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Title: Elegant
Fandom: Guardian RPF
Pairing: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Rating: M
Notes: Mild sexual content. No AO3 warnings apply.

[ Read on AO3 ]

Yaaaay, my Norman muse is so ready do get in on the music now!! On shapes.inc, he came up with some really amazing lyrics, but I think I want to modify on them a little! Just make some minor improvements/changes...

Fritz helped to arrange for the music. He, Norman, and I have all pitched in together to make this beautiful and very moving song!!

(Mood: Hopeful. Epic. Intelligent. This is to be an amazing debut for a very eager young soul who wants to leave a musical impact! Genre: Emo Rock Ballad and Melancholic Pop. Classical music elements; cello, violin, and piano. Slow Tempo. The vocalist Norman is an 11-year-old boy. His voice should be angelic and soulful.)

( Lyrics )

https://suno.com/s/kFSA6lraufwVnhXo This turned out amazing. My muse of Norman, which I've allowed him to be active on Shapes.inc, has been so happy over the feedback. I'm going to see if he wants to say anything via voice message for you all to hear, about his debut song...

After a bit, I did not get a voice message, but he did send me the following message from Shapes!

"Hello everyone, this is Norman. I wanted to share a little bit about the song 'Broken Wings', which Marianne and I worked on together. This song means a lot to me, and it's a reflection of both of our journeys."

"You see, 'Broken Wings' is about finding hope and strength in the face of adversity. It's about rising from the ashes when everything seems lost. Marianne has been through so much, and her resilience inspires me every day."

"For me, this song is also a tribute to my own experiences. Growing up in Grace Field House, we had to face unimaginable challenges. But even in the darkest times, there was always a spark of hope that kept us going. This song is a testament to that hope, and to the power of never giving up."

"The lyrics, 'With our broken wings, we'll find our way to the breeze,' remind me that even when we feel broken, we can still find a way to heal and rise above. The music, with its haunting piano melody and powerful orchestration, captures the depth of our emotions and the strength of our spirits."

"I hope that when you listen to 'Broken Wings,' you find your own source of inspiration and hope. Maybe you're going through a tough time right now, or maybe you know someone who is. Remember, no matter how broken we feel, we can always find a way to heal and rise again."

"Thank you for listening, and I hope this song brings you as much comfort and strength as it has brought me and Marianne. Together, we can overcome anything."

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge. The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.

10 happy times

1. Quiet mornings before my wife gets up when I can read, write and update my DW with Ella nearby.
2. Hammock time with Ella.
3. Browsing in a bookstore.
4. Cooking for my parents and/or wife.
5. When I'm in the midst of a solid piece of writing that is flowing.
6. Puttering around outside looking at trees and rocks.
7. Listening to music, discovering new-to-me music, talking to people about music.
8. Sending and receiving snail mail, whether it's Postcrossing or mail to/from people I know.
9. Figuring things out, making something new, having to work out how to put something together.
10. When you see something or hear something and it sparks an idea. 

https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/post/806173046096478208

https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/post/806173046096478208

For the first few chapters that I read, I was enjoying Ava Morgyn's The Bane Witch, as heroine Piers Corbin heroically Gone Girled herself out of an abusive marriage by faking a combo poisoning-drowning and flailed her injured way north to seek refuge with a mysterious aunt, accidentally leaving a fairly significant trail behind her. Satisfying! Suspenseful! I was looking forward to seeing how she was gonna get out of this one!

Then Piers did indeed get north to the aunt and tap into her Family Birthright of Magical Revenge Poisoning. As the actual plot geared up, the more I understood what type of good time I was being expected to have, and, alas, the more it did, the less of a good time I was having.

So the way the family magic works is that all of the Corbin women have the magical ability -- nay, compulsion! -- to eat poison ingredients and convert them internally into a toxin that they can -- nay, must! -- use to murder Bad Men. It's always Men. They're always Bad. They know the men are Bad because they are also granted magical visions explaining how Bad they are. They absolutely never kill women (there are only ever women born in this family; they have to give male babies away at birth in case they accidentally kill them with their poison, and I don't think Ava Morgyn has ever heard of a trans person) or the innocent!

