oneiriad

One advantage of having a cold - watching Murderbot in the morning.

Preservation culture: oversharing in fancy restaurants.

Gurathin - that doesn't sound very sweet, you know.

Snarky Murderbot. Earnest Murderbot. Awww.

Awww, Ratthi = puppy. SecUnit = great conversationalist.

Ah, Gurathin, you are so very paranoid.

Murderbot - not becoming a tree because it needs more media.

Oh look, another centipede - and a - uhm? Oh no.

Chekov's egg sacks?

Inferior model. Can't even handle a single centipede.

Point the first against the mysterious new person in the show: she clearly has bad taste in media. Just ask SecUnit.

Point the second: yeah, that bit I've been dreading since the trailer.

Seccy???

Oh, look: actually scary Murderbot pinning Gurathin to the wall. Yes, good.

(Am I misremembering or did they skip part of the conversation here?)

Poor, paranoid Gurathin. Hopefully he comes around in the show. I prefer him as Murderbot's friend it doesn't like, but we're still a bit away.

Please tell me sexually harassing SecUnit is against the rules. Bad DeltFall or possibly undercover GrayCris person. *hits repeatedly with folded up newspaper*

I am happy that they've gone with Murderbot is aro-ace - I just wish they hadn't taken the "everybody else seems to be going overboard in the other direction" way of showing it.

First among equals? Is Preservation proto-Roman empire now? (Or did nobody else read those novels?)

And cliffhanger.

Also, Mensah - it didn't hurt Gurathin. It pinned Gurathin to the wall without causing him any physical injury. It made a point, nothing more.

You know, the show is starting to grow on me with the last couple of episodes. Less cringe, more action. I enjoyed SecUnit and Mensah working together at the end. (And I need more SecUnit interacting with Gurathin, and less Leebeebee interacting with anybody, femme fatale wannabee or not).

Rude, Gurathin. Your SecUnit already saved two of your colleagues, or did you forget? Nobody's died under its watch on this expedition.

Murderbot, you have a strange taste in media if that's your idea of a fun show.

Fredningsalliancen? What, Danish subtitles, are they anti-terraforming or something?

Want to join... ?! Hey, show, who the fuck is writing that idiocy? Nobody wants to do that.

Crabs!!! Space crabs!

Don't get me wrong, I love the alien planet bits, but who builds a house right next to a geysir?

And cliffhanger.

Right, while I'm a little sad that we didn't more Sanctuary Moon this episode, I did enjoy Murderbot's whole ugh, stupid humans, let me get back to my silly little shows thing.

14th day of the year, and one full year of having a king. Feels unnatural. Everybody knows monarchs should be female. It's traditional.

Life trundles on - sometimes slowly and with the stupid train breaking down three stations away from home on a day that was already late. Grrr.

I haven't been reading a lot of fanfic this week, because I got distracted by a very silly webcomic, Cultivator Against Hero Society. And I do mean very silly, this is not even close to a serious storyline. Main character Yan Sen is a ridiculously OP cultivator - cultivated to immortality, to divinity, to something-ty and then for handwavy reasons gets exiled from xianxia world and lands on an Earth. Which, fine, he can roll with this, he just wants to drink tea and rebuild his cultivation sect by finding some likely students. Just a few problems: namely the many, many copyright-friendly superheroes running around on this Earth and constantly challenging our protagonist to fights. The first many chapters are him curbstomping the local versions of Superman, Sailor Moon and the Power Rangers... It's very silly. The chapters I'm on now involves vampires with tiny umbrellas on their heads to shield against the sun, and a vampire vs. ancient mechas war.

 Another year came and went, along with my 20 year anniversary as a fanfic writer actually putting my fic out there.

It's been a pretty quiet year, all in all. I went on a spring vacation to Athens (which was nice and apparently unseasonably warm, did a day trip to Delphi and a food tour and looked at many ruins and some robots). Didn't get to see a Crazy Christmas Cabaret this year for the second year as an adult - and this time it was Tivoli being greedy capitalists that were to blame (and not covid like last time). Oh well, I've already secured tickets for next year.

