jducoeur

longficmod posting in

Updated pinch hits here! Thanks very much to everyone who has claimed one. If you can claim one of these, please comment with your AO3 name and the number of the pinch hit you want. All comments are screened.

Like main assignments, these pinch hits are due on 28 June, and they require a check-in during the week of 7-14 June.

You may ask to exchange your assignment for an open pinch hit. If you are given that pinch hit and fulfill it, this won't count as a default. Please tell me in your comment requesting a pinch hit if you are asking to swap.

( PH 2 - Blue Lock (Manga), 終わりのセラフ | Owari no Seraph | Seraph of the End (Anime & Manga), Fairy Tail )

( PH 5 - Temeraire - Naomi Novik, The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman )

( PH 7 - Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), Dial M for Murder - Hatcher )

( PH 8 - Path of Night (Podcast), Vampire: The Masquerade - Various Authors (Choice of Games), Vampire: The Masquerade Port Saga (Podcast) )

( PH 9 - 終わりのセラフ | Owari no Seraph | Seraph of the End (Anime & Manga), Blue Lock (Manga), Fairy Tail )

( PH 10 - Doctor Who (1963), Dragon Age (Video Games), This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone )

( PH 13 - The Elementalists (Visual Novel), Heart of Battle - Fay Ikin, Royal Affairs - Harris-Powell-Smith )

( PH 15 - Code Vein (Video Game), 神さまのいない日曜日 | Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi | Sunday Without God (Anime & Manga), Octopath Traveler II (Video Game), 刀使ノ巫女 | Toji no Miko | Katana Maidens (Anime), よるのないくに | Yoru no Nai Kuni | Nights of Azure (Video Games), Xenoblade Chronicles (Video Game) )

( PH 17 - Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), The Godfather (1972 1974 1990) )

( PH 18 - Ancient History RPF, Solstice (MoaCube Visual Novel), Crossover Fandom )

( PH 19 - Ace Combat (Video Games), Dishonored (Video Games), Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors )

( PH 20 - ATEEZ (Band), Blink-182 (Band), Men's Basketball RPF )

( CLAIMED - PH 21 - Ranma 1/2, Lost Girl (TV), Star Trek: Lower Decks (Cartoon), Marvel (Comics), 超時空要塞マクロス | Super Dimension Fortress Macross )

( CLAIMED - PH 22 - Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Video Game), The Angel of the Crows - Katherine Addison, Battlestar Galactica (2003), Babylon 5 (TV 1993) )

( CLAIMED - PH 23 - Original Work, Crossover Fandom, BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games), The Wheel of Time (TV), Tenet (2020) )

snickfic

I was swamped the entire writing and treating period for this round of

seasonsofdrabbles, and only barely managed the one fic I did write. Glad I finished something, though.

respects a triple drabble for Jaws. Brody/Hooper, post-canon, featuring a ghost.

Now to finally get back to my H/C Ex fic...

senmut

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	0	7,811	yes
Monthly	12,133	194,216	7 days

senmut

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	470	8,833	no
Monthly	12,133	186,405	6 days

sabotabby

The finale was...good, actually? Again, grading on a curve. It is still a bad show. But it's one of those bad shows where you get the sense that there is someone in the writers' room doing their best and sneaking all kinds of fun content in (see also: Archie singing IWW songs in Riverdale).

I had to check Reddit to see which case this was based on—it takes most of the episode to get to it. A seemingly unremarkable middle-aged travel agent drops dead in his driveway while his wife is out for a jog. It looks like a heart attack, but a cop in 44 Division suggests to Holness that she might want to get "her best" on it. Unfortunately the best that Toronto Police Services—sorry, TPD on the show for some reason—have are Graff and Bateman.

( spoilers )

And that's a wrap. I guess I'll have to find some good show to watch now.

china_shop

I wrote two things for the 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange, both Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. Firstly, my assignment, which I set during the blindness arc. This was the "4k words" fic I kept throwing tons of writing meta at... which helped to some degree, but the first draft still fell bafflingly flat. Thankfully,

trobadora prodded me into making them actually talk about their feelings (what? who does that?!), and then it came into focus. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Also, this one had a title from pretty early on, so didn't cause me last-minute title stress. *pets it approvingly*

Title: Trust Fall (6163 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Mutual Pining, Emotional and Physical hurt/comfort, Domestic Weilan, Clothes Sharing, Protectiveness, Weilan letting their guard down around each other, Shen Wei’s secrets and Zhao Yunlan’s feelings about them, Episode Related, Blindness Arc, Missing Scene, Getting Together, First Kiss, Zhao Xinci's A+ parenting
Summary: Shen Wei’s grip on Zhao Yunlan’s arms tightened in line with the tension in his voice. “You didn’t tell Minister Gao.”

