( 1. Hogfather - Terry Pratchett ) Pratchett at his best balances the comedy with really meaningful moments, and this is definitely one of those.

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( 2. The Book Eaters - Sunyi Dean ) Definitely not my jam.

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( 3. Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us - Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman ) Very light, sometimes questionable, but packed full of fun anecdotes (and a surprisingly good examination-in-passing of how scientific research works).

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( 4. Ocean - Colin Butfield and David Attenborough ) Not life-changing, but well worth a read.

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( 5. Common Goal, 6. Role Model, and 7. The Long Game - Rachel Reid ) I wasn't keen on CG, but I liked the other two a lot - and I'm looking forward to the seventh book coming out later this year! More Ilya and Shane: give it to me.

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( 8. The Fifth Form at St Dominic's - Talbot Baines Reed ) Worth a read! But it's not going to shoot up my list of favourite school stories.

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( 9. Time to Shine - Rachel Reid ) Not brilliant, but sweet.

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( 10. Identity - Nora Roberts ) Mostly you know what you're getting with Roberts! This was very heavy on the wealth porn, but despite all my mockery I did enjoy reading it.

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( 11. Persuasion - Jane Austen ) A delightful story as always.

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( 12. Strange Pictures - Uketsu ) Short, weird, and interestingly different.

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( 13. The Snow Tiger - Desmond Bagley ) This has aged much better than I expected; I was genuinely gripped.

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( 14. Swallowdale - Arthur Ransome ) These are just such good books.

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( 15. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - Marie Kondo ) Interesting to read the original after all the cultural osmosis, but actually I disagree with her quite a lot! I'm not sorry I read it, though.

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( 16. Sassinak - Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon ) I did still quite enjoy this, but it was a distinct let-down from my much-better remembered version!

I was reading this morning's edition of Dan Rather's Substack newsletter, where he was writing about the song "Stand By Me". (Apparently he writes about a song or musician every Sunday.)

Anyway, he mentioned that "Stand By Me" was "numbered among the Recording Industry Association of America’s 25 Songs of the Century." This naturally got me curious: A ranked list of things? That's like catnip to me!

So I went to look for it. Turns out that there's no such things as the RIAA "25 Songs of the Century." What there is is the "Song of the Century" list, produced by the RIAA in conjunction with the NEA and Scholastic Inc. It's a list of 365 songs. So where did Rather get this idea of "25 Songs of the Century"? Because "Stand by Me" is #25 on the list, and the Wikipedia entry for "Songs of the Century" only includes the top 25 songs on the list. Apparently Rather (or, more likely, one of his research assistants) looked at the Wikipedia entry, didn't read the text carefully, and based on the table of songs assumed that it was a list of 25 songs.

If you read the text carefully, not only do you get the correct number of songs. You also start to question the RIAA's methodology for creating the list. According to the entry, "[h]undreds of voters, who included elected officials, people from the music industry and from the media, teachers, and students" were asked to select the songs. These voters were selected by the RIAA (and one is forced to ask "how many students does the RIAA know?"), and of the 1300 voters selected, only 200 responded. Seems kind of sloppy and haphazard.

Then, if you read the list, you see that the voters were rather sloppy and haphazard in their definition of a song: #7 on the list is the entire album of West Side Story, which is not "a song." Altogether there are 18 albums on the list: 11 Broadway shows, 6 jazz albums, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Obviously I don't have a copy of the instructions that the RIAA sent to the voters, but I think we can all agree that (with the exception of Thick as a Brick and possibly a few others) an album is not a song.

Also, just as an aside, I think 2001 (when this survey was conducted) was a bit premature to be choosing the most impactful songs of the 20th century.

All that being said, I think any other such list would be just as subject to being haphazard and subjective, and on skimming over the list I do think it would be an enjoyable and/or interesting list to listen to. Plus, unless you were born on February 29, you can figure out what day of the year you were born on and then look at the complete list and see what song your birthday corresponds to. (Mine is "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.)

Maybe I could make a handwritten Chinese zine that I record myself reading aloud to a bunch of seeds.

This is gonna be my day. Or I'll take a nap. Still hard to say which way it will go.

Also I can't believe I haven't posted any pictures of Daphne in a year. I just spent an hour looking at photos, so I can't make up for it now short of sharing my entire library. But here's a particularly funny sequence from last spring, when her friends came to the back door looking for her.

( Daphne and friends )

Right now everything is covered in snow and ice, except the back patio, so that's nice. I still go out and sit in my rocking chair and look out over where the gardens will be in the spring, and admire the sparkly beauty of a frozen river.

Luckily the dogs love the frozen river, so now the play groups look more like this.

