Playing with words

 TED LASSO SEASON 2 TRAILERRRRRR


SO EXCITED! I'm also intrigued by the pairing they are teasing! I wasn't feeling it in S1, but I'm seeing it now! 😍 I need to make my husband watch this with me, hehehe



Also! Sometimes fandom spite can produce The Most Delightful things! 😁😁😁 actually 😝😝😝 is more apt

I don't know if anybody else has been following the pussy eating twitter discourse but this winning comment from DC:



has now led to the creation of the comm heroes_dont  and its fic/art exchange!!! Please join in! I am nominating allll my favorite het pairings because I'm sorry, but if your man don't, HE AIN'T NO HERO. I don't make the rules, those are JUST FACTS. 😋

Their profile icon, BTW, is AWESOME:
 

Okay, posting a bit late because it has been A Week, but I'm almost at the end of my to-do list! 

TV:

TED LASSO
😭 Okay, so lyrawhite insisted that I watch this and I was like. ...A soccer comedy with a white American football coach transplanted to England to coach their football. Really? 😅 BUT IT WAS SOOO GOOD because it completely ran counter to my expectation of dumb jock humour. Ted believes in people and makes tonnes of silly jokes and he is 100% genuine. And the way that positivity really does bring out the best in others is just the most heartwarming thing? Fantastic cast of characters, spot on writing, awesome narrative arcs. Season 2 is coming in July and I honestly can't wait. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

Lucifer 5B
Cheating a little bit because I did not actually finish binging the season until yesterday even though I started it when it dropped last week! I was reaaalllly looking forward to this and found it oddly disappointing? Too many bottle eps in an already short half season, which meant the main storyline had to be compressed into even fewer eps and considering Deckerstar had FINALLY just gotten together, there was really not enough shippy stuff! 🙁🙁🙁 They did some narrative tie-ins to much earlier eps though, revisiting and closing a couple of arcs, which was somewhat satisfying. And the ending sets up a huge game changer for the final season too, but it just didn't have the same exciting momentum as past seasons and the spectacle factor didn't deliver in the finale because of COVID filming restrictions. :/

Books:

 Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

This was a great little novella and the only thing that bothered me was its place in the timeline: it's probably set before the last novel (Network Effect) but I didn't know that going in so I was rather confused at first. Anyway, Murderbot is still grumpy and competently working its way through challenges and around The Rules given to it by humans, and it was a lot of fun to see some of its favourite humans pop up again! "That left me with the human most likely to want to drop everything and come watch me break into a damaged transport and the human also most likely to come watch me break into a damaged transport but only so he could argue with me about it." 😂 Good fun and definitely recommend! 

    Temeraire 3-6 by Naomi Novik

So these are basically Temeraire and Laurence wandering around the world constantly getting into trouble and also finally meeting the Napoleon threat in battle! I loved the way Napoleon is depicted too - his vision for infrastructure etc. is innovative and progressive, like his battle strategies, it's just that he wants to take over your country's resources and autonomy, is all. 😁 I also enjoyed how Novik depicts yellow, brown and black people having complex and progressive cultures and customs, while the white colonizers are basically entitled racists with guns and ships enslaving people (and treating dragons and women badly) and Laurence is in a state of constant facepalm. The plot ends up a bit meandering though, and the endings are rarely triumphant and conclusive in terms of arcs? So I'm pausing on this series for a bit because I have a lot of other things on my list I want to get to.

 Shrill by Lindy West

I liked this a lot more than The Witches are Coming! Does everything a good feminist novel should: shine a light and make you think, and West does it with a wicked sense of humour. She makes great points about fatphobia, responsibility in comedy and vitriol in online media. I will probably revisit this one in future, and I definitely want to watch the show based off this.

 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

OMG GUYS. THIS. BOOK. 😭😭😭 I literally had tears in my eyes when I finished it. This one is very much more in line with The Martian than Artemis but it went in completely unexpected directions despite Weir's signature nitpicky science details and hilarious delivery. Might make you believe in the basic tendency towards cooperation in sentient beings. Going to add it to my bookshelf as a keeper. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

 Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Re-read for obvious reasons, and I loved it all over again. HEIST HEIST HEIST! 😁 I'm holding off on re-reading Crooked Kingdom though because uh. I know how it ends and Fuck No right now. 😅

 Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

Interesting and revealing - I don't agree with a lot of her final pronouncements (especially the ones with a devout Christian bent) but I enjoyed the poetry and hearing anecdotes about her life and the way she shows how her perspective was blown wide open sometimes. 


Next up: The Rose Code and The Faraway Nearby. I usually read e-books on my phone nowadays but since the new job has long periods of waiting for drop-ins on Fridays, I'm taking it as an opportunity to also get through my neglected bookshelf! So far both are excellent and I predict I'm going to be adding The Rose Code to my shelf too. 🥰

So I spent the weekend backing up fics and reviews that are on ffnet to AO3, since signs are pointing to ffnet circling the drain. Another one bites the dust, but I'm not terribly sad about it since AO3 is superior in most ways anyway, and I've only been putting up fic on ffnet as an afterthought. Still, it made me rather nostalgic. I had completely forgotten how I'd had a phase where I wrote a new, spite driven Forwood fic after every new ep of TVD, and re-reading all those old reviews made me think of the Genesis awards forum. <3

Also I noticed the stats on one of my series while I was clicking in and out, and if one more person bookmarks it is going to be SUBLIME. :DDDD 



I really want to write a new Skittles chapter that is exactly 3030 words to make it all 3s, but I don't know if I have it in me! LOL Besides, this author has already won at AO3 word/chapter count number manipulation, LBR. I find it extra delightful that it is Lucifer fic! Link here I've only read the first chap of the first fic, but so far it's good!