“What? This? Eh, why bother him with minor operational details during a holiday?”

“Details.” Shen Wei’s tone was flat, which probably meant his brow was stern. Not Envoy-forbidding, but something in the Mildly Disapproving Professor range.

Zhao Yunlan refused to be disapproved of. Why let worry flood in and wash away their victory?

And then I picked up a late-ish pinch hit. Which would have been completely fine, except that I pounced on the "outsider POV" prompt (yes!!), without considering that my outsider POV fics always run long, because I feel like the POV character needs to get their own arc as well as the requested pairing being very present. Seven thousand words later... Yeah, this is why I've been AWOL for the last week and a half. (Well, and other reasons. But this was a big part of it.)

Anyway, this is one of those post-canon/everyone lives fics, told from Li Qian's POV. I always feel like, having had her life saved by Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan at the beginning of canon, she has a low-key life debt to them. Not like she should call them benefactor or anything, but like they're karmically linked now, which is only a tiny step away from being found family. I had a lot of fun with her perspective, and (again, thanks to

trobadora's beta) added more shippiness in the rewrite, and this is how it came out.

Note: This did not come complete with a preordained title, and I was flailing until inspiration hit about an hour before reveals.

Title: The Life-Changing Magic of a Home-Cooked Meal (7341 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Lǐ Qiàn & Shěn Wēi, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, POV Outsider, Domestic, Politics, Dark Energy Science, Worldbuilding, Found Family, Sharing Clothes, Banter, Established Relationship, Long-Haired Shen Wei
Summary: Li Qian peered past him down the hall, but there was no sign of Professor Shen. What should she do with her gifts?

“He’s in the kitchen, cooking up a storm. I’ll take you.” Chief Zhao opened the door wider, and Li Qian squared her shoulders and walked into the home of Professor Shen, Shen Wei, hero, public figure, and Ambassador of Dixing.

Chief Zhao seemed completely at ease. He took her coat and hung it on a coat-rack that was already thickly layered with wool overcoats and leather and denim jackets. She left her shoes on the floor below, next to a pair of fine leather shoes, some casual sheepskin boots and some heavy black ones with buckles.

Her initial base assumption that the Black-Cloaked Envoy would live in eerie, solitary splendour was starting to seem shaky.

hrj

Ticked off two more things on the retirement checklist this morning: getting copies of the two paystubs that I was still missing, and getting my official "retirement gift" from the attaboy catalog. As usual, the catalog offerings were mostly either "already have one" or "no use for this" but in the end I settled on a wet/dry shop vac. You know, in the event that I ever get back to doing carpentry projects or whatnot. After you pick your primary gift, they roll you over into the gift card section, where you pick gift cards until you run out of remaining balance. So I currently have $250 worth of gift cards for Black Angus Steakhouse that I will be looking for a special occasion to use.

Most of the IRA activity is complete -- I have confirmation and documents for one of the annuities and for the managed fund (the "pretend this doesn't exist for now" fund). I should get the confirmation and paperwork for the other annuity shortly. I've updated my budget projections spreadsheet and concluded that the annuities are probably over-deducting for taxes, but I think I'll let it ride for now. This year is going to be completely weird for income taxes and I'd rather get a refund than have to pay. Next year I can fine tune things, and the year after that I should be able to predict fairly precisely.

Oh, and still waiting on Social Security to come through. I think on Friday I'll do another round of sitting on the phone to check in. (I check the website almost every day, on the chance that an approval will show up there before I get it in the mail.)

In the mean time, I'm continuing with an overstuffed calendar. Mon/Tues in Stockton to run medical errands for my dad. This morning recording an interview for the podcast, then working with the electrician who will be re-doing my electrical panel. In a couple hours I'll do a guest appearance by zoom for a college class that read one of my books. Tomorrow the electrician starts and completes the panel work, mostly while I'm out of the house for a combined bike ride and routine medical check-up. (I figure since they sent me a pre-work questionnaire about my exercise, I'll properly impress them if I show up in my bike togs all sweaty.) Online Wiscon is this weekend, then Monday the HVAC folks come to do my annual maintenance. And then I have nothing extra scheduled for a week and a half before the Nebula conference (which I'm attending virtually). June is pretty empty at this point, but the way things have been going, who knows?

conuly

The clowns running the FDA have proposed restricting access to covid vaccines, to people over 65 or who have certain medical conditions. There's a public docket for comments on the proposal.

