marycrawford | Reading

trobadora posting in

The deadline for the 520 Day Reverse Exchange has passed, and the collection is full of fantastic gifts!

If you haven't yet filled your assignment and haven't received an extension, please contact us NOW by replying to your assignment email (please don't change the subject line) or commenting here. Comments here are screened.

We may need to look for pinch-hitters over the next couple of days. If you're available, please keep an eye on this comm and your email. Our first port of call will be the other creators the recipient requested from, if those people said they might be able to pinch-hit.

Thanks so much to all our lovely participants for being a part of this! :D

kathleen_dailey

Recently I saw a post suggesting that commenting on any AO3 fic that was posted more than a week or two earlier was perceived as de trop at best and repellently creepy at worst. WTAF.

By extension, is one not meant to express an opinion about, say, The Left Hand of Darkness (published in 1969) if one reads the work for the first time in 2026? How about Christopher Marlowe? The Tale of Genji? The Gospel of Thomas? A great-grandmother's diaries? Do readers IRL never reread their favourite novels or stories from decades ago?

Specifically with respect to AO3, what is the point of a publication archive if not to introduce readers to new, middle-aged, and old works?

Sincerely asking someone who knows the reason to please explain. (Especially the "creepy" aspect.) Apologies in advance if this topic has already been discussed. It's new to me--or at least it's made an impression on me for the first time!

the_shoshanna

Another walk, this time partly in rain

I slept badly last night for no particular reason, just woke up at 3:30, managed to doze for a while, but was basically awake from 4:30 on. Bah.

Breakfast this morning was the sauteed veggies again, yay, but our host Elena says she'll make pancakes tomorrow morning. A day or two ago she gave us some pre-made maple(-flavoured?) pancakes from Marks&Spencer, which were fine I guess but certainly didn't feel nourishing; but now she's saying she's going to make pancakes with the bananas that are starting to go spotty brown on the sideboard. I am curious to see what they'll be like...

Today the forecast was for intermittent rain, possibly heavy at times, with a fairly strong wind from the northwest. So we decided to do a walk along the west coast, going from north to south so the wind would be at our backs. We caught a bus to our starting point, L'Etacq, about two-thirds of the way up the west coast (our big walk two days ago started at the northwest tip of the island). The bus ride there was almost an hour; taking the bus incidentally also gives us informal tours around! Also, this bus runs northward up the coast, the same route we planned to walk southward down, meaning that we could pretty easily bail out and catch it to go home at any point if we wanted to; worst-case scenario we'd have to wait an hour for the next one, but we wouldn't have to walk far to get to a stop.

There were ominously dark clouds approaching, so as soon as we got off the bus at its northernmost terminus we put on our rain gear: rain jackets and pants (and gaiters for me, because the rain pants I got in Wales last year are slightly too short and dump rain into my boots otherwise), and rain covers on our packs. This time I have a proper pack cover, unlike last year when I had to carefully dry out my passport and a lot of paper currency post-drenching.

I had downloaded a GPS track again, but we hardly needed it, since all we had to do was keep the ocean close on our right. It was about 11 am and the tide was out, although just beginning to start in again, so we went down onto the currently enormously wide beach and walked along it. It was VERY windy, enough to make me wobble on my feet a few times, and I had to put my wool hat on not only to keep my ears from freezing but also to keep my hair out of my eyes; I didn't think to bring any kind of headband on this trip. But thankfully the wind was indeed at our backs, shoving us along! And it did indeed start to rain after ten or fifteen minutes -- not a heavy downpour, but stinging painfully on my face whenever I turned to look to the side, because the wind was so fierce. Rain gear happily doubles as excellent windbreaking gear; thermal layers under it are definitely nice too.

The beach sand was hard-packed enough that walking wasn't difficult, and the views were hazed but dramatic, clouds and waves breaking on rocks and the vast curve of the bay; that whole coastline looks like a closing parenthesis. There are occasional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century towers and other structures, and also frequent German bunkers; the whole coast was heavily fortified against an expected British assault.

One of the buildings we passed was a small, mostly white-painted old stone house with a few windows and absolutely no indication of mod cons after about 1880; a sign outside indicated that (like the Seymour Tower we walked to across the seabed on our first real day here) it can be rented for overnight stays. However, your £400 rental fee doesn't buy you beds or toilets: https://www.nationaltrust.je/stay-hire/properties-for-hire/le-don-hilton/

(Again, we were walking at low tide, across a beach that was maybe seventy meters wide at that time; Geoff will doubtless post some pictures soon. If you want to see what high tide can look like there, go to the page I just linked, click "view all photos," and look for the one with crashing waves! All the coastal walks come with big warnings about not getting trapped by the incoming tide. Trudie, who led our Seymour Tower walk, told us about the rule of twelves: in the first hour the tide is coming in, a twelfth of it comes in; in the second hour, two twelfths, in the third hour, three twelfths; and then back down three, two, one over the next three hours. Which means that if you notice the tide starting to come in, calculate how fast it's moving, and from there assume you know how much time you have before you're cut off, trapped, and drowned, no you do not; it's soon going to be coming in two and three times as fast as you're currently allowing for.)

We also passed a handful of seaside cafes, ranging from fairly swanky restaurants to parked vans; about half of them were actually open. I stopped in to one of the swankier ones to pretend to consult their menu but really just to use their bathroom 😈. We also saw two intrepid and possibly utterly mad people going into the surf, I assume to in fact surf although they were a little too far away for me to see surfboards. We lost sight of them as soon as they went into the water, so I hope they managed all right! Other than them, it was far too rainy and windy for anyone to be on the beach.

After an hour or so the rain stopped and the sky largely cleared (it was still windy, so the clouds were moving at a good clip!); we took off our rain gear and enjoyed the amazing unhazed views. And after about three hours in all we reached our endpoint, the La Courbière lighthouse at the island's southwest tip. Well, not the lighthouse itself; the tide had by now come in enough that the causeway that connects the lighthouse's rocky perch to the mainland was underwater. But the ice cream van parked at the top of the causeway was also worth visiting!

Ice cream consumed, we walked a little further up the road to where a bus home was due in ten minutes. Perfect timing.

What with having slept badly and then a three-hour hike, I was getting really groggy and sleepy on the bus! We pondered stopping for coffee on our way home from the main bus station, and wandered through the pedestrianized shopping areas eyeing various cafes, but weren't really feeling coffee. We did, however, split a very acceptable cinnamon roll from Marks & Spencer's food hall.

Also we realized that we had wandered pretty near a restaurant that Elena, our host, had recommended to us. She's Latvian, and her daughter married a Kenyan man, and they've recently opened this Kenyan restaurant here! So we went by to check it out; it was about 4:00 pm at that point, and the restaurant was closed for the gap between lunch and dinner, but we admired the menu posted outside, and then through the glass door I saw a woman with a child I recognized as Elena's granddaughter, who was here the other day while we were having breakfast. The woman saw me seeing them and came to the door to ask if we needed anything, and I said "Are you Elena's daughter?" and of course she was, and we made a dinner reservation for six pm. before finally heading back to the guesthouse.

Having collapsed for a while, showered, and collapsed for another while, I was pretty stiff when it was time to slog out again to dinner. But it was worth it! We split an appetizer of "Swahili-style" potato croquettes stuffed with minced beef, with a cloud of parmesan shreds on top and tomato salsa on the side, which were excellent. Then I had grilled cod, which came with various veggies in a pool of a smoky tomato sauce surrounded by a hot green herby sauce, and ugali on the side; Geoff had a goat coconut-milk curry and a tomato and cucumber salad dressed with the same hot green herby sauce. Everything was delicious, although I would like goat more if it weren't always so bony. Then for dessert we split a fantastic hot chewy chocolate brownie and vanilla ice cream, which probably isn't particularly Kenyan except in the sense that Kenyans know a good dessert when they see one 🤤 Oh, and we also shared a Kenyan lager called Tusker, which was very good. The waitress told us that if we ever ordered beer in Kenya it would be served warm unless we specified we wanted it cold, but I don't remember how she taught us to ask for it cold.

And it didn't rain on us either going to or coming back from dinner, hurrah!

Tomorrow is forecast to be "rather cloudy with showers, perhaps heavy or prolonged." Thanks for the specificity, folks. We're planning on going to the Jersey Zoo, which is run by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, of which Geoff is a big fan. ("He was one of my boyhood heroes," he says.) That should give us a fair number of indoor things to see, so we're not outside getting rained on all day. But first I'm going to take a sleep aid tonight, and we'll probably take it easy tomorrow. On top of three hours of actual hiking today, Geoff reminded me that we did more than an hour of just going back and forth through town.

For now, we are curled up in our warm room, blogging. And as soon as I post this, it's time to relax with a Heated Rivalry story 🏒🍆😍

tarlanx posting in

c_ent

Created for

seasons_of_fandom Spring 2026 CH07: SPRING MOOD

12 Word of Honor Mood Icons

amused	annoyed	content	happy

mischievous	refreshed	sad	shocked

thirsty	worried	+1 determined	+1 enraged

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Getting a Wriggle On

Artist: leecetheartist

Rating: G

Fandom: n/a

Characters/Pairings: n/a

Content Notes:

A pretty odd one for today's MerMay. I was thinking about molluscs and some of those odd nudibranch species - colourful sea slugs and the like, and this guy developed. Drawn with the Kakimori steel nib, and one of the Van Diemen's ink moving day specials, Persian Princess. It is very sparkly.

kathleen_dailey

Something for my Heated Rivalry peeps:

A tour of the Heated Rivalry cottage

Hollander’s now iconic line, 'I’m coming to the cottage,' lands differently here, because the place feels suspended between fiction and reality. ... Over the next several weeks, a few lucky fans will have a chance to live in Shane and Ilya’s hideaway. They’ve won a contest to stay for a deeply discounted rate of $248.10 a night (a nod to the hockey players’ jersey numbers), before the property hits the market in June.

