Sunday, April 12th, 2026 01:54 am
hallelujah the dahlias are moved. it is 2 in the morning but they are on the new taller shelf AND miracle of miracles, this shelf is basically at floor level. which means overflow dahlias can go on the floor and still get light! which means some of the things that were on the floor can go back on the shelves!

I am not a neat or particularly organized person but it gets to a point where even I'm like: the next pile of stuff I trip over is getting thrown away.

they still need more light, they've definitely outgrown the two they were barely crowding under to begin with, but I ordered another one of those super-powered floor lamps. it won't improve the walking situation, but here we are.
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Saturday, April 11th, 2026 10:55 pm
Gardening is such exercise; I had forgotten a bit. I took water and snacks with me to the big garden this morning and cut back 20 spirea bushes to the ground. This afternoon I put maybe half the remaining cannas into 10 half-full holding pots on the patio, and after exhausting the two cubic feet of soil I had ready I went to the hardware store for four more.

I also dragged the bags of compost Marci helped me acquire from a local farm out back, even though I haven't decided where to put it yet (everywhere could benefit, really, I might drive by again tomorrow and see if they have more), packed all of the outdoor Christmas greens off to the garage in preparation for the dahlia* move, and got some pansies for the road garden.

*I lifted the lights again on Friday, but they're growing through the shelf now and that's not good for them. Also not gonna lie, when I said there'd be space on the shelf below I forgot that they get wider as well as taller. Marci and I brainstormed ways to get some of them outside early, but I think it's going to come down to more shelves and another light.

...In my defense, I genuinely did not expect them to sprout A WEEK AFTER PLANTING.

Anyway, my point is, I mixed some yogurt with blueberries for my evening snack (don't worry it'll be chocolate and cookies later, this is just the pre-snack where I get some nutrients before loading up on sugar and caffeine to keep myself awake long enough to study) and left it in the kitchen, so every bite I have to get up from the sofa and walk around to make sure all my muscles still work.

Also, today was one of those Productive Days.** I'm not saying every day should be a day where lots of Tasks Get Checked Off, but occasionally such a day comes along and I always wonder, is this just part of the cycle or did I do something to facilitate it? Some combination of sleep (ha ha not today) or herbs, that brain supplement [personal profile] marcicat recommended, or maybe that magical euphoria blanket [personal profile] green is studying??

(I got the white one (amazon link), which makes me feel like I have one of those Gusu Lan winter cloaks that appear in all the Tencent winter art for MDZS. It's delightful. Also suprisingly stain resistant: I didn't even try to keep Daphne's snacks off of it (life is short, let the dog have a bone... although I will admit I didn't realize how lucky I was that my last two dogs preferred chewing on clean chirpy cat toys) and so far the white fluffiness prevails.)

**Wrote stuff, paid stuff, updated stuff, did laundry and research?! Moved the garden bridge out of winter storage!

It does make me slightly less anxious on days when I'm like, "no thank you I can not," because I know days where I'm all, "let me do a dozen things real quick" are coming, but think how useful it would be if it were predictable.
Saturday, April 11th, 2026 09:59 pm
Just a little late-night one, tonight, but it sings.

The way I must enter )
Saturday, April 11th, 2026 09:24 pm
Nothing makes you feel old like looking at your AO3 profile, glancing at your user ID, and suddenly remembering that it's a really fucking small number because you technically joined before they were even in open beta. By, like, a day. But still. I remember the length of the queues back then.



Seriously, I was still living in Tennessee when I made that account. That's terrifying.
Saturday, April 11th, 2026 08:12 pm
1. I visited an art museum today, and now I need a nap.

2. More sorting games!

3. Books finished: I was skeptical about whether I'd enjoy Star Shipped, given that it was a contemporary romance. I was perhaps less interested in the main pairing than in how the novel incorporated fandom activity for the fictional show and how I've definitely read slashfic with the same gimmick before. I also recently finished Sorcery and Small Magics, a fantasy/romance (romantasy?) with an interesting magic system and enjoyable forest adventures. The only thing that bothered me was that it seemed to have the aesthetics of pre-Industrial England, but inconsistently modern sensibilities in terms of gender and sexuality. Of course, it's a fantasy world and not actually imperial Britain. I also fell asleep multiple times listening to the audiobook and may have missed an explanation about the setting. In any event, I'm looking forward to the sequel, because the romance part is still unresolved, argh!

