Reading

(no subject)

Work yesterday left me incredibly frustrated. The ducks that are nibbling me to death have mutated to giant size and with razor-sharp beaks. Because I was so frustrated, I decided I needed to reread one of the most disturbing sets of Hannibal AU fics I've ever encountered: A Gifted Student and A Letter to My Abuser. They're gorgeously, awfully written. (If you decide to read them, pay close attention to the tags oh god pay close attention to them.)

A Letter to My Abuser is, in some ways, the harder read for me, because when I first read it I tried to figure out why I identified so hard with a side character; Ollie, so giddy to meet his literary idol, but forcibly warned/ran off by this AU version of Will Graham. When I read it last night, my brain went "ohhhhh, yeah, Neil Gaiman", and then I had to read some fluffy fic to scrub my brain.

I hope his victims get closure. And that they win the legal actions against him, because they deserve the money they're suing for.

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EDITED TO ADD: I used to subscribe to FKAHerSweetness' Ko-Fi, as she left Ao3 and only posted her fic behind a paywall. I eventually ended my subscription because as time went on, I didn't enjoy how she wrote Will. She writes AUs only, and more power to her, but they became something I didn't want to read.

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Sense8

I’ve been hearing things about Sense8 for years, nothing specific just, ‘Damn, that was good, wish it hadn’t been cancelled!’ And that last part actively put me off, because things that get cancelled so often end badly, or don't end at all. But I finally got around to watching it.

I was not expecting the most adorable gay couple ever and their beard-turned-live-in-yaoi-fangirl.

I was not expecting m/m/f polyamory.

I was not expecting great trans rep and Freema Agyeman being an utterly awesome lesbian.

I was definitely not expecting telepathic eight person orgies 👀😀

And on top of all that, it WAS good. The queer perspective of the Wachowskis combined with the story-telling power of J Michael Straczynski. I wonder what the show could have been if they’d been given the full five years for JMS to tell a story Babylon 5 style? As it is, it gets an ending, but you can tell how much the pace changes in the second half of season two especially, compared to the leisurely set-up and trickling out of information that came before.

There's some unfortunate copaganda, which I suspect would be different if the show was conceived now, but definitely worth it.

I'm like a diamond on the inside / just add the pressure

(Thank you FOB/Pete Wentz for always providing entertaining song lyrics.)

Everything is ugh. My back is having one of its stretches of hurting and feeling fragile, so my life involves lidocaine patches and dipping into the stash of muscle relaxers and heavy-duty pain meds. I've been having an upswing in different types of migraines, and I suspect the main culprits are weather and stress. All I want to do is sleep, and my mood can generally be described by that Charles Darwin quote of "I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything". With a large side of "meh". I really want a doctor to prescribe the historical treatment of going to the seaside for a week (with the appropriate servants to take care of me and bring me dainty treats while I sit with my feet in the ocean).

Today is particularly ugh, as we lost three writers yesterday and I need to cover their work while we hire new writers for those positions. (Yeah, read between the lines there and you can probably guess what happened.) Thankfully, I talked to my boss and asked how this would work with my current projects, and she told me that my number one priority right now is to focus on the writing/being a writer, and once those positions are backfilled, I'll go back to my Program Manager work. So at least I don't have to worry that I'm being held to two sets of different standards. But still, stressful.

Meh.

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One thing that's been entertaining me is going through my Tumblr archives - prompted by a post going around asking people how long they've been on Tumblr oh my god 2010 really?! - and finding a lot of fun content and a lot of pink & black eye candy. But I realized (a bit too late) that I shouldn't read my text posts from 2011, because that was the worst year of my life. Dear Powers That Be, that isn't an invitation to go "hold my beer!" and try to overshoot that. I don't need that.

Performing some traffic maintenance today

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

(no subject)

It's snowing. In March. Sure, why not.

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In screaming fangirl news, AMC announced the June 7th premier date for The Vampire Lestat, posted the opening credits to YouTube, and released the second single. I DON'T WANT TO WAIT I WANT ALL OF IT NOW.

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Speaking of vampires -- you know, one of my default states of being -- I have decided that a way to bring myself more joy is to lean into my pink and black aesthetic, with more of a vampire governess vibe. Because I've needed distraction recently, I made a Pinterest board. I may spend part of this weekend reworking my pink wide brimmed hat that has bat lace appliques on the underside of the brim and making a pink lace jabot.

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Even more vampires: I spent last night reading a fantastic AU Hannibal/True Blood fic, only to get to the last chapter that was a note from the author saying they would no longer be updating the story as they have left the Hannibal fandom. DAMMIT.

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Health stuff: I've been having bouts of stomach bloating and pain (mostly after I eat something) for no real reason I can identify, so I tried an experiment: for the past few days, I didn't have anything with cheese, and lo, everything was fine. Today I added cheese to the exact same thing I had for yesterday's lunch, and guess what? If I have become digestively sensitive to cheese, I want to punch a divine being in the face multiple times. Cheese my beloved, don't hurt me!

Entry tags:

questions

Question thread #149

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

(no subject)

Between yesterday and today, including medication-induced napping, I slept for over 13 hours. I guess that's what happens when I finally let myself rest on day six of a migraine. Yes, feel free to glare at me about being terrible at taking care of myself. I KNOW.

The ridiculous thing is I'm still tired. Like, if I logged off right now, zapped a buckwheat pillow to put on my face, and flopped on the couch, I'd be out for at least an hour.

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I'm no longer in the "ugh I hate everything everything is stupid especially me" state that I'd been in over the past few weeks. Well, I still feel like randomly crying, but I don't hate myself, so progress yay?

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Last night, the latest of Seanan McGuire's Incryptid series hit my Kindle, yaaaay! But I haven't started it yet because the book focuses on one of the characters --Sarah-- I don't care that much about. I prefer her as a supporting character, but also know I'm probably not going to get more books focused on Mary or Antimony for a while. (Also, anything about Sarah has a good chance of involving a giant spider, gaaaaaaah.)

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Thanks to my Tumblr dash over the past few weeks, I am kicking myself for selling off this mandragora pendant from Moon & Serpent. I technically could afford replacing it, but I'm saving my money for my big tattoo, as in commissioning the art and then getting it inked.

Still talking about that emotional support stuffed animal fb group

To be clear, I support people doing whatever they want with their plushies. 100%. But I feel it’s weird to put a muzzle on them, or have a tag with your name, phone number, and address attached to their harness. I get that’s it’s to help get them back if you lose them, but the data privacy part of my brain is backing away chanting NO NO NO.

An interesting discussion that’s happened in the group is about microchipping your support plushie. On the one hand, putting an Apple air tag in Clovis would soothe some of my ever-present mild anxiety when he travels with me. On the other hand, that would involve opening a seam and carefully sewing it closed and in NO WAY do I feel comfortable doing that.