kskitten | Reading

My vacation was awesome and amazing, and I hiked up in the north woods and forgot all about work, and I wish I could do that permanently. Also exorcised a lot of demons from last year when I had to cancel the trip due to The Events. And I actually got some stuff done, too!

Here's where things stand as of today:

Exchanges due in September/October (enemiestoloversex, cuppajoexhange, Come in a Flash, sexpollenplus, ficinabox, trickortreatex, seasonofdrabbles + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I am at 14/16! I've finished all my assignments for FIAB, the only one left I can actually write right now is TOT, because SOD assignments are not out yet. There are some tempting PHs out now, though, and I also want to write at least 3 FIAB treats before reveals. So my goals this week are to finish my TOT assignment, pick up and finish at least 1 PH, and work on at least 1 FIAB treat.

Exchanges due in November/December (fffx, ficinabox treats, seasonofdrabbles treats, yuletide_admin + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): The only assignment out so far is fffx, so I'm currently at 0/1. I need to sign up for Yuletide this week, which might be my last(?!?!) sign-up for the year.

Exchanges that will go into 2026: au5k & highadrenalineexchange.

Nope, nothing new on Femslash Salad Bar...

I finished The Tomb of Dragons, and I actually really dislike how the series ended. :/ Enough that it might even have soured me on reading any of the books ever again. I am really baffled by the choice to have 2.5 books about how Thara is finally finding a place that he belongs and making actual friends, who rely on him too, and try to come up with a deeper meaning to his life than his calling, which will go away in ~5 years, and then at the very end just have him ditch everything and everyone, such that he can never go back and visit, so basically he'll just never see any of those people again, and all the character/relationship-building of the whole series is just gone. I mean... WTF? o.O I was really blind-sighted by this ending so badly, after how much trust the author had earned. Ouch, this one hurt a lot. I was hoping to reread all these books (and buy them) over Christmas, too, but now that plan is shot.

And now, for something completely different, I'm currently reading a non-fiction book from the library (which, oddly, is somewhat relevant research for upcoming fandom works I have planned): Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake. It is fascinating! And I am a huge nature nerd, so I'm enjoying it immensely! I'm about halfway through, and through the beginning of the book when he was talking about plant/fungus relationships and plants that don't photosynthesize, I was thinking, "Oooh, I wonder how this applies to ghost pipes?!?!" And then in the section I'm on now, he just started talking about ghost pipes, so A++ bringing all my weird favorite plants to the yard. This book is clearly my people. Hoping to finish this week!

On a rec, I also got Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots out of the library, which is what I'll be reading next. I haven't started yet, but also hope to finish reading this one this week. It's a Yuletide fandom too, I believe, and I'm thinking that's what I'm going to do instead the rest of this year reading-wise, once I finish out my current selections: just read interesting-looking Yuletide books.

Surprisingly, Nona the Ninth still hasn't come up for me, but I suspect it will by end-of-week, so that will likely be a next-week book.

Wen Guan by Qi Xiao Huangshu - Nothing on this; I'll pick it up when I have a gap.

Dear Door - No progress on this either, but I'll continue to read as it amuses me.

BNHA: S8 has started, and I still have the movies/OVAs as my back-up treat, but I'm hoping to build up a chunk of episodes before I dive back into this. I do not do well with weekly episodic stuff anymore.

Fall Horror-Movie Season: I didn't do anything official, but I did happen to finally watch The Shape of Water during my trip, and it was lovely! I will add my voice to the chorus: LET THE WOMAN FUCK THE FISH! This week I have to do solely streaming, so I'm planning on Hotel and Cube, and then I have to put in my DVD requests for next week.

Goals for this week: 1) Finish 1 assignment. 2) Pick up 1 PH and finish it. 3) Work on 1 FIAB treat. 4) Sign up for Yuletide. 5) Finish Entangled Life & take notes for future use. 6) Finish Hench. 7) Watch some horror. 8) Set up my horror queue for next week. Whew, that's a lot!

selenak

Dear Yuletide Writer,

we share at least one fandom, which is great, and I'm really grateful you take the time and trouble to write a story for me. All the prompts are just suggestions; if you have very different ideas featuring the same central characters, go for them. Also, I enjoy a broad range from fluff to angst, so whatever suits you best works fine with me.

DNW:

- bashing of canon pairings or characters in general. By which I don't mean the characters have to like each and everyone - a great number of those I've nominated can be described as prickly jerks, among other things, and it would be entirely ic for them to say something negative about people they canonically can't stand - but there's a difference between that and the narrative giving me the impression to go along with said opinions.

- Alpha/Beta/Omega scenarios, watersports, infantilisation. Really not my thing, sorry.

Likes:

- competence, competent people appreciating each other

- deep loyalty and not blindly accepting orders

- flirting/seduction via wordplay and banter (if it works for you with the characters in question)

- for the darker push/pull dynamics: moments of tenderness and understanding in between the fighting/one upman shipping (without abandoning the anger)

- for the relationships, both non-romantic and if you like romantic, that are gentler and harmonious by nature: making it clear each has their own life and agenda as well

- some humor amidst the angst (especially if the character in question displays it in canon)

The question of AUs: depends. "What if this key canon event did not happen?" can lead to great character and dynamics exploration, some of which made it into my specific prompts, but I do want to recognize the characters. Half of those I nominated are from historical canons, and the history is part of the fascination the canon has for me. ) However, if you feel inspired to, say, write Cecily Neville, space captain, and manage to do it in a way that gives me gripping analogues to the historical situations: be my guest!

