Wandering Around Talking To Rainbows

Things I've Been Up To

2026-07-09T19:29:29Z

I've been on jury duty this week, which involved a lot of waiting around, so I finished a library book, did a lot of knitting, and stress-wrote a fic.

Ain't No-one Else To Blame But Me (1464 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: Siblings, Hockey, Family Dynamics, Sibling Rivalry
Summary: Alexei’s first love was hockey; it did not love him back.

Anyway, what else? Movies! I have been watching them!

Pretty much on the spur of the moment, I went to see my local art house cinema’s Mystery Movie last Friday night. (My horror movie buddy, texted me the night before to see if I fancied it, we’ve done a horror mystery movie before and that was great but I wasn’t certain about one where I didn’t even know the genre. However, I haven’t see this friend in ages - she got married earlier this year, so she’s been busy - and I wanted that part of the evening, so I decided that actually I do trust the film curator enough that it’ll be a good time so said ‘fuck it’ and agreed.) To our mutual amusement it turned out to be Slither, an early 00s ridiculous splatter-fest that my buddy had actually seen in the cinema when it came out but it’s been so long since she saw it, all she could remember was that it had Nathan Fillion in it - or as she put it ‘the guy from Castle’. We laughed, we squealed, we heckled - a well/badly timed jump scare led to me wearing half a glass of wine - it was a pretty packed screening, full of fellow film nerds also having a good time. (Was it a good movie? No. Was it a good time? Absolutely. We do not require our horror movies to be good, though we like it when they are, but we do need them to commit to the bit.) And then afterwards, we went for cocktails and spent a glorious couple of hours ripping it apart, analysing the tropes and generally nerding out about horror movies, in between catching up on life.

My original plan for Friday night was to go and see The Mandolorian and Grogu because that seemed a good time for a Friday night when I wanted to turn my brain off and enjoy some action. The screenings were pretty limited near me, but I spotted there was one Sunday lunchtime, so I zoomed home from swimming and made it to that one. My main criticism of this film is that I think it wasn’t sure who it’s audience was, it didn’t seem to be willing to commit to whether it was a family film or not. There were whole sections with Grogu and the little mechanic aliens that were clearly aimed at kids, but a big chunk of the plot is all bounty hunters and gladiator style fights to the death. So like tonally, a bit all over the place, I wish they’d decided what kind of film they were making because for the record I’d have watched either version but there was a bit of whiplash going on there. (You could have cut a good half an hour/forty-five minutes out of it with no really storytelling loss, but I enjoyed spending time with those characters so it didn’t drag.) But, I can’t claim that I didn’t enjoy it. I watched three seasons of the Mandolorian purely for Djin and Grogu learning out to be a family and fighting bad guys, I’d likely have watched another three, so I was quite happy to watch another two and a bit hours of them doing their thing. Plus Sigourney Weaver as a New Republic senior officer, all very moral relativist but coming through in the crunch nonetheless, very hot.

And finally! I’ve had a documentary open in a tab on youtube for about six months, after reading a blog post about it somewhere, and I finally got round to watching it. Listers is a charming little indie documentary film by two brothers who discover the concept of competitive birdwatching, fall down a rabbithole investigating and end up spending a year living in a van making a film about doing their own ‘Big Year’. It’s both delightful and bizarre, just a fascinating deep dive into this whole other world and it’s dramas and foibles by two guys who’re outside it enough to see it’s eccentricities and have perspective on them, and fully aware that they have in fact been sucked into the culture of it. It’s a film made with a great deal of affection but also a clear sense of the ridiculous.

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Nobody Knows You and Nobody Gives a Damn

2026-07-05T18:54:16Z

So at the start of last month - last fic_rush probably - I knocked out a little double-drabble Bicker for drabble_zone as a wee test to see if I could write for this fandom. (I am SO down the rabbithole with reading fic for this fandom. But that doesn't always translate to writing stuff myself. I did a lot of movie fanfiction last year for films that I can probably count on one hand the number of other peoples fics I've read, and there are definitely fandoms I read heavily without any desire to write myself. The crossover between what I read and what I wrote in MCU was pretty minimal too...) And then, umm...the idea wouldn't leave me alone, so I figured, I'd expand it out into a fic, 1000 words of outsider POV maybe? Several weeks later and it's four times that length and a completely different fic! I mean, the bones of it are the same, but it's much more about Carter - and his feelings about both his own feelings about his friendship with Scott, hockey friendships in general and Shane & Ilya's weird not-friendship - than the original drabble was. (I spent some time down a wikipedia rabbit hole trying to get the timeline for the realworld Sochi winter Olympics right for this fic. I remember it being a shitshow of contraversy at the time but I was a bit fuzzy on what was known at the time and what came out later.)

Not Friends (Or Anything) (4065 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter & Carter Vaughn
Characters: Carter Vaughn, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: POV Outsider, Friendship, Team Dynamics, show canon only, Institutional Discrimination
Summary: Honestly, Carter found it weirder that they weren't friends.

Here's a weird question. Is Carter a really common name in the states? Because I feel as though, a lot of shows I've been fannish about over the years have had a character called - normally as a surname but occassionally as here a first name - Carter?

