felinejumper | Reading

oursin

Happy birthday,

damnmagpie!

conuly

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

*******

Link

conuly

Watch on YouTube

conuly

Clicky!

Also, I meant to say re: the utilities that you are all the best and I absolutely love you :)

(Still need to call National Grid and still don't wanna.)

jjhunter

Let's take a breath for poetry. It is April, and as good a time as any for a collaborative poetry fest. Please find below a starting stanza or two of a brand new haikai (what's a haikai, you ask? Think extended haiku: alternating stanzas of 5-7-5 and 7-7). Comment with a following stanza to build on that seed. Someone (most likely me) will respond with another stanza, and so on and so forth throughout the day.
===

daffodil focus
bell song, valdrome, pheasant's eye
live stained glass glory

_

anghraine

Speaking of my coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb perspective on the various obligatory het romance plots in TOS, I’ve been really struck by how many seem dub-con at best. Maybe that’s partly because I’m finishing the third season and it’s especially pronounced there, and it’s also been particularly glaring with Spock in particular (the Kirk dubcon plots tend to be more viscerally horrifying, but he at least gets to consent sometimes).

Spock has a small fraction of the number of romantic (or "romantic") plots that Kirk does, and while I might be misremembering something in the many episodes I’ve seen—

1— “This Side of Paradise”

The premise of this "romance" is that Leila, the softly-lit blonde girl of the episode, was in love with Spock six years earlier, but his issues meant their love could never be, and he rejected any possibility of romance with her. It's not at all clear what past!Spock actually felt about the situation (Leila says "you couldn't give anything of yourself" and he wouldn't even put his arms around her), both because of his general manner when not under the effect of the sex/docility/spore cult pollen, and because her feelings are so much the main driver of both the backstory and the present events.

Early on, lead spore cultist Elias asks Leila if she’d like Spock to join their creepy community. She replies, “There is no choice, Elias. He will stay.” It doesn’t seem like she actually cares about what he’d choose in his right mind, just about using the sex pollen to railroad him into the life she wants with him. This doesn’t mean she was always like that (she herself has been exposed for a long time, though she doesn't change much when the spores lose their hold on her), but her disinterest in his consent to life with her makes this ostensibly sweet romance 100x creepier. Not helped by the sex pollen itself and her avoidance of explanations when Spock is still in his right mind and could decide for himself.

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Current Location: Washington
Current Music: West Coast (Lana del Rey)

sholio

As is my usual practice, my latest book as Lauren is available for download for my DW circle for the next week or so!

Download from Bookfunnel.

The download will be up until the book goes live on Amazon on May 2.

(Technically this is Shifter Agents #6, but it's a standalone that shouldn't require any context to read.)

oursin

So today was my physio let's see how you're doing assessment, at the different health centre -

- which I was in a bit of a swivet about getting to, because the obvious straightforward route is the longest, and there are shorter ones but these involve a tangle of residential streets -

- not to mention, whichever way you slice it, the road winds uphill all the way, yea, to the very end, because the health centre is bang opposite Parliament Hill.

Nonetheless, I found a route which seemed doable, which said 24 mins (and that was not actually starting from home base but from the road by the railway line), which I thought was possibly optimistic for an Old Duck such as myself, but mirabile dictu it was in fact just over 20 but under 25 minutes, win, eh?

And took me along streets I have seldom walked along since the 70s/80s when I was visiting them more frequently for Reasons.

Had a rather short but I hope useful meeting with the physio - some changes to existing exercises and a new one or two.

Thought I would get a bus back as I had had time to check out the nearby bus stops, and there was one coming along which according to the information at the stop was going in a useful direction.

Alas it was coming from the desired direction, but still, cut off a certain amount of homewards slog.

letzan

High-level stats for week of 2025-04-08 - 2025-04-14

Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 10029 (+176 from last week)

Works I classified F/F: 5766 (+236 from last week) (2599 new, 3167 continued)

0.66% of all 875663 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:

BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!! reaches a best-ever rank of 14 in its third week on the chart.
New RPG Zenless Zone Zero enters the chart for the first time this week. Hey Duggee also returns after a week away. These two replace Once Upon a Time (whose most recent run was 8 consecutive weeks), and The 100.
The Wicked Years Series celebrates 20 consecutive chart appearances (out of 40 total appearances).