( Daphne and snow )

Title: in the darkness with you
Word count: 4,233
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Rating: Mature
Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc

Summary:

Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.

Reading: Last week I finished Stephanie Burgis' Wooing the Witch Queen (fun!) and read Heated Rivalry. I opted to just skip straight to the actual HR novel rather than first reading the Scott/Kip novel, which worked out fine, since I also had that context from the show. I enjoyed it a fair bit, but now I'm in the awkward position of wanting to see the next chunk for Shane and Ilya but no more urgently than after I finished watching season 1 of the show. The choices now are a) read the entire series (presumably doubling back to actually read book 1), b) skip ahead and read The Long Game, or c) hold off entirely and wait for season 2 of the show.

I also read a few more volumes each of Hikaru no Go and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but I'm still in rereading territory with both. (I think I've already read up to vol. 12 of Kurosagi, but for Hikaru, I think the odds are against me really realizing when I've hit new territory until I go to enter a volume in Goodreads and find it's not already on my Read list there.)

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Watching: scruloose and I are caught up on both The Pitt and Frieren, and we finished Midnight Mass last weekend (a very solid, intense ending).

With my crunch time at work starting, it's not an ideal time for us to start a show that's a significant time commitment or that's going to leave me desperate to see a next episode when work is eating most or all of my evenings. It's possible this will result in me just showing scruloose Heated Rivalry, since it's apparently our key cultural export of the decade and all. *g* Only six episodes and I don't have to worry about being impatient to see what happens next or about being spoiled.

(I still don't feel actively fannish about HR at all, but am enjoying being adjacent to it and seeing all the fannish excitement and meta and such. I have saved many fic recs to my read-later list on A03, but have yet to actually read a single one [and may never, given how slowly I go through fic--there's still a steady stream of Guardian fic I haven't read that also goes on that list].)

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Weathering/Working: We have what sounds like a significant nor'easter blizzard arriving at some point tomorrow, with heavy wet snow. Will this be where our luck fails for the season and we lose power for the first time? (I'm completely astonished that it hasn't happened yet. Probably it's not really because the generator and backup power are warding that off, like carrying an umbrella around...)

And of course the spring crunch is set to start tomorrow in the late afternoon, right around when the storm is likely to be in full swing. Will the weather have much impact? (Mainly, I guess, in terms of Those Who Speak all being able to make it there safely; I kinda hope that there's some kind of backup power in their actual building, but I don't know for sure one way or the other.)

candyheartsex author reveals have happened! And here's the fic I wrote for facethestrange:

**

Title: in the darkness with you
Word count: 4,233
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Rating: Mature
Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc
A/N: Many thanks to china_shop for beta-reading.

Summary:

Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.

candyheartsex had creator reveals, so here's another portion of fanworks. :D Weilan drawing and 2 fics, a Chuguo fic, and a (non-Candy-Hearts) Zhubai drabble. :)

Underneath by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Undressing, undergarments, Kneeling, Mild Sexual Content, no sex just touching and vibes, Black-Cloaked Envoy | Hei Pao Shi (Guardian), Long-Haired Shen Wei (Guardian), Fanart, Drawing
Summary: Zhao Yunlan discovers what's under the Envoy's robes.

meet me where the hours bend (I'll do it again) (524 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Episode: e008 Zhao Yunlan Fails at Impressing Shen Wei, Canon Compliant, Pining Shen Wei (Guardian), Caretaking, Hurt/Comfort, Stomach Ache, Sick Zhao Yunlan, Memories, Tenderness
Summary: Zhao Yunlan whimpers in his sleep, and Shen Wei doesn't do anything.

The Envoy and the Cat (549 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Da Qing & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Da Qing (Guardian), Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Ye Olde Haixing Era, Tree Climbing, friendly teasing, Da Qing Being a Cat in Human Form
Summary: "Really? Really, Damn Cat? You had to get the Black-Cloaked Envoy of all people to help you down from a tree?"

It Takes a Village (369 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng
Characters: Chu Shuzhi, Guo Changcheng, Xiaomi the Dog (Guardian), Special Investigation Division | SID Ensemble (Guardian)
Additional Tags: Fluff, Dogs, Domestic, Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Minor Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Team as Family
Summary: "Who will feed Xiaomi when we're away?" Guo Changcheng asks, and Chu Shuzhi blinks.

"Everyone?"

See Nothing (100 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, Chinese Actor RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Characters: Bai Yu (Actor), Zhu Yilong, Li Yan (Actor)
Additional Tags: Beard Burn, Innuendo, Silly, Light-Hearted, No Homophobia, POV Outsider, Drabble
Summary: "Hey, what happened to your chin?"

