What I’m doing Wednesday
Feb. 25th, 2026 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerlibrarianHealth stuff
Much, much better. I do not want to cut off my right leg. Which is nice.
Teacher stuff
I'm teaching a class later today. We are talking about writing book annotations. For bibliographies, critics, book recommendations, etc. Mostly based on Joyce Saricks' works in Reader's advisory field. Here are two short articles she wrote for BookList on "Annotation writing" and "Writing about books" if you are curious. It's what we do almost every day here on our blogs, book social platforms like Goodreads, Librarything, Listy, The Storygraph. I went with the basic structure: introduction, turning point, climax and conclusion, less than 250 words. I could have chosen less than 150 words but they are novice for most of them in writing that kind of work. It reminded me of the times fandom was on a drabble spree.
100 words, no more, no less .
I'm a product of university studies from the 1980s. I studied French literature with professors that had been teaching for at least a few decades. I learned to write essays, critics, annotation through the structuralism theories and formalist narratology. Hence, Genette, Barthes, Todorov and Vladimir Propp.
I'm still working on my Holmes, greek myths retelling, remix, etc. class with a side trip through Public domain. I got lost into a rabbit hole that opened looking through the journal of Transformative Works. I had no idea Anna Todd's After was originally a RPF about Harry Styles. Consider me surprised and not surprised, LOL
I've played with Adobe Firefly, AI created images and video from text. It's ethically better than the rest of the things available. I want to see if I can remix all the version of Holmes in a short video. I played with an anime style first. You need to be logged in Bluesky to see it.
Reading
Mon très cher F, Le fantôme de l'opéra 2 by Mio Nanao. It took a violent dominator villain twist I did not see coming.
The apothecary diaries V.5 Still addicted. I have to wait like two weeks before getting V.6 in French from my library. Then V.7 is coming out only in May in French. So i'm switching to the English edition (it's volume 8 in English, the French put v.1 and v.2 together), it's coming out early March. I'll have to read the rest in ebook after that.
L'affaire du rideau bleu (Les Quatre de Baker Street #1) by Djian, Legrand and Etien. Comics about side characters in Holmes' universe that revolves around Sherlock's street urchins gang. It's not for children, mature themes, violence, etc. But interesting. I like the collection title : The Baker Street Fourth.
Watching
I'm almost done with Unveil: Jadewind (29/34), the investigating cases were interesting, both leads are good. I'm not sure about the bad guys yet.
Crafting
I'm about a third done with my red fox.
Much, much better. I do not want to cut off my right leg. Which is nice.
Teacher stuff
I'm teaching a class later today. We are talking about writing book annotations. For bibliographies, critics, book recommendations, etc. Mostly based on Joyce Saricks' works in Reader's advisory field. Here are two short articles she wrote for BookList on "Annotation writing" and "Writing about books" if you are curious. It's what we do almost every day here on our blogs, book social platforms like Goodreads, Librarything, Listy, The Storygraph. I went with the basic structure: introduction, turning point, climax and conclusion, less than 250 words. I could have chosen less than 150 words but they are novice for most of them in writing that kind of work. It reminded me of the times fandom was on a drabble spree.
100 words, no more, no less .
I'm a product of university studies from the 1980s. I studied French literature with professors that had been teaching for at least a few decades. I learned to write essays, critics, annotation through the structuralism theories and formalist narratology. Hence, Genette, Barthes, Todorov and Vladimir Propp.
I'm still working on my Holmes, greek myths retelling, remix, etc. class with a side trip through Public domain. I got lost into a rabbit hole that opened looking through the journal of Transformative Works. I had no idea Anna Todd's After was originally a RPF about Harry Styles. Consider me surprised and not surprised, LOL
I've played with Adobe Firefly, AI created images and video from text. It's ethically better than the rest of the things available. I want to see if I can remix all the version of Holmes in a short video. I played with an anime style first. You need to be logged in Bluesky to see it.
Reading
Mon très cher F, Le fantôme de l'opéra 2 by Mio Nanao. It took a violent dominator villain twist I did not see coming.
The apothecary diaries V.5 Still addicted. I have to wait like two weeks before getting V.6 in French from my library. Then V.7 is coming out only in May in French. So i'm switching to the English edition (it's volume 8 in English, the French put v.1 and v.2 together), it's coming out early March. I'll have to read the rest in ebook after that.
L'affaire du rideau bleu (Les Quatre de Baker Street #1) by Djian, Legrand and Etien. Comics about side characters in Holmes' universe that revolves around Sherlock's street urchins gang. It's not for children, mature themes, violence, etc. But interesting. I like the collection title : The Baker Street Fourth.
Watching
I'm almost done with Unveil: Jadewind (29/34), the investigating cases were interesting, both leads are good. I'm not sure about the bad guys yet.