The feature doesn't seem to be behind a paywall (yet). It has some lovely pictures of the place and the fans.

trobadora posting in

sid_guardian

The 520 Day Reverse Exchange deadline is tomorrow! Please post your completed assignment to the AO3 collection by 11:59PM UTC Wednesday 13 May! (What time is that for me?)

Your work must be complete to fill your assignment. It's fine to keep editing until reveals, but the first and each edited version must be a work that stands on its own.

If you have any questions or, for any reason, you can't make the deadline and you haven't contacted us already, please let us know NOW by replying to your assignment email (don't change the subject line) or commenting here. Comments here are screened.

General info, schedule and minimum requirements | Posting instructions

Thank you to everyone who's already submitted their entries, and good luck to everyone else for the final stretch! *\o/* *\o/* *\o/*

the_shoshanna

a less physically but more emotionally exhausting day

We started the day with a non-overwhelming breakfast! Just a bunch of veggies sauteed up together, no eggs no bacon no beans no toast (but yes coffee, and her coffee could punch Superman through a wall). We were delighted! Also, when we asked where we could find a laundromat to wash some clothes, she let us use her machine. So Geoff put a load through and hung it to dry before we left for the day; I had surreptitiously been doing some sink laundry and also I don't sweat the way he does, but I too am glad to have been able to properly wash some things. (Still gotta sink-wash a bra this evening, though; I've had too many destroyed by machines to trust one I don't know.)

Then we headed out to the bus station to catch a bus to the Hamptonne Country Life Museum https://www.jerseyheritage.org/visit/places-to-visit/hamptonne-country-life-museum/ . This was one of the things I specifically wanted to see while we're here, but sadly I was a bit disappointed. There was no living-history reenactor guide working today (the guy at the entry selling tickets said she would have been there but she had to go to a funeral, so I'm not going to complain), and the guide who took us around spent more time talking about what it was like to work there, and less about what it would have been like to live there in the various eras it represented (13th, 17th, and 19th centuries), than I was hoping for. (Honestly, a good episode of Historical Farm would have given me more -- thanks for putting me on to that show,

dorinda!) Still, it was interesting to poke around and look at things, and Geoff enjoyed it more than I did, which was good because I was the one who really wanted to go and if he'd been really disappointed I'd probably have felt guilty.

We did see a nineteenth-century apple crusher (which I immediately recognized thanks to Historical Farms!) and got to taste some of the cider they produce there. It was just fermented juice, no added sugar or rum or any of the other things that might be added to improve the taste, and it was like drinking paint thinner, I couldn't even finish my small cup. The guide said it was probably about 5% alcohol, but it felt stronger. So maybe it's a good thing I couldn't finish it!

Interestingly, the average age of the people visiting the museum seemed to hover around 70 that day. "School must be in session," I said to myself.

We finished up in the cafe, where we split an unexciting packaged sausage roll and a jacket potato with tuna mayo and sweetcorn. I don't know if the potato was a local Jersey potato, but it at least was very good! This whole concept of baked potatoes with stuff on them was something entirely unknown to me until a visit to Edinburgh years ago, when we got a number of out-and-about meals from a jacket potato shop that would put any of dozens of salads or sauces or meats or whatnots on them; I remember having to work hard to keep them from also plopping a giant knob of butter inside the potato as a matter of course. I mean, a buttered baked potato is delicious, but if you're topping your potato with a tomato-cucumber salad tossed in a vinaigrette, two tablespoons of butter really does not improve the experience. Anyway, I always think of that place when I have a jacket potato topped with something unusual to me, such as, for instance, tuna mayo with sweetcorn.

The bus we took to the museum was the same line we took home yesterday afternoon and it had the electronic announcement screen, but it wasn't on so I had to track us with my phone again to know when to get off. Ah, well. We had a nice five-minute walk through houses and farms from the bus stop to the museum site, and when we left to go back to the bus stop, the guy in the ticket office told us that if, once we got to the street the bus ran down, we went the other way from the bus stop we would come to an interesting old dovecote. We did walk that way for a bit, but didn't see anything promising, so we turned around and went up to the bus stop.

Rather than taking it all the way back into the capital city, though, we went only three stops (again tracking progress on my phone, for lack of any non-tech way to know where we were or which stop was ours), got off, and walked about fifteen minutes through more houses and potato fields and mildly wooded areas to get to the Jersey War Tunnels https://www.jerseywartunnels.com/.

The occupying German armed forces had this big tunnel complex built, largely but not entirely by forced labor and slave labor, originally as an ammunition store and barracks, later as a potential hospital in case of an Allied assault on the island(s). Now it's been turned into a really excellent museum of the occupation. When we bought our admission tickets we were also given replica ID cards, establishing each of us as an actual Jerseyite whose story we could discover as we went through the exhibits. (I was given the identity of a middle-aged Jewish woman who, when she was arrested a few years into the occupation, managed to escape her guards and flee to someone who hid her until the war ended.)

We made our way through the tunnels, each of which has been set up as a gallery documenting a different aspect of the occupation or part of the war, in chronological order: from the first decision that the islands wouldn't be defended, to the arrival of the Nazi forces, the gradual tightening of restrictions and rations, various people's attempts at resistance, escape, and sometimes collaboration, the arrival of a Red Cross aid ship just as the food situation got desperate, the experience of watching D-Day (remember, you can see France from here!) while still not being freed and while the local German commander was maintaining he would hold fast, until the final surrender and the arrival of the UK troops who raised the Union Jack again, as we saw reenacted a few days ago.

One particularly effective device was life-size human figures with video screens for their heads showing recordings of actors, so that you could imagine actually meeting and talking to the person who was depicted speaking to you. Here's a German soldier, fluent in English, who has bought your child an ice cream; do you let your child take it? Here's another who wants to hire you to do his washing, and you need money desperately; do you take the job? Here's a farm woman talking about food rationing, and how lucky her family is to have some livestock and chickens -- but of course the German authorities closely watch everything, including recording every piglet born, and god help you if you're caught hiding one. Here's a starving Russian slave worker who has escaped his barracks and stolen some carrots from your field; what do you do?

One informational signboard talked about collaborators, including women who went with German soldiers. It did acknowledge that, aside from the fact that the soldiers might be young, handsome, and -- at least in the early years -- friendly and congenial, being friendly with them might also mean extra food and security for the woman (and her family), but no explicit link was drawn between that signboard (which also explained the derogatory term "jerrybags" for such women) and a later one that told the story of a young woman who was "assaulted" (details unspecified but clearly sexual) by a German soldier while she was serving him in a restaurant, slapped him, and was promptly shipped to a German prison camp, where she died. Nor was a comparison made between "jerrybags" and the local workers who took jobs with the occupying forces to help build the tunnel complex. It all reminded me of the way that women's sexual purity so often stands in for and symbolizes all kinds of morality. Why is a woman who accedes to a soldier's demands and blandishments more of a collaborator than a man who takes a job furthering the enemy's projects?

On another note: as we approached the end of the war, plaques on the wall announced various milestones. I was surprised at the strength of my desire to spit upon seeing the one marking Hitler's suicide.

Anyway, the whole thing was A Lot, and very well done.

Eventually we emerged from underground and caught the bus home again. Once again we stopped on our way home from the bus station for an early dinner, rather than go home and then have to leave again; we found a nice sort of Spanish-Asian fusion place on one of the squares we walked through that had pleasant outdoor seating. (For COVID-cautious reasons we prefer to eat outside when we can; we're also masking on the buses and in other indoor public spaces. We haven't seen a single other person masking, but no one seems to give us the stink-eye about it, except possibly for one person on the bus the other day who seemed not to want to sit next to me.) Geoff had delicious lasagna that came with yet more delicious chips, and I, having not yet had any seafood other than some salmon at the arts centre cafe, had a sizzling plate of scallops and veggies in a vaguely oyster-sauce kind of sauce? Also a nice big glass of merlot, and Geoff had a pint of a Spanish beer called Madri, which he liked but I did not care for. And then back to the guesthouse and blogging!

One thing that has both startled and amused me is that several people (including the ticket guy at the Hamptonne museum), on hearing that we're planning to go from Jersey to spend ten days in Guernsey, have reacted with "Ten days on Guernsey?" in a very what-the-hell-would-you-do-that-for? tone of voice. I'm assuming that this is an expression of inter-island rivalry and not a real indication that we'll be bored out of our minds 😂 I mean, we did accumulate a list of things we might want to see there, and hikes we might want to do, and also we'll probably take a day trip to Herm.

But before then we still have three days here on Jersey to fill! It's likely to rain tomorrow and Thursday, so maybe we won't do another big hike, but we would like to see the Jersey Zoo...but for now, it's oh-so-exciting hand laundry for me, and curling up with some internet.

tarlanx posting in

c_ent

Title: Pear Blossoms in Spring
Author: Tarlan (

tarlanx)
Fandom: Yin Yáng Shi | The Yin-yang Master (Movies - Guo Jingming)
Pairing/Characters: Bo Ya/Qing Ming
Rating/Category: PG SLASH
Word Count: 1085
Summary: It is Springtime in the city and Qingming needs time to heal after the battle with the Serpent.

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84733851

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Ocean Dancer

Artist: leecetheartist

Rating: G

Fandom: n/a

Characters/Pairings: n/a

Content Notes:

This MerMay - number 12, was drawn in the cardiologist's waiting room while

rdm had his tests. It's drawn with the beautiful Azure Kingfisher ink I've used before this MerMay, it's in a Lamy Demonstrator.

kathleen_dailey

This 2019 thread on Plaidadder's Tumblr raises points that have bugged me for decades about some writers' (far too often, women writers') unwillingness to use their skills and their imaginations to discover the truth about canon female characters.

https://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/185804552724/i-know-i-know-i-knooowww-i-knowww-that-women-in

( Read more... )

In the case of the canon character I've written most often, five decades of pro and fan stories have (mostly) denigrated, ridiculed, and distorted her onscreen actions and--crucially--her motivations. This Tumblr discussion reminds me that I'm not the only writer and reader who has felt compelled to look for the truth behind the representations, and misrepresentations, of women in canon.

ranalore

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: drained
Current Location: why do people always decide to gun their engines after 9pm?

the_shoshanna

Today the weather was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and mildly warm and a steady wind from the north -- and that last was important because today was our day to do a challenging hike along the north coast, and the last thing you want is a wind blowing you off the cliff!

