* I find SMBC pretty hit and miss these days, but today's comic smacked me in the face. :-)

* Idk if 4am!me's brain worries more than it should, or daytime!me's brain worries less than it should. I just know we're in a circular standoff, and I'm very tired.

Previous poll review
In the Fourth walls poll, 68.2% of respondents said "the one-way glass that stops TPTB seeing fannish activity" is important to them; 65.9% said "the one that shields fandom from public/media attention", and 61.4% said "the wibbly-wobby physics-defying thing that means celebs and fans exist in separate universes that just happen to occupy the same space-time". About one in five respondents love ALL the walls.

In ticky-boxes, ballooooooooons and golden sparkles won 54.5% of the vote, coming second to hugs (77.3%), but the other tickies made pretty good showings too. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
I finished Courtney Milan's The Marquis Who Mustn't and enjoyed it very much. Such a kind, good-hearted series with a lovely sense of community and a spark of mischief. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Then I ploughed through one of my randomly selected library books, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman. I found this a delightful read and very moreish. It's voicey, with a distractable, occasionally omniscient 3rd POV scattered with pop culture references. I appreciated it's acceptance of introversion and valuing of alone time. Also, the main character has anxiety, and it didn't really try to fix her.

Andrew and I are still slowly listening to Barrayar by Bujold, read by Grover Gardner.

Kdramas
Juuust enough has happened in One Spring Night that I'm into it. I mean, it's still going around in circles, but I'm most of the way through episode 14, and I'm definitely going to finish. The story relies heavily on respectability, parental authority, and conservative attitudes for its conflict (the leading man is a single dad, OH NO!!), which took me a while to get my head around.

Other TV
Our journey through Middle Earth continues. We're on the second disc of extras for The Two Towers, and the actors seem a bit punchy in their interviews, lol. Other than that, just The Pitt. ♥ (My brother watched a few episodes of The Pitt and said it doesn't have a plot, and I... don't know how to answer that. There are mini-storylines with the patients. The capital-P plot, maybe? such as it is? has kicked in at episode whatever-we're-up-to. I feel like it totally works without a driving plot arc, because there are character/relationship arcs, and rising tension/pacing, and theme. Maybe that's all you need?)

I'm amused that I have three streaming service subscriptions and we're spending so much time watching DVDs.

Audio entertainment
More Better Offline, Tech Won't Save Us (the one about humanoid robots), Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Pod Save America, Cross Party Lines, Fansplaining.

Online life
From you I have been absent in the spring February, quite a lot. My reading page seems pretty quiet, and I'm still having trouble keeping up; open tabs proliferate (that's the middle line of a haiku).

Writing/making things
I'm subsisting on alibi sentences. My creativity is sitting on a bench somewhere, staring blankly into the sky.

I keep failing to post the meta about adverbs in speech tags because it's so prescriptive, and who am I to say anything?

Life/health/mental state things
I don't know what I'm doing with my life. The world (mostly as presented by the above podcasts) is freaking me out. Yesterday I made fifty chicken dumplings and talked to my brother in NY.

Good things
Dumplings. Creativity is a tide. Sunshine. Grapes. Library books. Black cat lying on the very edge of a sunbeam. Independent media and reporting.

I Want to Finish What I've Started: Author Edition 

Cannot BELIEVE I still have an SPN icon!

Anyway ... I first started making fanvids for fun in 2002, but I began posting them on LJ in 2006, and since 2026 is therefore my 20th anniversary of posting the first one (#what) and I've been wanting to get more of them on AO3, I decided to make that a project for this year!

So here's my 2006 one and only Supernatural vid, Life is a Highway.

This isn't the first one I put online, but of the 2006 vids I think it's probably one of my favorites and a good one to start with. Contains clips up to late season one because that's all I'd watched at that point and most of what was available. Here's the original LJ-imported-to-DW post. Please enjoy this dive into an alternate reality a moment in time when season one of Supernatural was literally All There Was.

Some notes if you'd rather read them afterwards

Obviously at this point all I have is the exported file rather than the original vidding files (as this was at least 5 computers ago) so 2006 quality is what you're getting, including some slight wonkiness with jerky video and slightly odd cropping (I was screencapturing the video, which explains both the slight borders that occasionally appear - I got a lot better at cropping later - and a few instances of jerkiness as my 2006 computer struggled to render the video). The credits also include my original 2000s-era LJ name, which some of you may remember.