I took a day trip to NYC specifically to see the current cast of Hadestown— in particular, West End import Jack Wolfe as Orpheus and folk singer Allison Russell as Persephone— before the cast turnover in March, and it was absolutely worth the trip! I've loved Anais Mitchell's concept album for years and have actually seen the Broadway musical twice* before, although apparently it didn't stick, because I seem to have forgotten half of the songs...? Like, genuinely, I found myself thinking ...have I ever heard this song before? They can't have changed the musical since 2023, right? more than once. (The stage musical is substantially different from the concept album, both in terms of fleshing out the plot by adding new songs and in tweaking some of the original ones.)

In various assorted thoughts:
- Jack Wolfe was always going to be the best Orpheus I've seen, because the previous actor I saw was... not the strongest part of the show, but even without grading on a curve, he was in fact phenomenal, just absolutely perfect for the role. His Orpheus is so sweetly awkward and completely earnest it's no wonder that even street-smart, touch-shy Eurydice falls for his castle-in-the-sky promises of gold rings and wedding feasts and his plan to write a song that will bring the seasons— out of whack since Hades and Persephone fell out of love, all freezing winters and scorching summers, no spring or fall— back in tune, and he has the voice to pull it off: like, yep, this guy can in fact sing so beautifully it would make flowers bloom and the gods fall back in love, 100%, checks out. (I even forgive the musical for the lyric changes from Mitchell's original "Epic (Part I/II)", because the less flowery lyrics did in fact sound lovely when Wolfe sang them.) It perhaps made the ending even more devastating, because surely, if any Orpheus could make it out, this one... but no :(

- At least from the nosebleed seats, the actresses playing Eurydice (Morgan Dudley) and Persephone (Russell) looked strikingly alike, which added an interesting dynamic to both Persephone's and Hades' interactions with Eurydice— the parallels between Eurydice and Persephone, and between both couples, are written into the story itself, but I did find myself thinking, like, did this Eurydice catch Hades' eye because she looks like Persephone? Is Persephone's particular kindness to/sympathy for Eurydice because she sees her younger self, too? I think the fact that I'd particularly noticed their similarly braided hair, and how Eurydice's neutral-toned first-act costume and Persephone's colorful one (green dress, ocre-red highlights in her hair) felt like visual foils, made me look at Persephone's costume change into vintage widow's black when she returns to Hadestown for the winter with new eyes, too, especially the detail of her hair being hidden away in one of those fancy hair nets (snoods?).

- I really appreciated how this Hades (Paulo Szot) wasn't trying to copy Patrick Page's original performance, because I feel like the other actor I saw in the role was trying a little too hard to match Page's "sounds like the lowest key on a piano" vocal depth and it had mostly just sounded growly. This actor's voice has/he was going for more of a rich timbre(?) (I don't know music words) than sheer depth; I found out afterwards that he's an opera singer by training, which checks out. Actually, overall, I really appreciated how differently this cast played the same roles than the one I saw before— it felt like a really fresh take! (I would say that both versions of Eurydice and Persephone are a tie for me, I liked this Orpheus and Hades much better, and my favorite Hermes remains the understudy I saw in 2023.)

( Footnotes )

Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Rating: Explicit
Length: 59,047 words
Content Notes: Bullying and homophobia.
Creator Link: harriet_vane
Theme: Inept in Love, Pretend Couple, Friends to Lovers, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters

Summary: Will needs a date to his mom's wedding. Mike volunteers.


"I have an idea," says Mike.

Ice cubes form in Will's stomach. "How dangerous is it? Like, should I call Dustin to talk you down, or should I call Nancy to be ready to drive us to the hospital?"

"No," says Mike, "you can't tell anyone or it won't work."

"Or what won't work?" Will asks. It's like picking up a rock you know a spider will be under.

Mike gets up and closes Will's door. Hopper doesn't make them keep it open but sometimes Will does anyway, because every now and then lying around alone with Mike on his bed just makes his chest ache too much. If the door is open he can tell himself You can't do anything right now, someone will see.

Mike leans back against the door. His eyes are lit up with that special maniacal gleam that the Wheelers get right before they do something insane, like when Nancy says, "Then we have to go kill Vecna ourselves," or whatever. "Take me to the wedding," says Mike.

"Yeah," says Will slowly, "you'll be at the wedding. Obviously."

"As your date."

Reccer's Notes: They've fixed Hawkins' Upside Down problem (though this predates the final season), and it's the kids' senior year, and Will is worried his mom is worried about him, so Mike hatches a plan to be Will's (fake) date to Joyce and Hopper's wedding because of course he does. That means we've got Will pretending to pretend he's into Mike and Mike playing gay chicken against himself and...losing? winning? both?? Neither of them is doing a great job (or any job) communicating, but their fake relationship thrives and does what all the best fake relationships do, becomes real. A sweet friends-to-lovers romance with just the right amount of agonizing feelings.