(Also I'd forgotten how good this song was until it showed up on this show.)

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Where on Earth Did May Go?

2026-06-07T15:48:15Z

It feels like one moment, I was up to my eyes in election programme planning and the next it was the end of the month.

I think (I hope, I hope) that we’re finally making some progress on sorting the rotas at work because there’s frankly perilous levels of burnout so fingers crossed that I’ll start seeing some real improvements to the old work/life balance. I’m also back in the archives again for the second half of my 80/20 placement. I’ve got some boxes ordered so I can start getting the stuff that’s been digitised organised to go to cold store.

Speaking of work/life balance I’m taking myself off on holiday in August. You know how you can do these ‘week in Tuscany painting/learning to make pasta’ kind of holidays? I’m essentially doing one of those for sound recordists, I’m off to deepest Argyll to learn to use a bunch of weird and wonderful specialist microphones and get in some studio time. I’m hoping to reset my creative brain or at least make some art. (Worst case scenario I come home with a bunch of cool field recordings and having read a book and written some fic.) If it goes well, I want to start submitting sound art to projects/call outs again, I’ve missed doing that - I’ve missed that being part of who I am.

Despite work’s attempts to eat me alive, I’ve been having a decent year for consuming new-to-me media. Despite having watched no new films this month, I’m well ahead of where I was last year in terms of film watching, though in fairness, last year I re-watched a whole bunch of films at home but that didn’t start until June or so when I realised I wasn’t watching new films and went on a re-watching films and writing fic for them kick throughout July and August. I’m cautiously going to suggest that I’m more able to read fiction this year than last, but only cautiously because while I inhaled the latest Rivers of London book the other week, I’m conscious that this series is the only fiction I’ve been letting myself buy sight unseen over the last few years as I know I’m going to read them within at most a week or two of buying them. So there may be an element of exception proving the rule there. (The advantage of having gone to cover the same week long event for work this year and last, is that having inhaled a whole book during that week on both occasions I have a clear marker of where I was book wise both years. And the answer is, in exactly the same spot.) What I’ve definitely done is watch more drama series than the last few years. Limited series only but watching a six episode series over the course of a month is such an improvement over the last couple of years. So many watched the first episode, enjoyed it, never went back and watched the rest of it, situations. Okay so it’s only been Chernobyl and Heated Rivalry so far but I have missed being excited about shows.

I’m not sure if it’s correlation or causation, but it sure seems to have helped that I’ve had some good tv knitting on the go. I’ve just finished my election project scarf and having a non challenging craft project literally on hand definitely helped me actually focus and stay put for long enough to get engrossed.

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I Know I’m Different, I Do As I Please

2026-05-04T13:38:14Z

I really liked this week’s Friday Five, so I started writing this on Friday, but this long weekend proved fairly busy so I’m just getting round to finishing it. I was in Glasgow for this experimental music festival I got to most years, and generally I spend most of the time when I’m not actually at the gigs, looking at art and writing. This year I’ve ended up doing much more reading. I read the entirety of Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea and a surprisingly large chunk of Prophet by Helen MacDonald and Sin Blache. (Thank you rubbish wifi connections and people packed too tightly on trains for me to be able to knit comfortably.) I really enjoyed - am really enjoying - both books even if neither of them are the books I thought I’d read this week if I got any reading done at all. I also had a lovely lunch with a friend from uni - twenty plus years of friendship, a comfort like no other - and received an adorable picture from her this morning of her toddler delightedly hugging the cuddly penguin I got him for his birthday. (My heart, it grew three sizes.) I’ve spent a lot of this weekend feeling tired, but it was worth it, I definitely needed this weekend of music and art and friendship and time to myself.

1. Do you like to spend time outdoors?

I do like spending time outdoors, but living where I do I have to clarify that my kind of spending time outdoors, is taking a nice walk along the river, or the canal, or round one of my city’s parks. I like having a picnic on a nice bench, or on a blanket on the beach. I enjoy a sheltered nook with a book, or taking a wander with my little sound recorder. Perhaps a wander round a ruined castle with lunch at the cafe afterwards. I could perhaps be persuaded - by a friend who knew what they were doing - to do some light kayaking on a loch, and I enjoy paddling in the sea on a nice day - if it’s really lovely weather I’ll even swim - but otherwise I’m not really into outdoor ‘activities’. No desire to go bagging munros or cold water swimming or what have you.

2. What is your favourite flower?

I love spring flowers the best. Tulips, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, primroses. Something about their resilience, about the way so many of them come up year after year, often without human intervention after their initial planting. I love the way the river banks near me burst into vibrant colour at the first sign of milder weather, the way their bright little blossoms poke defiantly out of drifts of late spring snow. There’s a reason my default icon for most of the last decade has been crocuses poking through the snow, that’s hope for me, with all my struggles with SAD, in an image.

