Rules: put your music on shuffle, and make a poll with the first 5 songs that appear to let folks vote for whichever they like best!

I was tagged by gothyanki but I don't actually listen to playlists much these days, I either listen to specific albums/songs in a variety of ways, or the radio. Last time I did this meme I cobbled together a collection to randomise from, but this time I decided to just listen to the radio (specifically Double J) and write down the first five songs I like enough to theoretically listen to on purpose (though the only one I remember ever actually seeking out is "Weather With You" and then only because it was attached to other Crowded House songs I like more)



Crossposted to tumblr, which means it has to be radio buttons. NO NUANCE as they say on tumblr.

1. Today was mostly a catching up day at work, since I had not only the weekend but the three business trip days last week where I wasn't really spending that much time on my regular work. I am all caught up now, though!

2. I also got my reimbursements submitted for the trip. The hotel and flight were paid through the travel agent who arranged everything, so I don't need reimbursements for those, but there's uber trips and per diems, so I should get reimbursed for those next week.

3. We have a couple cardboard cat loungers that are in pretty bad shape, and rather than get more cardboard ones, Carla ordered some sissel ones and those arrived today. Spritzed them with catnip spray to get the babies interested and so far they seem to like them.

I would like to bulk up my store of recipes that travel and reheat well and are good for taking to other people, the "casserole for someone who's ill/grieving/up all night with a newborn" kind of thing. Casseroles and hearty soups are welcome, but also other kinds of one-dish meals that don't require much fiddling other than reheating.

In return, I can offer one of my own that fits this description:
White chicken chili

It was beautifully quiet today. The snow helped, of course, and the snow was the cause - people staying home, cars not getting driven, taxis not cruising for passengers. Helicopters and planes staying on the ground. It took me a while to realize I wasn't hearing the usual sounds. When the snow let up and people started driving again, I honestly felt resentful that the travel ban wasn't going on longer. It'd been a nice glimpse into a quieter New York City. I feel like that's how it always is. Just a glimpse of a better world.

Or at least, a moment to resettle so I can realize just how noisy the West Side Highway really is. I went down to the park to walk a bit in the afternoon, after the snow stopped, and I don't mind noise from kids that are shouting about how happy they are or what a good time they're having when they're sledding down a big hill, or noise from people talking about an inflatable toy's weight limit before sledding down the big hill themselves. Human voices. There were a couple of shrieks right near me for some reason, and of course a very loud barking dog that its owner insisted was friendly, and overall, just nice sounds of people.

I had my headband on and my hood up, and both those things helped muffle the world. The coat itself was warm enough that when I lay back in the snow, twice, I stayed comfortable enough to settle in for a little bit. Not many minutes, but enough time to measure on a stopwatch, easily.

There were several taped-off CAUTION areas around fallen trees and threatening branches, and I found it wonderful that people had already made a single-file path underneath one of the trees in between the branches - sticking as close to the path that the tree had fallen over as best they all could. Ducking down to get under and through. A little ways away there was a bower made from bushes bent over with snow that also provided something of a roof, and some parents took pictures of their kids hanging out in there and posing at the entrance. It made for a nice echo of both adults and children doing more or less the same thing, if on different scales. The intent of play was close enough to call it the same.

There were snow men, snow women, snow people, and snow animals. There were snow structures made from hand packing it and snow structures made from using plastic bins to mold sturdy bricks. There was a moment I saw the sky start to come out and felt a pang of disappointment because it meant the day was moving on from the storm. I'd fallen back into the snow already then, and made a point to do it a second time. If I'd been more careful with my legs not getting wet, I'd have lain there a while longer. But I knew the day was going, so I might as well go, too, so I wouldn't have to see it end.

There are days when what you need to see is a video of a starfish taking a walk on the beach. And in case you're concerned - the person who took the video put the stranded starfish in the water.

In which I’m ambivalent about several fandom-favorite shows. Oh boy!

Heated Rivalry. It was wild watching a hockey romance on my screen after writing ~350k of hockey romance fic. Literally on the tv I could see writers addressing and working within the same logistical constraints all us hockey RPFers do! And this is a show that knows hockey. From the very beginning with the joint ad shoot, I knew I was in good hands. Maybe my favorite nerdy moment of the whole show was towards the end where they’re discussing how to get Ilya on a different team, and Shane straight up starts laying out the salary cap considerations. In bed! Extremely hot of him!

