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I may feel like a dishrag, but if so it's a dishrag who had a wonderful time returning to Arisia after six years, even if the ziggurat on the Charles is still a dreadful place to hold a convention. For the Dramatic Readings from the Ig Nobel Prizes, I performed selections from W. C. Meecham and H. G. Smith's "Effects of Jet Aircraft on Mental Hospital Admissions" (British Journal of Audiology, 1977) with what I hope was an appropriately haggard channeling of my sleepless night and Leonie Cornips' "The semiotic repertoire of dairy cows" (Language in Society, 2024) with what I hope was an appropriately technical rendition of cow noises. I heard papers on the proper techniques of nose-blowing, whether snakes dress to the left or the right, the sexual correlations of apples. It feels impossible, but it must have been my first time onstage since onset of pandemic. Readers who overstayed their allotted two minutes were surrounded by a chorus of bananas.

I had forgotten how much socializing my attendance of conventions used to entail. I turned the corner for registration and immediately spotted a nineweaving, followed in close succession by a choco_frosh, a_reasonable_man, and a sorcyress. I was talking to the latter in the coat check when Gillian Daniels came in and now I have a zine-printed copy of the second edition of her chapbook Eat the Children (2019/2026). I had not lengthy enough catch-up conversations with awhyzip and rinue and am now in possession of a signed copy of Nothing in the Basement (2025). I brought water with me and kept forgetting to duck outside to drink it. Dean gave me a ride home afterward and commented on my tired look, which was fair: six, seven years ago I could sprint through programming even after a night of anaphylaxis or a subluxed jaw and these days there's a lot less tolerance in the system. It seemed to be a common refrain. If I have fun and don't take home any viral infections from this weekend, it'll be a win.

Tomorrow, panels.

Hardy Canadian me looked at the sorta clear sidewalks from my window, looked at the weather forecast (3C now, temps dropping rapidly this evening), and put on her boots to go to the supermarket. Going was easy enough, even over the slush of the houses that had removed most but not all of Thursday's snow. Only had to detour once into the street, because the corner house at the end of the block was completely untouched. Suspect the Greek gardener is in Greece or something. But the opposite corner was passable and the Baptists, somehow getting their act together at long last, had cleared the whole width of the sidewalks on both sides of their lot. I'd say snowblower but there were no mounds of blown snow to be seen, so where they put it all is a mystery. Am grateful they did, whatever.

So now I have potatoes and swiss cheese and eggs to make omelets with, and lime juice to make peanut sauce for the cabbage (napa) and carrots I have from the greengrocer. Must boil the carrots first because they don't cook otherwise. 

I did scrape the remains of the snow from my walkway and sidewalk this morning. Hope it dries before it freezes but I have salt and sand even if it does. Next door M (age 9) came out to try to shovel his front walk with minimal success because neither if their shovels has a metal edge, which is what you need for icy slush. I lent him my ice scraper which seems to have worked. But their front path has paving stones that makes it difficult to shovel things completely flat. There are benefits to mundane concrete aftercall.

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⌈ Secret Post #6952 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.


( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #993.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Title: deep sea, baby
Rating: Explicit
Fandom: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy TV
Relationship(s): Nahla Ake/Caleb Mir
Word Count: 361
Summary: 

Caleb’s flesh carries callus and scar and blemish, but Nahla had kissed over every single tarnish, had worshiped him whole; she’s trying to make her penance.

Read on AO3.

Title: Put A Sock In It
Fandom: The Legend of Korra
Characters: Zaheer
Rating: G
Summary: Sticker/Button design of Zaheer with a sock in his mouth.

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Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

---

So to me there are 3 categories of favourite tropes: the ones i love to write, to read and both. Note that obviously i do like everything I write when it comes to tropes, but i'd say not all of they fall under the favourite tree. Sometimes some things are a lot more fun to write than to read about.

( tropes i love to write )

( tropes i love to read )

( tropes i love to write and read )

My nephew's not-yet-fiance sent me a Christmas card wishing me happy holidays from her and my nephew and included two photographs - one of her and her two dogs and one of her and my nephew. Oh and the envelope had two return address stickers - one on the back and one on the front - same address so, of course, I Google mapped the shit out of that. Google says most of her online presence is Facebook so my journey ended. It's ok, I know enough. I'm flattered to be included but it's still kind of weird.

