https://blorbo.social/@azurelunatic/113365361076765740

Did a photo shoot today for the cover of the blank book. Is it the best? Who knows. But I like it.

...

So, pretty much the only place you see Palamades without Camilla is in the River bubble, where his only source of entertainment is the same 3 books. The one he talks about is "The Necromancer's Marriage Season", which is a crappy romance which I immediately discerned to be in the Regency-adjacent category.

Therefore, to distinguish the costume from any other grey-robed bespectacled wizard type in the absence of a Camilla, we need the book.

I have been collecting objects for a photoshoot for this book's cover for An While. I didn't put all the things in the box that I meant to put in, but I think I got a pretty decent picture all the same.

Previously: line up AM pills on the left side of the desk, PM pills on the right side, and Both pills in the middle (to be added to boxes after AM pills, and then put on the PM side). This requires extra clearing off of desk space to make sure they all fit. (Bottles that have already been loaded in go back into the "Come With Me If You Want to Live" drawer, either right-side-up if I don't need to do anything else, upside-down in the fabric organizer that the primary stack of filled boxes will go in if they need a refill soon, and upside-down in that place with a little plastic dot inside them if I ran out midway; a set of matching plastic dots mark the compartments where there aren't that pill.)

New procedure: AM pills go in the pink bins on-or-near the desk, PM pills go in the blue (teal) bins, and Both Times pills go in the white bins and migrate to Blue after they've been added to AM.

The colored plastic dots come from Microlet lancet tip protectors. (Used lancets go in my mini Sharps jar, which started life as a Costco Loratadine jar and then got a red paint job on the lid and bottom using some non-preferred nail polish, and a label saying SHARPS on the side, implying Please Don't Fill Above This Line. I dump it into the big sharps bin in the bathroom.)

This weekend featured some Bodily Fail, over which I am still Disgruntled and Apologetic. Fucking cancer. Fucking cancer treatments.


Book status: finished with The Curse of Chalion a day before the audiobook was going to get whisked back to the library, and into Paladin of Souls. (We will probably not do The Hallowed Hunt, and the next person to breathlessly suggest that we do any Sharing Knife gets The Cut Direct. However: Penric, my beloved.)

In other book news, I waxed enthusiastic about All The Warnings on Cyteen to alexseanchai, concluding "But it's great about Growing Up Autistic Under Surveillance" although modern understanding of neurotypes and Azi vs Cit psychology suggests that uh, starting a kid off via 100% Tape-based learning would Probably Not result in Autism. "Oh, they're not sensitive to their discussion, are you Florian" "No, sera" (paraphrase of Ari I and Florian I) hits Significantly Different in context of Autism "Speaks", those morally bankrupt allistic and about-us-without-us fuckers.


Relevant to The Locked Tomb, Target's Halloween shit is coming out, and they have a skull-topped decorative bottle, some blatantly 3rd House skulls that are bedazzled to fuck and back, and a "Finally, some peace and quiet" coffin shaped motto board with a skull that could be painted into a number of different House skulls.

Prologue: Vass wrote a thing and then I read it.

Log: I have been enjoying Hands of the Emperor! I have been enjoying fic for it! People who care about spoilers, please do not click, do not click any of this: there is a major identity spoiler inherent in the tags for basically every fic in this fandom. (Depending on reading order, confirmation of the concealed identity of a particular character happens either in the space whale book or in one of the books about characters who aren't Kip. This is front and center in this character's AO3 tag, vaguely equivalent to tagging every Dendarii-only Admiral Naismith fic "Miles Vorkosigan|Admiral Naismith", except no viewpoint character spends half of an entire book trying to figure out who the Little Admiral is when he's at home.)

Today I would like to discuss the Evil!Household.

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Evil!Household

This tag collects fics that posit: what if, instead of what happened in the backstory of the series, someone had gift-wrapped that delicious little secretary, and presented him to the Emperor? And further, what if the Emperor had done what comes naturally to Emperors, and hadn't given a second thought about the autonomy that all beings should enjoy?

( Orientation bits that don't come up until the book with the space whale on the cover. )

Would you like angst, torture-for-funsies-but-also-not, and consent issues? Would you like excessive powers used for bad but it looks like everyone is having fun? There's BDSM! There's total power ... exchange? It's not safe! It's not sane! Most of all, it's not consensual!