Spoiler: we did not get blown off the cliff.

We had another huge breakfast at the guesthouse -- honestly, I'm becoming less able to eat them as the week goes on. I'm just not used to either that much volume of food at breakfast, or that much dietary fat; fat is very filling! And today's omelet/scramble included the bacon I didn't eat yesterday. We asked for vegetables tomorrow, lots of veggies please. After that I think I may opt out of cooked breakfast entirely for a day or so, and just have muesli with fruit and milk; it's still got a lot of nuts, but that fat doesn't gorge me the way eggs and bacon do.

Anyway, after that we caught a bus up to the northwest corner of the island, to a ruin called Grosnez Castle. We weren't quite sure which way it was from the bus stop, but we got to chatting with a slightly older couple who had also gotten off the bus, and they were confident it was thataway, so off we all went. Except that we walked faster than them, and anyway they were going to be turning left/counterclockwise at the edge of the land to go geocaching, while we were turning right/clockwise to pick up a coastal trail. A few days ago we overheard a woman complaining to a group of friends that the trail she'd tried to follow had been really poorly marked and she'd ended up walking several kilometers further than she should have had to, but we found it pretty clear throughout the day; the path was always obvious, and there were occasional signs. The only problem was that sometimes there were a couple of possible paths and we weren't sure which one was best -- but I had downloaded a GPS app and loaded into it a trail from I think it was a Jersey Heritage site? Anyway it kept us on the extremely curvy and narrow.

We didn't bother exploring the castle ruin, because we wanted to get walking; we knew where we were hoping to end up but really weren't sure how long it would take us to get there. So off we went!

The trail was much like the cliff trails we were on in Wales last year: narrow, often only a yard or so from Certain Death but safe enough if you weren't stupid about it, with absolutely gorgeous views along the cliffs and out to sea, where we could see Guernsey and Sark (and probably Herm too) in the distance. And also France, but that's old hat to us by now. (I was amused to get a text from our mobile-phone provider informing me that I was now roaming on a French network, though!) We tromped along happily, admiring everything including our own stamina. There was a lot of up and down, as the trail wended its way through and around and down into the places where the sea has cut deeply into the land.

There are supposed to be a few puffins in that area, a small colony, but we didn't expect to see them, and indeed we did not. We did, however, see the giant statue of a pair of puffins that has been put up to mark their presence!

We had caught a 10:30 bus and started walking at 11:30, and at about 1:30 we arrived in the town of Grève de Lecq, which greeted us with perfectly salubrious public toilets, and a beautiful curving stretch of sand beach, and a very nice beachside cafe with outdoor seating. As I said to Geoff, that's my kind of hiking: rugged terrain, gorgeous views, crashing ocean waves, and a pub every two hours! We split a pint of Liberation ale (unfortunately no longer actually brewed on Jersey) and a piping hot plate of chips with a sort of chili mayo dip, and Geoff also bought me a bottle of water, because I hate the taste of the tap water at our guesthouse and had meant to bring an empty water bottle to fill along the way but forgot. (Look, I was managing all the logistics of getting us to the start of the hike, and keeping us on the right trail, and keeping an eye on the bus times to get us home again from various possible bailout points, and I did remember to bring the bag of trail mix. I dropped one stitch. And then I had a bottle of tasty water anyway!)

We headed out again at two, but fortunately only got about five minutes down the road before Geoff realized he'd left his camera on the table! So I waited while he went back for it; the waitress had kindly set it aside when she saw it had been forgotten. So Geoff ended up walking a bit further than me today, and accordingly has slightly greater bragging rights 😀

Anyway, from there we continued on the same kind of cliffside trail (and occasionally road), except that we made a small detour around a recreational shooting range that was flying the red flags that meant, according to all the signs, ACTIVE SHOOTING IN PROGRESS, DO NOT ENTER. We did not enter! We did see a couple of guys with bows as we skirted the edge of the restricted area, and a little further on we heard a fair amount of gunfire.

Right at the point where we detoured, we also stopped to look at some odd-looking sheep grazing in a field beside the road. Another couple of hikers were already there, looking at the sheep and chatting with the shepherd, a young man who was happy to tell us that they were an unusual breed called Manx Loaghtan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_Loaghtan); he said, and we could see, that they often had four horns, but Wikipedia says they sometimes have six! We definitely didn't see any six-horned ones. And a signpost next to the field he and they were in told us that the conical hill in the center of the field, on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean, was an ancient hill fort, which had been fortified in various ways by multiple succeeding cultures and forces. So much history, just lying around everywhere!

We walked past many many potato fields, and startled several grouse out of the gorse as we walked by, and saw a tractor moving through a field and followed by a flock of hopeful gulls (or similar), and encountered a fair number of other walkers, either coming the other way or overtaking us. We don't generally overtake others, except for one older couple whom we leapfrogged a few times as we and they alternately stopped to rest, snack, or don or doff layers. Strange to think that we also qualify as an older couple now!

We made it to our ultimate goal, the evocatively named Devil's Hole, a deep crater and blowhole in the oceanside cliff, at about 3:15. Except that we weren't actually there yet; we had arrived at the Devil's Hole bus stop, from which we could get home, but the Devil's Hole itself was a ten-minute walk further on, steeply down through woods as we approached the edge of the water. Climbing back up was not fun ("ten minutes there, fifteen minutes back"), but the Devil's Hole itself was worth it: a wide and dramatically deep and dangerous hole in the rock, and fascinating to stare down into. A signboard warned onlookers that the ground beyond the constructed path and viewing platform was crumbly and unstable, adding, almost but not quite in these words, "Jersey Fire and Rescue rescues twenty or thirty people a year who try to climb down there and can't get back up, don't be a dumbass!" It was indeed sooooo tempting to hop the fence just to get a better look down the throat of the crater, but we generally try not to be dumbasses, so we did not. Sadly it was low tide, so the seawater was not crashing in the crater, but we could see it ominously slapping around at the bottom, as the waves washed the outer side of the rock.

There was also a big statue of the devil beside the path down, mostly cheesy but fun to see.

We slogged back up the path to the parking lot where the bus would stop, had about twenty minutes to sit and rest, and then the bus arrived that would take us back home! Excellent timing. Well, first it took us five or six stops further out, to the end of its route, and then it turned around and took us home.

You could not pay me to drive on these roads. The roadway was often barely six inches wider than the bus, and yet was a two-way road; several times either the bus or the oncoming vehicle had to brake hard, back up, and pull into some invisible but marginally wider spot -- or just into someone's driveway -- so that we could squeeze past each other. Truck drivers and oncoming buses often flipped their rear-view mirrors in to make more room. In the more rural northern part of the route, the bus driver often honked several times as he approached blind curves. If there was a bicyclist in the road, there would often be a line of several cars creeping along behind them, since it was rarely possible to get around them (and you couldn't pay me to bike these roads either). As an admiring and occasionally freaked out passenger, though, bus rides like that are pretty cool! Also, the bus we took home was a newer one, and it actually announced every upcoming stop both aloud and on an electronic screen, which was remarkably civilized compared to the way I'd had to carefully track our progress on previous bus rides so as to know where we were and when we should get off. It wasn't actually helpful, though, since we were going to the end of the line, the big main bus station in the center of town, so we didn't need help identifying it. But it's good to know that some buses, at least, have that system!

Rather than get home and then drag ourselves out again for dinner, on our way home from the bus station we stopped at a likely-looking pub that had outdoor seating and split a big order of fish and chips; a "coronation chicken tart" that turned out to be curried chicken salad on top of a flaky pastry, garnished with salad greens; and another pint of Liberation Ale. Then back to the room for collapsing, showering, and blogging. And here we are!

umadoshi

Reading: I had a pretty good reading week--I read both Role Model and The Long Game, so I'm caught up on the Game Changers books until whenever the new one comes out, and read Platform Decay once my hard copy finally arrived on Friday night. (Tracking info put it in the city by last Sunday and it got delivered around 8 PM on Friday. WTF.)

I also read The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope.

And tomorrow All Hail Chaos (Sarah Rees Brennan, sequel to Long Live Evil) comes out! So that'll be my next read. (I'm going to get it in hard copy and also in ebook, and doing so will only cost a few dollars more than buying Platform Decay did in hard copy alone. Fucking book pricing.)

I also need to browse my manga collection and decide what to read next from it.

Watching: A few more episodes of Justice in the Dark, and we also watched ep. 1 of Witch Hat Atelier. (I read a volume or two of the manga quite a while ago, and remember essentially nothing about it.)

Current Mood: tired

awanderingcoyote posting in

sid_guardian

This is the fanworks round-up post for April! Please link in the comments to any Guardian (or related fandoms) fanworks you created or enjoyed last month.

all kinds of fanworks are welcome – fic, art, vids, picspams, etc. - including those made for exchanges and events
new chapters of WIPs count
meta or discussion posts, too
whether or not you've already linked these in a post of their own, we still want them here!

If you're linking to fanworks you didn't create yourself, please clearly mark these "REC", so there's no confusion about authorship/creatorship.

(And please still do link your fanworks, meta, etc. separately, in their own post, at any time!)

So ... what Guardian and related fandoms works did you create or enjoy in April?

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Mermaid Blues

Artist: leecetheartist

Rating: G

Fandom: n/a

Characters/Pairings: n/a

Content Notes:

I enjoyed getting the Akkerman bottle out again and using it with the Kakimori nib. Something has profoundly upset this mermaid. Poor thing. She was fun to draw though. She'll pull through, don't worry, the ocean is on her side.

Current Mood: thoughtful

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Happy Merther's Day
Artist: leecetheartist
Rating: G
Fandom: n/a
Characters/Pairings: n/a
Content Notes:

Mermay the Tenth - Yesterday in Australia it was Mother's Day, so I'm catching up after a lovely day out with my Mum.

So there'll be another drawing later today so I can catch up.