IIRC, I was making these earliest vids on a really old copy of Adobe Premiere that I had absconded with from my college computer lab in the 1990s.

Also posted on AO3.

If you want a 12 Mb download in 2006 quality, you can download it here!

Also, an interesting bit of context on the 20th anniversary vidding project - I discovered recently that I uploaded a bunch (most? all?) of my older vids to Vimeo in 2016 on the private setting, so apparently I was planning a *10th* anniversary vidding project, but got derailed somehow. What is time.

Title: From All The Spaces Between Times
Chapter: Chapter 72 — And the World Sensed Us There, With Empathy
Author: elrhiarhodan / elrhiarhodan / elrhiarhodan
Fandom: Star Wars, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars — Obi Wan Kenobi (TV), Star Wars — Jedi Apprentice Books
Characters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Shmi Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, The Force as a Sentient Character, Watto, Quinlan Vos, Padmé Amidala, Sabé, Darth Maul, Yoda, Mace Windu, Adi Gallia, Quinlan Vos, Professor Huyang, The Force, Plo Koon, Vokara Che, Siri Tachi, Aayla Secura, Bant Eerin, Bruck Chun, Xanatos du Crion, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Hego Damask II | Darth Plagueis, Komari Vosa, Bail Prestor Organa, Breha Organa, Bail Antilles Prestor, Rael Averross, Nim Piana, Ahsoka Tano, Sifo-Dyas, Reva Sevander, Lene Kostana (mentioned), Savage Opress, Pong Krell, The Traitor, Original Characters, Other Characters To Be Added
Pairings: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Shmi Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon Jinn (yes, we’re arrived). Bail Prestor Organa/Breha Organa
Word Count: ~ 5000 this chapter
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Possible eating disorder (Obi-Wan), Ideation of child murder, Graphic description of vomiting (Quinlan Vos)

Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi has never known it, but he has always been the Force’s Champion, destined to suffer infinite sadness in defense of the Light. On his last turn on the wheel, responsibility for The Chosen One, the false child of prophecy, had been thrust upon him with no warning, and Darkness held the upper hand.

But this time, the Force has marshaled its power and will protect its Champion until the time is right, no matter how long Obi-Wan has to wait and how much he has to suffer.

Or,

Obi-Wan is reborn as a twelve-year old.

He wakes up on a slavers’ ship, with all of his prior life’s memories intact, and he’s bound for Tatooine with a Force-inhibitor collar around his neck, a bomb implanted in his spine, and no way of knowing what state of the Galaxy is in.

Just another day in the life of the Force’s Champion.

Chapter Summary: Naboo is not an easy place for Obi-Wan. He struggles to put away the old memories of tragedy and mistake, and succeeds, if for no other reason than the imminent arrival of Quinlan Vos and what they are going to uncover inside Master Yoda’s ship.

---

From All The Spaces Between Times: Chapter 72 — And the World Sensed Us There, With Empathy (On AO3)

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( Meta — And the World Sensed Us There, With Empathy )

In between the other books I've been rereading, there were also a couple of rereads of older books.

Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of Nimh - I reread this one a few days ago after randomly finding it while looking for something else on my bookshelves. I still feel as I did the first time I read it, or watched the movie - whichever came first for me, I genuinely don't remember now - that this book has an absolute genius premise in how it plays around with the tropes of classic children's animal literature.

Cut for anyone who doesn't actually want to know the big spoiler in the premise (which is revealed in full about halfway through the book).

( About that book )

Anyway, I really enjoyed it! A fun quick read, a classic for a reason.

A Wrinkle in Time - I had pulled out this one and several others in the series to reread around the time I did my Dark Is Rising reread a couple of years ago, and finally got around to it. I remember a lot of this book really well - I must have reread it a ton as a kid, because I remember the broad shape of the plot as well as, in vivid detail, a number of images from the book, like the kids all bouncing their balls in unison, the disembodied brain, or Meg starting to pass out and dipping her head to inhale from the oxygen flower. What I didn't remember is how it all connected together, how it ended (I can see why), or how absolutely batshit insane this book is.

( A little more about this one )

Pandemic Life
Just had my Covid booster.

Previous poll review
In the Oxford comma poll, 44.4% of respondents have firm opinions, 34.9% have moderate preferences, and 6.3% are officially neutral. (I worded the poll badly, because actually what I have is a firm preference, which is to weed out unnecessary commas for cleaner prose. Yes, I realise I used an Oxford comma above. ;-p) The "always use it!" contingent makes up 39.7% of respondents, while 15.9% said "only use it when necessary!"