( Full top-20 table and description of methodology after the jump )

oursin

Happy birthday,

mme_hardy and

polyamorous!

sholio

I will be going back to answer recent comments, but first, one more stray B5 thought with spoilers through 5x18.

( Tying up a loose end )

chestnut_pod

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Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: All Shall Be Still - Salt House

anghraine

In response to this post, yavieriel said:

I don't have particularly strong K/S feelings - TOS Shatner has Dad Vibes too strong for me to overcome - but this has been a delightful journey to watch you take.

I replied:

Interesting, I see that more easily from Nimoy than Shatner, but we all feel the Dad Vibes differently, lol. And thanks, haha—I went from "this is just part of the fabric of the universe of me, I'm not passionate but it just kind of IS to me" to "beating my head against the wall to avoid going insane" so fast it feels like whiplash!

yavieriel said:

Oh that is fascinating, Spock is entirely "hot but unapproachable college prof" to me. I can't even slightly imagine him drinking beer while grilling, or mowing the lawn in cheesy tshirts, or coaching t-ball. Whereas I feel like Kirk would be entirely comfortable with those things, and probably somewhat enthusiastic. My own dad's very stereotypical middle class cishet guy-ness is definitely somewhat performative, but it's not insincere, if that makes sense? Which also matches with Kirk's vibes for me.

I replied:

Ah, I see! My own dad is an extremely reserved and intense programmer from LA with zero interest in the various sportsballs and a great value for reason and debate (and board games that require some amount of tactical thinking), and we've always been conspicuously similar and close. Also Spock continually being on the receiving end of microaggressions is pretty true to the ways my dad has been targeted (as a multiracial Mexican-American man), so Nimoy's Spock feels all the more familiar. That said, I think partly the show sexualizes Kirk so much that I personally find it hard to see him as exactly paternal despite the strong Father To His Crew vibes. But I can see that as a way to read, for instance, Uhura saying she finds it soothing to listen to his voice through the intercom when she's nervous—it could be seen as a shippy thing, but obviously isn't intended that way.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Hit Me With Your Best Shot (Pat Benatar)

jjhunter

Let's take a breath for poetry. It is April, and as good a time as any for a collaborative poetry fest. Please find below a starting stanza or two of a brand new haikai (what's a haikai, you ask? Think extended haiku: alternating stanzas of 5-7-5 and 7-7). Comment with a following stanza to build on that seed. Someone (most likely me) will respond with another stanza, and so on and so forth throughout the day.
===

even single cells
know the daytime sync and sleep
for wake tomorrow

_

anghraine

So the great chronological-by-airdate TOS watch with my housemates is nearing its end and I’m genuinely kind of sad about it, in much the same way that I was happy but kind of sad about my D&D campaign resolving.

I will say, though, that I’ve been trying not to be One of Those People but I truly hadn’t realized before this TOS household re-watch that Kirk/Spock on the original show was at this level. I didn’t clearly remember the little bits I saw as a kid (I was far more into TNG and Captain Picard as a tiny Anghraine) and so I thought it would be more like the standard action-adventure male friendships that inspire big slash ships, and not god-tier “these guys are truly unhinged about each other.”

I’d seen the various Spock/whomever shippers duking it out among themselves, but from a distance, and just vaguely felt that none of the ship warriors were covering themselves in glory. I hadn’t realized that—I’m sorry, I know I’m becoming the villain here, but I had no idea I’d end up feeling like every Spock ship in TOS vs Kirk/Spock is 100% coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb.

