galaxysoup

Who here is good at naming cats?

2020-10-26T16:19:39Z

About two months ago, I adopted a new cat. I had one already, named Kierra (not named by me, as will become relevant later), who is elderly and lonely, and I wanted to get her a friend.

The process of integrating New Cat into the household has been lengthy, which I was prepared for - she started life as a feral kitten, and has a lot of trust issues to work through. I was planning to get to know her a bit more before I gave her a name, and... well, now all the names that were in the running don't seem to fit her very well, and I need suggestions.

Her personality: shy, mostly? But also very sweet, and she'll be very affectionate once she works up the courage to get within my petting range (we're working on it). She's an excellent hunter and also just a fricking huge cat. Seriously, she's a tank.

Her hobbies: hiding under the couch, having a tiny meow, playing with toys, dismembering beetles with joyful abandon

Naming precedents: her shelter name was Nellie, which I don't hate but am not married to. Kierra's last housemate had a literary name, so something literary could work. The last cat I actually named myself, at the age of seven, was Oreo, so pastry/dessert names have precedent too. And, of course, anything that goes with 'Kierra' or just seems to fit her personality. Given her size and temperament, I feel like she could carry off cutesy and tough equally well.

Does anyone have any suggestions? It's been so long since I actually named a cat myself (mostly I just wind up inheriting other people's cats instead) and I've now overthought it to the point where nothing seems right any more.

( Pictures of New Cat beneath the cut )

SIDENOTE I have now finally replaced my ancient computer and the new one does astonishing things like connect to the internet! and load images! Truly, it is a revelation.

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Sunday Six: Original Id Fic

2020-07-05T19:33:56Z

So I scrapped my first plot, started over with the same world and characters and a few of the beats I wanted to keep from the first attempt, and in the last four days have written 2.5k words, which for me lately is quite good! New tropes include: touch-starved character, shapeshifters, time loop shenanigans.

“Yeah?” Jamie eyes him thoughtfully for a moment, then smiles and spreads his arms. “Hug incoming!”

Theo manages to hug back this time, copying the placement of Jamie’s arms around him as closely as possible. They stay like that for a few minutes, and then Jamie gives a huge, wavery sigh and sort of tucks his face against Theo’s neck before pulling back. He rests his hand on Theo’s shoulder for a quick squeeze before letting go completely.

It’s. It’s fine.

(It’s amazing.)

I am also doing NaNo camp again and I think I managed to fix whatever I did in my settings last time so that people can actually find me now. I'm Galaxysoup there too, if anyone else is camping this month!

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Sunday Six: Original Fic

2020-06-21T16:06:43Z

The angsty romcom is currently in a plot area that is 95% angst and only 5% romcom, and given the world right now my brain has decided it doesn't really want to do that. Instead, much to my surprise, for the first time since college my brain has handed me an original story. It's such an id fic it's a little embarrassing, but I've decided it's self-care and consequently this fic is turning out to be just a laundry list of favorite tropes. Magic! College AU! Found Family! Platonically sharing a bed! Powers Overload! Bucket loads of Hurt/Comfort, with about a 1:6 scale of hurt to comfort! Also the main character is sort of the avatar of death? Look, sometimes a girl has needs, and right now a sweet and kind avatar of death is apparently it.

Tl;dr: a week ago I had 'what kind of a writer can't write' frustrations, and today I have five pages of character and worldbuilding background and 2k of fic. Here is a snippet of the scene where Theo, painfully shy avatar of death (??? it's unclear what exactly he is, especially to him), trips and makes a friend while trying to avoid some anti-magic protestors.

He should say something comforting. Maybe, ‘the protesters will leave soon’? But they both know the protesters will be back at some point. So... ‘bad roommates are the worst’? Or ‘I wish you didn’t have to deal with that roommate’?

That’s probably a good one.

“I have a spare room,” Theodore says out loud.

What.

Spoiler alert: and then they were roommates

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Children's Librarian Mode: Activated

2020-06-18T20:40:09Z

Since June is Pride Month and tomorrow is Juneteenth and both my country and the Harry Potter fandom are on metaphorical fire right now, I have decided to put on my (white) children's librarian hat to ADDRESS SOME STUFF and, in no particular order, PROVIDE SOME RESOURCES!

