even though they're not as much of either as has been popular lately).

shadowkat

1. For those interested? Nick Brendan was apparently working on and had completed a film, Yesterday is Almost Here prior to his death.

Sad time to be a Buffy fan.

2. The Dental visit went well - for the most part nothing has changed. I do have bleeding gums/sensitive gums - but that's a result of medication and diabetes, and possibly coeliac disease. Hence the reason, I'm seeing a dentist every six months now, as opposed to one every two or three years, like I had previously. (I don't get cavities. But alas, there are other things.) The dental hygienist's head came to my waist. I met her and thought okay, Latin America or Southeast Asia, they grow them tiny south of the equator. I don't know why some people are very tall and some are very short. I am not a biologist or geneticist. I think she had to be four foot?
I'm almost 6 foot. She also either had a frontal lisp, it was the mask, or a heavy accent with the mask - muffled her speech. I had to listen closely to what she was saying and ask at various intervals. (I'm used to doing this - I've done it my entire life - since I naturally mishear things. Also, having grown up with a speech issue which took me about twenty-five years to overcome, and sucking at languages - I'm patient with folks, more so than most. You won't survive in NYC if you aren't?)

Afterwards - I over taxed my knees by wandering to and from grocery stores and stores along Court Street. Managed to pick up various GF pre-prepared foods and items, such as Feel Goods: Vegetable Egg Rolls, Soup Dumplings, and Mozzarella Sticks, GF Deli SourDough Seeded Bread, Gluten Free Pizza,
GF Ravioli, GF Biscuits, GF Clam Chowder, GF Chicken Vegetable Soup (Hale and Hearty)...among other things. It was a haul - so heavier than intended.
I didn't get sweets - or baked goods at least, outside of some chocolate sandwich cookies. Icing my knee now.

It's slightly warmer today - made it up to 58 degrees and 60 in some locals. As a result, small children have been playing noisily in the backyards behind me, screaming as only small children cas. Brings back memories of my own childhood - when I had a sprawling backyard, no fences, and woods that seemed to stretch for acres behind us (it didn't - I was small).

3. Still enjoying my book - I actually look forward to reading it - and consider doing it instead of other things. And think, no let's draw this out. Why I love it and haven't been able to get into other books (some admittedly better written) is beyond me? I think it's that this one has a writing style and trope that I'm craving at the moment?

What's going on in the book at the moment? ( Read more... )

kaberett

Today was A Travel Day; yesterday, in preparation for same, I Ran Errands, including "acquiring Tiny Cake" and "visiting the pharmacy".

On the way from those two jobs to the next couple, I passed Several Good Things.

One was a new-to-me flavour of completely ridiculous daffodil:

a double daffodil, with white petals and inner trumpet, protruding past a much shorter orange outer trumpet

It's a double not in the sense of having a confusing froth of intermingled trumpets (as of Double Fashion or Double Camparnelle, both of which exist locally), but in the sense of having two nested trumpets, one shorter and orange, from which the longer white one protrudes. I have never! previously! seen a thing like this! I am really enjoying my current streak of encountering varieties of daffodil that make me go "what the fuck???"

Shortly thereafter I checked over my shoulder while crossing a tiny bridge and was startled and delighted to see A COOT UPON THE NEST that, last I passed it, was clearly still derelict. Obviously I went back and Gazed Upon It for Some Time and was eventually rewarded by it STANDING UP to reveal SEVEN??? (possibly) EGGS!!!

And the Egyptian goslings were peeping about the place when I subsequently passed them on my way back up the hill. A+ errands would run again.

sanguinity

Life has been very busy and I am behind on posting all the things, but this morning I had a few free hours. I spent it writing fic.

Better than Tons of Gold and Cases of Diamonds

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas for PhoenixFalls
Edmond Dantès/Abbé Faria
Imprisonment, Canon Compliant, Making the Subtext Text, No Betas We Die Like Abbé Faria
Major Character death, 1300 words

Dantès swore that nothing but death would part them. Nothing but death did. Scenes from a sort of marriage.

The last couple of weeks, I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo with

monte-cristo-daily. We're only just past the Château d'If, so please don't spoil me, I know nothing. (Right now Dantès is buying everyone boats: I heartily approve!)

But from the moment Abbé Faria was introduced, I shipped it. Alas, when I turned to AO3, I discovered this was a "when not even the sickos on AO3 have your back" kind of moment. So I fixed that. ;-)

Inaugural post for the 'ship, hooray!

lee_bella posting in

potterfests

Fest Name: Pansy Fest 2026
Links: Bluesky | AO3 & Rules
Type of Challenge: Prompt fest
Description: A Pansy-centric fest. No AI writing or AI art allowed. Sign-up is open till April 28.
Ratings Restrictions: All ratings allowed
Length Restrictions:
Fic: Minimum 300 words; no maximum
Art: None
Timeline:
Sign Up Open: January 31, 2026
Sign Up Closed: April 28, 2026
Works Due: April 30, 2026
Works Revealed: May 1, 2026

shipperslist

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musesfool

I made this Shanghai scallion flatbread this afternoon and it is really good but if you should endeavor to make it, I have 2 warnings:

1. whatever you think is "medium heat" when you're cooking it is too high. No, lower than that. Or don't go the full 12 minutes recommended, but I think that might be harder to gauge.

