Sturdy and Serviceable

Fiction Peeve

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 17:11:07 GMT

I'm trying to define a thing I find frustrating in fiction that I find a bit difficult to describe. I encounter it commonly in fanfic, and less commonly, but still a fair amount in profic. I'm tentatively calling it "Agenda Collapse."

( circling around an idea )

I welcome any and all thoughts on this subject, because my thoughts feel so blobby. If you wanna poke my thoughts into shape, thank you very much!

ETA: I think part of it is the idea that people who are basically sympatico will hold the same opinions on things, whereas IRL, you can enjoy and love a person and still think they are deeply wrong about, say, UBI, or how to hang toilet-paper. So in some part, perhaps this comes from an unwillingness to look unflinchingly at conflicts between people who love/like each other. You can love someone and support their life goals, and still believe their plan to hitchhike across the west coast is foolhardy and dangerous, and you will hide their wallet to stop them! Or at least, I would still be able to find such a character choice interesting and perhaps sympathetic.

Also ETA: also you can agree with someone's agenda and be willing to work with them and still find them as tedious as hell! That doesn't seem to happen on the stories I'm thinking of.

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off-brand Valentine

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 03:27:54 GMT

I'm eating off brand cinnamon hearts, and the texture is subtly wrong

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Recset: AUs of time and place

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 21:05:06 GMT

I have always really loved a story firmly anchored in both time and place. All the stories in this rec-set are set in a real and particular place and time (unlike, in all honesty, canon) but are not set in "now." The level of detail necessary to make a place and time feel real is honestly scary to me, as a writer.

I set myself the constraint that the story must take place in a "real" time and place, insofar as such a thing is possible in fiction. I am not an expert on any of these places, but all of them were committed to providing sufficient detail that to me, a person who had never been there, it felt like the place could be real. (Except the nineties. I have been there.)

The first two stories in this rec-set are the reason I wanted to use this theme; I particularly commend them to your attention.

( MDZS fic recs )

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Stupid like a fox

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 01:33:26 GMT

I have never had a high opinion of Elon Musk's intelligence, but I'm genuinely baffled by how one manages to go about being this bad at a thing. Is there any chance that he can somehow get off the hook for 44 million? I thought his debt was personal, not leveraged against twitter. Can he somehow walk away from this debt? Is there any possibility that this is strategic destroying one's own company?

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KinnPorsche: Bad Ideas

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 01:47:38 GMT

After I watched KinnPorche, I had a very specific idea of the fic I wanted, and here is the fic I found. I thought of this as the "Bad idea sex" rec-set as I was compiling it, although there is not sex in every one of these, it's off screen, I think, but more importantly, all of these have some element of someone making an objectively truly terrible decision, even if it seems logical in the world of the show. Extremely mind the tags, which should be under a cut. The rec-set as a whole has the same level of dub-con as the show, less murder, but more creativity in bringing unwholesomeness to the page. ( recs )

I know there's no KinnPorsche fic in this set, but I found the fic was, on the whole, too fluffy to meet my needs. If you have some bad-idea K/P fic, lmk.

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Dreamwidth for mobile browsing

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 19:44:31 GMT

I've made this guide to browsing and using dreamwidth on a mobile device.

( details, screenshots )

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Knit Knotes: Adventures in Gauge

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 03:21:38 GMT

So I have gotten into the weeds of gauge, such that I now have a favourite cast-on for swatching.

(If you are a person who finds you need at least fifteen rows to recover from whatever happened with your cast-on and have your tension come to its equilibrium: Special Cast On for Swatching. If you do not understand how a person could have this happen, you're probably fine.)

I have become obsessed with finding a way to make my stockinette stitch match my knitting in the round and have knit an upsetting number of swatches and watched quite a few youtubes trying to figure it out. I did this mostly on some acrylic yarn I mostly use whenever a patterns says "with waste yarn..." The yarn is acrylic, I think, or at least it certainly melts rather than burns, so this is not blocked.