Tagged: #fine. the k/s girlies of yesteryear were entirely justified and spock especially has powerfully relatable closeted gay energy #(kirk does not. kirk's energy is powerfully bisexual)

ETA 4/21/2025: Somewhat relatedly, I was actually looking at how the characters' share of overall dialogue breaks down statistically between TOS and TNG. It turns out that, proportionally speaking, you'd have to combine the line shares of Picard, Data, Riker, and Geordi to reach the share of overall dialogue that Kirk and Spock have in TOS (~73% of all TOS dialogue). And this isn't only because Kirk gets so much of the dialogue (he does get a ton of it, though his share drops sharply over the course of the show; IMO he also gets the bulk of the bad dialogue in the later show, despite some great S3 scenes—he's not carrying so much of the show's bad writing earlier on). But the only TNG character who has a higher proportion of overall dialogue than Spock does in TOS is Picard, and only a few percent more at ~31%. Meanwhile, in TOS, there's a steep drop from Spock's share of lines/screen time to McCoy, who has only 13% of the show's dialogue; the line shares only get slighter from there. Meanwhile, Data and Riker both have slightly higher shares of overall dialogue than McCoy, and Geordi comes pretty close to his share as well. TOS gives a lot of centrality to Kirk and Spock compared to even other ST shows.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Danger Zone (Kenny Loggins)

anghraine

Femslash Spirk scrap for today (at a point around the end of “The Conscience of the King”):

“I will admit,” said S’paak, “that I do not find the governor’s presumed fate a particularly grievous one, captain. I see no reason that skill at performance should exempt anyone from justice, much less someone guilty of Kodos’s crimes.”

Captain Kirk’s lips curved into an unconvincing approximation of her typical expression. “His skill at performance wasn’t the difficulty, unfortunately.”

S'paak could not help but wonder what Kirk would have done if events had not taken the matter out of her hands. Dr. McCoy could talk with Karidian’s own theatricality about blood and severed heads and vengeance, but Kirk had been cautious to the point of near folly. True, the Jessica Kirk of Tarsus IV had been a girl of thirteen, and the uncertainty of human memory made caution understandable. But the weight of evidence was so clear.

Even so, Kirk—a woman more prone to leveraging emotion than hiding its existence—had not fully succeeded in concealing her true thoughts. At least, not from S’paak. Kirk had gone from uncertain and reluctant to grim, fearless, admirably unfaltering. S’paak guessed that, in the end, Kirk would not have hesitated to personally consign Kodos to the fate he deserved had circumstances allowed for it. That was not an irrational vendetta, however bitter, but deserved and necessary.

“Those difficulties are past,” said S’paak, “thanks to you, with respect to both him and his daughter.”

“Not me alone. But thank you, I think,” said Kirk. She turned slightly away, though not before S’paak observed the uneven inhalation of her next breath, the quick, repeated flicker of her lashes. “Riley deserves more of your sympathy, though. He’s younger than me, lost more, and I ... I’ve always needed challenges to struggle against. Something to overcome.”

“I see no logical reason for starvation to be among those challenges,” said S’paak flatly, “nor the massacre of civilians, least of all when they are sent to death on no pretext except baseless pseudoscience.”

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Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Goin' Back (Freddie Mercury)

conuly

and applied for a shitton of jobs. The worst they can do is call me a dipshit, and they probably wouldn't do that to my face. I think? Seems like a waste of time to call somebody up and say "You're terrible, how could you think we'd consider you?"

*****************

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rachelmanija

In this YA novel published in 1990, six fourteen-year-olds face their inner dragons while they're in an accelerated academic program which includes a class on Beowulf.

I read this when it first came out, so when I saw a copy at a library book sale, I grabbed it to re-read. It largely holds up, though I'd completely forgotten the main plot and only recalled the theme and the subplot.

My recollection of the book was that the six teenagers are inspired by class discussions on Beowulf to face their personal fears. This is correct. I also recalled that one of the girls was a gymnast with an eating disorder and one of the boys was an athlete partially paralyzed in an accident, and those two bonded over their love of sports and current conflicted/damaging relationship to sports and their bodies, and ended up dating. This is also correct.

