where do i go

One of these years, I'll actually have my shit together at the time assignments go out to have this actually ready.

Thank you so, so much for participating in Yuletide this year, and for unwittingly signing up to deal with my tired, forgetful self.

~~~

Alpha & Omega — Leah Cornick

Ah, Leah. What a fantastic bitch of a woman. Truly loved the focus on her and her backstory this time around the ol' book train, and would appreciate some more of that, please and thanks. Have fun. Be mean.

Some thought noodles:

• She and Bran are...strained, at best. Be tense.
• Leah, on an icily competent visit to Wal-Mart
• Show the gap between utter disaster and Bran finding her.

Luminous Dead — Gyre Price, Em Arasgain

Have you ever been anxious and afraid? Because that was this whole reading experience for me, plus a healthy dose of remembering why I hate being underground. Em and Gyre's relationship is assn at such a distance, under such a huge strain. I'd love to see the evolution/future of this partnership, or the aftermath of nearly going banonkers in a murder cave.

Some brain noodles:

• They cave again. It's better this time. Slightly.
• Em is, like, the Minotaur at the center of the (cave) maze, and Gyre is Theseus. Neither realize it.
• The horta is involved. Somehow.
• They meet somewhere entirely mundane. The lights are fully on. It's still ominous.

Murderbot — Murderbot, Worldbuilding

Idk man, just talk about some robot feelings.

Some brain noodles:

• Get academic with it, talk about what defines consciousness and who gets to decide those parameters.
• Write the 50¢ Bantam paperback novelization of literally any space soap.
• Go into detail about what, exactly, made all those artifacts they're so squirrelly about digging up.

Nailed It! — Nicole Byer, Jacques Torres, Wes

This stupid little Netflix program is, quite literally, one of the few things that brought me pure, uncomplicated glee in this, the year 2 P.T. (Pandemic Time). Please, be as silly with this as you can personally stomach.

Some brain noodles:

• Gingerbread mansions. Glue is used. It is not supposed to be.
• Baked Alaska, but in Jell-O. It's still binworthy.
• Turducken, but cake. They all fit together, but they all come apart.

Persuasion — Anne Elliot, Frederick Wentworth

Sometimes, okay, you just want to pine after someone. Think about the gaps they left, the things you want to tell them, the warmth you're missing. Like grief, but self-made.

Some brain noodles:

• Anne is a lumberjack. This is as far as I got before shorting out.
• Wentworth is a ghost haunting Kellynch. Anne leaves. The house mourns.
• Something maudlin about selkies and being lost to the sea.

Rivers of London — Beverley Brook, Peter Grant, Thomas Nightingale

Love a trio. Fond of a bit of weird, a smidge of mystery, a spot of grim determination to keep going when all else is lost. Would love to see these three lean on and support each other, maybe investigate some oddities, eat a plate of chips, make out, whatever.

Some brain noodles:

• Nightingale is a nightclub singer. Bev owns the place. Peter stumbles in one night, drawn by the sweetly piercing trumpet and caught by two sets of eyes.
• Bev & Peter are thieves. Nightingale encounters them (curator? guard? owner? investigator?). Stuff.
• Just some weirdness. Bev makes pastries that act like Sophie's hats. Peter designs buildings that echo with silent jazz. Nightingale is haunted by the remnants of war and the unfinished business of the Folly's dead.

my girl's got about three hours left, and i think she knows it.

how can she not: she's had chips today--tostitos with a hint of lime--and all the popcorn i could responsibly throw at her. there's blues on the radio, harmonica wailing in the back of all our minds for the first time since he died, and we're all surrounding her, petting her, telling her she's a good lady, the best baby, our missy miss.

it's a deathbed visitation, a living wake, and still, when i forget about the utter failings of the back half of her body and the events of the last six months, it seems like just a normal afternoon. i'm laying down on the couch, she's on the floor beside me, and sometime, just after 4.30, he'll walk in through the door, work bag in hand.

death is a funny thing. even when you expect it, when the weight of it thumps at your back for near on four years, it has a habit of refusing to follow expected paths.

which is to say: i'm tired of it.

Dear white people,

Hi, I'm one of you. A bazillion generations of people who are concerningly pale mixed with a few who "just tan really dark" (read: like dry coffee stains on a napkin) boiled down into one white idiot with a computer. That's you, too, right? Cool, we've established some common ground.

So maybe, for once, you'll listen.

In moments like these—a phrase that should be unique, individual, calling to mind a single clear instance, an undeniable point of reference. Instead, it could refer to any of a hundred instances, any of a hundred crimes, any of a hundred summers that started not with a burst of joy but a flare of ever-simmering outrage.

In moments like these, it is important to remember the irrelevance of being all-inclusive in a verbal sense, of making sure that your semantics are precisely right, and, most importantly, of assuming that words and statements necessarily have an opposite.

That's right, I'm talking to you, #AllLivesMatter hashtagger, and you, #BlueLivesMatter Facebook group.