( moderately large images, since I'm showing individual knit stitches )

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Fic: A Lucky Snow First Falling

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:17:54 GMT

I meant to post this here for More Joy Day but then uh, you know, what is time?

But is the most joyful thing I have written in yonks.

A Lucky Snow First Falling (6224 words) by Betty
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Characters: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Western Canada, Canadian Shack
Summary:

Lan Zhan, on the other hand, is a delicate flower from Shanghai, yet he wakes up every morning to go jogging around the campus in a tracksuit that Wei Ying is sure he would find sexy if he was ever awake to observe it. In contrast, while Wei Ying is technically the more winter-savvy, he beat Nie Huaisang at fourteen days without leaving the hodge-podge of tunnels and walkways connecting the university’s sprawl, even if it was only because Huaisang’s professor wouldn’t answer his email last week.

My inspiration for this fic was twofold: the extremely specific experience of being a kid in western canada where you get in a car and drive for twenty to fourty minutes to do anything, and the winter of it all, but also the giddy feeling of being so in love that you are basically out of your mind on absolutely horse-doses of endorphins your brain is pumping out. Like. Those chemicals cannot be otherwise obtained without using crack, I'm pretty sure. (I haven't tried it, but.)

I wrote this in two days for pinch-hit, although I kind of want to fiddle with it still, I'm very pleased with the *feel* of it.

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knit knotes

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 18:27:27 GMT

I love the sewn bind-off's look, but apparently I am incapable of binding off a project without wanting to go back and fix something two days later, and it is very tedious to pick out.

gumbie_cat recommended combination knitting as a solution to my knit/purl tension problems, and I have to get more profficient at it to regularize my stitches but at the moment I think... maybe? It's possible that I'm actually purling tighter than I knit, using this technique.

Really miss having a tiny dog to knit for, going through scarf and cowl patterns to see if there is one with interestingly grotty cables I could make into a hot water bottle cover.

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End of year productivity, if time wasted can be called productivity?

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 18:06:50 GMT

So in a confluence of events, Anno Pestis was the year I started to become sensitive to wool against my neck. This is probably my punishment for feeling smug about my ability to wear wool. I spent a long time in denial, and then an even longer time admitting it, but trying to power through it (...??? this is bad and dumb, don't do it) and finally I have come to acceptance, in a journey that I sure will be repeated many times in my life.

One of the casualties of this is a some favourite sweaters. One of them, this one, I had even tweeted about before, which may make it unique among my sweaters? It's not a particularly beautiful sweater, but I liked the warmth of it, and it's weekend-at-the-cabin sturdiness, and one might even say rustic-ness. It's also a very useful garment, that one can throw on over whatever one is already wearing when one is cold. Which I kept on doing, long after it became evident that doing so would mean six hours of itchy neck.

Another plague indexed event is a friend's adoption of a dog. His name is Moose, and he is a Jack Russel/Chihuahua cross, two breeds I would not have recommended, but she did not consult me, and the heart wants what it wants. One reason I would not have recommended anything that rhymes with '-huahua' is our winters, which are quite severe for at least six weeks. Those big chihuahua ears function to radiate heat back into the sky, which is the opposite of what one wants, hereabouts, and honestly any dog under thirty pounds or with a particularly thin coat is at real risk of injury if it accidentally gets forgotten outside for more than a few minutes. (Moose is trying heroically to get himself out of that weight category, but is really suffering under the constraints of what he was born with.)

(Many cat population control initiatives will cut a notch in the tip of feral cats' ears once they have been spayed so that it is easy to tell they have already been trapped. In most parts of Canada this does not work because many ferals have damage to the edges of their ears from frostbite, such that it looks like they've been in a large number of fights.)

Anyway, I am dog-sitting Moose, and we are in the coldest weeks of the year. Obviously, the solution to this is to knit him teeny dumb sweaters. But what if there was a cheat? What if I could cut up a sweater, save myself from the temptation of wearing it, and consigning myself to itchery, and do a good deed (arguable, dog is not that into it., but.)

