ehyde | Reading

keep up fan_flashworks streak
finish current wishlist gift (quickly!) and write 3 or 4 more (so many tempting prompts!!)
finish two WIPs that are more than 4 months old, especially the Zhu Hong one)
Yuletide & treats?

Speaking of Yuletide, I think it's okay to post what you've nominated? I've nommed a handful of Kdramas: The Time of Fever, Unintentional Love Story[*], Good Manager, While You Were Sleeping, and Family by Choice (the dads).

[*] I'm never sure if it's okay to nom The Time of Fever and Unintentional Love Story? The pairing is the same for both. Ot1h, the shows have very different vibes, and ULS has different other characters as well. Otoh, you could reasonably write "ToF" fic set during ULS, or "ULS" fic informed by ToF... Mostly I nommed them both because I didn't know what other people in the (tiny, tiny) fandom might offer/request if they signed up, and I didn't want to mismatch if they only offered/requested one show or the other.
tl;dr: Umbrella fandoms solve a lot of problems! ;-p

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extrapenguin

So I'm (kinda) into sewing – wearables so far include one lined sleeveless A-line dress (made of velvet, because no-one told me velvet was a tough fabric lol) and one pair of pleated pants. I decided to make my own body blocks so I can draft my own things/alter crotch curves etc of other patterns to fit me. Today I decided to test out the bodice block.

expectation: I will have to do at least 1 round of alterations to get my bodice block to fit properly
reality: perfect block with optimal wearing ease on the first try????

So I now have a woven tank top made of a nice sky blue clearance bedsheet. I think I'll bind the armscyes, neckline, and bottom in bias binding and then have a wearable for next summer! I just need to buy a bunch of buttons for the closure (I'll put it in a side seam) and figure out a neckline. Currently, as befits a block, it's jewel, but I need to get it over my head so I'll need at least a keyhole and small button at the back...

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c_ent

Preview:

Here in my journal

Btw, has anyone watched The Journey of Legend yet? The summary sounds promising.

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rogueslayer452

I have recently watched two versions of Satan's School for Girls, the original 1973 one and the 2000 remake. I initially saw the 2000 version when it aired (because of Shannen Doherty and Julie Benz), however I only caught the tail end of it and never saw the movie in full. It took some time before finding it, and then I watched the 1973 version to compare. Both which were made-for-television movies, both were produced by Aaron Spelling, and both have their own strengths and weaknesses and unique takes on the story being told.

The premise is about a young woman who, after discovering the mysterious death of her sister and not being convinced it was a mere suicide, goes to investigate at her sister's university to discreetly find out the truth of what happened, and as soon as she arrives strange things start happening.

( The original 1973 version. )

( The 2000 remake. )

( My final thoughts, comparing and contrasting the two movies. )

I definitely don't want it to happen considering the current state of media we're in, but I cannot help but wonder what another modern remake of Satan's School for Girls would look like today, just conceptually.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: XG - GALA

nnozomi

So as you may have seen I spent some of my last post grumbling about the (emotional and practical) difficulties of starting to look for a publisher for my original thing (or rather, starting the Rube Goldberg process of finding an agent who... etc.). With helpful advice from qian and others, all much appreciated, I am trying to take some more concrete steps, but right now I'm stuck on finding comparative titles for my query letter. The thing is, a) I don't have access to all the books coming out in English (there are SOME in bookstores, and if I know what I want to read I can order it, but I can't just go down to the store or library and read everything that comes out) and b) I am a very fussy reader and I just don't read that widely among new books! I don't know what there is out there lately!

so please let me know if you have any ideas about books that partake of the following:
Essential:
-- published within the last three to five years (sigh)
-- SFF
Any of the below:
-- AU early 20th-century England or Europe
-- New magical system
-- Multiple protagonists who are friends but not lovers
-- M/M romance which is plot-relevant but not the main focus
-- M/M romance involving strangers/quasi-enemies to lovers
-- Male/female friendship between colleagues
-- Colleagues from wildly different backgrounds who share a passion for their work
-- Political machinations, preferably against a monarchy
-- Get-out-of-jail subplot

...that's all I can think of at the moment. Possibilities I have right now are Freya Marske's The Last Binding series and, although it's older than they're supposed to be, Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown. I want to say Emily Tesh's The Incandescent, because it chimes with my mind so well, but I can't actually think of any directly comparable points, oh dear.
(For the record, don't worry, I am not going to name a book in a query letter without having read it! I can get hold of promising possibilities if I need to, but I have to know what to look for first...).

renay posting in

ladybusiness

To begin, a complaint.