This mermum and merbaby were drawn with Van Diemen's Ink Rainbow Scarab. I am not sure if the shimmer has come up in these photos but the sheen certainly has!

Gotta say this Life Noble Note book has really come to the sheen party.

Current Mood: happy

umadoshi

This is not a media-intake post, because my list of last week's media is upstairs on my computer and I'm on the sofa finally trying out the very small folding bluetooth keyboard I bought ages ago to maybe make typing on my phone a bit easier.

But hey, I live.

Current Mood: blah

trobadora posting in

sid_guardian

Zhao Yunlan sprawled on a couch, grinning at his phone. The background shows a purple sky with stars. Text reads, "Slo-Mo Rewatch. Guardian - half an episode per week @ sid_guardian.dreamwidth.org"

Hi, welcome back to our Guardian drama Slo-Mo Rewatch! Watch half an episode a week, and then come and chat about it here in comments. Or you can just jump into the comments without rewatching, of course!

Here is the first half of episode 15. On to the second half!

Episode 15, from 23:56:

Summary: Guo Changcheng and the Regent reach the SID, where Chu Shuzhi promptly grabs the Regent by the throat, and Zhao Yunlan has to defuse the situation. Shen Wei arrives just as the Regent starts talking about the Dijun Register, and is all Envoy in his bearing despite his Professor Shen outfit. Da Qinmg almost spills the beans about Chu Shuzhi's background. The Regent grovels to the Envoy, who is furious - and then actually shouts at him when the Regent admits to losing the Dijun Register. Zhao Yunlan attempts to defuse things, is snapped at by Shen Wei, and has a bit of a brain freeze moment in reaction. Da Qing comes to tell them there'll be a surprise inspection at the SID by the Xingdu Bureau - and Zhao Yunlan on the spot decides that nope, he's going to Dixing instead. Shen Wei tries to forbid it, but he insists, waving off the danger.

Zhao Yunlan learns about the passage to Dixing; then he, Shen Wei and the Regent go through. (Zhu Jiu has a new recruit, who watches them go into the passage.) Zhao Yunlan has visions of his parents along the way. In Dixing, he's surprised that 1) this looks like a normal town, and 2) it's dark, and learns about Dixing's lack of light. Meanwhile at the SID, everyone's preparing for the inspection, and they decide to have Guo Changcheng pretend to be Zhao Yunlan, so his absence won't be noticed. The commissioner arrives, and Da Qing is shocked to recognise him.

Quote:

Lin Jing: "Say, what do you all think they're talking about in there? Is the Regent saying our SID is incompetent?"
Sang Zan: "Incompetent?"
Wang Zheng: "It means slacking off."
Sang Zan: "We slack off all the time."

Detail:

My favourite little detail here is when Shen Wei invites the Regent to sit: the Regent starts sitting down, then straightens again and waits for Shen Wei to sit first! :D

Questions: Why didn't Zhao Yunlan tell anyone the Regent was coming? How much does he regret it, after Chu Shuzhi's and then Shen Wei's reaction? How hot is Shen Wei when he's being all furious at the Regent? And when he snaps at Zhao Yunlan, what's going through Zhao Yunlan's mind? What do the various SID members think about Shen Wei's behaviour when he arrives at the SID? What does Da Qing think about the way he tries to forbid Zhao Yunlan from going to Dixing, and wants to go alone? What do you think about the scheme to have Xiao-Guo pretend to be Zhao Yunlan? Which this your favourite part/scene/moment in this half-episode? Any favourite lines? And finally, any thoughts about how any of this compares to the novel?

(These are all just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like! You don't have to be keeping up with the rewatch to join in!)

Here is our schedule for the next batch of episodes - please do sign up to host a post if you can!

kathleen_dailey

My downstairs neighbour and I loaded up our shopping-carts with clothing, household goods, and electronics for dropoff at this year's Community Environment Day at Allan Gardens. We had a picture-perfect sunny day for the outing, and the walk down Jarvis to Carlton was very pleasant. Unfortunately, both of us were pressed for time, so we didn't get to walk through the park, which looked utterly alluring--vast and green and dappled and tranquil. We've promised ourselves to go for a good long walk through the park and the conservatory as soon as weather and our schedules permit. I haven't been to the conservatory since before the pandemic, so this is something I'm really looking forward to.

trobadora

highadrenalineexchange (HA) author reveals happened, and I can finally talk about this! *deep breath*

I wrote a whole sci-fi novella! And I had so much fun with this, and I'm really proud of the result. :D

The requested relationship was "Young King Warring With Rival/Famed Older Knight Who Was Betrayed By Rival", and my recipient was open to a variety of different genres and settings. But they said "space opera" in their request, and I went, "YES, THAT, I'M DOING THAT," and then spent the next week or so in a haze of worldbuilding and note-taking and snippet-writing.

HA has a very short creation period - only two weeks for a 10k story - so after that I pulled together a first complete draft. But I couldn't stop writing more, and worldbuilding more. Happily, there were several delays, so I was able to extend the story to double the word count, which IMO also improved it considerably. *g*

One of the most fun things about worldbuilding, for me, is hinting at all the things that aren't on screen, to make it look like a proper lived-in world - and to show how the world they live in shapes and impacts the characters, beyond the immediate plot. And I had SUCH a blast with all of that here! I'm definitely going to talk more about this in another post, but for now, here is the story - if it sounds at all like your kind of thing, I'd really love it if you gave it a chance:

**

Title: Zhentari's Choice
Rating: Explicit
Word count: 21,458
Relationship: Young King Warring With Rival/Famed Older Knight Who Was Betrayed By Rival
Characters: Younger King, Older Knight, Rival Would-be King
Content Tags: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Space Royalty, Space Politics, Political Manoeuvring, Betrayed to the Enemy, Code of Ethics, Sci-Fi Philosophies, Age Difference, Enemies to Lovers, Loyalty Issues, Power Dynamics, Consensual Sex, Refractory Period Manipulation, Multiple Orgasms
A/N: Many thanks to

china_shop for beta-reading!

Summary:

"Do what is necessary. Only the gods know what is truly necessary, but you must choose.
Do what suits the purpose. You have not the hindsight of the gods, but you must choose.
Do what is appropriate. You have not the measuring-stick of the gods, but you must choose.
Do what you must, Zhentari, and know your choice."

(The "Three Choices", according to the Zhentar Code)

Jolim Niall, famous Zhentar Knight (or infamous, depending on your position), has been in service to Tevin Appen of Trella for most of his life. When he falls into the hands of the King of Tarn, he's not sure which is worse: what Ayrom Gaudren no doubt has in store for him - or that it's Appen's betrayal that landed him there.

But Gaudren's plans aren't what he expects - and Jolim Niall must make a choice ...

the_shoshanna

Nothing beats meeting a friend for the first time

trepkos and I friended each other on LJ waaaaay back in the day, because we had friends in common and I thought she seemed cool and I guess she thought the same of me, and there it might have rested if Geoff and I hadn't come to her island!

We started the day with another huge breakfast and enthusiastic conversation from our host Elena; this time she made us veggie omelets and I fended off the beans and still couldn't finish everything. Then we hopped a bus to

trepkos's place -- we caught a slightly earlier bus than I'd allowed for, so when we got off at her stop we had enough time to wander around the little oceanfront park and out along a slipway and a natural sprit of land that would have been under water at high tide but was lovely to pick our way along now that it was exposed. Then we came back to shore and walked up the road to her place, and had a nice chat (and tea) with her and her partner, and then we got in her car and she drove us to see wonderful things.

We started with a stroll out an enormously long breakwater on the northeast coast, just to admire the ocean and the way it was so much choppier and violent on the seaward side than the inner side, which is of course exactly what a breakwater is for, but it's pretty cool to look along its length and see both sides at once. There were several people on their way to swim, even. We could just see France on the horizon. And it was ferociously windy; at one point trepkos picked up a tangle of seaweed that had been flung up on the walkway atop the breakwater and tried to drop it over the side back into the sea on the seaward side, where we were walking, and the wind immediately snatched it up and whipped it over our heads to dump it in on the sheltered side instead.

There was a plaque mounted on the breakwater commemorating a fifteen-year-old girl who, starting and ending there, swam all the way around the island. The mind boggles, but apparently this is a thing that people do regularly!

Then we went on a beautiful walk through a wooded valley of conservation land with a stream running through it, just chatting the whole way about fandom and life and I don't know what-all. I had wondered if ticks were a danger here, which question was answered by a signpost warning of the danger of tick-borne disease, and also by the dog we met that had a tick on its forehead, which its owner flicked off when Geoff pointed it out, shudder. But I don't get the sense that they're the constant glaring danger that they are in some places I've been back home.

*pause to tick-check my lower extremities*

At the far end of the conservation area we looped around briefly on roads before re-entering it to retrace our steps, and we passed someone's "fresh eggs for sale" shed at the end of their driveway, with an honor box for money and also a "smile, you're on CCTV" note posted. However, there were no eggs there to be admired; I mean, I wasn't going to buy any, but I would have enjoyed admiring them. We did see a pheasant and several chicks crossing the road, though!

From there we went to the Faldouet dolmen, a Neolithic tomb and ceremonial site; we didn't stay long but such places are always atmospheric and make me think about the length of human history and culture. This one is six thousand years old.

We also went to La Hougue Bie, another Neolithic passage grave, where history is literally layered on layers. We crept into the Neolithic passage under the hill, and walked through a reproduction Neolithic longhouse; and went through the museum exhibit about the enormous Celtic hoard of coins and jewelry that was found in an undisclosed location nearby, dating from around 50 CE; and went through the underground bunker that the Germans built into the hill, which now houses exhibits and photographs commemorating the enslaved workers whom the Nazis brought to Jersey from all over Europe to build their fortifications. (We forgot, however, to visit the sixteenth-century chapel on the top of the hill.)

We finished up in the on-site cafe, which offered cakes and eclairs of a size that I remarked would make an American blush; Geoff and I shared a latte and all three of us got bowls of really excellent tomato-basil soup with fresh rolls, crusty on the outside and wonderfully soft on the inside. It was so much that Geoff and I have decided to skip dinner -- though I might have a handful or two of our trail mix, which I also greatly enjoy!