My genius idea was that because of sweater shaping, I could use the wedge shaped bits at the tops of some of the panels to create the funnel shape that a dog has in front, and save myself all that knitting, as well as preserve the patterned bits. The sweater itself has seen a lot of wear and less than careful washing, so it is moderately felted, and I thought I could maybe just cut it to shape.

( come with me. on a journey. a journey of sweater cutting. Dog/sweater pics, and knit talk )

Lessons Learned:

( use larger needle )

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Fic: By the River-side

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 16:31:13 GMT

I started this fic a couple months ago and stalled out on the first scene, and then banged the rest out more or less in two days right before christmas. Stulti was v. helpful in giving it enough structure to feel story-shaped.

By The River-side (3867 words) by Betty
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jīn Líng | Jīn Rúlán, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī
Additional Tags: Twin Prides of Yúnmèng Feels
Summary:
The youngest shidis, however, weren’t sharing a room with Jiang Cheng, who could swim like a tadpole.
“What’s a tadpole?” asked Wei Ying.
“It’s a frog,” said Jiang Cheng. “Don’t you know anything?”

I thought I was writing "vignettes around the device of frogs" but 9/10ths of comments are "this story made me cry!" which. Uh.

Guys, I dunno, feelings?? I am not sure I did a very good job summarizing it. Sometimes, in Yunmeng, we don't talk about our feelings, we just invest them in symbolic objects, okay?

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I feel like academic AUs could be their own post, actually

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 19:55:33 GMT

Rec-set: Extremely Specific occupation AUs.

I really enjoy stories that bring a specificity to their AUs, and one of the areas that is often done is in the choice of character profession. All of these stories use the profession of the character to explore something about the relationship with those around them and their world, and/or to drive the plot. All of these were richly textured enough to feel real to me (a person who has not… worked any of these jobs.)

These stories differ in length, tone, and rating, although they are all wwx/lwj. (Sorry, this only now occurs to me. If you can think of one w/ a different ship or none at all that fits this description, lmk!)

grave goods (28535 words) by luckymarrow

When you think “Wei Wuxian, mortician,” it just makes sense, doesn’t it? Brings WWX’s canonical relationship with death into a nonmagical, modern setting.

( archive description )

and oh, bask in his glory (62205 words) by belle_abroad

If you, like me, feel about pro-wrestling a sort of “no, thank you,” I urge you to try this anyway. This story gets into the weeds of pro-wrestling in a way that is engaging, and full of affection for the sport(?).

( archive description )

Pentimento. (72966 words) by orange_crushed

A richly textured story of painting conservation, in which Wei Wuxian’s interactions with the art world mirror his canon interactions with the jianghu. A long fic that takes you on the whole journey and will give you feelings.

( archive description )

In The Dark Right Now (10637 words) by phnelt

This is maybe the most marginal in terms of adherence to my theme, but I love it, and it’s going in! You don’t get to see Wei Wuxian do much bat-research, but his job as a bat-researcher sets the stage and gives the story a shape and theme.

( archive description )

Waiting for Spring (130787 words) by thievinghippo

This is a repeat,but it belongs here. Major league baseball player is an extremely specific occupation!

( archive description )

if you go chasing rabbits (23569 words) by occultings

Is witch’s familiar an occupation? This fic argues that it is! There are some bits of descriptive language in this that I absolutely loved. Usually a fic leaves behind in me a vague feeling, maybe some scenes and character dynamics, but the bit “spines of books pile up in vertebral turret” has stayed with me ever since reading this.

( archive description )

Year Of Night Call (22006 words) by ailuridae

Usually I cut the archive description to let me talk about the fic but actually: ( archive stats and tags cut here )

Very few jobs give you the perfect storm of moral high ground, manic energy, and being a huge dick to people on the regular that Wei Wuxian finds so satisfying about trauma surgery. However, they don’t call it trauma for its psychological wellness. A year of q2 36 hour call would be unbearable if Lan Wangji weren’t the other fellow that he shares a call bed with.

