white_collar | Member Posts

What a shock! Going into day 6 of the AO3 drought and I'm actually posting here for the first time in *mumbletymumblety*. Ahem. I am very grateful for my quirk of preferring to read fic on my Kindle and thus downloading the majority of what I plan to read. I already had quite the backlog, so I guess I'll... get on that?

Traveled twice in October and am probably traveling again for Thanksgiving. I'd been planning for months to go to

confabcon at the end of October (which I did, and had a great time), but sometime in mid-September I realized that my mom's early October birthday was her 80th, so I decided to take a long weekend to go celebrate hers (and my) birthdays. (Family lore is that she went into labor with me at her birthday party.) So that was nice. Going to see if I can go see them again at Thanksgiving even though I'm not really one for quite this much travel.

The last time I traveled before last month was in May to the Atlanta Critical Role live show, which was an absolute blast, to the point where I tried to see about going to their only live show in the USA next year, too, but it goes along with Gen Con in Indianapolis next August, and hotels in the area are already booked solid. (Gen Con is like San Diego Comicon but for tabletop gaming, i.e. 10s of thousands of people in attendance.) Probably some of that is room blocks being held for Gen Con proper, but I've never been to the con before and am not into huge conventions like that so I don't think it'd be worth it for me to register for enough days to be able to get a room in the block. I'm interested in tabletop gaming, but not that interested. But I do still love me some Critical Role, including the current Campaign 4, though I'm finding it actually more stressful than I have in the past so I need to catch up on the last 2 episodes, which I've been holding off on. Partially for travel reasons, but partially due to stress. (I find the Schemers table in particular to be quite stressful to watch. Enjoyable, but stressful.) Maybe after today is over I'll be able to deal with stress in my entertainment again.

The only new fandom I've gotten into since the last time I posted is Heated Rivalry, which I thoroughly enjoy, but doesn't have me quite as hooked as it does some people, though I have been enjoying a lot of the fic. This is one of those fandoms, though, where the setting is pretty important to me so I have issues with AUs where the characters aren't hockey players. No coffee shop AUs for me (not that I'm usually a fan of those anyway). I also had long since (pre-AO3 crash) stopped randomly wandering through the Heated Rivalry tags on AO3 and was going almost entirely on recs and people I was already subscribed to. There was already way too much fic to get through by last spring, lol.

Oh, I did also watch Lanterns on HBO and mostly enjoyed it. There were some definite issues which I think were at least partly budget-related, but I quite enjoyed Kyle Chandler playing a charming asshole and Aaron Pierre's character's relationship with him. And his extremely messed up family life. Would have liked a bit more Green Latern-ness also. So if there's more, I'm at least willing to give it a shot. Not feeling at all fannish about it, though.

Anyway, that's me for now. Do not expect this to happen on any sort of regular occurrence!

Mood groggy

dine

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china_shop

Previous poll review
In the Muppets poll, 48.8% of respondents voted for "do-dooo do do-do", 39% for "do do-do do", and 34.1% for "mahna mahna".

In ticky-boxes, "mere cat" had a pretty good run but still came second to hugs, 58.5% to 78%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Andrew and I listened to a bit more Memory (Lois McMaster Bujold, read by Grover Gardner) last night. We're five hours in, and a part of me is still waiting for Plot to kick in. I think the earlier works in the series have conditioned me to expect Action and Shenanigans.

Meanwhile, The Tainted Cup (Robert Jackson Bennett, read by Andrew Fallaize) is proving an enjoyable listen. I don't know how much it's the narrator's performance, but Din feels like a cross between Peter Grant (Rivers of London) and Koli (The Rampart Trilogy), Ana a cross between Nightingale and Ursala (ibid, ibid), and the world-building isn't far off a blend of the two either. Two great tastes!

And in graded reading, I just read a story about two cats on a snowy mountain, facing off against a large eagle who was out for vengeance. Very dramatic!

I have Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir by Pedro Martin out of the library, thanks to

sanguinity's review, but I haven't opened it yet. (I also have Ann Leckie's Radch short story collection and a Wellington novel titled Rat King Landlord by Murdoch Stephens (I believe the landlords are literal rats), so if I find myself in the mood for paper reading, I have a good range of options.