Trepkos gave us a ride back to our guesthouse, where we are now tucked up blogging. Tomorrow we plan to hike along the northwest coast, which is supposed to be be both gorgeous and quite challenging. We'll start by taking a bus to Grosnez Castle, at the northwest corner of the island, and walking east from there; there's a bus we can take home after what might be a hike of an hour or two, and another one at what might be anywhere from another one to four hours; I'm finding it really hard to get clear information! We'll see how we get on.

elwendell posting in

c_ent

(Look away now if you watched it and remain a fan, because I have barred no holds.)

REBIRTH

The Chinese costume drama every fan had been awaiting for years. The sequel to Princess Agents. Woohoo! (Woo-oh dear!)

What a mess. Even had I not been coming to this series straight after finishing the relative masterpiece that was Pursuit of Jade, I believe I would have been disappointed with this one.

Rebirth seems to be a series of two halves. I believe only one person is credited with the script but, to me, it felt more assembled by a committee. Episodes one to twenty focussed on relationships. Episodes twenty-one to thirty-nine focussed more on political events. (Episode forty was just odd.) Frankly, I found the second half confusing. But I always find the Chinese drama political stories confusing so, to be fair, I can't lay all blame on the series. I soon lost track of how many warring factions we had, who was in charge of each, and why they were fighting. That we also had factions within each warring faction just left me reeling.

Initially, I think the most frustrating thing for me was the acting. Some actors were hamming it up way too much. The Empress and her Eunuch (Was he actually a Eunuch?) were so intense they were in danger of combusting, and not in a good way. Others were the opposite. Our female lead, Huangyang Tian Tian, was way too inexperienced for such an important role. She had the emotional range of a sloth. (There. I said it. Shoot me.) She is still very young, so there's plenty of time for her to improve, but this was not the project for her. The male lead, Li Yun Rui, is usually a reasonable actor. I have enjoyed other stuff he has done. Here, for some reason, he seemed to have forgotten every acting lesson or previous experience he ever had. Although his character was supposed to play emotions very close to his chest, I would have appreciated some expressions, however micro, to give me a clue about what was going on in his mind. As for chemistry between the lead couple...maybe it was an age difference thing, but I saw zero sparks. It would have been more believable if the script writer(s) treated it as a teacher, student relationship, rather than a romance. I am usually OK with any kind of relationship, but this supposed romance felt uncomfortable.

I'm willing to put some of the blame for the actor's non or over acting down to a poor director and the disaster of a script. The first half of the series featured a larger than average assortment of characters, most of whom were deranged (more so, than even for most Chinese costume drama) to one degree or another. The series in general offered enough such aberrant behaviour that it could keep a therapist in work for a lifetime. By the time we reached episode twenty most of them were mercifully dead, by their own hand or someone else's, which could have resulted in a reduction of income for our therapist, were it not for the fact that those characters were then replaced by a whole new set, ready and willing to be wiped out by episode thirty-nine. By the final episode our therapist would probably have needed a therapist, and there wasn't a graveyard big enough for the corpses.

No major spoilers. The story revolves around a female lead, being chased by every available male she meets. Some women work hard on their 'Siren' status, but she attracted an unreasonable amount of attention, for someone who was not working at it. In the first half of the series she spends much of the plot being kidnapped and rescued, one by one, by said bevy of admittedly very handsome men. When she finally settles on our male lead, the two of them spend the rest of the series riding off in opposite directions, and only coming back together briefly...albeit over, and over, and over again.

The male lead, when he isn't rescuing the female lead (incidentally, said female is supposed to be an army general), spends most of that same period either unconscious, spitting blood, or collapsing. Don't get me wrong. I love me some handsome male lead suffering, but this produced very little in the way of female lead comforting. In my book, there should be no pain without payoff. Once he finished with that trope he spent the last twenty episodes riding around, disappearing, for no logical reason, then swooping back in on a white charger, (a la Dream Within A Dream) at the last minute, to save the female lead (again). As for the final episode...why? Just...why?

Credit where it is due. The camera person resisted the temptation to soft filter every single face. We saw pores. We saw scars. We saw bleeding lipstick. But they at least did not look like anime or AI characters. The lighting person, however, seemed to over expose many outdoor shots. (Maybe they were trying to do something artsy?) So the result was almost the same in some scenes. I've seen better lighting in Instagram shorts, filmed on a hand held phone.

I will also give credit to the costume department. The characters who needed to look grand, did so without resorting to tinsel thread, miles of nylon georgette, and/or buckets of fake pearls. Yes, there were silks and brocades, but also wools and linens. The costumes worked. Also, hair ornaments were held to a minimum, or at least what passes for 'minimum' in a Chinese costume drama.

By the time I was less than half way through I was already gritting my teeth at the music. I don't have a good enough ear to be able to tell for certain, but I suspect all that swelling orchestral incidental music was synthesised. I hope it was. I hate to think of some poor orchestra having to play such banality. Once written/recorded it was used at every available opportunity. Every time we had a lovers clinch, it was accompanied by an orchestral crescendo. Every time we had a battle they played the same orchestral crescendo. Sick? Crescendo. Declaration to abolish slavery? Crescendo. Reciting your general political agenda? Crescendo. Rescue...crescendo. Death...crescendo. By episode ten I was all crescendoed out, with thirty episodes still to go.

So. What was my main takeaway from this series?

Just...Why?

Why? Because the first series left us with a cliff hanger. Why? Because the studio saw dollar signs. Why was it so bad, when it had so much money lavished on it? I suspect most of the budget disappeared into back pockets before it reached any set. Why did I watch it to the bitter end?

Here's my answer the last 'why'. It was rather like watching a train wreck, where you know it's a disaster but you just can't tear your eyes away. The first two or three episodes showed enough promise to reel me in. The next few episodes had me hoping that its general downturn would reverse within a couple more. After that it became a battle of wills. I had already started to compose a rant but thought it unreasonable to do so without wading through to the bitter end. After all, I have known series that did a slow build and managed to sneak up and hook me in with later episodes. The rest of the episodes in this series, however, only cemented my initial appraisal.

Now, if you're like me, a review like this will only make you more likely to try the series. If you do that, and disagree with me, I've no problem with that. I've been known to like some series that would make others click away within ten minutes. My personal advice, however, is...If you are sitting on the fence about watching Rebirth, jump off and run, as far as you can...in the opposite direction.

Sorry, but there was just no way to sugar coat this review.

tinny

The current round at

retro_icontest is about color palettes. You provide some of your old icons and palettes are generated from two of them. You then have to work with those palettes.

Teasers:

( 18+1 icons, mostly Wu-Lei related, and some other cdramas (and one Zootopia icon) )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

Previous icon posts:

the_shoshanna

Today was the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Jersey from Nazi occupation, and we joined the crowd in Liberation Square to watch the festivities!

Well, mostly to listen to them. Well, mostly to stand in the sun with no view except of other parts of the crowd and mostly poor audio of the music and speeches and songs and prayers. But we did have an excellent view of a small group of young soldiers (cadets? Some were literal children) reenacting the troops' entrance into the Pomme D'Or hotel facing the main square, where they took down the Nazi flag that had been flying above its portico (that bit was not included in the reenactment) and raised the Union Jack for the first time in five years. We admired many mysterious local dignitaries, political and religious, who gathered on and around the dais we were near, in front of the hotel, and watched the parade of Scouts, veterans, military and ambulance units, and other groups who marched past to close out the commemoration. Overall we didn't really experience much of the ceremony, and I was sorry not to have been able to hear the first verse of "Beautiful Jersey" being sung in Jèrriais (the lyrics were in the program, and I could hear well enough to recognize and follow the English verses, but my ear couldn't pick out and follow the Jèrriais against all the background crowd noise and with the poor amplification from the main square that we were just outside of). Even so, parts of the morning were quite moving, just knowing what it all meant.

Also I saw a lot of locals recognizing and calling out to one another in the shifting crowd and parading dignitaries. It's not a huge community here!

After the ceremonies ended there was music and food trucks and so forth in the next square over, but I was a bit done with crowds at that point. So we wandered a few blocks away to get Geoff an ice cream (it was hot and sunny! I had brought a scarf because I'm always afraid of being cold and the forecast had said it might rain, and I'd ended up draping it over my head to shade the back of my neck; I was worried about sunburn!). Then we went to check out the Jersey Museum, just off that second square.

We wandered through rooms recreating the domestic life and furniture of a (real, historical) Victorian family whose home the building had been, and who had gone broke and done a midnight flit to France, but what was more interesting to me was the exhibit that had been tagged on to it in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, tracing the connections that family, and other Jersey people, and the culture in general both here and in England, had with the Atlantic slave trade. I am now too tired and sun-fried to really write it up -- I think Geoff is saying a lot more, he's next to me also typing -- but I thought it was very well done.

We looked through some other galleries as well, especially a good display on the Neanderthals who lived here off and on for, like, a hundred thousand years, up to as recently as forty thousand years ago.

trepkos, we also saw your friend's piece on the people persecuted as witches! But by that time I was really staggering, so we stopped in the cafe in the museum's courtyard and I had a half-pint of that yummy Stinky Bay IPA and also several handfuls of trail mix, the first things I'd eaten or drunk in seven hours. Then we went back to our guesthouse, rested for a while, and had another excellent meal at the same cafe we'd been to before; they're getting to know us there! But our host, who recommended it to us, has also recommended a Kenyan restaurant (run by her daughter and son-in-law) and, when we asked about seafood, a Portuguese place, so I expect we'll branch out eventually.

But now, collapsing into bed.