Also: made a couple new TQG sets recently. This Chess Players/moving pieces set was another fun challenge. I had to learn to make pale GIFs because I wanted it to look chessboard-y, and I think the final effect is pretty nice, although Tumblr isn't playing nice with the timing and refuses to sync the GIFs which are actually all the same frame order and length! Grrrr. Anyway, it was neat to look at the different way the actors learned to move the pieces, and I love the elegant way Beth captures pieces the best, although I found capping Benny violently taking pieces the most amusing. Like he would hit the piece with his, and then use the dead piece to punch the clock after, and apparently TBS modeled it off how Bobby Fischer played.

I also tried that trendy vibrant painted background GIF effect on the first GIF of this B2 set. Will have to attempt it again in a scene with less movement, but I think it's a decent first effort!

eller your postcard arrived! It looks even more amazing in person! And your choice of stamp! eeeep! <3 Thankyouthankyouthankyou!

ganked fromtielan 

1. How many stories have you posted?
61 under NRGburst, 17 under NRGmeta

2. In what categories?
M/F: 54
Gen: 15
M/M: 6
Multi: 1
F/F: 4

3. What ratings?
General Audiences (15)
Teen And Up Audiences (23)
Explicit (4)
Mature (20)
Not Rated (16)

4. How many fandoms?
50 fandoms - this number is skewed by the meta entries and by fandoms with multiple categories. I've written stories in 27 canons.

5. How many fandoms where you've written more than 10 stories?
1: Game of Thrones

6. Any fandoms where you were the first to post a story for it?
Nope.

7. Any fandoms where your story is still the only one posted for it?
N/A

8. How many fandoms that are still Yuletide sized?
Maybe half of them? I'm surprised by how few fics there are for the Ghibli movies, actually. 

9. How many fandoms where there are still fewer than 5,000 stories posted for it at AO3?
About 40 

10. How many megafandoms (over 50,000 stories at AO3)?
2: Star Wars and MCU

11. How many AUs have you written where the settings, occupations etc are completely changed?
1 

12. How many canon-divergent and/or canon distorting tropes (like soul marks, bodyswap) + canon AUs have you written?
6

13. How many stories have you written that would require an AO3 content warning or a CNTW?
6

14. How many words in the shortest story you've posted?
100 words

15. How many words in the longest story you've posted?
57351: Full Circle

16. How many crossover stories have you written?
1

17. How many fusion stories have you written?
1

18. How many RPF stories have you written?
None

19. How many WIPs and/or series have you posted?
9

20. Do you have any fanfic that is completed but not posted to AO3?
There are some short ficbit type things that I've posted for trope_bingo  here on DW, but other than that I think I've moved everything worth moving from ffnet.

Gloves Off
The Queen's Gambit (TV), Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
E, 1300 words, no archive warnings apply

Birthday smutfic for Terra_Banks, missing scene from Middlegame Maneuvers (Exchange-verse). There is discussion of post IUD insertion pain, just to warn.


Also: survived my first day of work at my new job! I am tired but happy. One weird thing: the contract is for MORE money than they had originally offered me. And they're paying me through the summer despite me having no classes then, which is blowing my mind: part time teachers here are usually paid per lesson at the end of the month. I never minded it because of the scheduling flexibility (and TBH hubby is the main breadwinner anyway) but whaaaaat. This might tip me into the next taxation bracket if I'm not careful, which has not happened to me ever. XD 

Cut most of these out of my sets on tumblr! If you have requests from there, just HMU via comment - I have most of the caps still. GIF icons are sized for DW and AO3 and only the first frame will show on tumblr. Stills should work everywhere! :D

Please comment/credit if used! 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when your beta has a birthday, you write them some smut.

Skittles (1360 words) by NRGburst
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Mile High Club, Fingering, PWP
Series: Part 3 of Check and Mate/An Exchange of Kings
Summary:

Sweet (and sour) treats from Check and Mate/Exchange-verse

We're moving so I don't have time to make a header or anything fancy, but here's a video of bullet chess, which is a version of Skittles, for those of you who don't know what the title ref is. 

Last chapter of An Exchange of Kings is up. :)



Fandom: The Queen’s Gambit (TV)
Characters: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts, Jolene
Rating/Warnings: M, no archive warnings
Word Count: 7080
Tags: Period-typical racism, background Mike/Jolene, Christmas fluff
Summary: Forever is the sweetest con

Or you can read from the beginning here

I didn't manage to finish a single book last month. Not a one. Just too scattered mentally, I think- I'd pick one up and then get distracted, probably mostly because the B2 discord has reeeeeaaally picked up and I'm spending all my time there instead. Whoops. It's fun though! It's like our little corner of fandom has really come together even though casual TQG watchers have all basically moved on. 

I did watch some things too! The whole season of Godless, which I had not thought I would enjoy (a Western? Really?) but completely overturned my expectations! I loved how it was women expertly toting the guns as well, a sweet F/F romance was the only one that was endgame, and there was a disproven prophecy! :DDD

Also I've totally caught up on Wandavision and oooh the angst. I am right back in my Infinity War feels right now. :((( "I just feel you." vs "I can't feel you." Nooooooo *sobs forever* I really do like the creativity of the first eps too, and I'm loving seeing Darcy and Jimmy again, as well as loving Agatha as a villain. Last ep is probably going to kill me, though. :(((

Plus I watched To all the Boys I've Loved Before: Always and Forever and I think it was even better than the book! So well done! I have already re-watched the first movie and am planning to do the second tonight. I love Lara Jean's panic response meltdowns! LOL They are so epic! Planning a crossover TQG fic and oooh it's going to be fun!