First up: a plug for your local library (obvs) and, failing that, for bookshop.org, which is the indie bookstore response to Amazon. If you want to be more intentional in your book-buying, here is a list of BIPOC-owned indie bookstores you can order from.

With book sourcing out of the way, we can move on to our first topic: JKR. Unfortunately, this stands for J. K. Rowling and not 'Just Kidding, Right???'

( What does 'death of the author' mean? )

( One fan's reasoning behind continuing to read the Harry Potter books )

And now we can get on to the fun part: book recs! People who read fiction develop more empathy and emotional intelligence, two things we could use a lot more of in this world.

( So you don't want to read Harry Potter but you still want to read a fantasy series )

( Some good queer books for kids )

( Kids' books with black main characters who get to have fun )

( So you also want to read grownup books for grownups )

Phew, that's a lot of linking! If anyone has more books or resources they'd like to add, please comment and tell me and I'll add them to the lists. Thanks to the lockdown I don't have access to a lot of my usual library resources, so I'm going mostly off memory for this post. As I come across more stuff I'll add it too!

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Sunday Six - angsty romcom, The Sequel

2020-05-17T20:29:20Z

So, I've been mostly fine during this whole lockdown - I'm safe, my family seems to be safe, all of us have been able to socially distance and stay pretty isolated, and my job, at least thus far, is secure. The one area I've noticed that I've been definitely affected is when it comes to communicating with people. I'm okay with the level of interaction required on tumblr, and I've been texting memes to my friends and that sort of thing, but I've been very bad at Dreamwidth-levels of communication. I'm sorry!!! The times that I have come on and posted something people have been really lovely about responding to it, and I have not been very good about responding in turn. I'm going to try a few different strategies, because I want to keep checking in and interacting with people!

I have, at least, been getting a reasonably decent amount of writing done. I have three chapters and about 12k of this so far! So I can share bits of that at least.

He wants to believe that Zhao Yunlan has surrounded himself with people who will protect him and look after him. He wants to be able to think, in the long stretches of night, that Zhao Yunlan is safe and happy and will continue to be loved and never betrayed. That Zhao Yunlan will never have to look back on the choices he’s made and be able to pinpoint the ones that made everything collapse into smoking ruins.

Zhao Xinci looks around this station, at the things his son has built, and sees: Criminal. Mobster. Delinquent.

The foundations of his son’s life are so terribly fragile.

That's right, ladles and jellyspoons, I am attempting DAD ZHAO POV! o.0

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Sunday Six - angsty romcom, The Sequel

2020-04-26T18:31:54Z

Look at me, actually remembering to do this on a Sunday!!

There’s a pause in which Zhu Hong and Shen Wei make involuntary eye-contact. Despite the structure of the discussion thus far, a very quick conversation happens in that moment, in which Zhu Hong’s eyes say something along the lines of do you see what I have to work with and Shen Wei responds with a commiserating believe me I understand, you should see some of the faculty meetings around here.

“I believe Lin Jing’s job also requires him to make dangerous things?” Shen Wei prompts, gently. It’s not Xiao Guo’s fault that he’s young and has never had to learn how to intimidate someone.

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Sunday Six - angsty romcom, The Sequel

2020-04-13T17:45:35Z

It's a day late, but technically I had written this by Sunday! Also who knows what time is anymore anyway.

A… kissing friend. Is ‘boyfriend’ a weird word to use? He’s pretty sure they’re dating, even if they haven’t gone on any actual dates yet. Is he too old for the word ‘boyfriend’, and is it presumptuous of him to want something like it?

If only someone had published a scientific study on the matter. But no, his brief foray into the Anthropology and Psychology sections of the library had been simultaneously overwhelming and deeply unhelpful.

Guess whose POV this from.... :D

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Sunday Six - angsty romcom, The Sequel

2020-04-05T14:19:36Z

I'm trying to kick myself back into writing mode, so I have signed up for Camp NaNo (hahahaha wait what) and I come to you with a Sunday Six for the first time in.... uh, mumblety ~~months~~ days.