Watching
( Cut for length )

Audio entertainment
Not a great deal. I've mostly switched back to ChinesePod's pre-intermediate lessons. One episode of local political podcast Cross Party Lines, though they're very establishment.

Online life
Hosting WED was so good. Even if I didn't make much progress during the hosting period, it helped me to turn some of my attention back to writing. And while I know the AO3 outage is really hard for some, I personally am enjoying what feels like an up-tick in activity on Dreamwidth. Silver linings, and all that.

Writing/making things
In a break from my usual habits, I've been writing random snippets of something in my notebook before I turn out the light at night. It's Guardian, but sufficiently niche that I'll probably never bother to assemble it into a coherent story. I'm just dipping in and toying with it from various angles. It feels nice to even be doing that much.

Other than that, I'm pretty motivated to write Yuletide treats. Let's see if I can.

Life/health/mental state things
I feel like I've been socialising more than usual, which is probably good for me, but: *grabbyhands at keyboard and Dreamwidth* *grabbyhands at Chinese apps* *grabbyhands at couch and cat and Andrew*

I voted today, to avoid the Saturday rush.

Language Learning
I passed my six month-versary of starting Chinese a few days ago. Stepping back, I'd say that I'm happy with where my reading is, a bit hazy on writing (I haven't done much in a while), and my listening and speaking are falling behind. I knew this was happening -- I just haven't made time to do anything about it. I'd really love to practice with another learner, but I don't know how to find one. Relatedly, it's become apparent I started language exchange too early; I can't pull sentences together fast enough, and I'm not confident in my pronunciation, so we mostly just speak in English.

Food
I made a carrot, sultana and walnut cake for Saturday night and left it in the oven too long. It was fine, just a bit dry. Note to self: trust your oven! This is not the inefficient gas monster of yestermonth.

Good things
My physio encouraged me to take more baths. These chocolate fish. Frankenpegs. Not everything has to happen all at once. Friends online and off. Andrew. Halle. Sleep.

Poll #35412 Outage

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 52

View Respondents

How's your AO3 withdrawal?

View Answers

mild
26 (50.0%)

medium
13 (25.0%)

severe
6 (11.5%)

critical
1 (1.9%)

I miss kudos emails
19 (36.5%)

n/a
1 (1.9%)

other
0 (0.0%)

ticky-box of interesting times are so time-consuming
32 (61.5%)

ticky-box full of luck and crossed fingers for those of us with elections this week
36 (69.2%)

ticky-box full of porcupines playing jenga
19 (36.5%)

ticky-box full of lingering traces of Halloween
22 (42.3%)

ticky-box full of hugs
37 (71.2%)

china_shop

As always, it was a great pleasure to host you all. Thanks for being delightful guests, and best of luck with your writing projects in November! The lovely folk at

zwei_hexen have taken the reins now.

Here's the final tally for Write Every Day, 15th to 31st October 2026.

( Tally )

Day 30:

ashelterofpages,

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shippen_stand,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 31:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shippen_stand,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Please let me know if I've missed you, and feel free to check in belatedly. :-)

ruric

Last week both Walter Koenig and Sir Patrick Stewart shuffled off this mortal coil and the tributes to both were lovely. DEATH needs to be called in for a performance review - he seems to keep missing the obvious choices which would make the world a better place.

AO3 went dark and wow the number of so called fans who have no idea about their own history, consent, the protection provided by AO3 and copyright laws has been surprising.

A Lear jet dropped out of the sky and no I have not and will not listen to the audio.

Apparently Trump is considering nuking Iran in the next 7 days under continued pressure from the monster leading Israel who is still murdering people by the tens of thousands whilst the world watches.

Meanwhile our erstwhile government is sending the Met to arrest a 94 year old Jewish human rights lawyer (and another several hundred people often pensioners) who are protesting a genocide.