Crafting
I'm about a third done with my red fox.
catching up a bit
Feb. 25th, 2026 08:05 pmtrobadora- Exchanges:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fffx is having a delay, and meanwhile highadrenalineexchange is in sign-ups. As things currently stand, FFFX should reveal right at the HA deadline, which isn't optimal, and if there's another delay, it will be even less optimal. Two 10k exchanges, overlapping - oops?
And yet somehow I'm still signing up for HA! Because I want to be writing, and I know it will reliably make me write. So far this year hasn't gone great writing-wise, and I need it to get better because I always feel better when I'm writing ...
Of course it may turn out that no one else signs up who wants anything I can write, and the whole thing will be moot anyway. *g* Fingers crossed! - Comments:
Over at the Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch, things have gone a little more quiet in the comments than I'd like, but I can't exactly complain because I've been so busy I've fallen behind myself a few times. Including right now. And I'm also a bit behind on AO3 comments - on older stuff, that is; I'm caught up on my most recent fic, including the spam comment I got today. (It's so frustrating when there's so few comments to begin with, and then one of them is spam! *grumbles*) I'm going to see if I can catch up at least on some of it tonight.
How's everyone else doing? Anyone else doing HA?
I miss con reports
Feb. 24th, 2026 05:00 ammaygraderhemaI didn't realize it's been over a year since I posted. Huh.
That said, I miss con reports. Escapade was this past weekend and I couldn't go (reasons blah, blah, blah) but I hope everyone had a blast and I'd really love an old fashion con report overview, or was that really mostly a live journal thing?
In other news, The Mole got me the Heated Rivalry books - the first two? Are there more? and I'm working through them. I can't watch the series but it keeps popping up here and there so I was curious. She got me the old fashioned paperbacks (I don't have an e-reader like Kindle) and I have neither cable nor a TV, so it's more curiosity than anything. But it does read like fan fiction which I find hilarious. Neither of the main characters has really caught my interest and enemies to lovers isn't really my trope but I'm gonna read them both just cause. I'm also painfully aware I need to up the magnification on my reading glasses again, since I'm struggling a bit and the print is not particularly small.
I am mildly surprised at how explicit the books are. I've really not bought many new books in the recent years and mainstream romances were my thing only briefly, when my mother was reading them. I get that this is more of an erotica niche but still...fan fiction in my brain for this level.
I have been re-reading Katherine Kurtz's novels. I'd forgotten kind of, how much I enjoyed them and found to my delight, I still do and the Mole, again, graciously provided me with hard copies of the three main novels because the type face on my old paperbacks really was a challenge to my eyes. They'd also been revised slightly since that original release and it was fun to see what an where. Nothing huge - no major plot points were change. Mostly a freshening of some dialogue as near as I can tell. But I still find them to be marvelous so I may be going through my bookcase for some other forgotten favorites.
What are you reading?
That said, I miss con reports. Escapade was this past weekend and I couldn't go (reasons blah, blah, blah) but I hope everyone had a blast and I'd really love an old fashion con report overview, or was that really mostly a live journal thing?
In other news, The Mole got me the Heated Rivalry books - the first two? Are there more? and I'm working through them. I can't watch the series but it keeps popping up here and there so I was curious. She got me the old fashioned paperbacks (I don't have an e-reader like Kindle) and I have neither cable nor a TV, so it's more curiosity than anything. But it does read like fan fiction which I find hilarious. Neither of the main characters has really caught my interest and enemies to lovers isn't really my trope but I'm gonna read them both just cause. I'm also painfully aware I need to up the magnification on my reading glasses again, since I'm struggling a bit and the print is not particularly small.
I am mildly surprised at how explicit the books are. I've really not bought many new books in the recent years and mainstream romances were my thing only briefly, when my mother was reading them. I get that this is more of an erotica niche but still...fan fiction in my brain for this level.
I have been re-reading Katherine Kurtz's novels. I'd forgotten kind of, how much I enjoyed them and found to my delight, I still do and the Mole, again, graciously provided me with hard copies of the three main novels because the type face on my old paperbacks really was a challenge to my eyes. They'd also been revised slightly since that original release and it was fun to see what an where. Nothing huge - no major plot points were change. Mostly a freshening of some dialogue as near as I can tell. But I still find them to be marvelous so I may be going through my bookcase for some other forgotten favorites.
What are you reading?
Bits and pieces, catching up
Feb. 23rd, 2026 04:53 pmmificI've been busy lately with several things on the go - doing HR art for the ICE OUT donations challenge, recording a long SGA podfic for the Podfic Big Bang (And Hope by Sihaya Black), and trying to fit in recording a couple of shorter ones for Romancing McShep and Romancing SGA, as well. Oof. Plus a lot of HR fic reading. I've accepted that it's impossible to keep up in any meaningful sense, and just surf along reading stuff I see reccd or authors I know I like a lot, and the few WIPs I'm following. Eventually I guess I'll catch up with numerous gems in the fandom that I missed in this avalanche of new fics, many of them extremely good.