Both cats are in the dog bed. I think it's all good under there.

Elbow Coffee was pretty good all things considered.

And now everyone but me is hunkered down waiting for the game to start. Assuming an hour of pregame crap, they have a couple of hours to wait yet.

So very true. Do not view with mouth full.

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9. What are your favorite tropes?

I have too many to list. Here are a few.

Friends to lovers. The reluctant hero. Someone in distress. Found family, race against time, rags to riches.

I live to read fantasy stories but don’t write them at all.

Challenge #9 at  snowflake_challenge 


Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

I cheated and read an article online that listed a bunch of tropes and these are my findings. I like hidden worlds and secret societies, but I strongly dislike chosen one stories. And I don't read a lot of fantasy, so I don't tend to encounter hidden worlds much. I guess I just like the idea of their being a secret mirror of our society. I've written a couple of fics where various pantheons of gods intersect with modern society and with each other because I like imagining what might be going on that we don't see. 

I LOVE me an amateur sleuth. That's why Miss Marple has always been my absolute favorite, closely followed by Jessica Fletcher. Right now I'm reading Three Bags Full where the sleuths are the ultimate amateurs - a flock of sheep whose shepherd has been murdered! I also like amateur spies like Tommy and Tuppence and Mrs. Pollifax.

If I like the source material, I will try almost any type of AU. The only kind I tend to bounce off of are set in school; as a teacher, I find them so unbelievable that I can't suspend my disbelief.

I'm also very fond of crossovers. Sometimes I'll see someone bigging up a crossover on the AO3 subreddit and, even if I know nothing about either canon, I'll give it a try. I also really enjoy writing crossovers; it's like weaving together two different fabrics or putting together a puzzle. 

And while we are on the subject of things I like, I love writing and reading drabbles. I enjoy a fic where someone has provided a link to a playlist. I like when people play around with form and experiment, even when it doesn't quite work. I like an author with audacity. 

A new baihe live action drama, Candy (糖果, pinyin: tangguo), has started airing on GagaOOLala. Here's the official synopsis:

Top actress Lin Can plummets overnight after a devastating PR crisis. Wen Nuannuan—the girl she once left behind in her youth—reenters her life as an assistant. Under the pressure of fame and public scrutiny, the two escape the city to join a rural reality show. Meanwhile, veteran manager Si Han and superstar Jiang Wan are locked in a fierce game of love and power, entangled in workplace rivalry and unresolved past feelings. Between tenderness and cruelty, sincerity and calculation, two GL love stories unfold against the unforgiving reality of the entertainment industry.

And here's the trailer:


The main page for the drama is here. Each episode appears to be about 30 minutes long (judging by the first one), and I vaguely remembering on Chinese social media that there are eight episodes in total (but am not 100% sure). The first episode is free-to-view.

closed

Today's prompt is: smart

• You have 2 days time to submit an icon for this prompt (in other words, until prompt 2733 gets posted)!
• Prompt 2729 have been closed.
• If you have any questions regarding the prompt, feel free to ask in a comment.
• To submit an icon you simply reply to this post with the following information:
Icon:
Claim: (only necessary if it's a specific claim)
Status: (e.g. #1/10 - number of icon completed/table size)

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<b>Icon:</b> <img src=""> <b>Claim:</b> <b>Status:</b>

First, a quick announcement before I get into the challenge: threesentenceficathon  IS LIVE! Go and leave prompts, fill prompts, it's a ton of fun! Even if you don't think you'll like it, you may surprise yourself. It's also a great, low pressure, quick and easy way to get the creative juices flowing (which fits in with Snowflake Challenge #8, the creative process).

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

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Ok everything is positioned and velcro'd down and cameras placed and fuck is it dusty under there. I had a coughing fit like I haven't had in ages. But it is all done. Biggie is happy. Julio is going in and out - not willing to commit.

For the first time since September 2023, I peed standing up today. It was successful! Well, let’s say “mostly” successful.

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