And to add insult to injury there's a rip off site out there that has scraped A03 and published a metric fuckton of fic without authors permission and is making authors opt out by citing links to every single fic to be removed. Not only that, but they're producing crappy AI audio books of fic that isn't theirs and charging people to listen to them. OTW has been notified and I hope they sic their legal team on the creators of that site and the hosting service. If you've ever posted on A03 you might want to check A03.life - they seem to have most of mine up there.

halfshellvenus

Lamentation
Idol year 20 | week 3
Sin-Eater

x-x-x-x-x

Your fault, he always says,
If you hadn’t done that
If you would just
Why can’t you ever—

His unceasing sins lie
Written in cuts, in
Bruises and broken bones,
Across her fragile body.

There, they wait to be
Absorbed— absolved—
Like a curse that
She never agreed to carry.

--/--

Voting information to follow soon...

dine

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chicating

But someone on my list might like it.
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halfshellvenus

HalfshellHusband had surgery late Friday night on his broken leg, and got very, very lucky.

First, the genius surgeon who did two hip replacements and a knee replacement for him made himself available. And second, the metal above-knee component turned out to be fully compatible with the below-knee hardware from the earlier knee surgery 4 years ago.

The risk was that if the pieces were incompatible, the surgeon would have to replace the piece leading to the shin bone as well as adding a new piece for the thigh. With HSH's osteoporosis, removing the shin piece could have caused the shin to shatter as well, in which case they might not have been able to secure a metal replacement leading into that bone. If THAT didn't work out, it could have cascaded into a future above-knee amputation.

I can't tell you how terrified we were of that possibility. HSH has a chronic neurological condition that makes his muscles perpetually tight and weak, and he has balance issues. The chances of him being able to walk on an artificial limb he couldn't feel would be extremely low.

Fortunately, the surgeon was able to go with the simplest scenario. We're SO relieved. And removing all those bone fragments from the thigh and making a clean cut for attaching the metal has REALLY reduced HSH's pain. It was absolutely excruciating before the surgery. Now it's a level he can get through using his impossibly high levels of grit and determination.

Thanks for all of the well wishes everyone sent his way! We both appreciate it very much.

dine

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china_shop

"My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.

“But I also tell [my students] that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out. Writing this way is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.”

– Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

1st Nov: Once again, I don't know where the day went! I'll write something before bed and check in later at

zwei_hexen. :-)

It's been a complete pleasure having you all here! Good luck with all your things!!

The tally
( Read more... )

Day 30:

ashelterofpages,

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shippen_stand,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 31:

brithistorian,

china_shop,

glinda,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shippen_stand,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan

Please check in on the most recent post, and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.

neekabe

Happy Halloweeen!

Part of this is noting for future us.

THe past two years have been slow for halloween (Realtively) but one yaer was a weird year when they were talking about splitting halloween, so there were on two days. ANd last year was just gross weather wise.

WE did up 100 bags, and then had a bunch of loose candy. The kids responded to the bags with a unique amount of excitement this year (we've often done bags) but after one kid was like "A mystery bag!" we realiezed that this year we were inadvertently making blind bags XD

GLow sticks continue to be a source of excitement for all ages.

We figure we had about 250 kids and could have gone longer, we closed up with a couple dozen candies and a handful of glow sticks for fear of another big group coming up. It was fun. With two slow years we were afraid that the neighbouhood was aging out, but nope. It was just two years of awkward weather.

krait

As most everyone knows by now, even some local news outlets, the Archive of Our Own is down for maintenance following a security issue. It's prjected to be down for 2-4 weeks, and fandom is in a tizzy. (Personally, I'm just glad that I was able to finish the fic I had open. Thank goodness my AO3 account is set to always open entire works!)

otw_status_feed is an easy way to follow updates as they come.

In the meantime, this is a great opportunity to revisit older and smaller archives (and DW). Which ones do you remember fondly?

blacksquirrel

Hi Everyone - it's been awhile!

While A03 is down could anyone point me toward fic for The Pitt?