But apart from that it's been - pretty quiet. Partly because, to be honest, I don't really have a large social circle IRL. Being aro-ace, introverted and a bit of a homebody doesn't really help, but I was spoiled for a few years by being in a social circle with people who lived nearby. These days it's a lot less stuff. I really should try to do something about that.

I managed to write 4 entire fanfics this year, yay! (Well, two fics and two ficlet.) And all of them at least partly in Cdrama and danmei fandoms, so I guess that's my active fandom these days.

First was A Hard's Day Night, a crossover between Word of Honor and the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and a sequel to Nirejseki's It's Tough to be a God (which has Jiang Cheng ascending to the heavens). My fic then involves Gu Xiang, another angry, purple, whip-wielder, seeking shelter in a temple of JC's and is basically a fix-it. (It's also the fic I stalled on in 2022 after having had to interrupt writing it to finish the last Yuletide fic I suspect I'll ever write).

Second was A Diplomatic Incident in Three Easy Steps, which is a crossover between Beetlejuice and Heaven Official's Blessing. I had fun writing that one - I feel that the grotesque comedy of the Beetlejuice ghost verse blend fairly well with Ghost City and that universe.

Ficlet the first was Boys Will Be Boys, which is basically just a fragment of story. It's what would happen if Wenren E from Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know and Di Feisheng from Mysterious Lotus Casebook were to meet. Answer: fight! Fight Fight! (Listen, those boys have one track minds).

Ficlet the second is the only non-crossover - The One Within the Scum Villain which stole the very bare bones basic concept from a specific manga and applied it to SVSSS. Judging by hits and kudos that was the year's biggest success, though frankly I think that's just that it's in that reasonably active fandom.

I read a fair amount of books this year. Also finally succumbed to my deep frustration with Goodreads and applied to be a "librarian" there, so I can actually keep using the site to track my reading instead of waiting literal months for books to be added.

Some favourite reads in chronological order:

( Foxes, witches, cultivators oh my )

I watched a bit as well. My favourite visual media this year was, well. I quite enjoyed Lille Spejl, a Danish movie from the 70s with Frits Helmuth as a gay factory worker and part time drag queen and his social circle. It reminded me of Ta' det som en mand, frue from the same period. I also quite enjoyed Mysterious Lotus Casebook - wacky murder mystery solving turned epic martial artists drama, bit slow to start, but fun, and I very much enjoyed the grumpy bad boy Di Feisheng. 

( List of everything I watched in 2024 without further comments. )

My calender tells me it's 2024.

It feels like I haven't really done a lot this year. I mean, I definitely haven't been productive fic-wise. It's - year before last, I felt I was just getting in a roll with a fic and then I had to stop writing it because I had to write a Yuletide fic, which - well, the recip read it, at least. Anyway, this year I swore off exchanges, but I haven't been able to refind it. All I've written are three crossover ficlets in Danish - one MDZS/Word of Honor, one Narnia/Sandman and one Good Omens/Murder She Wrote.

I wish I could claim I had been superproductive in other parts of my life, but... I've worked, been on a couple of vacations - 5 days of springtime vacation in Berlin (lovely city, must visit again, can recommend the computer game museum) + a couple of days in the summer in Lund (very nice, though probably won't visit again - might repeat the couple of days somewhere in easy reach thing, though).

I've read a fair amount - you can find the complete list on Goodreads. A little bit of this, a little bit of that - got through both The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (quite fun) and Heaven Official's Blessing (technically speaking MXTX's best written, but just not quite as engaging as the other two), read a few books on asexuality - rec: Refusing compulsory sexuality; bunch of comics, the autobiography from the first lady detective in Denmark - stuff.