I couldn’t help but think about how it must be even wilder to watch if you’re a closeted NHL player. Like damn. I was crying at the big climactic scene in ep 5, as a queer unathletic woman in her 40s; imagine what that must be like to someone who actually plays the sport and lives that environment every day. I think I saw something about a juniors player(?) coming out recently and citing the show as being part of his inspiration, and just, man.

So did I like it? Well, I enjoyed watching it and would watch it again (except probably not episode three; I feel for Scott but the whole romcom thing about murdered me, and I have negative interest in Kip). I love Ilya to little tiny pieces, and I think Connor Storrie did an incredible job with him. That “deadpan on the outside, dying on the inside” kind of character is catnip. The show also made me cry big fat tears twice, which basically never happens. I’m weak for musical cues, but actually crying over a movie or tv or book is extremely rare for me.

On the other hand, I think Shane is a much weaker character, with very little external to react to compared to Ilya’s family troubles. The entire core of Shane’s character is being anxious about things that mostly haven’t happened yet, which is difficult to build a narrative arc around. I also don’t think Hudson Williams is as strong an actor as Storrie, but it’s honestly hard to say when the material he’s working with is so much weaker. I feel like it's particularly rough because he's so clearly a Sidney Crosby expy, and Sid is so much more interesting a person than Shane is. If Shane had more Sid in him (the leadership in the room, the thoughtful and very proactive team caretaking, the weird random nerdy obsessions), I would like him a lot more.

Also, I’m sorry to say but I got bored of the sex after a while. 🙈 When it comes to live action sex scenes, less is more for me, I guess? I do appreciate, as I saw someone comment, that the show made it extremely clear what everyone’s dicks were doing at all times, even though we basically never see them.

Overall, a fun time! Not mad I saw it. Not sure it really needs a second season, when it feels like it already told the whole story, but I guess we’ll see.

--

Murderbot. I read the first book a while back and was unimpressed, but I thought a change in medium might address a lot of my issues with it, specifically a sense of worldbuilding and adding more depth to the characters, even if only by being played by real live people. And indeed, I do think the show was an improvement on that score. The live actors, the flashbacks, and the necessity of building sets all added a lot to make this feel like a real world that people live in.

To be honest, the real reason I wanted to watch the show was because I really like David Dastmalchian and because Gurathin was the most interesting character in the book after Murderbot, and I was extremely well fed on those counts. The expansion of Gurathin’s character added a lot to him, to the show, and especially to the relationship with Murderbot. Holy shit, it’s like they revamped him specifically as shipbait. ( spoiler cut for those that need it )

On the other hand, the show retains a lot of the weird tonal dissonance present in the book, and without the excuse of Murderbot as an unreliable narrator. I think Martha Wells probably has politics similar to mine, and I'm confident that her representation of the extremely queer, communal society of PreservationAux was meant to be a positive one, but what we see on screen often feels like it's making a joke at the team's expense. Ratthi and Arada are the worst, because they always feel like they're about fourteen years old, but everyone on the team frequently comes across as naïve, sheltered, and neither capable of nor interested in emotionally grappling with the reality of the world they live in. The way they are loudly protective of local fauna that has repeatedly tried to kill them or threatened their lives is a good example. They come across as parodies of people who hold their professed values, rather than serious examples of what those values might look like in practice.

The exception, for better and for worse, is Gurathin, an outsider who has joined their community only recently, barely buys into most of their practices, and notably is never the butt of the joke.

And like, I recognize that this is a relatively light-hearted show! Some of my very dearest tv shows and movies are ones that mix silliness with heart, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. I think I still haven't fully figured out why this rubs me the wrong way, when those don't.

All that didn't prevent me from enjoying it overall, though. I laughed a lot. I also thought Skarsgard did great. I've not liked him before, but tbf that was in Infinity Pool and The Northman, and it's possible I hated those in general and not because of him. Anyway, I think the more he gets to be a weird little (big) guy, the better he is, so he's great as Murderbot.

And unlike Heated Rivalry, this is clearly dying for a second season. I'm glad it's been renewed.

Previous poll review
In the Fourth walls poll, 68.2% of respondents said "the one-way glass that stops TPTB seeing fannish activity" is important to them; 65.9% said "the one that shields fandom from public/media attention", and 61.4% said "the wibbly-wobby physics-defying thing that means celebs and fans exist in separate universes that just happen to occupy the same space-time". About one in five respondents love ALL the walls.