I hope everyone is doing ok or at least muddling through. I'm back from an amazing sabbatical, I got promoted and ,except for everything happening in the entire world, things are going well.

glinda

I am...vaguely amused that of all the problems that the recent PHP security exploit shenanigans have caused, only two things have really impacted me personally. (Probably largely because I don't do online banking. People pull genuinely hilarious faces at me when I offer to paypal them, but most folks my age do in fact have an account, that they too got twenty odd years ago to buy things online before they had their own credit card.) One was - hilariously - the music reporting system we use at work throwing security certificate issues for a week and the other is the AO3 outage.

I decided to take advantage of it to run the usual November Group Read over at

readingtogether, (

kalloway I figure you have bigger fish to fry this year) so if any of you fancy taking advantage of not having AO3 to distract your from your reading list, then come along and sign up for the most low pressure 'finish some books you have started and not finished/have been lurking on your shelves for ages' challenge in November. There'll be weekly check-in posts on the comm and folks usually get quite chatty in the comments.

I've fallen behind on writing again, after a solid start to the year, and the fic burst of July and August so I'll be heading into NaBloPoMo with less words than I did last year. (Unless I end up finishing one of my half-finished fic this evening, there's at least 10,000 words in half-written fic lurking in documents at the moment. I'm significantly more likely to finish a blog post of short film reviews, which is what I meant to do this morning and then wrote this instead, oh well. Also this was originally going to be a work vent post, but went in another direction, which is probably for the good.) Not by much, only like 2000 words, but given that in September I looked good to be going in 5000 words ahead, that's somewhat disappointing. Nonetheless, I'm still intending to aim for 10,000 words for November with 15,000 as a stretch goal. (Does anyone know if

mini_wrimo is running again this year? I always find it helpful.)

30291 / 75000 (40.39%)

Music The East Pointers - Misty Morning

dine

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china_shop

"Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which had nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it."

– Virginia Woolf, via The Marginalian

My day 31: No writing yet, just lots of Dreamwidthing, tidying, and cooking for guests this evening. I made a cake, so there's a good chance I'll ingest enough sugar to write something after my friends have left. :-)

It's the 31st here (happy Halloween!), but I'll put up another post tomorrow for everyone else's 31st, and then we're heading over to our lovely hosts at

zwei_hexen for November.

The tally
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Day 29:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shippen_stand,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 30:

china_shop,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

ineptshieldmaid

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dine

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china_shop

If anyone is after a particular story of mine, feel free to comment here or PM me, and I'll upload you a copy. No obligation, no fuss, no need to explain or feedback or anything. We're all used to having stuff at our fingertips when we want it -- it's jarring to have it suddenly go away!

I've dumped all my Guardian works into Google docs here (html format), and I'm happy to do the same for Due South, White Collar, or anything else that isn't RPF, if anyone wants it. (In theory, the CanRPF is still lurking on a comm on LJ. Happy to give access, though that would require you to have an LJ account, so...) (At least some of the Cruiseliner crackfic is here on DW.)

Unfortunately, most of the filenames aren't super useful in terms of pairing or genre, sorry! If you're looking for something in particular, let me know and I'll try to point you in the right direction.

Other than dumping them in gdocs, I don't know how to back up 914 works, plus the half dozen or so I forgot to download from AO3 when I posted them. /o\

Profile

White Collar

Page Summary

beck_liz - Day 6 of the AO3 drought and I'm actually posting
dine - some things are better left alone. like me, for instance
china_shop - Me-and-media update
china_shop - Write Every Day: final tally
ruric - What a week - Koenig, Stewart, A03, Armageddon, AO3.lif3
halfshellvenus - Idol Year 20: "Lamentation"
dine - a wretched hive of scum and villainy
chicating - Pretty sure I'm not gonna write this...
halfshellvenus - HalfshellHusband news
dine - I'm often mistaken for an adult because of my age
china_shop - Write Every Day - day 31 (Halloween!)
neekabe - (no subject)
krait - Sturm und Drang
blacksquirrel - Hello World
glinda - Stay Up 'til The Misty Morning Comes
dine - I'm not young enough to know everything
china_shop - Write Every Day - day 30/31
ineptshieldmaid - Rec Post For Trying Times: WaybackMachine-saved smut
dine - more places to find fic
china_shop - AO3 outage

December 2019

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