In ticky-boxes, 39.7% of respondents selected "buying a random bargain bin product, imprinting on it, and spending the rest of your life trying to track down replacements", and I'm very glad it's not just me. I recently bought 18 toothbrushes online, which should theoretically keep me going until I'm 60. Naturally, hugs won the ticky-boxes, with 69.8%. Thank you for your votes!! ♥

Reading
I can't remember what prompted me to, but I listened to the audiobook of The Duke Who Didn't by Courtney Milan, read by Mary Jane Wells, and loved it all over again. (Last time I read it in ebook.) It's a British historical het romance with leads of Chinese descent, and they and their supporting cast are delightful.

I've now started the next in the series, The Marquis Who Mustn't, in ebook. (It's the first ebook I've bought in ages. I'm proud to say that, after some technical hitches, I managed to load a Kobo book onto my Kindle, so that'll be my plan from now on.)

While waiting to see if my Covid jab would importune me, I was allowed to go hang out in the library for the 15 minutes. I not only picked up my reserve, but also two random contemporary romance novels and a Japanese coffee shop book with cats. Given my recent rate of (not) reading hard-copy books, I should clearly not be allowed to browse.

Kdramas
Still going on One Spring Night. It's finally picking up. The cast is amazing, and they have excellent chemistry, which is what's been keeping me watching. The plot is, in essence, woman dumps her long-term high-status boyfriend for someone nicer of lower status; everyone has a hard time accepting this, especially the long-term boyfriend. Personally, I'm like, "The new guy is Jung Hae-in! Look at his smile!! How could you not??" Anyway, it felt like they were all having the same conversations over and over for seven episodes, which got a bit wearying, but hopefully the latest developments will stay developed. (FTR, this drama feels like an obvious descendant of Something in the Rain, with many of the same cast but (thankfully) no subplot about workplace sexual harassment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one will stick the landing better!)

Other TV
Watching our way through the extended edition of Lord of the Rings, plus many of the extras. What a blast from the past! Frodo actually made me tear up at the end of Fellowship. We're on the second disk of Fellowship extras.

Also, still, The Pitt and SurrealEstate, and my sister and I started season 4 of Fringe. (I would totally watch this show if it were always Olivia and Lincoln as partners. Who even needs Peter? ;-p)

Audio entertainment
Letters from an American, The Shit They Don't Tell You About Writing, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner (part of Crooked Media), and a whole bunch of episodes of Better Offline, including "Openclaw with David Gerard" (as recced by sabotabby), four short, angry episodes titled "AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble", and a fantastic rant with Cal Newport about AI reporting (spoiler: the vast majority of it is hype), which also, towards the end, explained (in words small enough for me to understand) how AIs are made/trained. Highly rec. I'm now working my way through Better Offline's series "The Enshittifinancial Crisis" and greatly appreciating his invective.

Online life
The Guardian slo-mo rewatch is still my happy place.

Writing/making things
I've been working on the same Yuletide New Year's Resolutions treat for, like, forever. It's only a couple of thousand words, it's just taking a while to come together. That's okay. I've also been noodling at a post about adverbs in speech tags for fan_writers, but there's too much to say; I need to rein it in.

Still intermittently practising drawing. Telling myself that one day I'll be able to do expressions and poses. That would be nice.

Life/health/mental state things
( Grumbling, feat. local politics )

Cats
Halle keeps bringing cicadas into the house and crunching them, nom nom nom.

Goals
I wrote a list of goals for the year and have not looked at it since. La la la.

Good things
Podcasts, kdramas, DVDs, audiobooks, media generally. Fandom and Guardian specifically. Sunshine again, yay! My roof did not blow off. Andrew and Halle and friends and biking out to meet someone for lunch.

1. My second finished & posted fic of the year, another late fandomtrees gift, is Guardian:

   Title: Emergency Contact (6050 words) by china_shop [Teen and Up]
   Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
   Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
   Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, (For one of them), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Zhao Xinci's A+ parenting, Inexperienced Zhao Yunlan, Internalized Homophobia, Feelings about being closeted, Non-Linear Narrative
   Summary:
   
   Zhao Yunlan lists Shen Wei as his emergency contact. The fact they've never met is but a minor detail.