In ticky-boxes, ballooooooooons and golden sparkles won 54.5% of the vote, coming second to hugs (77.3%), but the other tickies made pretty good showings too. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
I finished Courtney Milan's The Marquis Who Mustn't and enjoyed it very much. Such a kind, good-hearted series with a lovely sense of community and a spark of mischief. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Then I ploughed through one of my randomly selected library books, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman. I found this a delightful read and very moreish. It's voicey, with a distractable, occasionally omniscient 3rd POV scattered with pop culture references. I appreciated it's acceptance of introversion and valuing of alone time. Also, the main character has anxiety, and it didn't really try to fix her.

Andrew and I are still slowly listening to Barrayar by Bujold, read by Grover Gardner.

Kdramas
Juuust enough has happened in One Spring Night that I'm into it. I mean, it's still going around in circles, but I'm most of the way through episode 14, and I'm definitely going to finish. The story relies heavily on respectability, parental authority, and conservative attitudes for its conflict (the leading man is a single dad, OH NO!!), which took me a while to get my head around.

Other TV
Our journey through Middle Earth continues. We're on the second disc of extras for The Two Towers, and the actors seem a bit punchy in their interviews, lol. Other than that, just The Pitt. ♥ (My brother watched a few episodes of The Pitt and said it doesn't have a plot, and I... don't know how to answer that. There are mini-storylines with the patients. The capital-P plot, maybe? such as it is? has kicked in at episode whatever-we're-up-to. I feel like it totally works without a driving plot arc, because there are character/relationship arcs, and rising tension/pacing, and theme. Maybe that's all you need?)

I'm amused that I have three streaming service subscriptions and we're spending so much time watching DVDs.

Audio entertainment
More Better Offline, Tech Won't Save Us (the one about humanoid robots), Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Pod Save America, Cross Party Lines, Fansplaining.

Online life
From you I have been absent in the spring February, quite a lot. My reading page seems pretty quiet, and I'm still having trouble keeping up; open tabs proliferate (that's the middle line of a haiku).

Writing/making things
I'm subsisting on alibi sentences. My creativity is sitting on a bench somewhere, staring blankly into the sky.

I keep failing to post the meta about adverbs in speech tags because it's so prescriptive, and who am I to say anything?

Life/health/mental state things
I don't know what I'm doing with my life. The world (mostly as presented by the above podcasts) is freaking me out. Yesterday I made fifty chicken dumplings and talked to my brother in NY.

Good things
Dumplings. Creativity is a tide. Sunshine. Grapes. Library books. Black cat lying on the very edge of a sunbeam. Independent media and reporting.

I need to sit up, no slumping.

Still no contract.

I wonder if the HR manager has pushed back against the client group manager...

ETA 2 hours later: Apparently they are renewing me, but they're changing the payroll company they're paying me through, and I'm not sure what's going on with the rate, or how much longer the contract will go for.

--

Also, per my icon: you should do a search on "political" quilts at QuiltCon '26. There are a bunch of conservatives with their panties in a knot because "suddenly" the quilts are "political"...

--

We have two new chickens. Babies, 6 weeks old. We're keeping them inside for the moment, in a cage, mostly because the coop we'd put them in needs repair and I won't have proper time until Sunday (but am stealing lunchtimes and after work). We're also trying to get them used to cuddles.

squidgiepdx belongs to this comm, but he’s perpetually been some combination of sick and busy, so I’ve taken the liberty of helping him out.

He’s trying to track down a particular BTS shot from Stargate: Atlantis:

And now on to the SGA Picture part of the deal. So I wrote a quickie story for romancingmcshep about John Sheppard's ass (the fest goes until February 28th if you're interested!) and the whole story is based on a picture that NOBODY can find anymore. I KNOW! It's frustrating! Anyway, there's what I think is a "behind the scenes" shot of most likely S01E03 "Hide and Seek" or S01E05 "Suspicion" where it's focused on Joe Flanigan's butt. Like kinda blatantly. He's kneeling on the Gateroom floor over Rodney, I believe and you can see where his t-shirt is pulled up and the waistband of his BDUs are lower - showing some skin and some of his boxers. This is what I think the camera sees in that shot, as Sheppard is kneeling like that but I remember there being a whole lot more skin. Does anyone remember a BTS photo like this? SO FRUSTRATING that I can't find it when I know I've seen it a hundred times.