A “What If All The Cultivators Were Surgeons?” AU.

This tells you what you are getting.

it is wednesday my dudes (3796 words) by ritualist

Stripper is an occupation that is presented here as very much about the workplace and the politics and logistics thereof. Also, I too have panicked and talked about squid facts.

( archive description )

Every book its reader (21854 words) by twigofwillow

The author is fairly open about working in the field, but even if they weren’t, it would be very obvious from the details of the story that they not only have experience working as a librarian, but also Opinions. Much like LWJ definitely would.

( archive description )

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Sat, 20 Nov 2021 18:10:45 GMT

( weight talk from a thin person, don't feel any obligation )

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Mon, 15 Nov 2021 19:57:52 GMT

If anyone needs moral support for yuletide, I am not signed up and available for beta and hand-holding. Comments screened in case you want to take me up.

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I discovered the FORBIDDEN DOG PARK

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 02:52:13 GMT

Who wants to hear about the FORBIDDEN DOG PARK?( Read more... )

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Xenokink: doing it wrong

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:26:03 GMT

(I am not actually concerned about doing it right or wrong, in this particular case)

An informal tumblr survey of the reasons people are into Xenokink revealed that I am extremely an outlier, because, while I wouldn't say it's a thing I'm into per se, when I'm into it, I'm into it because the aliens do sex weird. And I think it's because of ace reasons: make sex weird! Acknowledge that sex is weird! It's weird!

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Wen Ning recs, for haint month

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 21:12:00 GMT

for halloween, some fic about our favourite spooky boy, the ghost general himself.

(Wen Ning is not usually particularly spooky, not is he guaranteed to be spooky in these fic, but I’m in my Wen Ning Feelings, so.)

These fic vary in the extent to which they consider Wen Ning the ‘main character’ of the fic, but he plays a central part in all of them. None of them are too long, one might very reasonably make an evening of this list, if that were one’s inclination!

If there’s a fic that you’re like, Betty, I can’t believe you didn’t mention [[blank]], please tell me about it!

( recs, assorted ratings )

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Fic: Return to White Clouds

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 16:51:46 GMT

I wrote a fic! It's kind of a thesis about Wen Ning, but also some stuff happens.

Return to White Clouds (3526 words) by Betty
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín
Additional Tags: forestry and feels
Summary:

Wen Ning recognizes what is happening. He is being confessed to. This happens to him, sometimes. There is something about him that makes people tell him secrets, although he doesn't think he does anything to encourage this. His sister used to say he had trust-worthy proportions, which people could naturally see. Since she had never read his fate in his face, this doesn't seem too reliable.

Wen Ning encounters Lan Xichen, and they discuss trees. A secret is shared.

( Process thoughts )

( spoilers )

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Stories in which Meng Yao gets to be happy

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 17:42:52 GMT

Meng Yao (Jin Guangyao) is a complicated and somewhat contentious character in canon. Arguably, his tragic ending was brought on by himself, because he was unable to let go of his grievances. But his grievances were super legit!

( MDZS/CQL fic recs )

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Sun, 29 Aug 2021 16:23:35 GMT

Okay, so if you want to pipe a bunch of emails from mutt to urlextract, so that you can, for example, grep through them for work and pipe that to fanficfare, you want :set pipe_decode or set pipe_decode=yes in your .muttrc

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Books: K.J. Charles, Kate Elliott, De Bodard