4. Currently reading: Still Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, mainly because I keep picking up other books that are on more pleasant topics and have larger font sizes. I'm also listening to the audiobooks for Cinder House (Cinderella retelling, with ghosts) and Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History.
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Saturday, April 11th, 2026 04:41 pm
Today's to-do list, with a few items already checked off because I was going to post this earlier and forgot:

- fold laundry
- put up hummingbird feeder
- clean out dead plants from the porch garden and get the pots back in shape
- reply to AO3 comments
- put away winter decorations and get out the spring ones
- pick up groceries
- write 200 words on either Forsaken Road or broken beaten damned (I picked broken beaten damned but I might poke Forsaken Road later)
- crosspost some fic from FFA and the PWKM

I had some feline help with the plants ("Springs, what's in your mouth? Give me that. GIVE ME THAT. No, you can't eat the chives. Leave the wasp ALONE."), so I anticipate summer gardening will be somewhat more exciting than it was when Prowl was content to nap under the chairs while I worked. I need to go get some more pots, because mine are in pretty sad shape after a decade of being left out in all weather, so I may need to add a quick trip to Lowe's on the way home to my to-do list, but we'll see how it goes.

EDIT: I finished! And made that trip to Lowe's and organized the shed while I was at it. A productive day.
Saturday, April 11th, 2026 09:49 pm
Dear [community profile] fandom5k writer,

thank you so much for writing a story for me! I've requested and received all of these fandoms before - some for many, many years, and often with the same prompts, because when I really enjoy something, I immediately want fifty more takes on the same thing. *g* So if that's what we matched on, don't worry about repeating things! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships I requested.

Everything important is in the requests themselves, but if you'd like even more info, general likes etc., here you go.

My AO3 account is [archiveofourown.org profile] Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms and relationships

In somewhat alphabetical order - note that some sections are expanded compared to the sign-up form:

Jump directly to:Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette )

镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing )

Grimm/Guardian crossovers: Nick Burkhardt & Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Ya Qing, Sean Renard/Ya Qing )

Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha )

Sherlock (BBC): Jim Moriarty/Sherlock Holmes )

山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu )
Saturday, April 11th, 2026 03:22 pm
Saturday, April 11th, 2026 10:32 am

In recent months, various life circumstances have pretty much forced me to slow down on a lot of things. This has its ups and downs, but one upside to all that is I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I’d been kind of struggling with my reading pace for a while, and just in general struggling to figure out where to fit reading into my daily routine, because if I don’t find a way to make things routine they tend to slip through the cracks even if they are important to me. What finally helped me break through that last year was just to try and finish a book at whatever pace worked for my routine, and not worry about setting a numeric goal, as that just felt like disincentive to start anything long.

So here’s what I’ve read so far this year.

Read more... )

Saturday, April 11th, 2026 07:35 am
Title: Ring of Evil
Author: Snowgrouse
Fandom: The Longest Day in Chang'an (2019)
Pairing: Gan Shoucheng/Original Female Character/Right Cavalry Soldiers
Rating: NC-17 for sex and graphic violence, sexual and otherwise
Genre: Darkfic, PWP, Hard BDSM, Non-Con, Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat
Warnings: YE OLDE FUCKEDE UPPE SHITTE. Big, big warnings for brutal non-con in this one--dark even by my standards. While she does enjoy it a couple of times (and gets to come at least twice), this is definitely more rapey than ravishey and quite violent. There are several extreme kinks featured herein, so heed the Ao3 tags.
Length: ~5700 words
Summary: On Lin Jiu Lang's orders, Gan and his men burn and pillage a gentry lord's estate, and brutally rape the only woman left in the village: the lord's beautiful, beloved concubine.