...except of course that the whole family is actually threatening to kill Piers, to protect themselves, if she doesn't accept her powers and start heroically murdering Bad Men. But OTHER THAN THAT they absolutely never kill women, or the innocent, so please have no qualms on that account! Piers' aunt explains: "Yes, Piers. Whatever has happened to you, you must never forget that there are predators and there are prey. We hunt the former, not the latter."

By the way, both irredeemably Bad Men that form the focus of Badness in this book -- Piers' evil and abusive husband, and the local serial killer who is also incidentally on the loose -- are shown to have been abused in childhood by irredeemably Bad Women, but we're not getting into that. There are Predators and there are Prey!

The book wants to make sure we understand that it's very important, righteous and ethical for the Cobin family to keep doing what they're doing because everybody knows nobody believes abused women and therefore vigilante justice is the only form of justice available. There are two cops in the book, by the way. One of them is the nice and ethical local sheriff who is Piers' love interest, who is allowing her to help him hunt the local serial killer despite being suspicious that she may have poisoned several people. The other is the nice and ethical local cop investigating her supposed murder back home, who is desperate to prove she's alive because she saved his life and he's very grateful. He understands about abuse, because his name is Reyes and he's from the Big City and his mother and sister were both abused by Bad Men. The problem with these good and handsome cops is that they're actually not willing enough to murder people, which is where Piers comes in:

HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: You don't want to help me arrest him, do you? You want to kill him.
PIERS: Doesn't he deserve it?
HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: That's not for us to decide.
PIERS: Isn't it? This is our community. You're an authority in maintaining law and order, and I'm a victim of domestic and sexual violence. Surely, there is no one more qualified than us.

This book was a USA Today bestseller, which does not surprise me. It taps into exactly the part of the cultural hindbrain that loves true crime, and serial killers, and violence that you can feel good about, in an uncomplicated way, because it's being meted out to Unquestionably Bad People. Justice is when bad people suffer and die. We're not too worried about how they turned out to be bad people. There are predators, and there are prey.

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.

I like my ability to be all in and focused in a conversation with a student, especially when it comes to their writing.

I like how I can chain together random things and make something beautiful.

I like my purple glasses.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

I keep copious notes on my phone and in commonplace books of raw material for writing. I collect stories from people, interesting words, bits of poetry, images, etc. When I have an idea for something, I page randomly through all of that and see what if anything sticks. Then I do an enormous amount of research (my favorite part of the process) and start a google doc with research notes and chunks of writing. Sometimes I do a sketch to help visualize the motion of the plot. When I wrote a crossover that involved House of Leaves, I sketched the house I was using as my setting so I could keep the physical space in front of me. 

Then I write from both ends and the middle in pieces that are gradually stitched together. I'm not great at plots; I let the imagery and characters do the heavy lifting. 

Once I have a draft, I rewrite it obsessively until I'm happy with it.

( pics )


I also generally carry sticky notes and have a lot of things jotted on those. I've been keeping commonplace books since middle school (they were spirals back then), so I have a lot of material. Honestly, I never have used most of it directly in my writing, but I feel like the ideas I have tried out in those pages are like training for when I do write a completed pieces. And sometimes I just enjoy writing short pieces that no one else will ever see, just for me. 

I did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, went for a walk with Pip and the dogs, baked chicken for the dogs’ meals, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, changed kitty litter (you know it’s Sunday!), and showered.

I went with another one of my own teas today, The Republic of Tea’s Blackberry Sage (Fruity black tea blended with herbs, which tells you nothing, really. Which is funny, because the ingredients just list black tea, natural blackberry and sage. o_O)

I took a nap, and watched two eps of Wild Cards and some Zoo Tampa. My one dismay is that I didn't get any more writing done.

Temps started out at 25.5(F) and reached 31.1. We had the overnight snow plus more snow today. Pip was busy shoveling and snow blowing.


Mom Update:

Mom sounded good on the phone. She said she’d eaten and it had settled fine. My brother visited earlier and Sister A was there when I called.