Lin Jing does not expect much out of life. Hope? Sure, he has lots of hopes! He even has wishes and dreams. He also has what he thinks of as extremely realistic expectations for which hopes, wishes, and dreams he will actually see realised, and how much discomfort and humiliation he might suffer in the process.

It is so, so disappointing when even his extremely modest expectations are cruelly and devastatingly revealed to be hopelessly optimistic.

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Lock Down Fest Fics

2020-03-15T22:01:06Z

So naye posted an announcement on Tumblr about Lock Down Fest, which runs from the 20th-30th of March and is a non-anon, self-posting, multi-ship and multi-fandom mini fest which offers the prompt getting stuck in/isolated together, and/or quarantine-inspired.

While I'm not quarantined (yet) or adequately socially distanced (here's hoping the city government comes to their senses and shuts us down soon), I thought this would be a cool thing to take part in. I didn't have an immediate prompt fill idea, though, which meant I had to come up with a way to bunny myself.

In an attempt to narrow my fic subjects down from 'every fandom I have ever known' to 'only a few of the fandoms I know', I decided to add to the challenge and try to answer the prompt in a fandom I've never written in before. I went through my bookmarks on AO3 and noted down each different fandom I'd saved a story in, and then I eliminated all the ones I'd written in already, whether the fic was fully posted or forever unfinished and eternally languishing on my harddrive. If I then cut out the fandoms that I do not, for whatever reason, feel like I'm capable of writing a fic for, I'm left with:

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., American Gods, Angel, Avatar the Last Airbender, Big Eden, BTS, Disney Princesses, Fruits Basket, Good Omens, Hawaii Five-0, Hot Fuzz, Knives Out, Lord of the Rings, The Losers, National Treasure, Parasol Protectorate, RED, seaQuest, Sleepy Hollow, Teen Wolf, The Untamed, Tintin, What’s Your Number

The challenge, now, is to write one or more stories involving any number of these fandoms, either as solos or crossovers (because come on, what's a more classic crossover setup than 'and then these strangers got quarantined together'??). Looking at this list, I think I need to let things percolate a little bit to see what inspires me before I pick an actual story.

At the moment, I am a little worried that the answer may be a Knives Out/Disney Princesses crossover from Marta's POV, because omg. What.

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The Untamed: The Post-Series Wrap-Up

2020-02-11T01:31:17Z

Where better to start than the beginning? Here was what I knew about The Untamed going in:

There is a character who only wears white and is very serious, and one who only wears black and smiles a bunch, like a reverse Shen Wei/Ye Zun.

The one in black is either evil, or misunderstood, or both.

Playing the flute is Very Bad.

One of the main characters may get reincarnated a bunch? Unclear.

At some point the character in white gets drunk.

At several points the character in black passes out dramatically.

And falls off a cliff at least once.

Somehow as far as I can tell both of them nevertheless survive to the end.

There's a donkey.

You know, I thought everyone was humoring me when they said I basically had everything, but. Uh. None of this list is actually wrong, and several sections of it cover large swathes of Important Plot Arc. As a list it doesn’t actually do a terrible job of encapsulating the show.

Wish there’d been more donkey, though. :D

( On to the ‘hilarious in hindsight’ section of today’s entertainment! )

And so we have reached the end, for real for real. Thanks everybody for keeping me company as I did this thing! :D I started reading the book translation and am about 15 episodes into King’s Avatar, so if anybody wants to yell with me about either of those you are more than welcome.

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The Untamed, Episodes 46-50

2020-02-06T12:31:49Z

AND SO WE HAVE REACHED THE END. I may do a final reflections/look back kind of post this weekend, now that I’ve seen the whole series and am finally able to appreciate the naivete of my earlier comments, but until then:

( DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN )

( Also some fic recs: )

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The Untamed, Episodes 41-45

2020-02-03T23:41:11Z

BOY A LOT HAPPENS IN THESE EPISODES

( In conclusion: MIANMIAN!!!!! :D )

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The Untamed, Episodes 36-40

2020-02-01T12:29:58Z

This was equal parts hilarious hijinks and desperate tragedy, which i am starting to realise is just how this series rolls.