2. Having a lot of fun with the smudgers. Here is my not-quite-convincing sketch of Amina from We Are Lady Parts. I did one of Zhao Yunlan, too, but while it came out okay in terms of shading, it doesn't look enough like him that I can bring myself to upload it, and my Saira and Bisma... well, it's good to practice. Baby steps.


3. out_there posted Noah Kahan's The Great Divide a while ago, and it's really stuck with me.
   
   
   Watch on YouTube
   
   
   I also keep listening to Amina's cover of The Reason:
   
   
   Watch on YouTube


4. In Kdramas, I'm watching One Spring Night for its wonderful cast, but I'm in the market for something more fun (preferably light/swoony romance), if anyone has any recs.


5. Milestone: as of yesterday, Andrew is self-propelling (driving again). No more driving him home in the evenings! Of course, this meant I stayed up past midnight making (slightly disappointing; needs scallions and/or garlic chives, neither of which I had) salsa. But anyway, now Andrew has independence (and I have the possibility of earlier nights). Woot!


6. We're rewatching LotR after many many years. Halfway through Fellowship. Oh, this soundtrack!

For future reference: I replaced my downstairs smoke alarms yesterday.

So in 2025 I read and finished 90 books, plus 4 short stories, and didn't finish 12 books for various reasons. All of this doesn't include any Bible or fanfic reading.

Please note, just because I finished a book doesn't mean it was good or that I liked it, just that it wasn't so bad that I couldn't finish it (or it was historical detective and I wanted to know who did it). Conversely, just because I struggled with a book doesn't mean it was badly written, sometimes I just can't get into a book – a personal thing rather than a book quality thing.

The books are alphabetical via author surname.

( This way... )

But before I get to that, I started posting another fixit WIP over on AO3. This one will probably be about 4 chapters long, most of which is written, but it's kind of a mess so I'm posting it as I finish cleaning them up and filling in the missing parts.

The Living and the Damned - goes AU from the beginning of 5x18, rated mature because there will be tentacles, though things are a bit too dire for that yet.

And speaking of tentacles.

( More from the behind the scenes books (tentacle related) )

Title: From All The Spaces Between Times
Chapter: Chapter 71 - Broken Jars Speak the Truth
Author: elrhiarhodan / elrhiarhodan / elrhiarhodan
Fandom: Star Wars, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars — Obi Wan Kenobi (TV), Star Wars — Jedi Apprentice Books
Characters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Shmi Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, The Force as a Sentient Character, Watto, Quinlan Vos, Padmé Amidala, Sabé, Darth Maul, Yoda, Mace Windu, Adi Gallia, Quinlan Vos, Professor Huyang, The Force, Plo Koon, Vokara Che, Siri Tachi, Aayla Secura, Bant Eerin, Bruck Chun, Xanatos du Crion, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Hego Damask II | Darth Plagueis, Komari Vosa, Bail Prestor Organa, Breha Organa, Bail Antilles Prestor, Rael Averross, Nim Piana, Ahsoka Tano, Sifo-Dyas, Reva Sevander, Lene Kostana (mentioned), Savage Opress, Pong Krell, The Traitor, Original Characters, Other Characters To Be Added
Pairings: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Shmi Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon Jinn (yes, we’re arrived). Bail Prestor Organa/Breha Organa
Word Count: ~ 4600 this chapter
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None

Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi has never known it, but he has always been the Force’s Champion, destined to suffer infinite sadness in defense of the Light. On his last turn on the wheel, responsibility for The Chosen One, the false child of prophecy, had been thrust upon him with no warning, and Darkness held the upper hand.

But this time, the Force has marshaled its power and will protect its Champion until the time is right, no matter how long Obi-Wan has to wait and how much he has to suffer.

Or,

Obi-Wan is reborn as a twelve-year old.

He wakes up on a slavers’ ship, with all of his prior life’s memories intact, and he’s bound for Tatooine with a Force-inhibitor collar around his neck, a bomb implanted in his spine, and no way of knowing what state of the Galaxy is in.

Just another day in the life of the Force’s Champion.

Chapter Summary: Obi-Wan finally has his first solo mission, a visit to Naboo to do some research in the State Archives. He had thought this would be a simple trip, Master Yoda has even lent him his personal transport, the Tython-One.

But nothing is ever simple, not when the Force’s beloved Champion is involved.

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From All The Spaces Between Times: Chapter 71 — Broken Jars Speak the Truth (On AO3)

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( Meta — Broken Jars Speak the Truth )