Your Local Epidemiologist has a good post about the proposal, including that the people suggesting this know that nobody is going to do the placebo-controlled tests of new boosters they want to require.

Possible talking points include:

Families and caregivers wouldn't be eligible for the vaccine, even if they share a household, unlike the current UK recommendations.

Doctors, dentists, and other medical staff wouldn't be eligible either.

My own comment included that the reason I'd still be eligible for the vaccine is a lung problem caused by covid.

Seriously, this is just exhausting.

kaberett

... have I done the "oh no, why has my pen stopped working, did I break it :(" dance only to realise that in fact, no, THE PEN IS EMPTY. (Once because my first attempt at filling it was apparently fairly inept unless I have massively misjudged how much ink it lays down, which given that it's a Pelikan is not totally implausible, but would still be... surprising.)

On the upside I think I might have worked out why a different pen seems particularly prone to evaporation and drying out. I am not sure how fixable it is, but I do at least have a workaround! (I think the inner cap is a bit reluctant to settle into place; it shouldn't be, but wiggling the pen a bit once capped seems to be helping...)

(This is such a ridiculous hobby.)

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

sage

books
The Hidden Story of the Mahabharata: With Inner Meanings from Paramhansa Yogananda by Nayaswami Gyandev. A classic for a reason. The annotations are useful, too.

Sweet Obsession (Dark Olympus, #8) by Katee Robert. 3.5 stars. I love this series. Good m/m romance, though this wasn't the best of the series. Looking forward to the December release getting deeper into the A-plot.

not quite finished with: Breathing Mindfulness: Discovering the Riches at the Heart of the Buddhist Path by Sarah Shaw. A history of Theravada Buddhism in southeast Asia. The roots of where modern mindfulness meditation came from.

next up: the new Vivan Shaw Doctor Greta Helsing book!

healthcrap
I changed my night guard and have been living in a trigeminal neuralgia flare ever since (like living in a nonstop migraine). I found some more of the old type of guards in a cabinet, though, so hopefully tonight will be better. Also, rt shoulder is sore since stopping PT and getting myself to DO PT on my own is so very hard. Also not succeeding at doing any Pilates while feeling so crummy. Lucky to do my 33 minutes of yoga. :/

( dirt )

#resist
May 20 to 26: Walmart Boycott 2
June 1: Pride LGBTQ Protest
June 3 to 9: Target Boycott
June 14: Flag Day & No King's Day (Trump's Birthday) Protest
June 19: Juneteenth Protest
June 27: Stonewall Anniversary Protest
June 24 to 30: McDonald’s Boycott
July 4: Independence Day Boycott and Protest

I hope y'all are all doing well! <333

siria

Period, Full Stop
The Old Guard | Nile and Andy, Gen | ~1500 words | Thanks to

sheafrotherdon for betaing.

(Also on AO3)

( Nile and Andy talk about bleeding, and not dying. )

isis

What I recently finished watching:

S3 of Dark Winds, which GRRM (who is an executive producer of the show) makes a cameo in, hee. Also Jenna Elfman guest stars as an FBI investigator in from DC. This one goes hard on the "dark" part of the title, with some fairly gruesome crimes going on, as well as the emotional darkness from the fallout of the events of the previous season.

As usual I really enjoyed seeing my local landscapes, and the general Indian-country vibe of the show. (As I've mentioned before, I live not far from Navajo, though the local tribe is actually the Southern Ute; also, the college down the road is free for enrolled tribal members of any US tribe.) I was less a fan of how the season really consisted of very separate storylines, Bernie in the Border Patrol and Joe and Jim on the rez, however, the Navajo police investigation was well integrated with Joe's personal story, which made it all that more interesting. (Also here I have to admit that although I like Jim Chee as a character, I don't find him very attractive - a combination of Kiowa Gordon's chubby face and his truly dreadful 1970's costuming - so the romantic storyline was a little flat for me.)

However, damn do I love Bernie! However, her storyline confused me a bit, because it started out being about human trafficking but ended up being about drugs? But there was also a frightened Mexican family involved? Not sure what was going on there. I did figure out before the reveal who the bad guys and the complicit guys were (and heh, I bet the Republicans are none too pleased at the show painting the Border Patrol as a den of corruption) and wow, the ending of that bit was very kickass.