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Chasey
Artist: leecetheartist
Rating: G
Fandom: n/a
Characters/Pairings: na
Content Notes:

I dragged myself away from games at the club for a bit to draw this playful mermaid. I used VanDiemen's ink Great Ice Lake, I think it is, which has a silver shimmer. The darker blue is Azure Kingfisher. And a little black for the fish. I used one of

rdm 's 3d printed pens with a Schmidt nib with the Lake, and then the Lamy Demo with the Azure Kingfisher, and the Rotring Art Pen with whatever black it was I put in it ages ago.

dancing_serpent posting in

c_ent

The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
or

tinny posting in

c_ent

Wu Lei and Zhang Zifeng in Upcoming Summer

Upcoming Summer (盛夏未来) is a 2021 Chinese coming-of-age movie starring Wu Lei as Zheng Yuxing, wannabe DJ, and Zhang Zifeng as Chen Chen, A-student. The two high-schoolers get thrown together through a white lie she tells her parents after failing the gao kao. Zheng Yuxing was a no-show at the exam, and the two bond.

Does it have a happy ending?

ending spoilers

Well. If the happy ending is them being together at the end: no. If the happy ending is them becoming good friends: yes. It's a coming of age movie and as such fleeting and melancholy. I loved this movie, and even as a die-hard romance fan, this movie gave me everything I wanted.

Where to watch? You can watch it on Netflix here. (I did not manage to find it by title within Netflix itself, no matter what I selected as my preferences. If the link I gave here doesn't work for you, try googling for it.) (If you can't find it, dm me.)

Is it a rec? Yes! This movie is brilliant. The main characters all have secrets - and each one is slowly revealed throughout the movie. I'm not going to spoil any of them - although I suspect that I would get more of you to watch it if I did. *g*

But trust me on that one: you should go into it unspoiled. I did, and it shook me. I wasn't quite sure I had picked up on the hints or not, and whether I had imagined it all, so I went and watched the whole movie again the next day. I had not imagined it. The movie is very cleverly done. (It's admittedly a bit harder to see if you don't understand a bit of Chinese and are unfamiliar with cdrama tropes, and even then you can miss it.)

The movie plays with different expectations a lot. What parents expect of their children, what teachers expect of their students, what children expect of their parents, what people expect of life. What viewers expect of a coming-of-age movie. :) A lot of those expectations are challenged throughout the movie, and the characters have to reexamine their choices. (And the viewers have to rewatch the movie. :D)

The two students are very cute. They both act like 18-year-olds would, in my opinion. Opinionated, stubborn, looking for connection, hopelessly romantic. It all feels realistic. I'm in no way objective when it comes to Wu Lei. I loved him in this, that's no surprise. I didn't know Zhang Zifeng before this, but she's amazing, too.

My favorite character in the whole movie is probably Mrs Qu, the teacher. She's no-nonsense but caring at the same time (within the constraints of being a teacher in China).

I really don't want to say anything more about the movie, because any plot points I could mention are taking away from the experience, and there is not that much plot in the first place.

But what I should mention is that one of the major elements of the movie is music. Zheng Yuxing, wanting to become a DJ, has a very intimate connection to music and to the electronic music scene. Very unusually for a Chinese movie, the main songs are western songs, and they are used really well.

Coldplay & the Chainsmokers | Kidnap Kid | May Day

The two western songs:

Watch on YouTube

No superhero, no fairytale bliss, just somebody I can turn to, somebody I can kiss. I want something just like this.

Watch on YouTube

The friends we made a long the way. A journey you can't recreate.

The rest of the OST is by popular Taiwanese(?) band May Day (五月天). Here are two songs from the OST, one performed by May Day itself (and he sings in such a beautiful low register for this <3) , and one performed by Wu Lei and Zhang Zifeng:

Watch on YouTube

Some pictures (hopefully not spoilery)

Peeking

Making a couple video

Upcoming Summer heart to heart

Heart to Heart

Upcoming Summer clubbing

At Zheng Yuxing's favorite club

Upcoming Summer sparks

Lots of beautifully lit shots

Upcoming Summer tunnel

More cinematography

Upcoming Summer festival

At the music festival

Upcoming Summer festival2

At the music festival

I have made a separate spoiler post about the movie. I'd love to see you there to discuss it once you've seen the movie.

.

the_shoshanna

Sea kayaking!

Today we had an early breakfast, because we had to walk out the door at 8:40 to catch a bus to the place where our kayak tour would launch. The earliest option for breakfast at this small guesthouse is 8, which is what we'd requested, but we went into the breakfast room at 7:40, since the muesli and fruit and such were already out, and she'd said we could take milk from the fridge if we were making coffee or tea with the kettle and supplies in our room, so we figured the same would apply to taking it for an early muesli breakfast. She came in about ten minutes later and when we said we didn't need a cooked breakfast today, given our time limitations, she was having none of it! She pressed us ("You have to eat!") until I said I'd have one egg -- yesterday we had two each, plus baked beans and tomato and basically the full English™️ -- whereupon she brought out two eggs for each of us, plus toast, slices of cheese (Geoff's not a big fan of cheese and I didn't eat the cheddar because this was getting to be a lot of food! but I admit I delightedly chowed down on the Wensleydale with cranberries, mmmmmm), and sliced tomato and cucumber, not to mention trying to give us beans as well, but that we did manage to fend off. She's very enthusiastic!

Even so, we did manage to get out in good time, and walked down to the center of town to catch a bus to a stop called Ouaisne Junction, and if you think we had the slightest idea how to pronounce that, you're mad. We'd asked our host (who is from Latvia) and she took a guess as more or less "wash-neh," but when we showed the written word to the bus driver he pronounced it basically "way-nay" or "way-neh," so that's what we're going with.

Anyway, here on Jersey the buses only stop at a stop if a stop is requested, if someone on board presses the signal that they want to get off there or if someone is waiting there to get on; otherwise they just blow past it. Nor are the stops announced. So you can't just figure you want the ninth stop and count, and you can't always see the stop name as you blow by, and of course we have no idea what our stop looks like. Fortunately the local bus app can track you along a bus route map that shows the stops; it's supposedly also showing live tracking of the bus, but the "live" tracking is often a minute or two outdated, so our little location dot was often a stop or two ahead of the bus icon 😂. Still, I was able to track us and know when to signal that we wanted the next stop. Yet another way in which travel without a phone and a data plan just isn't really feasible any more...

We walked ten minutes from the bus stop down a country road to a lovely beach, and the van from the kayak company, towing a giant rack of kayaks, passed us on the way. We got there and meet up with our guide Derek, who was indeed the husband of Trudie who was our guide yesterday; we were already in bathing suits under our clothes, so we stripped down and got fitted with sleeveless wetsuits and windbreaker jackets and floatation vests and also helmets juuuuuust in case we dumped a kayak and landed headfirst on a rock, and put on the water shoes we'd brought from home (which we wear for lake kayaking there). There were supposed to be three other people on this morning's tour, but their ferry had been delayed, so it was just me and Geoff. And then we launched! The water was cool when we waded in to launch, I wouldn't have wanted to go swimming, but with the wetsuits and jackets -- and exertion -- we were perfectly comfortable.

We spent a good two hours paddling along the coast, with almost constant (and fascinating) narration from Derek. He pointed out Nazi fortifications (including what we'd thought was a seawall along the edge of our launch beach, but nope, it was an anti-tank barricade) and caves that were inhabited by Neanderthals for thousands of years, and different kinds of seabirds (many of which are experiencing population crashes) and geological features and formations, and told us lots of stories about life and resistance during the Occupation (which his mother lived through). The wind and water were active but not too strong or choppy; paddling was quite manageable even for us lake-kayaking amateurs.

Exxxxxxxcept when Geoff didn't see a barely submerged rock in front of him, bumped it, momentarily grounded his kayak, and then tipped and dumped it and himself trying to get unstuck! But Derek had walked us through how to get back in before we even put the kayaks in the water -- these were sit-on kayaks, so they didn't fill up with water or anything -- and he paddled over, righted the kayak, and steadied it for Geoff to hoist himself back into (onto) it, while I hovered a safe distance away. Geoff was drenched, of course, but not even bruised, and the helmet was not needed, and it was warm and sunny enough that he didn't get chilled or anything, and mostly dried off pretty quickly.

After two hours we returned to our launch point, stripped out of all our borrowed gear, and said goodbye to Derek with many thanks; both this and yesterday's walk were great experiences, well worth their cost, and we plan to leave some glowing Tripadvisor reviews. The beach had perfectly acceptable public toilets, which I ducked into to change out of my swimsuit into the bra and underwear I'd brought with me, a bathing suit not being particularly comfortable as everyday walking clothing; Geoff's suit, of course, functioned fine as walking shorts. Derek had told us the pub next to the beach had excellent beer, but we wanted food more and also, having had a very pricy though tasty dinner last night, didn't want to pay their prices, so instead we got a couple of sandwiches from the beach-shack cafe, plus a few handfuls of the trail mix we hit a grocery the other day to put together, and that did the trick just fine. Geoff had filled a water bottle at the guesthouse this morning, but unfortunately I really dislike the taste of the tap water there, so I only had a swallow.

Then we walked along the long wide sweeping curve of the beach in the opposite direction from where we'd kayaked; we'd gone south and east around a point, and now we walked north and west, passing a variety of people enjoying the beach, a group gathered and getting ready around a rack of canoes whose towing van identified them as Healing Waves Ocean Therapy, pretty cool! and also a number of waterfront hotels, one of which Geoff just looked up as I'm typing this and informed me costs about $400 a night, jeepers.

We ended up at St Brelade's Parish Church, which had a beautiful stone ceiling inside, and very warm and welcoming flyers and info posted, and also a vast and fascinating graveyard around it, with stones as old as [illegible] and as recent as last year. There was also an older side chapel building with partially preserved paintings on the ceiling that the posted info said dated from 1375 and 1425, mostly too faint to fully appreciate but including a beautiful and well-preserved (or perhaps well-restored?) Annunciation.

By that time we were pretty wiped, so we walked up to the main road and waited only ten minutes or so for a bus back into the center of St Helier, the capital, where we're staying. No need to paranoically track our progress when we're taking it to the end of the line! We wandered homeward through a big shopping area, and I seized the opportunity to check the backpack options at the local outdoors supply store, but my ideal unicorn backpack remains sadly mythical. We weren't terribly hungry, but stopped at the same nearby cafe we went to before, where we split a really good teriyaki salmon bowl, and Geoff got a pint of a draft beer he'd liked the other day and I tried a bottle from what Derek had told us is now the only craft brewery still operating on the island. The brewery is unappetizingly called Stinky Bay, but the IPA I got of theirs was delicious.