The point, the very essence, the goddamn undeniable reason for #BlackLivesMatter being the rallying cry of a movement is because apparently, that fact is not universally understood, that truth is not recognized by the system supposedly designed to uphold it, that reality does not match the one lived by Black people in America.

When was the last time you heard of a white man being choked to death by police? When was the last time you heard of police breaking into an apartment unannounced and shooting a white woman to death? When was the last time you heard of a white person running through a neighborhood getting shot by people who believed they might be a thief?

The answer to that is: never.

The reason for that is that—unlike George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, who were all Black Americans—white people are not systemically oppressed, stigmatized, ostracized, and brutalized by the society they live in.

Instead, white people—comfortable with this fact or not—built, maintain, reinforce, benefit from and contribute to a system of governance and policing that is designed to discriminate against people of color, most specifically and egregiously against Black people. The reason your hashtags are unhelpful and borderline disrespectful—along with other less polite descriptors—is that they take the realities of Black lives, of Black experiences in this country, hold them next to the struggles of white people, of non-Black women, of law enforcement employees, of any other of a host of options, and have the audacity to call them equal.

You can believe that all lives matter equally, sure. But that's not relevant right now. What's relevant is that Black lives are in danger, Black lives are being treated as disposable, Black lives aren't getting the respect and dignity that they deserve.

So save the sentiment for later. Much later. Learn how to say it in a way that isn't a knee-jerk reaction invalidating a cry for recognition and justice from a marginalized community because, just once, you feel like you weren't being represented. Despite the current configuration of our society, not everything is about you, and it's time we, as white people, shut up and did something about it.

Start with letting them speak, continue with raising them up and supporting then, finish by helping them dismantle the system that put us here in the first place.

Sincerely,

Someone who is tired

I watched--in the loosest sense of the term, it was by no means in one straight sitting--Star Trek's "The Menagerie" last night. Maybe the better word is "finished".

I finished "The Menagerie" last night. It's one of those that seems oddly fitting, if edging slightly into horror. A race of telepaths who can create illusory lives for themselves and any in their sphere of influence, and a man paralyzed, his mind trapped in a body that no longer responds to him. The reality is daunting, the illusion is disconcerting, and the episode itself condemns neither. It simply points out that the one thing that all humans have in common, the thing that makes them unsuitable for the Talosian's titular menagerie, is an ingrained dislike of being imprisoned, a need to be free, an inability to quietly sit in a cage. The fact that Christopher Pike is sitting right there, his body having become that prison for his mind is almost incidental.

Okay okay oKAY so I am the wOrsT & irl life is /stares blankly into the void of capitalism/

Bless you for putting up with my /waves hands/, and hopefully this helps give you some direction as to What To Do.

( JINGLE JANGLE )

I present to you (very late, don't let the timestamp fool you) a list of the things from this year's Yuletide Collection that I particularly enjoyed. It ranges from lit fandom, to RPF, to tragically cancelled TV shows that aired on FOX in the US, but they all share the fact that they were /chef's kiss/.

( take a seat )

Hello, & thank you very much for signing up for this year's exchange. Feel free to read (or not read) this at your own will (it's basically just a condensed version of the prompts on AO3), the few absolute hard no thank you's are already in the Optional Details section of the prompt you received.

If you're interested, you can find other exchange letters in the General and Sundry tag, though I must apologize for the sheer amount of recycling I've fallen into. I'm going to try to be Eloquent & Helpful in re Ideas & Feels, but a great deal of this does just boil down to Gosh, I Like This A Lot, Please Sir, May I Have Another.

( yodel-ay potato latkes )

Hello, & thank you very much for signing up for this year's exchange. Feel free to read (or not read) this at your own will, the few absolute hard no thank you's are already in the Optional Details section of the prompt you received, so this is just a heavy dose of Even More Facts, in case you're interested.

NOTE 07/07: I am very slowly adding to this, my apologies for my Snail-like Speed
ETA 07/10: I'm almost there, o patient & kind author, bear with!
ETA 07/12: FINISHED, HAVE AT THEE!

If you're interested, you can find other exchange letters in the General and Sundry tag, though I must apologize for the degree of recycling that might happen here. I'm going to try to be Eloquent & Helpful in re Ideas & Feels, but a great deal of this does just boil down to Gosh, I Like This A Lot, Please Sir, May I Have Another.

For any ~practical evidence~ of myself, I'm here on DW at theladywanderer , the twitter as MacTireDona , & the tumbles as cauthons . I'm most likely on the twitter, & the tumbles is on perma-queue, even as I lurk.
( shining shimmering wonder )

First of all, let me take a moment. Borker. I can't--

Okay, I'm good.

Hello Borker, Brand & New! Thank you so, so much for participating in this year's exchange. The letter that follows is partially a more put-together form of my likes/dislikes, & partially a compilation of the prompts left on the AO3 sign-ups, for your convenience.

For any ~practical evidence~ of myself, I'm here on DW at theladywanderer , the twitter as MacTireDona , & the tumbles as cauthons . I'm most likely on the twitter, & the tumbles is on perma-queue, even as I lurk.

( there are no cats in america )