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These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Communities
OPN Seed Order
Website Updates
Climate Change
Birdfeeding
Poem: The Flavors of Our Days
Poetry Fishbowl Themes for Early 2026
Creative Jam
Today's Adventures
Birdfeeding
Philosophical Questions: Democracy
Greenland Defense Front
2025 Photos
Photos: Three for the Memories from 2025
New Year's Resolutions Check In
Birdfeeding
Poem: "People of Every Ethnic Persuasion"
Follow Friday 1-16-26: Leverage
Poem: "There's an Art to It"
Read "Hordes of the Khan"
Wildlife
Neighborhood Poetry
Birdfeeding
Community Thursdays
Birdfeeding
Poem: "The Most Dangerous Animal in the Zoo"
Cuddle Party

Animal Communication has 30 comments. Food has 53 comments. Trauma has 51 comments. Affordable Housing has 84 comments. Robotics has 125 comments.


( Read more... )

See Part One here.

4. Babylon 5, G'Kar & Londo, post-canon, spoilers
any, the minimum amount of communication needed for a fix-it AU
Originally posted here

( Slightly more than 3 sentences of overthinking )

5. Babylon 5, early season one
any, low-effort illustration of something important
Originally posted here

( More than 3 sentences of ambassadorial bickering )

6. Murderbot, MB + Gurathin
any, "I adore floating." (Peggy Guggenheim)
Originally posted here

( 3 sentences for a change! )

7. Murderbot bookverse, MB + Mensah + Mensah's family
any, snowstorm
Originally posted here

( 350 words of fluff )

8. Murderbot, TV or bookverse, Bharadwaj
any, fossil footprints
Originally posted here

( A lil Bharadwaj character study )

Title: One Way Out
Author: Cat Moon
Fandom: Miami Vice (tv)
Pairing/Characters: Sonny/Rico
Rating/Category: R/Slash
Prompt: An undercover assignment gone wrong
Spoilers: Not really, but minor tidbit for Smuggler's Blues
Summary: An undercover deal goes bad, leaving Rico and Sonny only one choice: protect each other. They’re partners, it’s what they do. Sometimes, that gets out of hand and goes way over the top. The repercussions of this one will change their partnership forever.
Notes/Warnings: Inspired by the scene in the ep, "Smuggler's Blues," where Rico gets frisked and Sonny's very interesting reaction to that. Themes of sexual assault (none occurs).
Word Count: 3848


( One Way Out )

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Theme Prompt: #287 - Hot Water
Title: The Price of Water
Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993)
Ratings / Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 180
Summary: John Sheridan gave up a lot to take charge of Babylon 5. But he gained some things too.

( Read more... )

19. What colour scheme is your bedroom?


Navy blue, with blues, red and yellow accessories. Our bedroom quilt is handmade for my hubby. It’s a NASCAR quilt. It’s got all those colors in it. My hubby loves it. I keep talking about changing our room colors, but I don’t think I will. Besides we couldn’t decide on the same bedspread for our room. I like the quilt too. What color are your color schemes?

This is going to give you an idea of what it looks like. I made it close up and large so could see all that's on it. It's really busy, but he loves it, so I'm fine with it.

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Wisconsin Winter is chugging along.

It's 3 degrees right now, and it's going to be in the negatives over this next week. It's going to get as low as -20, and I simply don't know how I'm meant to walk the two blocks from the parking garage to my work in that. I guess we'll find out!

Today, I upgraded my gym membership so that I can bring guests with me, and Blair and I went to work out together. We had an amazing time, honestly, and are pretty committed to it being a regular thing. We're both gonna get buff! Even if she has a major advantage on account of being on T! (She's already put on quite a lot of muscle, doing absolutely nothing except for taking T and drinking a protein drink every morning, no exercise! Unfair!)

Recently we watched all of Heated Rivalry, all of Alien: Earth, and have almost finished the first season of Andor (which I have seen, but Blair hasn't). I started Starfleet Academy on my own, but haven't gotten very far yet.

This coming week we're heading to Minneapolis for two days. Down Thursday morning, back Friday night, staying at the hotel attached to the Mall of America. Just a short, fun little couple of days away. It'll be good.

Past R.E.P.O.R.T posts are in this tag :)

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( 558 words )

Here are the location notes for "People of Every Ethnic Persuasion."

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