Then we staggered home at about five-thirty, showered (unfortunately both the water pressure and the hot water supply could be better here, but it's a functional shower and that's what we needed), and started writing up the day. And here we are!

If you're enjoying my trip blog, you might also enjoy Geoff's, which is at https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/index.html -- he sets up the outline in advance, so click each day that has actually happened to see his writeup. Eventually he'll probably post some pictures, which I won't be doing (except maybe after we get home); I'm the logistics officer of our trips, but he's the photographer.

Tomorrow is Liberation Day! Our plan is just to head into the center of town after breakfast and try to find a place from which we can watch the ceremonies and reenactments, and then hopefully there will be festivities and whatnot. Also hopefully it won't rain much; today's weather was spectacular but it's not going to last.

tinny

I strongly suggest watching the movie first.

Don't click on the spoiler cut here in this post before you've seen it.

Here's my non-spoilery review post of the movie: https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/811203.html

the twist explained - spoiler!

So Zheng Yuxing's secret is that he's gay.

The gender of his crush, DJ Ming, is never mentioned throughout the movie.

In spoken Chinese, the personal pronoun is gender neutral, so that works fine.

Of course, Chinese movies by law have to have subtitles, and the movie makers apparently decided to intentionally mislead the audience by using the female pronoun whenever Zheng Yuxing talks about Ming. I'm not quite sure why they did this. I don't think it was to get around censorship because an offscreen mention of a gay relationship would not be subject to censorship. But maybe they just enjoyed making the audience assume the wrong thing at first, just like with Chen Chen's secret.

Zheng Yuxing's doorman friend at the disco accuses him of bringing Chen Chen as his beard because he was dumped by Ming.

Ming never speaks when Zheng Yuxing calls him on the phone, so we never hear his voice.

The first real clue is when Zheng Yuxing's father tells the other parents that his son would never do anything to Chen Chen. This is slightly annoying, since in a western show/movie, I would expect this to be a normal attitude. In all Asian dramas I've seen so far, this is sadly not the case. Everyone always assumes that all men are horndogs and not to be trusted when alone with a woman. So, in a Chinese movie, this was the first dead giveaway.

The second real clue is when Chen Chen and Zheng Yuxing arrive at the music festival and look at the poster of DJ Ming, and Zheng Yuxing says, "Now you owe me a secret," because even though we don't see Ming's face, Chen Chen does and that alone constitutes knowing his secret.

The third clue is in that same scene, when some girls pass by behind them and say "Ming is so handsome" (帅 shuai), which is - just like in English - only used for men. The English subs ruin this, too, by translating it as "Ming is so cool." :/

All of these are easy to miss, but taken together, they're pretty clear and obviously intentional.

my thoughts - also spoilery

I loved all the "we need to be brave and more honest with ourselves" talks Zheng Yuxing and Chen Chen had with each other, because she unknowingly helped him accept himself. And it's just such a wonderful motto for a movie in general. <3

I loved how everyone is wrong about everyone else in this movie. The teacher is wrong about the kids, Chen Chen is wrong about her mother, her parents are wrong about her, Zheng Yuxing is wrong about Ming. It's so well done.

I still don't know whether Chen Chen originally tried to kill herself in the pool or just went in there to think, and then came up with a better solution than killing herself. The scene at the festival with the lady on the string implied that going to the festival/music had something to do with... saving her life? Or just making her see reason and becoming an adult? I have no idea, that was a bit too symbolic for me. :D

I wonder in hindsight how open and naive Zheng Yuxing is at school. If he felt inadequate or unaccepted for being (secretly) gay, I would suspect him to be a bit less carefree. It's possible for him to be like this, that he really doesn't care about being an outsider, I just thought it less likely, because the movie shows us in other scenes how very lonely he is. For me, it doesn't match with the carefree attitude.

It's almost cut off by the fade to black, but when Zheng Yuxing collapses in the hotel lobby, after his father stands back at first, he then rushes to his side after all. <3

I love how Zheng Yuxing is not at all interested in school or doing well in the exam, and I expected this to be shown as a negative thing in a Chinese movie. But it wasn't. He was obviously very motivated to be the best at music, and he put all his energy into that, rightly so, and in the end he did make his dream come true. I thought that was amazing.

Even after watching it several times, I'm still not sure whether Zheng Yuxing and Ming really were in a relationship or whether Zheng Yuxing was just following around his crush like a puppy and it was never reciprocated from the start. Both seem possible to me. He himself isn't even sure if it was a relationship or if there was a breakup or not. My personal headcanon is that Ming treated Zheng Yuxing like a groupie, probably had sex with him, but wasn't really interested in a relationship.

I'm not sure he really would have kissed Chen Chen - that kiss felt like fan service more than anything. I guess I can see a young guy who's just been told that he's her crush go, 'Maybe I will like kissing her,' and only after that finding out that he really doesn't. But - again - it seems unlikely. He would have hugged her instead. (That said, I am not complaining about the fanservice. I am a fan of that kind of service.)

I wish we could have seen a little bit more about their relationship in the coming years, not just her going to the concert. That felt a tiny bit abrupt, but overall, the movie answered all my other questions, and it felt like a satisfactory ending.

ETA: there's one scene where Zheng Yuxing and Chen Chen post a video on social media from a location they don't want to reveal. Zheng Yuxing says to the camera, "我们在哪里" (women zai nali? Where are we?). This is a tradition between Wu Lei and his fans. He will make a selfie video like that with his fans wherever he has a public appearance. I checked, he started doing that in 2018, so the video in this movie is not the origin of the tradition but rather a fourth wall break.

tinny

Wu Lei and Zhang Zifeng in Upcoming Summer

Upcoming Summer (盛夏未来) is a 2021 Chinese coming-of-age movie starring Wu Lei as Zheng Yuxing, wannabe DJ, and Zhang Zifeng as Chen Chen, A-student. The two high-schoolers get thrown together through a white lie she tells her parents after failing the gao kao. Zheng Yuxing was a no-show at the exam, and the two bond.

Does it have a happy ending?

ending spoilers

Where to watch? You can watch it on Netflix here. (I did not manage to find it by title within Netflix itself, no matter what I selected as my preferences. If the link I gave here doesn't work for you, try googling for it.) (If you can't find it, dm me.)

This movie is brilliant. The main characters all have secrets - and each one is slowly revealed throughout the movie. I'm not going to spoil any of them - although I suspect that I would get more of you to watch it if I did. *g*

But trust me on that one: you should go into it unspoiled. I did, and it shook me. I wasn't quite sure I had picked up on the hints or not, and whether I had imagined it all, so I went and watched the whole movie again the next day. I had not imagined it. The movie is very cleverly done. (It's admittedly a bit harder to see if you don't understand a bit of Chinese and are unfamiliar with cdrama tropes, and even then you can miss it.)

The movie plays with different expectations a lot. What parents expect of their children, what teachers expect of their students, what children expect of their parents, what people expect of life. What viewers expect of a coming-of-age movie. :) A lot of those expectations are challenged throughout the movie, and the characters have to reexamine their choices. (And the viewers have to rewatch the movie. :D)

The two students are very cute. They both act like 18-year-olds would, in my opinion. Opinionated, stubborn, looking for connection, hopelessly romantic. It all feels realistic. I'm in no way objective when it comes to Wu Lei. I loved him in this, that's no surprise. I didn't know Zhang Zifeng before this, but she's amazing, too.

My favorite character in the whole movie is probably Mrs Qu, the teacher. She's no-nonsense but caring at the same time (within the constraints of being a teacher in China).

I really don't want to say anything more about the movie, because any plot points I could mention are taking away from the experience, and there is not that much plot in the first place.

But what I should mention is that one of the major elements of the movie is music. Zheng Yuxing, wanting to become a DJ, has a very intimate connection to music and to the electronic music scene. Very unusually for a Chinese movie, the main songs are western songs, and they are used really well.

Music: Coldplay & the Chainsmokers | Kidnap Kid | May Day

The two western songs:

Watch on YouTube

No superhero, no fairytale bliss, just someone I can turn to, somebody I can kiss. I want something just like this.

Watch on YouTube

The friends we made along the way. A journey you can't recreate.

The rest of the OST is by popular Taiwanese(?) band May Day (五月天). Here are two songs from the OST, one performed by May Day itself (and he sings in such a beautiful low register for this <3) , and one performed by Wu Lei and Zhang Zifeng:

Watch on YouTube

Some pictures (hopefully not spoilery)

Peeking

Making a couple video

Upcoming Summer heart to heart

Heart to Heart

Upcoming Summer clubbing

At Zheng Yuxing's favorite club

Upcoming Summer sparks

Lots of beautifully lit shots

Upcoming Summer tunnel

More cinematography

Upcoming Summer festival

At the music festival

Upcoming Summer festival2

At the music festival

I will make a separate spoiler post about the movie, you can come discuss it with me there once you've seen it.

x-posted to

c_ent

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Some leave only Ripples
Artist: leecetheartist
Rating: G
Fandom: n/a
Characters/Pairings: na
Content Notes:

After a busy day, and incidentally GMing a game where the PC's are all merfolk except for one water elemental, I had a little time to bring out the Kakimori dip pen once more and do a quick brush like sketch of this mermaid touching the surface and causing ripples.

I don't know if it's the ink - Van Diemen's Ink 9 Lives, but it didn't seem to flow as smoothly as previous inks. Or maybe the Kakimori is needing a bit of a scrub.

Anyway, I think she looks elegant for just a sketch.

facethestrange posting in

sid_guardian

( You're about to view content that the poster has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

china_shop posting in

sid_guardian

Zhao Yunlan sprawled on a couch, grinning at his phone. The background shows a purply sky with stars. Text reads "Slo-Mo Rewatch. Guardian - half an episode per week @ sid-guardian.dreamwidth.org."