His post: https://squidgiepdx.dreamwidth.org/341626.html

⌈ Secret Post #6989 ⌋

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


01.


( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #998.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Well, that sure is 33 inches (84 cm) of snow out there, goodness gracious. (We beat the record from 1978! Wow.)

So far my power is fine, I have baked a loaf of bread and spent the day working my way through the manuscript for crit group tomorrow, which is another snow day. I don't think I've ever had two consecutive snow days?

The windows are completely blocked by snow, I tried to take a peek outside this morning and couldn't open the front door, it is still snowing. Hope everyone else in the path of this nor'easter is safe and warm!

ETA: Ducked out during a lull in the wind and threw some snowballs!

First I bring you two recs I shared on fancake, then notes on my recent rewatch, a complaint about taxonomy, some observations about the 1980s, three more recs, and finally a call for papers more recs.

We Better Make a Start (11087 words) by thefourthvine
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Characters: Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Himbo Steve Harrington, First Time, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Are Best Friends, Podfic Available

Summary: As soon as Eddie gets to the counter, Steve turns to him and says, "Back me up here. Kissing is no big deal, right?"

Steve Harrington is talking about kissing. Eddie's brain shorts out. "Uh," he says.

Bookmarker's Notes: Steve accompanies Robin to a gay bar where he discovers his skills with the ladies are transferable to guys. Robin and Eddie both have a crisis over it, though for different reasons. Very fun and very hot, with Steve at his himbo best.

Like a Virgin (26183 words) by mistresscurvy
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler, Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Characters: Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, Argyle (Stranger Things), Jim "Chief" Hopper, Joyce Byers
Additional Tags: Loss of Virginity, First Kiss, First Time, 80s teen sex comedy, will and mike are both 17 in this fic, Discussions of sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Coming Out

Summary: "Did it ever occur to any of you that I might not want to have my only sexual experiences be with someone who isn't actually interested in me?" Will asked.

He was met by three identical looks of confusion. "I mean, it would still be sex," Dustin said finally.

Bookmarker's Notes: Set after a season four where, yes, a lot of people died. But the kids are seventeen now, and Mike and Will are both virgins, which Mike is very concerned about: Cue the 80s teen sex comedy. Unlike much of that genre, though, this isn't gross or embarrassing, and everybody's having a good time. I adored Will here, kind of baffled by what Mike's gotten them into, yet excited about it too, and it's wonderful to see him stand up for himself, confident enough to be honest about who he is and what he wants. Plus it includes the entire crew, even Argyle.

So, in November, I started rewatching the first four seasons of Stranger Things in preparation for the fifth season. The first season is still so good; tightly plotted, every group working in their own genre until all three storylines converge. Second season: Not my favorite, for a number of reasons, but it does give us Max and for that I will forgive it. The third season is a mall-shaped masterpiece of nostalgia, even if a bunch of goofy kids infiltrating a secret Russian facility is harder to buy than the Upside Down. Fourth, all over the damn place, literally, and full of infodumps thrown together in order to explain the new retroactive continuity, but the Hawkins crew is absolutely solid.

And the fifth season? The first half felt like a different show than the second half, and the second half wasn't exactly made up of my favorite things. I loved the quarantine aspect—huge fan of a bottle episode—and I was proud of Will (and glad that he finally got something to do), and Robin and Steve running the radio station was perfect, but I wanted MORE TEAM FEELS. There was NOT ENOUGH FRIENDSHIP for me. And would it have killed the Duffers to make Will and El BFFs? Apparently so. It got real sloppy toward the end, too, losing interest in characters in peril (Erica! Mr. Clarke!) and not checking back in with them AT ALL. And that final boss battle was boring. Like Joyce wasn't even a little bit dirty at the end. But I still love the characters and the finale didn't destroy my love for the show, and in this era of television, that's not nothing. Watching all five seasons at once was a great decision and kept me happy for a month.

But when I finished the first part of S5, I desperately wanted more, immediately, and felt all out of sorts for like, a day, until I remembered fanfic. So I went to the Stranger Things tag on AO3, filtered by gen, and sorted by kudos, and I am only going to say this once but the people tagging their Steve/Eddie and Steve/Billy fics gen need to open a fucking window. Though not either of the authors I just recced, because, as you'll see, they didn't tag their explicit relationship fics "gen," and also those came from my bookmarks.