What I'd completely forgotten was the main plot, which was about the narrator, Eric, who idolized his best friend, Paul, and had an idealized crush on one of the girls in the class, who he was correctly convinced had a crush on Paul, and incorrectly convinced Paul was mutually attracted to. Paul, who is charming and outgoing, convinces Eric, who is shy, to do a speech class with him, where Eric surprisingly excels. The main plot is about the Eric/Paul relationship, how Eric's jealousy nearly wrecks it, and how the boys both end up facing their dragons and fixing their friendship.

Paul's dragon is that he's secretly gay. The speech teacher takes a dislike to him, promotes Eric to the debate team when Paul deserves it more (and tells Eric this in private), and finally tries to destroy Paul in front of the whole class by accusing him of being gay! Eric defends Paul, Paul confesses his secret to him, and the boys repair their friendship.

While a bit dated/historical, especially in terms of both boys knowing literally nothing about what being gay actually means in terms of living your life, it's a very nicely done novel with lots of good character sketches. The teachers are all real characters, as are the six kids - all of whom have their own journeys. The crush object, for instance, is a pretty rich girl who's been crammed into a narrow box of traditional femininity, and her journey is to destroy the idealized image that Eric is in love with and her parents have imposed on her - and part of Eric's journey is to accept the role of being her supportive friend who helps her do it.

I was surprised and pleased to discover that this and other Sweeney books are currently available as ebooks. I will check some out.

tobermoriansass

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oursin

But this did sound awfully like that spate of books where people had A Bright Idea to Do Something for A Year and got a book out of it, which was clearly the intention, and this struck my cynical ayfeist self as 'My Spiritual Pilgrimage to a Mystical Experience, Conversion, Faith, and Publishing Deal'.

Could I become a Christian in a year?

(How long did it take St Augustine? asking for a friend.)

For my perpetual Christian road-trip – beginning in the last months of 2022 and ending in early 2024 – I purchased a 21 year-old Toyota Corolla and stocked the glove box with second-hand CDs. I filled up my calendar with Christian retreats, church visits and stays in the houses of Christian strangers all across the highways and byways of the UK – Cornwall, Sussex, Kent, Hertfordshire, Birmingham, north Wales, Norfolk, Sheffield, Halifax, Durham, the Inner Hebrides – seeking out every kind of Christian, from Catholics to Orthodox Christians: Quakers, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, high to low Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, self-professed mystics, focusing on my generation specifically, those in their 20s and 30s, the youngest set of adults in Britain.

70s flashback!!! Only in those days it was people working their way through the various offerings of the 'Growth' aka 'Human Potential' Movement that was flourishing then and I'm pretty sure that people wrote up their memoirs of their odysseys through the various practices/groups/cults on offer.

I was also, in the light of this article today, intrigued that it was two bloke friends who set her on this path: I’m delighted to see gen Z men in the UK flocking back to church – I just hope it’s for the right reasons. So am I. I have a friend who has been involved in the much-delayed and still unsatisfactory response of the C of E to certain abuse cases and some of those seem to have been connected with cultish manifestations which were praised for bringing in that particular demographic.

(And having noted the other day that Witchfinder Hopkins was pretty much in that demographic of young men aged 18-24, I'd really like to know where these Gen Z converts are in relation to issues like ordination of women, LGCBTQ+ inclusivity, etc etc.)

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compersion & limerence

Reading

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Black Cherries by W. S. Merwin

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There is a friending meme ongoing

Haikai Fest: "'The World's Most Popular Spring Flower'"

Tumblr crosspost (29 January 2025)

Red Boar's Baby

Physio reprised

Femslash week in review: 2025-04-08 - 2025-04-14

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Another thought about B5 5x18

Books, at last

Tumblr crosspost (29 January 2025)

Haikai Fest: "Circadian Cueing"

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Tumblr crosspost (25 January 2025)

I did the second most terrifying thing

Face the Dragon, by Joyce Sweeney

The problem of incest, daddy issues & Maeglin

Maybe I'm being unduly cynical

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February 2021

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