The "Temptation" series is about the Evil!Household ... functioning. As it were. The "Fallen Temptation" series is about after the Fall (pre-canon event told in flashbacks in canon, all the magic goes crashieboom) when there is a reckoning for the nonconsensual base of all the events of the previous series. There are also miscellaneous other stories around the edges.


Postscript: I would recommend this to everyone who looked at the Ari/Florian/Catlin relationship from Cyteen and went "hmmmmm" (in an enjoyment kind of way). For Ari I.

So Belovedest was in line behind someone whose leggings had skeleton hands on the back. Specifically, skeleton hands that were cupping/supporting the ass cheeks. They described the garment to me when they came back out. (Side note: Belovedest and I have somehow developed a hobby of noticing awesome clothes that people are wearing, mentioning them to each other, and then discussing them. It's great fun.)

After describing the leggings, they asked the important question: Who in the Locked Tomb series owns these pants?

The awful teenagers would have needed some time to mellow before being able to properly appreciate these pants, so they're out.

Coronabeth has the sense of humor to wear them, but the style she's been allowed to develop is shiny and maximalist, and I don't think anyone would give these to her.

No one would give these to Ianthe either, but she would wear them.

Judith would probably snicker. Marta could keep a straight face. Neither would wear them.

8th house. Hahaha no.

6th house. Cam could keep a straight face, Pal would snicker. Otherwise it probably falls into the same category as the shirt that Pyrrha was going to give Nona. (We haven't reached that point of the book yet.) So, a tick in the Ass Joke box on the wall.

5th house. Now we're getting somewhere. Magnus would get them for Abigail, as a joke. They would end up as shared pajamas.

9th. Gideon gets them for Harrow, because that's hilarious. Harrow is not a wasteful person, so she does not immediately light them on fire (plus, fire in a contained habitat: not funny). Ergo, Harrow has to wear them when she has worn literally every other scrap of clothing she owns and she is forced to do laundry. Which means going out in some kind of public. Wearing these. Oh, the agony. (Gideon thinks it's hilarious.)

I've been reading the audiobooks with Belovedest. They seem to be enjoying sharing the series with me; I'm certainly enjoying sharing the series with them.

So I'm shuffling around in my need-to-be-filed papers, and I come across the positivity exercises that I yote pretty forcefully from the CanPlan cancer planner binder. I start looking them over, starting with the "Messages to God" section, and yelling a bit.

As I narrate the Waiting Room Exercise, Steph speaks up. (1. Facts I know for sure. 2. Assumptions I'm making. 3. Things I can control. 4. Things out of my control that I can pray for.) "Since you mentioned Messages to God, I've been hearing this in Harrow's voice."

"'Dear God, I am your meanest petitioner,'" I say, attempting to channel Nonagesimus. "... Harrow's messages to God, as filtered through the narrator of book 2." I snickered. "'Dear God, I am a whiny little bitch...'"

New pairing of strong preference:

Camilla Hect/Palamedes Sextus

Pining!
Woe!
I like reading about them getting things they want with each other, but I don't reject out of hand the presence of Actual Dulcie.

I think this one may be joining MSR on the shelf of dynamics that could badly hurt me IRL but makes for excellent fic fodder. My brain has gone so far as saying it's got dynamics like a tragic Connie/Mike AU.

One of the reasons I didn't get to sleep near a reasonable hour was an epic AU with enough Cam/Pal to get tagged but the endgame was Harrow/Gideon/Corona/Cam. (Ianthe: still the worst.)


Canon-wise
( Mostly unrelated Nona )

Sex Pal!

Also https://alex-van-gore.tumblr.com/post/699208564487634944/you-leave-me-no-choice

http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/
http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Larissa%20%22Lardo%22%20Duan*s*Shitty%20Knight/works?commit=Sort+and+Filter&utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=1&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=kudos_count

( Read more... )

I got two lovely things:

Gift:

Ghosts in the Machine (1954 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Foreigner Series - C. J. Cherryh
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Bren Cameron
Summary:

Bren slips back and forth between memory, dream, and reality. (Set mainly between Foreigner and Invader.)