I read, or started to read, several of the things I found on the first few pages of hits, but kept getting that sinking feeling you get when you realize the fic you're reading was written by someone who doesn't remember the 80s—probably because they hadn't been born yet.

A selection of slides from my imaginary PowerPoint presentation on the 1980s:

• If you're making a joking reference to popular benzodiazepines, it's Valium, not Xanax.

• Private homes were more likely to have answering machines than voicemail, but even those wouldn't be common until the late 80s and early 90s.

• The telephone was the phone. No one called them landlines because there was just the one kind.

• VCRs were still new and very expensive ($500 to $1,000 or more)—so if you were worried about paying the bills you probably didn't have one—but if you did have one, you'd be more likely to rent movies from an independent (and often janky) shop than buy them, as movies on VHS were very very expensive (around $100) when they first hit the market.

• The only way you're renting a video from Blockbuster in 1985 is if you lived in Dallas, Texas.

I will permit Eddie saying, "My bad," however, because it's funny.

Bonus 1990s slide:

• If you were playing Mario Kart in 1996 it would have been on the Super Nintendo; there was no Mario Kart on the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.

I know it's crass to complain about free entertainment, but the cognitive dissonance is real. Many of these things could have been solved with the slightest bit of research, but, on the other hand, you don't know what you don't know, like working class people weren't routinely drinking bottled water in the 1980s, magic eye stereograms became ubiquitous in the 90s, not a decade before, and if you were at the hospital, that thermometer wasn't going in your ear.

And so I trudged on through my disappointing search results. I didn't want to exclude relationships (except for Steve/Billy which can get lost) because some of them are canon and, thus, could be considered gen, so there I was, wading through pages and pages of fic labeled gen that was decidedly not gen, when, in the midst of that relationshippy soup of search results, I found it. The fic I had been looking for. A fic that was just like the show, with a new big bad and EVERYBODY (from S2) in it, where the romantic relationships fit into the story without overwhelming it. Excellent voices. Very well written. And looooooooooong.

In A Strange Land (180411 words) by MrsEvadneCake
Chapters: 12/12
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Jonathan Byers & Steve Harrington & Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Past-Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler
Characters: Steve Harrington, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Eleven | Jane Hopper, Jim "Chief" Hopper, Joyce Byers, Scott Clarke, Sam Owens (Stranger Things), Billy Hargrove, The gang's all here.
Additional Tags: Action/Adventure, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, POV Multiple, Period-Typical Homophobia, 80's Music, Eldritch Abomination, Horror, Steve Harrington-centric, Pre-Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, So many horror references, Honestly Pretty Mediocre Babysitter Steve Harrington

Summary: Doom comes to Hawkins, Indiana. Population est. 30,000.

It's cold, that's all, and the breeze is kicking up. That's why Steve feels the chill go up his spine like someone dropped an ice-cube down his back.

"Why wouldn't I be real, El?"

"The Aboleth got you."

Highly recommended. With the small caveat that it seems to think winter break happens in February?

That fic was so satisfying I stopped digging through the gen tag and moved on to the relationship soup, but lord it's a jungle out there. I did manage to find these three excellent Mike/Will fics all by myself:

( Three post-canon Mike/Will fics )

But I saw some shit out there that I can't unsee. Some of the kids just aren't all right. So it's time to get out of the tags and ask for recs: If you have favorite plotty or tropey fics that focus on a pairing—that preferably still involve Hawkins and most of the cast and don't include the redemption of Billy Hargrove, but I'll read anything if it's good—I'd love to hear about it. And of course if there's excellent plotty genfic I've missed, I need to know about that immediately.

Title: Watching
Author: lucy_roman
Rating: Mature
Summary: Bodie is watching Doyle flirt with another man
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle
Word Count: 1,101

( Watching )

Title: Happy Family
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No Warnings Apply
Fandom: S.W.A.T.
Relationships: Donovan Rocker/Molly Hicks
Tags: Established Relationship, Fluff
Summary: Watching Donny with their daughter tells her that the twins will be loved by Donny just as much.
Word Count: 1,486

Title: Alone And Lonely
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jonathan Willaway.
Rating: PG
Setting: Beyond the Mountain.
Summary: Jonathan Willaway has never been particularly sociable, but being alone doesn’t suit him either.
Word Count: 300
Content Notes: Nada.
Written For: Challenge 501: Amnesty 83, using Challenge 30: Solitary.
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
A/N: Triple drabble.