How much or how little sex: I'm cool with anything you feel comfortable with, from detailed sex to the proverbial fade out after a kiss. Or no sex at all (given that most of my prompts are non-romantic in nature), as long as the story explores the emotional dynamics in an intense way.

( Cecily Duology - Annie Garthwaite )

( Foundation (TV) )

( Alien: Earth )

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Munich

kantayra

As the post title says, I'm on vacation! So this will (possibly) be relatively brief today. The best thing I saw on the drive up was a highway bulletin-board ad that read, "Need legal advice? Don't ask us! We're just a bakery!" A++ aversion of expectations, would eat their cinnamon rolls again, lol. (Seriously, soooooo many ads for lawyers. And controlling women's bodies. o.O)

Anyway, here's where I am for this week:

Exchanges due in September/October (enemiestoloversex, cuppajoexhange, Come in a Flash, sexpollenplus, ficinabox, trickortreatex, seasonofdrabbles + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I am now at 11/15; I got done exactly what I need to last week! 😊 I'm setting myself a goal for nothing this week, because I'll be on vacation the whole time, so I'm very busy hiking and working jigsaw puzzles. Although I am doing a bit of research into something that might turn out to be a treat. I'll be busy next week for sure (especially since there are a couple outstanding pinch-hits that I am the candidate the grab), but I'll worry about that then. If I feel inspired to write anything this week, that's just a surprise bonus!

Exchanges due in November/December (fffx, ficinabox treats, seasonofdrabbles treats, yuletide_admin + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): The only assignment out so far is fffx, so I'm currently at 0/1. I did skip both eatdrinkmakemerry and amperslashexchange. I checked on nominations for seasonofdrabbles and am good there. It looks like I'll have a very light Nov/Dec docket, but I have plans for that!

Exchanges that will go into 2026: au5k & highadrenalineexchange.

Nope, nothing new on Femslash Salad Bar...

I did, indeed, get The Tomb of Dragons in time for my trip, and am reading that and enjoying it loads, per usual. Finishing this is one of my few plans for the week!

I haven't hit the top of the hold queue yet for Nona the Ninth, but I still suspect it will crop up this week and there are decent odds I'll finish this, too.

Wen Guan by Qi Xiao Huangshu - I didn't do any reading on this. If Nona doesn't come in before I finish Tomb of Dragons, I'll resume this.

I'm just starting Ch16 of Dear Door, which is proving to be the porny fun I was hoping for, and I'm continuing to read it at my leisure.

BNHA: S8 has started, but I won't see it until post-vacation! And the movies/OVAs continue to be my back-up treat

Fall Horror-Movie Season! Nothing this week since I'm away, but I did watch two more last week, and have some thoughts:
- Crimson Peak: Well, this movie as a hot mess. But, y'know, some fun gothic aesthetic stuff going on, and I can't complain about Hiddlesbutt. I thought the ending was fairly meh, but I was entertained through the majority of it. I think fandom (and the fact that it's the 'twist' so often it's become cliche) had inured me to incest at this point. My reaction to it is: soooooooo?
- 10 Cloverfield Lane: LOLWUT?! 🤣 I enjoy John Goodman, so I was curious about this, even though I'm not a fan of survivalist bullshit, post-apocalypse, OR J.J. Abrams. And I was a bit wary of the blurb sounding a bit like 'Misery in reverse, but with possible creepy rapist vibes if a women is the victim', and that last one fortunately enough wasn't too big an issue. I did enjoy the whole 'trapped in the bunker, is John Goodman completely crazy and gaslighting everyone or not?' bits. There was some decent suspense and mystery there. And I did have the thought at one point, 'If I was writing crack!fic about this, she'd get out and there'd TOTALLY be aliens!' I...did not expect that to be the actual twist. 😝 Like, I figure most people have more sense than me, but then this is J.J. Abrams, ye great master of bullshit nonsense. So, uh, yeah. That was a thing they did, where they grafted a movie with COMPLETELY different tone and aesthetic onto the last ten minutes. Which, I guess, was a choice? I feel like there were two potentially decent movies here, but they did not successfully mesh. So, yeah, that was a thing. This week's selections were not as successful (for me) as last week's, for sure!

September word count: September has ended, and through the end of September I wrote 216k! I am pretty on track to get 250k by end of year. I have 83 works published de-anon at this point (although quite a few not yet revealed.)

Goals for this week: 1) Hiking trip, vacation, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! 😊 2) Finish reading Tomb of Dragons. 3) Maybe read some other stuff if I have time.

selenak

This is the third novel of R. F. Kuang I've read (after being impressed by the The Poppy Wars, first volume, but also emotionally so exhausted I didn't read the rest of the trilogy, amused and captivated in an emotionally distant way by Yellowface, and turned so much by Babel that I only read the first twenty pages or so and then gave up), and I think my favourite so far. There is academic satire but also genuine emotion throughout, there is great ambition epically realised (i.e. writing a trip to the underworld in the grand tradition of all the obvious suspects, but specifically one that reflects the present), and the horror parts hit home in a way that feels not derivative but specific for this particular version. (The novel is set in a universe where magic is real, but isn't concerned with how this altered history or not, just what it means you can study it at university.) Our main character, Alice Law, is the kind of messy, complicated and morally ambiguous (and not in a "nice" way) woman the author specializes in, though for me personally preferable because I had the sense of the narrative being on board with what it was saying about Alice's strengths and weaknesses through her initially very skewered perspective. Also she had a genuine learning process through that trip through the Underworld, and... but that would be spoilery.

( Spoilers realize the Underworld is modelled on a British University )

Also improving my week: This trailer for Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of Frankenstein:

Watch on YouTube