Fanwork Link: Roll To Charm Person

There's a feeling, I hope, a unidentifiable but deeply uncomfortable burn, felt by white women, who don't know, but should know, how many private brown group chats are typing.

And as I don't want to take on a cringe middle-class racist white woman (at this point there's about five of them that I have at various times decided not to take on, all terribly right-on, right-thinking, probably-vegan feminist pro-Palestine queer white women), that is all I have to say about that.

Candy Hearts Exchange has been revealed, and I now know (well, I was already pretty sure) that sanguinity wrote my lovely gift fic There My Heart Forever Lies! It is a 16K (for a 300 word minimum exchange!) Flight of the Heron story that riffs off the musical Brigadoon, which I had never heard of before, where Ardroy is saved by being taken out of time. I especially appreciate that the story took time to develop Keith's relationship with Francis as a counterweight for his eventual choice.

As for me, I wrote the following for sanguinity (which of course she guessed)! We do keep getting paired up in exchanges, which is no wonder considering the rareness of the fandoms. I had fun writing Laurent being his usual earnest, passionate self, while also, well, rising to the occasion. Thanks as always to garonne for beta reading. <3

In Which Laurent Rises to the Occasion (4150 words) by Luzula
Fandom: The Wounded Name - D. K. Broster
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Laurent de Courtomer/Aymar de la Rocheterie, Aymar de la Rocheterie/Avoye de Villecresne
Characters: Laurent de Courtomer, Aymar de la Rocheterie, Avoye de Villecresne
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-Poly
Summary: Aymar despairs of clearing his name and leaves France, leaving only a letter behind.

I want to talk about the education privilege meme that's been doing the rounds. On the one hand I love old-school memes that encourage lots of cool people on my d-roll to talk about their experiences growing up. But at the same time, I'm kind of frowning at this particular iteration.

( thinky thoughts )

Anyway, hopefully this is an adequate substitute for the meme and you don't need me to tell you in detail how absurdly precocious I was in reading and maths.

Happy birthday, laura_anne!

candyheartsex has revealed authors!! Another delightful round. Because the minimum requirements are so small (300 words for fic) and there are usually several hundreds participants, I decide to go mega self-indulgent and ask only for my rare polyships, in tiny (K-9) and larger (Wind Breaker) fandoms. And therefore I was SUPER DELIGHTED to get, guess what?? A gift for one of my beloved rare polyships :D :D :D :D 💖💖💖 *happy sigh* A delight, truly.

pile of five by yesthisisnarumi | Wind Breaker | Sakura/Nirei/Suou/Kiryuu/Tsugeura | ~700 words | rated T

Summary: Akihiko wakes up in the middle of their bed and tries his best to find a way out.

Read it on AO3

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Meanwhile I wrote two things :D :D One for a beloved BNHA polyship, and the other for K-9... I was so glad to have an outlet for some of my feelings over the fact that OBORO CANONICALLY GETS A COLLAR lol. This is probably the FIRST EVER K-9 fanwork in an exchange, too? >:D Mwahahaha

hardly an abduction | Boku no Hero Academia | Miruko/Dabi/Hawks | ~800 words | rated T
Summary: Dabi is injured. Miruko and Hawks take a risk to help, hiding in an abandoned shelter in the mountains.
Read it on Dreamwidth or AO3.

tailor-made | K-9 | Ren/Oboro/Fujimaru/Kagari | ~400 words | rated M
Summary: Oboro pretends not to make a big deal out of it when Hidaka hands him a collar.
But it is.
Read it on Dreamwidth or AO3.

Surely it can't be that hard to write a few sentences about the day, right? Especially since all evidence suggests once I start I will continue. It's like speaking practice: I want to do it, and I'll definitely start tomorrow, when I will have more energy, be more awake, be smarter and more capable, and therefore do it better or at least give it the effort it deserves.

( putting it off )

( pet party )

( plant news )

Do you want to guess whether I've done anything for Record Producing Month? The odds are in your favor if you base your guess on historical trends. Also, beagoldfish ends this week, but I really felt like last week's Lego Reunion Dinner was my finale. What to do.

Maybe I could make a handwritten Chinese zine that I record myself reading aloud to a bunch of seeds. (This is a joke based on my strategies for motivating myself to do stuff I put off, in case that ended up being more obscure than I intended.)

Also, comments on the Plums xkcd are filled with great poetry.