2. be careful when flipping it over! Remember that sesame seeds will pop in hot oil and things will spatter, so really and truly, be careful!

Otherwise, it's delicious, A++ will make again. On lower heat next time. The only thing I did differently was use toasted sesame oil on the inside before I put the scallions on. Also, I think it could hold more than 1/2 cup of chopped scallions, but that is just me. Oh, and I used five spice powder instead of ground Sichuan peppercorns because I don't like that much heat and so I do not actually have Sichuan peppercorns in the house. Anyway, I did it all by hand and it was easy enough. I can't recommend a Danish dough whisk enough if you enjoy making bread and don't have a stand mixer.

I had big plans to also make blood orange gelato - blood oranges are in season right now and on sale! but the ones I got are like, bruised to hell, so that is probably why the sale price - but I don't have room in the freezer for it. Bah. Pre-made chicken tenders were also on sale and I bought them to make for lunch this week and they are taking up a lot of space (there are only about 12 in the bag but the bag is enormous. so annoying! I suppose I could rebag them in something less full of air. Hmm...). Anyway, I am contemplating zesting and juicing the oranges and freezing that, but again, space is at a premium in there. One day I will have a full-size fridge. or a chest freezer. Either way. and I will be so happy.

Soon, I will take the rack of babyback ribs I bought this week (not on sale alas) and give them a dry rub before they go back into the fridge overnight to be roasted low and slow tomorrow. And in the morning, before I have to devote 4 hours of oven-time to the ribs, I plan to make pecan shortbread because I still have like 2 lbs of pecans from my Christmas candied pecans project. It's an Ina Garten recipe, so I anticipate it will be good! And I will eat a few of them for breakfast each morning next week.

And after reblogging this post, I have also been contemplating making gyoza for Easter since I'll have a 4-day weekend and could do it in stages, though I have never done it and don't know how to pleat them so I'm going to have to watch some videos - any recs for that? I'll also try to clear out some space in the freezer to freeze some for later. *g* But they look so good! I do love a dumpling.

*

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Mrs Robinson - Simon & Garfunkel

buttonsbeadslace

I was a polite student and didn't derail class discussion about grammar to say this, so dear readers, you get it instead. A while ago in Spanish class we were talking about ways of expressing accidental or uninentional actions, and how Spanish uses a specific passive voice type of form for this, unlike English where you have to be much more direct about who did the accidental action.

The closest English equivalent I can think of for the Spanish phrases that we were learning is "The computer broke on me." The Spanish phrase has the object that got damaged doing a reflexive action to itself, and the person (who perhaps dropped it, or pressed the wrong button, or in some other way did break it, just not on purpose) appears as an indirect object of the verb. Us English speakers in class agreed that English does indeed do this very differently, since 99% of the time we would just say "I broke it," and that passive voice is very rare in English.

What I did not say in class is that there's one major exception to this rule, that's actually very common if you know where to look. If you want to see the passive voice in English used to downplay someone's responsibility for some negative action, you need look no further than headlines about police officers.

gremdark

This time I remembered to queue up two hours' worth of music before locking myself out of my phone with my focus app. I use Focus Friend, which is bare bones enough that I don't need to think about it too much when I use it.

Today's missions are to clean the kitchen, tidy surfaces in the living room, and declutter the bedroom. We ran dishes this morning, and our roommate is out of town, so there's one less person around to make messes. Not too much to do. In between I'm hoping to keep plugging away at my Rare Kink Buffet fills. I had hoped to write multiple short ones, but what originally seemed to be a short idea is ballooning into a multichap. So we shall see. Wish me luck!

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Rose Tattoo - Dropkick Murphys

muccamukk

( Content note: harm to knitting. )

sholio

I posted some more Babylon 5 fic in the last couple of days: a new Londo/G'Kar fake dating fic plus a new chapter of the B5 catacomb WIP.

It's been a year this month since I started watching the show - my first post under the B5 tag was posted March 3, 2025 after watching the first couple of episodes. Still completely gone on it! I regret nothing!

In other news, NYT gift link to an article about Paul Brainerd, creator of Aldus PageMaker and inventor of the term "desktop publishing." This was a fascinating nostalgia read for me because, while I had no idea of the actual history, this guy (and Adobe and Apple) created the professional world of my young adulthood. My first job out of college in (I think) 1998 was working in the layout department of a newspaper that had just recently (last few years) gone from paste-up to an all-Mac layout room using a program similar to PageMaker from a third-party software maker that no longer exists. PageMaker - which I also learned to use in the college computer lab, and later at work - was the direct predecessor of InDesign, widely used even today. It's interesting to think back on those old newspaper days and how thoroughly they shaped me and continue to shape me. The computer/layout/marketing experience I got as a layout artist in the late 90s and 2000s has been immensely useful for my current self-publishing career.