What I'm watching now:

S2 of Andor, which I only remember certain points from S1 so I was pretty confused during the first episode. Hopefully it will become clear(er) after the second episode, tonight.

redbird

thisfinecrew)

twistedchick

In which I consider some of the reasons that governments exist -- in the midst of a regime that ignores the purposes of government.

trobadora

It's been almost two months since I've posted here?!

That can't be right. But it is??

I mean, I have been in a complete slump for nearly three months now, and today is the first day in ages that I don't feel like a zombie, but still. How did that happen?!

It didn't and doesn't feel like I was away from here for that long at all!

But I guess that's because I've actually been commenting a lot - I've been on DW! I've been reading my flist, and replying to posts and comments! And I've been part of the 60-billion-comment club over at sid_guardian, aka the excellent Guardian discussions happening in the comments of the novel readalong posts, and china_shop's delightful drama polls, where we can't shut up about our fandom. *g*

What I haven't done in all that time is any real writing, other than the one exchange fic that went live last night. Just a bunch of alibi sentences and false starts. Pretty sure that made the zombie issue worse; I always feel worse when I'm not writing. But in addition to the slump, time and energy have both been at a low ebb.

So, uh, yeah. Two months! For reasons, but I'm glad to finally be breaking that streak.

In conclusion, hi, everyone! I hope to actually post more again now, and not fall into a slump again right away. (Fingers crossed!)

Coming soon (I HOPE): Guardian 520 Day Reverse Exchange reveals (preview: I wrote a fic! I got fantastic artwork for one of my fics! There's a delightful bounty of stuff in the collection that I need to sit down to properly enjoy and comment on!) and also other updates.

penaltywaltz posting in

wipbigbang

So it looks like, between the Tumblr and DW post, that extending the sign-ups would be something y'all want. So the sign-ups are now officially extended to **May 28th**! I'll still be posting the first check-in form tomorrow, and instead of staying open for one week it will stay open for two this round.

calimac

Two of these from my childhood happened to pop into mind almost simultaneously.

1. When my parents first played for me the original cast recording of 1776 (a musical they'd seen in the theater, and bought the record of partly because they knew I'd be interested in the history), I heard the opening song, "Sit Down, John," and turned to my mother in puzzlement and asked, "What does '40-S' mean?" Huh? "Well, he keeps singing that: FOR-ty ess, FOR-ty ess." It was "Vote yes: VOTE-uh yes, VOTE-uh yes."

2. I saw a singing group on tv billed as "Tony Orlando and Dawn." There were three of them: a man in the middle and a woman on either side. I figured that one woman was Toni (I hadn't seen the name written), the man was Orlando, and the other woman was Dawn. Realistic believable given names, right?

m_of_disguise

Baby was absolutely feral all day yesterday, probably because she was up at the crack of dawn. M said that she had eaten half a house worth of food, was running around like crazy, getting into everything, and was just totally wild all day. At around 6:30 she started to get really fussy, and after a diaper change she curled up on my lap and fell right to sleep. It was quite early compared to her normal bedtime, but her only nap had been from 8-11, so she'd been awake for a really long time for her.

She woke up after an hour or so of snoozing, ran around some more, ate some cheese, and then passed out again, this time for the night.

I ate a bowl of leftover pasta and immediately felt sick. -_- I spent the rest of the evening trying not to throw up. Really need to remember to pick up my anti-nausea medication today.

Told M my woes about trying to figure out what to do about meals. He very helpfully said "You'll figure it out." -_- Okay then. Sandwiches for dinner tonight. It's supposed to be in the 90s for the rest of the week, why am I even bothering?

For some reason, we are still able to watch Spectrum TV, even though our service was supposed to have ended on Monday. I called them up to make sure we didn't have a TV plan, and they said that we only had an internet plan. ~shrug~ Guess I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/05/21/more-farewells/

Pinch Hits (3 new)

Jaws ficlet

Daily Check In

Daily Check In (Tuesday, belated)

L&O season 2: Episode 10

My 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange fics (both Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan)

Almost there! Almost! (Retirement)

PSA, text taken from thisfinecrew

[stationery] ... twice so far this week...

Flower Ice Cream

What I'm Doing Wednesday

2504 / Fic - The Old Guard

wednesday media

proposed restrictions on covid vaccines

New Substack post

wait, what?

WIPBB Big Bang/Reverse Bang 2025 - Sign-Ups Extended For A Week!

things I didn't get

(no subject)

Faewell to the Ensemble Studio...

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May 2025

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