In terms of reading very good authors, I had an exceptionally obsessive episode today where I started a story by one of my fave HR writers and couldn't read it. Because (unlike in ALL their other fics) they'd chosen to do all the Ilya POV narration in Ilya-speak, with most of the articles dropped. Russian doesn't have separate articles, I gather, because the distinction between "a ball" & "the ball" is done with word order - which is why in English, Russians often drop their articles. An example:
1. Девушка читает книгу. (The girl is reading a book)
2. Книгу читает девушка. (The girl is reading the book)
In both sentences, the meaning is nearly the same. However, in Sentence 2, the placement of “книгу” (book) at the beginning, before “девушка” (girl), highlights the importance of the book and implies a specific book.
The parts of the fic where it was Ilya's dialogue were fine because that portrays his actual speech, but the narrative (for me) is his thoughts (internal narration) in tight 3rd POV and there's NO WAY he'd be dropping "articles" in his thinking in Russian. It made him seem stupid, which he very much isn't, and I couldn't bear to read it. So I just now copied it into Word and betaed it, adding back in all the articles from his narrative POV parts. If you recognise the fic, hit me up in a DM and I'll share the edited version. It's a bloody good fic otherwise, 9000 words.
Life's been quiet apart from reccing, writing, arting and podficcing, and I'm looking forward to a dinner out with friends this Wednesday. Also enjoying sweet corn, and the start of the stone fruit season, with gorgeous nectarines. My garden is blowsy and straggly now, in late summer, and I need to take some time (ha!) to trim it back a bit. It's still warm here, about 22-24 degC highs, usually, and drier of late so I'm still watering the entire garden by hand every 3 days.
One bloody annoying thing that happened was that my credit card was hacked back at the end of January (picked up via notifications coming up on my phone from my banking app asking me to approve a bunch of things I hadn't bought). Luckily all smallish purchases (kids? An unambitious thief, anyway) and I think the bank will refund them. But that meant cancelling that card and them mailing me another (a process I last went through several months ago). And then the mailed card never arrived (presumed stolen from my letterbox) and I got another couple of false transactions on the new card that I hadn't even seen yet! So yet another card cancellation and this time I got it mailed to my bank. I was very glad that after the last debacle several months ago I'd arranged a second credit card via my other bank (I have accounts at 2 banks for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture).
Anyway, in terms of recs:
- I'm reading all Evilharlowe's HR works on AO3 - they really are a fantastic writer.
- Happened on a great short edit that sets Shane and Ilya's tuna melt hiatus to a Chappel Roan song (The Subway - amazing song) - heartrending edit, very well done, but man, I wish it were a full-sized fanvid.
- Bringing to your attention this workout video by Hudson Williams. Leg day and his skincare routine are really paying off! (CN for casual mentions of eating extreme diets or 'not eating' to make his body fit acting roles. Which is worrying but probably routine for actors.)
- there's a LOT of HR podfic by now and every day there are 1 or 2 new ones. It's a great way to revisit fics I read and loved while I do art. For example,cathexys podficced Magneticwave's Clear to a Hedgehog. This link gets you HR podfic on AO3.
Enough for now. Waving at you all - hope things are going as well as they can.! 💗
In terms of reading very good authors, I had an exceptionally obsessive episode today where I started a story by one of my fave HR writers and couldn't read it. Because (unlike in ALL their other fics) they'd chosen to do all the Ilya POV narration in Ilya-speak, with most of the articles dropped. Russian doesn't have separate articles, I gather, because the distinction between "a ball" & "the ball" is done with word order - which is why in English, Russians often drop their articles. An example:
1. Девушка читает книгу. (The girl is reading a book)
2. Книгу читает девушка. (The girl is reading the book)
In both sentences, the meaning is nearly the same. However, in Sentence 2, the placement of “книгу” (book) at the beginning, before “девушка” (girl), highlights the importance of the book and implies a specific book.
The parts of the fic where it was Ilya's dialogue were fine because that portrays his actual speech, but the narrative (for me) is his thoughts (internal narration) in tight 3rd POV and there's NO WAY he'd be dropping "articles" in his thinking in Russian. It made him seem stupid, which he very much isn't, and I couldn't bear to read it. So I just now copied it into Word and betaed it, adding back in all the articles from his narrative POV parts. If you recognise the fic, hit me up in a DM and I'll share the edited version. It's a bloody good fic otherwise, 9000 words.