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 18:17:28 GMT

It turned out all I needed to be able to read books again is to be away from the internet for 10 days. Some of the ones I enjoyed most were the K.J. Charles books, which I cannot meaningful discuss singly, because I read them in an enormous lump. The two series, though, were “The Will Darling Adventures” and “The Lilywhite Boys.” I found the Lilywhite Boys pretty enjoyable, but not exceptional; it’s a fun romp with jewel thieves. I particularly enjoyed a female character I would describe as “sexy librarian except not sexy.” I am still living with The Will Darling Adventures in my head, though. It’s about two men who were traumatised by both the war and their social situation, and the various ways that those things interfere with them conducting a relationship. I was impressed by the way the relationship develops over the course of three books, so that it always felt like their relationship was evolving and they were facing new problems and not rehashing old ones. The structure of the thing was really obviously building to a confrontation with a particular abuser in book 3, but it felt very satisfying, and not obvious or trite.

I also read The Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliott, which was supposed to be a gender-swapped Alexander the Great, in Space, which is to say, I assume it is, but I’m not that conversant in Alexander the Great, so I read it as purely original fiction. I enjoyed it and want book 2.

I read De Bodard’s In the Vanquisher’s Palace, which was densely textured, and well written, but didn’t grab me in particular. Probably it’s me.

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An Archive of all my Nirvana in Fire tweets,

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 17:26:19 GMT

or rather, the ones since my rewatch, occasionally edited for spag etc.
( Not spoilery so much as shit-post-y )

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Nirvana in Fire Rewatch

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 13:09:23 GMT

Got up in my Nirvana in Fire feelings and started rewatching it, and it's a very interesting show to rewatch, partly because of how dense it is and how much I missed the first time, and partly because I now have a slightly bigger wuxia/costume drama vocabulary, and am catching stuff I missed the first time.

(Also just a slightly larger mandarin vocabulary, which doesn't help as much as it might when half the characters are named "Jing" something, but.)

Like the fact you can definitely tell who's a wuxia character and who's a palace drama character by their hair, and MCS just puts his hair up and switches genres like "Hi, I'm a political operator now."

(Which is a relief, because the wig budget really doesn't show to advantage when his hair is down.)

Things established in E1 ( Read more... )

You don't have to grasp even a tenth of this to follow the show, and I know because the first time around I definitely did not, but it's fun to rewatch and see how much was there from the beginning.

ETA:( episode 2 )

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A bunch of CQL fic recs

Sun, 16 May 2021 17:04:07 GMT

Modern AUs

I love the portrait of the protagonists as idealists who are not under the illusion it is easy. I always love a story with an extremely particular setting, and this one is very particular.
now to begin the road (28872 words) by detectorist ( archive description )

This is also a very particular setting, (which I am afraid is a little bit wasted on me, as I Do Not Music,) but I really like the portrait of a group of friends, and the obnoxiousness of That One Couple.
like mice like rice (18314 words) by JSM氏 ( archive description )

I like how hints of a bigger cultivation structure in the modern world, as well as the feeling of a real city are conveyed.
Morning, keep the streets empty for me (5863 words) by feyburner ( archive description )

I have to admit although the main pairing in this one is compelling, I think my favourite thing is the absolute unbearable-ness of Wei Wuxian and LWJ in the background.
never knew i was a dancer (6614 words) by isozyme ( archive description )

Did I stay awake late last night reading a baseball AU, despite an interest in baseball that can only be described as "non-existent"? Yes, I did. I particularly commend this AU for giving Granny Wen a whole chapter as a guest star.
Waiting for Spring (130790 words) by thievinghippo ( archive description )

AU: Other

If you are not familiar with the crossover, I urge you to read this anyway. This story really explores my favourite territory for this kind of AU: how changing the parameters would change the outcomes, and also, how it wouldn't. It does feel like a slightly softer world than canon, though, because LWJ isn't left quite so alone.
On your rich breathing (4241 words) by Petra ( archive description )

Canon Compliant

I fully love the interactions between Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, both as a child and as adults. This story has both a lot of heart, and a sly sense of humour.
Before the Morning Sun (12620 words) by Vamillepudding ( archive description )

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Fri, 23 Apr 2021 21:39:07 GMT

( death )

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