Watched a few movies and shows - some fun: I think my favourite movie this year was "Ta' det som en mand, frue?", a 70s feminist movie with about half the time dedicated to a what-if-men-and-women-swapped places segment; and the Onmyoji anime on Netflix was also fun. A couple of things - sadly including Good Omens season 2 - were more disappointing - and I've almost stopped watching MCU. I watched the new Black Panther because Namor, mostly. Anyway, I've listed the full set below, mostly for my own sake.

( Full list of movies and tv shows )

Last episode.

I am starting to suspect things won't get wrapped up.

Maggie? Oops.

I am going to need a little more than nah. Why the change of heart?

Guess Aziraphale was a bit traumatized by that fire.

Awww, Shax.

This is not a daytime show. Needs more lighting.

Are Gabriel and Beelzebub flirting? So much fanfic.

Still missing the motivation here.

Good for Shax.

What are you up to, Metatron?

Aziraphale, ruler of Heaven? Please no. And angel Crowley? I - no. Oh, Aziraphale. You still haven't got it, have you?

Oh Crowley. You're not good at this, are you?

10 minutes to resolve this mess. Hmmm.

We're back at that fucking bandstand, aren't we?

Damnit, Aziraphale!

Right, when's season 3? (I hate cliffhangers.)

And she's got brains. And the ineffable husbands are gossip in Hell, snerk.

Nazi Zombie Flesheaters?

At least they get a briefing.

Tennant's having fun with accents this season.

And we continue the ethical debate on the monetary value of human life.

Yeah, my embarrassement squick never likes it when magician!Fell takes the stage.

Always read the fine print.

Poor Aziraphale really only performs well under pressure.

Are we going to follow up on the random zombies?

That Rolls needs a flashing red light in front to channel its inner KITT.

Goats!

Noooooooo!

Ah, very classical cataloguing system. Downright monastic.

Music mystery.

Crowley associating rainstorms with falling in love :-)

Imagine: Jane Austen writing books?! Weird.

Funny things, covids. Learn the weirdest noises.

Oh look. Brats.

Oh dear. Temptation, thy name is Crawly.

Our car? Now I'm getting Carlsberg commercial flashbacks.

Oh look, Good Omens in Good Omens.

So. That was a Year, wasn't it.

I can't claim my private life was especially exciting, though. Mostly embracing my time as crazy cat lady librarian. I did get to go to the US - NY to visit friends and then Boston with a detour to Salem for tourism. It was fun - got some nice souvenirs to take home. Like a proper Kitkat clock. Well, and a bout of covid, which definitely sucked.

I got a fair amount of reading done this year. You can find the full list on Goodreads. (I am currently angry at them, because they've removed the average user's ability to add books and editions).

Some of my favourite reads were Emmy Carell's novel from 1921, Kan mænd undværes, an epistolary novel about an f/f love affair; Roger Zelazny's A Night in Lonesome October;
C.A.Wolters's Den som hvisker; Bram Stoker's Dracula (yes, I read Dracula Daily); and Knud Pedersen's autobiographical Dengang da jeg var pige, about working class gay life in early 20th century Copenhagen.

I didn't get much writing done, I fear. Watching Sandman inspired me to write a very short fic, Serendipity, which I think might have been the first Hob saves Dream fic. I certainly wasn't the last. Following Dracula Daily and thinking how the cowboy Quincey Morris filled the role of noble savage lead me somehow to write a fic of Jonathan Harker's visit to Romania as if it was an Ancient Greek play, and finally there's my Yuletide story this year, Travel Light written for the Norwegian fantasy novels Ravneringene. They are very good novels. The fic? Well, I lost Yuletide as a writer. By the new year it had 3 hits and a drive-by guest kudos. That's not even enough to call it bad, just - guess nobody read the books? I dunno.

On the other hand, I won Yuletide as a recip, getting an amazing Far til fire fanfic, Læg nu smukt din hånd i min, which you should all go read.

What else? I watched a fair amount of tv shows and some movies. My favourites were definitely The Sandman and the new Interview with the Vampire shows. Encanto was probably my favourite new movie, but I also got to see Jaws for the first time and enjoyed it thoroughly.

( Full list of movies and tv shows )