It continues to be horrendously cold. We've been sitting under a high-pressure ridge and have had gorgeous sunny days that are absolutely freezing. It was -20F when I got up this morning and it's 0F out there right now. My husband's (uni-age) students are over here today because they wanted to help him dig out an ancient non-working snowblower that someone gave us ages ago from a snowbank and try to get it working again. (We do actually have TWO other snowblowers. This is just for fun.)

I took this picture on a walk up our driveway to the highway to get the mail a couple of days ago:

a long expanse of snow-covered road with piles of snow on each side

At least at this time of year, the sun warms it up SOMEWHAT during the day - in January it can sit at -40 24/7 for weeks; at this time of year we're still experiencing 20-40 degree increases during the day .... which is still barely enough to push us above 0F. The 10-day forecast shows that it will be glacially (haha) warming up, but still may not have crawled into above-freezing temps by the end of the month. UGH, I'M READY FOR SPRING.

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ladiesbingo

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Current Mood: accomplished

flo_nelja posting in

ladiesbingo

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flo_nelja

Titre : Les lamentations d'Orphée
Auteur : Nelja
Fandom : The Locked Tomb
Persos/Couples : Gideon/Harrow
Genre : Angst et bizarre
Résumé : Harrow remonte lentement les escaliers du monde des morts. Elle ne doit pas se retourner.
Rating : PG-13
Disclaimer : Tout appartient à Tamsyn Muir
Nombre de mots : ~500
Avertissements : Sous-entendus de mort, de contrôle mental, un peu de gore avec des os mais moins pire que le canon.
Notes : Ecrit pour ladiesbingo sur les thèmes "Shadows/darkness", "2nd person PoV", "Mythe/fable", "Coercion" et "Use of symbolism"

( Lien vers AO3 )

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ladiesbingo

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lee_bella posting in

potterfests

Fest Name: HP Daddy Knows Best 2026
Links: Bluesky | Instagram | AO3 | Rules | Claim a Prompt | Submission Form
Type of Challenge: Anonymous prompt fest
Description: A HP fic and art fest celebrating all things daddy. The use of AI is not allowed. Claiming is open till May 31.
Ratings Restrictions: All ratings allowed
Length Restrictions:
Fic: Minimum 1000 words; no maximum
Art: None
Timeline:
Prompting opens: March 11
Claiming opens: March 14
Claiming closes: May 31
All stories and art due: June 5
Anonymous reveals begin: June 7
Social media features: June 7 - 21
Creators revealed: June 22

sovay

The afternoon's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #86, containing my poem "Northern Comfort." I wrote it out of my discoveries of the ghost-ground that has been directly underfoot all my life and longer, from King Philip's War to Pomp's Wall, and this administration and its murderous terror of history. It shares a page and an issue of emptiness with a precisely targeted incantation by Gwynne Garfinkle as well the equally hollowing fiction and poetry of Kris Schokrowsky, Penny Durham, Carsten Cheung, Jennifer Crow, and more. I almost referred to the covert art by John and Flo Stanton, obscured by shattered webs of negative space or the rust-light of abandoned industries. Subscribe! Contribute! Make the right kind of strangeness in this world. I am off to South Station to collect one north-traveling seal.

Current Music: Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin, "The Green Road"

dolorosa_12

Rather than share each item individually, I'm just going to link to

goodbyebird's mostly good news links roundup. There's some fantastic environmental and sociopolitical news there.

I'll add to all this with the news that you can now walk around the entire coastline of England. It's worth reading the article in full, because this undertaking is extremely impressive and future-focused.

Another good news story, via 2022 Ukrainian Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk: the tropical plants in the greenhouse of Kyiv's Hryshko Botanical Garden survived Russia's winter bombardment of energy facilities, thanks to the concerted efforts of staff and ordinary Kyivan citizens.

I've basically been immersively living in these two songs for the past week:

Watch on YouTube

Network

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Custom Text

Write every day! - March 2026 - Day 21

10trueloves: loss

Possibly my most #dadcore thought EVER

(no subject)

happy equinox, etc

Fic: The Count of Monte Cristo

Pansy Fest 2026: Sign-up Open Till April 28

ouchie

we'd like to help you learn to help yourself

The passive voice was studied by us

(no subject)

A Tragedy in Two Acts

A quiet Saturday

BINGO: Diagonal Line

BONUS: Straight line

Fic - ladiesbingo - The Locked Tomb - Harrow/Gideon

[bingo] line

HP Daddy Knows Best 2026: Claiming Open Till May 31

You are just the fingertips of something

Post of links and music