( I want to see a whole show about Wei Wuxian being in charge of the baby cultivators )

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The Untamed, Episodes 31-35

2020-01-30T12:44:33Z

Did I already use 'maximum angst' for a cut tag? Ahaha, what an innocent child I was. D: D: D:

( Cut for MAXIMUMEST ANGST )

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The Untamed, Episodes 26-30

2020-01-26T23:29:41Z

Are you ready for this show to keep amping up? BECAUSE I WASN'T

( Welcome to the calm before the storm )

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The Untamed, Episodes 21-25

2020-01-25T12:14:06Z

So armed with the knowledge that the massive flashback had an end point, I went on a bit of a binge watch. Binge watching the absolutely most tragic and upsetting part of the show, you say? Not my most perfect plan! I may have also taken a break to read a bunch of funny Untamed AU stories, too, and may or may not have accidentally spoiled myself for one or two upcoming plot points. Only time will tell!

I decided to keep these posts to five-episode chunks, reasoning that they would be easier to read, but I have a few of them that I'll space out over the next few days. I haven't finished the series yet but I am ahead of myself at this point.

( Enjoy! )

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The Untamed, Episodes 16-20

2020-01-20T21:09:37Z

( Cut for MAXIMUM ANGST )

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The Untamed, Episodes 11-15

2020-01-07T23:24:47Z

So this took me a while, partly because of the holidays but mostly because of the bronchitis I got during the holidays. You would think that a week and a half spent on the couch hacking up a lung would be the perfect time to watch the entire Untamed series, but instead what I did was watch only the first episode of every TV series I’ve been meaning to watch for the last five years. As you do.

( Cut for sekrit reasons! )

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Yuletide Author Reveal: Discidium, Reparandam

2020-01-01T18:39:22Z

I had to default for the first time during last year's Yuletide, so this year I only allowed myself to pinch hit. Imagine my delight when trobadora's name popped up! :D

Discidium, Reparandam (10670 words) by galaxysoup
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
For: Trobadora
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán
Characters: Shěn Wēi, Zhào Yúnlán, SID Crew, Assorted Students and Bystanders
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Found Family, Canon Divergence, Post Season/Series Finale, Fix-It
Summary: The corner of Professor Shen’s mouth tightens slightly in the specific way that means he’s embarrassed but too reserved to show it, but it does put a halt to his efforts to make sure Zhao Yunlan has his gun, a backup gun, a warm enough jacket, a snack, and a willingness to preserve himself in the face of danger.

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The Untamed, Episodes 6-10

2019-12-10T01:50:40Z

Two weeks and $80 of computer repairs later, I am back with more... can I really call these recaps if I'm not actually trying to tell people what's happening in the episode?

( Beneath a cut for existential reasons )

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The Untamed, Episodes 4-5

2019-11-26T02:52:13Z

( Beneath a cut because why not?? )

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The Untamed, Episode 3

2019-11-07T02:49:41Z

( Beneath a cut for NEFARIOUS PLOT REASONS )

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The Untamed Episodes 1-2

2019-11-06T02:51:02Z

( Beneath a cut for SECRET REASONS )

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I am about to start watching The Untamed!

2019-11-06T00:45:15Z

Who knows how far I will get? Who knows how long it will take me? Not I!

For hilarity's sake, here is what I think I know about The Untamed going in:

There is a character who only wears white and is very serious, and one who only wears black and smiles a bunch, like a reverse Shen Wei/Ye Zun.

The one in black is either evil, or misunderstood, or both.

Playing the flute is Very Bad.

One of the main characters may get reincarnated a bunch? Unclear.

At some point the character in white gets drunk.

At several points the character in black passes out dramatically.

And falls off a cliff at least once.

Somehow as far as I can tell both of them nevertheless survive to the end.

There's a donkey.

And that's pretty much it. Wish me luck - I'm going in! :D

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Fic: Overpowered

2019-11-02T14:14:44Z

Overpowered (2290 words) by galaxysoup
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán
Characters: Shěn Wēi, Zhào Yúnlán
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Sensory Overstimulation, Superpowers
Summary: It’s not a problem, exactly. Like most things that cause him discomfort, Shen Wei can endure it. And if he can endure it, it’s not a problem, right?

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