This is a ghostly, lyrical little piece about Bren's man'chi, caught between two worlds and multiple states of being.


Treat:

Piña Coladas in Margaritaville (100 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Escape (The Piña Colada Song) - Rupert Holmes (Song), Jurassic World (2015)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Drabble, yumadrin, Yuletide Treat, Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational
Summary:

Save the Piñas, save the world.

This fun drabble crosses over the Piña Colada song, Wasting Away in Margaritaville (so totally the same dude), and Jurassic World.



Assignment:
THEY LIKE IT! OTHER PEOPLE LIKE IT! I AM PLEASED!!!

Despite it having been timechange weekend, I had got to bed early, and then woke up disgustingly early, fully perky and ready to get things done. I had a leisurely morning where I did not feel obligated to do any of the things, just get dressed and pack. It was fortunate that I'd woken early, as all of my alarms were set to only go off when I'm at home, and be silent when I'm elsewhere (like at work, but also at hotel). I hauled my stuff downstairs, checked out, and then realized that the valet queue was ridiculous. I promptly found a chair, parked my bags, and joined lobbycon.

I got a chance to chat with Wendy; that was nice.

I saw ckd; the name on the badge didn't mean much to me, but the blue shark picture did. "Oh!" I said. I know that shark! You are a helpful person who I have known in passing for years! So that was nice. He passed along greetings on behalf of aedifica as well.

Having seen him sillydrunk and being a fucking perfect unicorn the night before, it was no surprise that Naamen was gloriously hung-over.

The next little circle over was having a fascinating conversation about Supernatural. I had thoughts and feelings. It was thus that I met geardrops and doriangrayscale.

For the record, my feelings about Supernatural season 5 episode 22 are as follows:
( JUST WHAT. )


I was recommended "I Feel Better", by Hot Chip, which is … a bit surreal. I think this was around when lunch arrived, because Carrie had fries, and they were very very hot. There was basically nothing vegan on the menu, which is unfortunate.

Seanan had been Out of Town, but made an appearance for Lobbycon, in all her mantis shrimp rainbow hair glory. It was very good to see her!

We got around to exchanging twitter handles, and mentioned our strategies for dealing with some of the low-content sorts of people who seem to exist to recycle the same five links every three hours on Twitter. I was abruptly reminded of something I'd seen during an [off-topic] discussion of home automation.

"They're -- tweeting like a lightbulb," I said in disgust, and then had to explain.

Emma and Cynthia came back through, and that was great. Topics included Janelle Monae (yay afrofuturist art) and so many books and shiny things. There is a tool that will let you know when bands you like are going to be local to you, but I am not sure where to find it. I need to check out http://www.elizabethwein.com/sunbird . I did not know that Ellen Kushner had written not just one but several Choose Your Own Adventure books: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Kushner#Choose_Your_Own_Adventure_books

At some point after the valet line had cleared out, I retrieved Vash to load most of the heavy things.

Shweta and husband re-appeared also, and I went fishing for mippos with my party cane. (I have a cane with a rainbow tie-dye scarf attached to the front, and I had added a little book of paper for the con.)

Eventually it came time for the wrap party. That included some review of what had gone well, and who needed to either be sat down with a sock in his mouth or shown the door.

So there was a panel (which I didn't wind up going to, but sounded very interesting if I'd actually been making it to any panels) about how Whitey Brings Civilization is a toxic meme in general, and maybe when we're writing we might not want to do that thing.

So Whitey McMansplain in the audience stood up and started talking, apparently. ( Read more... )

Eventually the wrap party too was wrapped. Wendy and some guy who also had some muscles carried some soda down for me, as I was willing to take some home, but was sort of limited in what I was willing to carry at once. We loaded it up into my car. The valet dude on duty observed that the car sort of felt like he was going to die when starting. This was a Known Problem.

I headed home, not being quite up for Dinner With People after such a delightfully social weekend. This is such a lovely fun con, and I'm planning to return next year.

I curled up in bed early (for me). Before I fell asleep, I remembered that Aahz had been wearing an "I Break Rule 6" button, so I googled the phrase to see if I could find out the backstory. The backstory is amazing: http://rule6.info/timecon.html

My unexpected early rising schedule would continue for some time yet.