( if I can't be petty about my book collection, what CAN I be petty about?! )

I had a good time with The Shattering Peace. ( Read more... )

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sid_guardian

Just a reminder that

guardian_wishlist reveals are in two weeks, on 6 October (Reunion Festival).

If you've been meaning to take a look at the requests and make a little something or two, all wishlists are tagged for fandoms and media and open for receiving gifts. (Previous years' tags are labelled with their respective years, so check the plain fandom and media tags at the bottom for this year's wishlists.) Wishlist comments are screened.

Gifts must fit the requests and not include any DNWs. Prompts are optional. There are no minimums. Gifts must be unique to the recipient.

For posting guidelines, links to the Wishlist Spreadsheet and AO3 collection, and more information about the fest, please check the Rules/FAQ post.

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umadoshi

It's autumn! Or spring! Happy equinox!

And happy Rosh Hashanah to those celebrating! May the coming year be sweet.

It's not actually in honor of autumn's arrival, but we have a chicken marinating in the fridge for tonight's supper. ( food chat under the cut: very little more about the chicken, a bit about apples, and a bit about breakfast [read: banana bread] prep )

Current Mood: busy

halfcactus

I've been catching up on my journaling and updating my cnovel log and looking at everything, I'm beginning to suspect I don't actually like books. (Or movies.) 🤔

Personal cnovel + manhua log:

Recent/current reads:
公爵小姐不想被寵壞 The Daughter of Duke Doesn't Want to be Spoiled
Coming-of-age/slice-of-life comedy about the peerless beauty Yvette Winchworth, a sheltered duke's daughter with a lot of status privilege AND pretty privilege. The duke is, of course, Yvette's mom (screencap), who is sending Yvette off to stay with a mercenary group for two years while she (the duke) joins the political fray. The rest of the manhua is about Yvette adjusting to life outside her mansion and learning to fit in with the ML's motley crew.

This was a nice, light read. Yvette is super cute and she loves her mom so much she does everything to learn and be less of a burden. It gets a bit rushed in the end but I didn't mind because I wasn't interested in prolonging the storyline with Yvette’s dad or seeing the imperial power struggle plot lol. There's a (het) romance with the captain of the mercenary army, but Yvette cares most about her mom, her new friends/home, and the sheep. I enjoyed it a lot! Especially since it's only around 54 chapters total and has a clear destination.

The English translation is okay at first but gets progressively worse, to the point of feeling like MTL... Tapas and Manta appear to be using the same translation so there is no escape for me. >:(

她的山，她的海 Her Mountain, Her Sea by 扶華 Fu Hua
Loaded this up on my phone mostly bc I miss having something to read when I'm stuck in a bank queue. This is quite perfect for that! The reading difficulty is easy (it's a campus romance), the writing style is very clear, and the chapters are short. It's very easy to pick up and put down. Cons: there's a bullying storyline and I find bullying storylines much more annoying in novel form than in manhua or TV form. It's somewhat funny that that they deployed "and then they were roommates" as early as chapter one, though.

風之咒 The Wind Spell by Rrrrrrice
Plot as of chapter 1: Rosie is the deaf daughter of the last sea witch and a fisherman. She tries to supplement her father's income by selling oysters so he spends less time working and straining his bad leg, but one day he doesn't return. Rosie joins the search team and there, out in the deep dark ocean, she meets a siren.

Image

As Rosie leans over the ship, a feral mermaid with a long serpentine tail lurches up to hold her face.

This is such a struggle for me to read but the art is just so beautiful and sensual and it's fun, encountering all sorts of new words. I'm wondering if this comic is going to be three chapters, one for every spell that Rosie holds on to in memory of her mother. I'm personally on team "let the wind obliterate the village and its churches while Rosie and her loved ones live happily ever after". (The last public update was part 1 of chapter 3, posted Aug 31, but it's going to take me a while to get there.)