Life's been quiet apart from reccing, writing, arting and podficcing, and I'm looking forward to a dinner out with friends this Wednesday. Also enjoying sweet corn, and the start of the stone fruit season, with gorgeous nectarines. My garden is blowsy and straggly now, in late summer, and I need to take some time (ha!) to trim it back a bit. It's still warm here, about 22-24 degC highs, usually, and drier of late so I'm still watering the entire garden by hand every 3 days.
One bloody annoying thing that happened was that my credit card was hacked back at the end of January (picked up via notifications coming up on my phone from my banking app asking me to approve a bunch of things I hadn't bought). Luckily all smallish purchases (kids? An unambitious thief, anyway) and I think the bank will refund them. But that meant cancelling that card and them mailing me another (a process I last went through several months ago). And then the mailed card never arrived (presumed stolen from my letterbox) and I got another couple of false transactions on the new card that I hadn't even seen yet! So yet another card cancellation and this time I got it mailed to my bank. I was very glad that after the last debacle several months ago I'd arranged a second credit card via my other bank (I have accounts at 2 banks for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture).
Anyway, in terms of recs:
- I'm reading all Evilharlowe's HR works on AO3 - they really are a fantastic writer.
- Happened on a great short edit that sets Shane and Ilya's tuna melt hiatus to a Chappel Roan song (The Subway - amazing song) - heartrending edit, very well done, but man, I wish it were a full-sized fanvid.
- Bringing to your attention this workout video by Hudson Williams. Leg day and his skincare routine are really paying off! (CN for casual mentions of eating extreme diets or 'not eating' to make his body fit acting roles. Which is worrying but probably routine for actors.)
- there's a LOT of HR podfic by now and every day there are 1 or 2 new ones. It's a great way to revisit fics I read and loved while I do art. For example,
cathexys podficced Magneticwave's Clear to a Hedgehog. This link gets you HR podfic on AO3.Enough for now. Waving at you all - hope things are going as well as they can.! 💗
For Sale: Nintendo Switch games + TTRPG books
Feb. 22nd, 2026 03:18 pmsettiai
My debit card was compromised late last week, and I'm waiting for the bank to get all of the charges reversed. I've been able to cover my most urgent bills (the hotel and my storage unit), but I have a few others that are due that I'm still worried about paying. If I can come up with another $100 or so, it would make a huge difference while I wait for the bank to get everything taken care of.
So I'm going to try to sell a few things and hope for the best. 🤞🏻
First, I have a few Nintendo Switch games for sale:
Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! (example on Amazon)
Spyro Reignited Trilogy (example on Amazon)
TemTem (example on Amazon)
And then a few TTRPGs that were Christmas presents so they're still in basically like new shape:
Candela Obscura Core Rulebook (example on Amazon)
Daggerheart Core Set (example on Amazon)
If you're not interested but know someone who might be, please point them my way. It would help a lot if I could manage to sell at least one or two things from this list.
For payment, I have CashApp ($Settiai), PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle (nancy.lynn.foster@gmail.com).
So I'm going to try to sell a few things and hope for the best. 🤞🏻
First, I have a few Nintendo Switch games for sale:
Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! (example on Amazon)
Spyro Reignited Trilogy (example on Amazon)
TemTem (example on Amazon)
And then a few TTRPGs that were Christmas presents so they're still in basically like new shape:
Candela Obscura Core Rulebook (example on Amazon)
Daggerheart Core Set (example on Amazon)
If you're not interested but know someone who might be, please point them my way. It would help a lot if I could manage to sell at least one or two things from this list.
For payment, I have CashApp ($Settiai), PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle (nancy.lynn.foster@gmail.com).
FIC: in the darkness with you (Guardian: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan) [Mature]
Feb. 22nd, 2026 07:47 pmtrobadoracandyheartsex author reveals have happened! And here's the fic I wrote for facethestrange:**
Title: in the darkness with you
Word count: 4,233
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Rating: Mature
Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc
A/N: Many thanks to
china_shop for beta-reading.Summary:
Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.
Six Sentence Sunday
Feb. 23rd, 2026 12:44 amluthienA bit more of this:
A light touch at his elbow had him turning immediately, but he was not greatly surprised to find the Princess Svetlana Vetrova standing behind him and smiling at him impishly. She wore a long, blue pelisse over her gown - to guard against the chill sea winds, Ilya supposed, such as they were in June - and an extravagant poke bonnet, curled plumes cascading along its crown, sat atop her glossy ringlets. She was accompanied by her maid - a dour creature - as propriety demanded whenever the Princess took the air on the deck. Now, the woman waited a few steps away and stared down at the hem of her dress, providing them with the semblance of private speech. Ilya had no doubt that she would, nevertheless, memorise every word that passed between them and report back to Svetlana's mother - at least, she would do so if they conducted their conversation in Russian.
"So, you have not succumbed to the seasickness like your Mama," he said by way of greeting, in French.
~*~