Hello, Guardian Rewatchers! Thanks so much to everyone who's been part of the discussion, or has been reading along. ♥

Come join us for round 4 of the Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch. We're watching half an episode a week (about twenty minutes) so we can talk and squee about our beloved 镇魂 | Guardian drama. With the fourth batch of episodes, we have nosebleeds and aggressive nose-wiping, Zhao family backstory, and Chu Shuzhi in a singlet! We also get trapped in an Absolute Zero laboratory, and the SID celebrates the Reunion Festival!

For those who remember our last rewatch, this time we're aiming for a lighter touch. Posts are on the minimalist side - a brief summary, one quote, one screencap, maybe one noteworthy detail and some discussion-starter questions. Minimalist comments are more than welcome, too!

We're looking forward to some fun discussions as we revisit Haixing, Dixing, and the SID – and of course you can always drop in on any of the previous discussions at any time.

Fans of the novel, the drama, or both are very welcome! You don't have to keep up with the rewatch – it's absolutely fine to dip in and out. We want to hear what you think! Those of us who participated in the Readalong or are otherwise familiar with the novel are likely to compare and contrast the two canons, but it's 100% okay to focus purely on the drama.

Please consider hosting a post or two! Comment with a date from the schedule below! Posts should ideally be made sometime on the Friday or Saturday, in any time zone.

Schedule for round 3
Weekend of 15 May - no new post; catch-up time!
Weekend of 22 May - no new post; explore the 520 Day collection time!
Weekend of 29 May - episode 16 up to 23:53
Weekend of 5 June - episode 16 from 23:53
Weekend of 12 June - episode 17 up to 22:31
Weekend of 19 June - episode 17 from 22:31
Weekend of 26 June - episode 18 up to 23:38
Weekend of 3 July - episode 18 from 23:38
Weekend of 10 July - episode 19 up to 20:18
Weekend of 17 July - episode 19 from 20:18
Weekend of 24 July - episode 20 up to 22:26
Weekend of 31 July - episode 20 from 22:26

ranalore

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: productive
Current Location: my amazon orders page and I have never been so close y'all

the_shoshanna

Turns out that

trepkos lives nearby! We've been internet acquaintances since forever, and this morning we met in person at the same cafe where Geoff and I had dinner last night: a great time chatting, and she has kindly offered to show us around some favorite places on Sunday!

But today she went to run errands and we headed off to catch a bus to a three-hour guided walk across the seabed where huge swaths are exposed at low tide (the sea floor slopes quite gradually and some of the tides are quite huge). I don't have time or brain to write it up properly but it was wonderful: lots of information about shellfish (our guide showed us a live limpet! I've always heard "clung like a limpet" and so on, but she knocked one off a rock so we could see the actual animal. And then put it back, and we could see it shimmy about a little as it resettled itself), and about neanderthal and later early human inhabitants, and anecdotes of people trapped by the rapidly rising tides, and just incredible views across the exposed sand flats and rocks, and channels still running with the tide going out (and later in again), and some commercial oyster beds. There were nine other folks on the tour, and we enjoyed chatting with them too.

Bus back to the main depot in the center of town, where we located the place to catch another bus at 9 tomorrow morning for our kayaking tour with a parallel branch of the same company (probably led by today's guide's husband; she's originally from Germany and met him when she came here and went on a kayak trip he led!). Then we stopped for dinner at a likely looking restaurant in a square on the way home: also very tasty. I pulled out my phone and booked us a table at last night's cafe for Saturday night (day after tomorrow); Saturday is Liberation Day, the 61st anniversary of the island's liberation from Nazi occupation, and there will be big celebrations (the guy in the tourist info centre said ten thousand people would be in town!), and we don't want to have to worry about finding a place that evening.

And now it is late and I must go to bed. The time change and being brain-fried yesterday led me to break my 220-plus Wordle streak, darn it!

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Speedy
Artist: leecetheartist
Rating: G
Fandom: n/a
Characters/Pairings: n/a
Notes:
MerMay the 7th.

I've had a day not conducive to drawing but fired this off this evening.
It's drawn with a Lamy Demonstrator gleefully full of Van Diemen's ink of Azure Kingfisher,
one of my favourite with its sparkle and sheen.

Streamlined and pelagic evolved merperson

Current Mood: tired

aurumcalendula posting in

c_ent

(20 × ~15 minute episodes)

Sharp Downpour is a police procedural minidrama set around 2010 that follows detectives Lu Yi and Lin Shen as they investigate a number of cases.

( Read more... )

( content warnings )

It's available on WeTV.

trobadora posting in

sid_guardian

Just a reminder that the 520 Day Reverse Exchange deadline is now one week away. Please post your completed assignment to the AO3 collection by 11:59PM UTC Wednesday 13 May! (What time is that for me?)

(Actually, the first entry has already been posted! Congrats! \o/)

Your work must be complete to fill your assignment. It's fine to keep editing until reveals, but the first and each edited version must be a work that stands on its own. If you're unsure how to post, see the instructions here.

If you have any questions or, for any reason, you can't make the deadline, please let us know NOW by replying to your assignment email (don't change the subject line) or commenting here. Comments here are screened.

General info, schedule and minimum requirements

*cheers everyone on*

the_shoshanna

in the Channel Islands!

A friend very kindly gave us a lift to the train that we took to the train that we took to a plane that we took to a plane to the Bailiwick of Jersey! Which (like the Bailiwick of Guernsey) is not part of the UK, but rather a self-governing direct dependency of the British Crown. Very cool! and also made it a giant pain to find a reasonably priced travel SIM that would provide both minutes and data in both England (since we transfer at Heathrow) and the Channel Islands.

I've already blogged some of our exciting adventures so far! Other than thinking for the first couple hours that I'd forgotten my wallet, the transatlantic overnight flight was fine. I didn't manage to sleep, even though we had a whole three-seat row for just the two of us, but I did watch a bunch of historical short PR films made by, or at least for, British Airways' predecessors, like BOAC, about air travel, dating from the late 60s or even early 70s all the way back to the 20s! That one was a day and night at a way-station airport on the south side of the Arabian Gulf, I think somewhere around where Abu Dhabi is now? A big fortress of an installation "in case of -- unlikely, but possible -- trouble from the local Bedouin tribes", it's been built because planes can't fly at night, you see. So the passengers traveling on Imperial Airways (yep) get room and board at way stations like this for each of the four nights it takes to get to India. Meanwhile engineers and mechanics climb all over the plane by lamplight (all, like, thirty feet of it), checking and adjusting it for the next day's flight, and dozens of jerrycans of water have been hauled in so the passengers can bathe, and also the local merchants bring camel-loads of goods (especially pearls) to be sold on in the great markets of the Empire. It was fascinating both for its actual context, of which I wanted far more, and for its attitudes and silences. Also fun was a travelogue from I'd guess the 50s, of two white British women having a grand time touring through Asia. I was struck by the immense amount of alcoholic socializing ("I'd never flown before, but by the time I had my first drink on the plane I felt completely comfortable!"), and of course the exoticism and all the smoking, but the thing that completely sent me was the baby hammock provided by BOAC, rigged to hang from the ceiling next to the overhead bins like a cradle in the treetops. Had turbulence not been invented yet?

Anyway, that flight got to London in good time, even had to kill time flying in circles because we were early and local noise regulations forbade us to land before six am. We didn't have to reclaim our bags, as they'd been checked straight through, hurrah, but we did have to go through immigration and security again ourselves and walk what felt like a kilometer or so. But it was nice to stretch our legs! We had enough time between flights for me to set up my UK travel eSIM, but Geoff's phone wouldn't start up, so we just had to hope we'd be able to deal with it in Jersey.

And that flight was greeted at Jersey baggage claim with the announcement that a whole lot of our bags hasn't made it on at Heathrow, but they'd be on the next flight they pinky-swore, and so thirty or so people, including me, lined up at baggage assistance to give them our bag check number, a description of our bag, and our local contact info. Sure glad I had a working phone! Also that at the last minute I jammed some clean underwear, another shirt, and my toothbrush into my carry-on. I've been flying since I was a child, and I think this is the first time I've ever had luggage go astray! And I don't understand why Geoff's bag was one of the first to arrive on the carousel in Jersey and mine didn't even make it on the plane; wouldn't they have been close to one another in the to-be-loaded stack at Heathrow? Oh, well, the auto-email I got from British Airways says they have it (i.e. it's not lost, just delayed) and if we're not at our B&B when it arrives our host says she'll be here all day and can receive it, no problem.

Having dealt with that, we took a bus into the center of St Helier, the capital, and from the bus depot walked about 15 minutes to our guesthouse/B&B. The proprietor is friendly and welcoming; I'd exchanged email with her in advance and it's paid through Booking.com, so she didn't even ask to see ID or anything, just gave us keys to the house and the room. Geoff is glad our room is on the ground floor because it meant he didn't have to climb multiple flights of stairs; I, relatively unburdened 😢, rather regret that's it's at the front of the house, facing a rather busy street. Oh, well. She said the place isn't very busy; if it's really noisy tonight I can always ask about moving to another room. We're here for more than a week!

Having dumped our stuff, I looked up the local Apple Store manqué ("authorized reseller") and we walked back down there and got Geoff's phone restarted, as previously blogged, and then just wandered around town for a couple of hours. We didn't try to actually be tourists, but we located a bus stop we'll need to catch a bus at tomorrow, and picked up some maps and walking advice at the tourist info, add checked a couple of groceries for good trail mix or the makings thereof but without success, and climbed many many steps to a high point from which we could admire the view of the port and the bay. Then we came back home, set Geoff's phone up with his UK number, and he showered and is now napping while I've been blogging and also trying desperately to stay awake; except for dozing maybe half an hour on each flight, I've been awake for [counts on fingers] twenty-nine hours, but if I crash too early I won't sleep enough tonight. But we're definitely going for an early dinner tonight; our host recommended a nearby cafe, and we stopped in this afternoon and it looks perfectly nice. And it's two blocks away, which is a big plus this evening. If I'm really lucky, my bag will arrive while we're out!

ETA: a nice man just showed up with my bag! Yay.

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