Current Music: Sabrina Carpenter - Nobody's Son

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sid_guardian

Likely the last set of works before

guardian_wishlist gifts are revealed. :) ~~But who knows.~~

All fics, 1x drama Weilan, 2x novel Weilan, 1x Zhubai. :)

Peaches and Hope (1989 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Ye Olde Haixing Era, Accidental Engagement, and intentional engagement too, Misunderstandings, Dixing Culture & Customs (Guardian), Lollipops, Kissing, Getting Together
Summary: "The sweet treat you gave me... What was it made of?"

Asking this simple question makes Shen Wei's heart race in a way that only the fiercest battles have ever managed to do before.

Not the Plan (1937 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan, Original Yao Characters
Additional Tags: Married Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Fluff and Smut, rated purely for smut, there's zero violence and no Crows get harmed, Porn with Feelings, Blow Jobs, Some Humor, Post-Canon
Summary: A couple of Crows with a nefarious plan are unlucky enough to interrupt the Soul-Executing Emissary's honeymoon.

At Last (970 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Drunk Sex, (but the consent is not particularly dubious because it's Weilan), Drunk Shen Wei (Guardian), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time, Grinding, Hand Jobs, Coming In Pants, Coming early, Rough Sex Turned Tender
Summary: Drunk Shen Wei finds a different way to slow things down, without throwing his entire self out of his body.

Love, Spilling Over (1672 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
Additional Tags: Tenderness, Established Relationship, set during the promo tour, Crying, Light Angst, Hopeful Ending, Soft, Guardian Bingo
Series: Part 12 of Guardian Bingo 2025
Summary: "Tell me about that life," he murmurs against Bai Yu's skin. "Not what we can or can't have. The life you want."

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umadoshi

Posted elsenet yesterday: Queen's Quality is the only manga I've worked on with a simulpub release (for the last few years of its run), and now I'm down to odds & ends and small corrections that need doing for its final compiled volume. Feels a bit strange, having properly said goodbye months ago when adapting the epilogue.

That's this weekend's work, which I'd hoped to get done sooner than this (due to the Dayjob crunch starting this week, not because I'm running late), but I don't have the translation for my next assignment yet anyway, so I guess it's worked out fine. I do hope I can get this done today, though. (And I wish I'd gotten that translation and could have started adapting it this weekend, given. >.<)

Queen's Quality is one of those series that switched publishers/titles partway through its run (very early, in this case), and there's always something a bit amusing about being like, "I'm working on vol. 25, which is the final volume. I've worked on this story for 27 of its 28 volumes." (Which is to say, in this case, that Queen's Quality was preceded by three volumes of an initial series called QQ Sweeper, and someone else adapted vol. 1 of that one.)

scruloose and I have been getting some household puttering done, which was desperately needed. We're both prone to letting piles of ~stuff~ slowly accumulate, and getting some of that beaten back before work swallows my life for however long is a relief. (Especially since that type of visual clutter is one of the sensory things that starts to bother me far too easily when I'm stressed. It starts to feel like I'm being loomed over.

scruloose also hung up a piece of wall shelving for displaying things in my office! I have no clear idea yet of what will wind up on it, as most small things that go on such a shelf are just sort of stashed around my office in bins or odd places. I'll have to dig through some drawers and see what surfaces.

(I see the usefulness of the "a place for everything, and everything in its place" concept, but am terribly unclear on how that actually works for most people in practice, given how many sorts of objects [that do in fact see use] don't really lend themselves to "this object resides here in the house". We're very much not minimalists, which doesn't help, but...yeah. Like what do you do with, say, a vacuum cleaner if you don't have some closet space that lends itself to being the vacuum's home?)

(A while ago my mother-in-law forwarded a couple of pics she'd come across of our place not long after we'd moved in, when we were unpacked and a bit settled. It's incredible how alien it looked--the original horrible paint colors, some furniture that's been LONG since replaced--but I think the biggest thing is the complete absence of anything cat-related.)