A/N: The title comes from the Chinese term for gang rape, if that's any indication. This is really dark and horrific--exploring the horror of the "medieval village in flames and soldiers raping and pillaging" trope, so I'm not sure if "ravishment" is even applicable. IDK if the lady agreed to be left behind in the village to hold back the Cavalry's advance (in which case, she consented, even if she knew what was coming), or if the lord sacrificed her for that purpose because he was as big a monster as the Cavalrymen. So I decided to leave it ambiguous, to add to the horror. Please heed the warnings. See further notes (including endnotes) on Ao3.



("They all want it," a particularly vicious-looking young officer says; Hui is even nastier with women than Gan himself is, his narrowed eyes glittering with menace. "They all dream of being raped. Every one." He caresses her cheek in a mockery of tenderness. "Don't you, sweetheart?" he says and turns his caress into a slap. "Hmm?"

"Well, now your fantasy's come true," Gan says and begins to slide his cock inside her pussy. The scream she lets out is heart-rending, horrific, ugly but beautiful to the men's ears; Gan almost comes as he feels its vibrations echoing inside her body, the tight squeeze as her muscles try to eject him in vain.

"Hui, put your hand over her mouth."

There's no one to hear them, and Gan loves to make women scream, so it's for different reasons that he wants Hui's hand on her mouth: he wants to terrorise her, so a soldier's dirty, sweaty hand is perfect for the purpose. Hui leers and clamps his hand over her lips, the men loving the way this makes her scream even harder; Gan rewards her with longer, deeper thrusts, the slickness of her pussy betraying her pleasure, allowing even Gan's hefty prick to slide in and out of her with ease.

Yet, she keeps on screaming, so Gan tilts his head and pouts. "Oh, poor you," he coos in mock-pity. "Poor, poor you. Are you scared?" he taunts and spreads her pussy, pulling open her folds. "We just want to play with your pretty little cunny, that's all," he says softly as he inspects her, watching his monstrously thick cock brutally splitting the white and pink lips again and again. "We don't often get to play with pale girls like yourself, you see; pink cunnies like yours are a rare treat. Don't you think it's pretty, boys?"

"Very pretty," they say.

"Yeah, nice and fat," another agrees, licking his lips like contemplating a delicious dish.

"Nice and meaty," Hui says and slaps her clitoris, making her shriek into his hand. "Yeah... You're going to take all our cocks in this fat little cunt," he says and slaps it again, making Gan groan in pleasure as she jerks around him in pain.

"Are you going to give her your special treatment, General?" one of the men says, leering maliciously.
)
Saturday, April 11th, 2026 05:23 am
I was growing really antsy about the missing notifications because day after day the tickets were piling up yet the problem didn't seem to get acknowledged anywhere (not in the known issues on the support page, not on [site community profile] dw_maintenance, no replies to those tickets... I even went to check the dreamwidth github issues but crickets there too :C).

Anyway, behold! A few of the (many, many) tickets about notifications were updated with the following:

"Our developers have been looking into this and finally figured out what was going on. There's a fix in, and notifications should start flowing again. I can't say if you'll get the old ones, but new ones should be fine."

I can't wait! Thanks to the "Recent Comments" page which I'm checking first like a kinda inbox, I'm fairly sure I'm not missing anything posted anywhere on my journal. Unfortunately, because I have a couple of active posts at the moment, the "Recently Posted" page isn't as useful to me and if someone replies a couple of weeks later to a comment I left on their journal, which is usually one of Dreamwidth's strengths, I'm unlikely to see it if the notification gets dropped :C

Glad a fix is on the way and hope it's coming to us soon!! To all the chit-chat and associated notifications!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😆 (Yes I'm constantly trying to get my inbox under control but not like this 😱 XD)
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Friday, April 10th, 2026 02:56 pm
Friday, April 10th, 2026 12:46 pm
Fady Joudah is a Houston-based poet (and doctor) who I first learned about through his translations of Mahmoud Darwish—one of which I may post later in the month—and then because Brazos Bookstore, one of our favorite independent bookstores in town, always tries to highlight local authors. I picked up a copy of Joudah's 2024 poetry collection last year and was thinking about posting a couple of different poems, but then I read this earlier one on Poetry Foundation and couldn't stop thinking about it, so here we are. Still on the subject of the moon, sort of.

Moon Grass Rain )