3. Any favourite warm weather activities?

I love the sea. One of my favourite warm weather activities is walking along the shoreline listening to the waves - sometimes acoustically with my ears, others through my sound recorder. I love it so. Otherwise, I love to sit under a shady tree with a book, preferably in some woods, but a nice garden with do. (There are benches along the river near where I live, yes I do have a favourite bench to picnic with my lunch after an early shift on a sunny day - despite being less than five minutes from my actual house.) I love picnics, with friends or alone, I’ve got a nice picnic bag, and I do in fact do a good spread, my local art centre does outdoor concerts in the summer, and that’s a definite favourite, sitting on the grass with a picnic, a cold beverage and some pals? Bliss.

4. Have you ever kept a garden? If so, what did you grow?

Only the container variety. I love growing herbs and vegetables, and also pretty flowers. Currently I just have window boxes, but they’re full of herbs, primroses and alpines (things that all to well at height with minimal shelter) and I love them. I really only have succulents indoors at the moment, but over lockdown and in the first couple of years after, I had peppers and tomatoes that did really well, cucumbers that were more trouble than they were worth and even mushrooms! When I had a ground level container garden I had good luck with spring onions but I haven’t been able to replicate that since.

5. Do you know how to swim?

I do. I love swimming. It’s probably my favourite form of exercise other than skating and I take comfort in knowing I’ll still be able to do it when I’m old, when all other movement hurts I can still swim. It eases my screwed up joints and calms my anxious mind. I’m not a particularly good or fast swimmer, I much prefer a gentle breast stroke to any kind of efficient crawl. It’s just me and the warm water, back and forth, for ten minutes or an hour, however the mood strikes me. A body in motion, safe and held in the water.

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Skids Over The Line To Get Something Finished this Month

2026-04-30T18:02:28Z

Beats The Alternative (1180 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Project Hail Mary (2026)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Eva Stratt
Additional Tags: Women In Power, Saving the World, Choices, Bittersweet
Summary:

The consensus is, that it would be preferable if they did not die.

Mostly this month, I've been watching ice hockey - I did the other kind of skating this weekend - day-dreaming about train journey's across Canada and watching Chernobyl. (There's a bit in the second episode where they go to a meeting and essentially ask permission to kill three men to save millions. I had a bunch of feelings about that combination of bureaucracy and brutal honesty in that exchange - not something you often see in 'saving the world' scenarios - and apparently I'm processing them via fic about Eva Stratt. I love her, your honour.) My escapism method is interesting I'll say that for it... Choices one might say.

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Oh Canada...

2026-04-20T10:01:51Z

I need some help/advice. (I definitely still know at least a few fannish Canadians right?)

So I’ve been thinking about going on holiday later this year, maybe end of September, beginning of October. Originally I’d planned either coastal Spain or bimbling around the low countries on an inter-rail ticket. (My local airport flies directly to Schipol, trains from there around Europe are easy.) There is - as of like a week ago - an absolute shitshow going on with the new post-Brexit passport controls/biometrics for UK travellers with the current advice being to get to the airport at least 3 hours early. And look, this may all be sorted by September, but I got caught in the post covid/Brexit nonsense on a work trip to France a few years ago - fucking running with a giant rucksack of Camera kit through Charles De Galle airport from passport control to my gate with a gate agent - and I’m not keen to repeat the experience. So between programmes the other day I pulled up seat61 intending to look at fun inter-rail options via Eurostar because, so my internal monologue went if I need to be at the airport that early I better be flying transatlantic at least. And like fuck am I going to the states while Trump’s in office…

…Yeah.

So back in 2008, when I worked in a call centre and used to plan train adventures between calls to keep myself sane, one of my favourite ‘and while I’m dreaming I’d like a pony’ plans was to do the ‘Canadian’, through the Rockies, across the prairies, across a fair chunk of Canada really. I spent way too long looking at pictures taken out the domes of the viewing carriages along that route. It was out of my budget, and oh goodness, I could not cope with the logistical uncertainty - the train shares tracks with freight, which has priority, so when it’s late it’s not minutes it’s hours, even now with the adjusted compensatory timetable they still recommend you don’t book onward travel or flights for at least 24 hours after your expected arrival time. But all these years later, I can afford it - not the fancy ‘prestige’ option, but the tiny individual sleeper cabin? A couple of nights in Toronto and Vancouver at either end to explore those cities and act as a buffer zone? Totally do-able.

Given the state of the world right now, neither Japan or Australia feel entirely feasible right now - I was never going to be willing to fly via Dubai, it was always going to be via Singapore, nonetheless - the logistics are just beyond me right now. But Canada. I could do Canada. And I’ve wanted to do that specific train journey for a very long time. I’d half planned to get my other bathroom re-done, but the thought of taking that money and turning it into a new bathroom suite when there’s so many places I’ve never been and things I’ve never done, just feels so pointless. I want to knock a destination off my life-list.

So Canadians - or just folks who’ve spent time in Canada - what’s your advice? What am I missing/not taking into consideration? Which direction do I go: East to West (with a detour to Vancouver island) or West to East (with a detour to Montreal?) What time of year? (I was thinking Autumn colour but I’m persuadable. However, I remember Chicago in February, and my friend C’s other bridesmaid flew in to meet us from Manitoba, and nothing she said made me want to do Winnipeg in winter…Would Spring be a better choice?) Should I stop off along the way? If so, where? Have I, in fact, lost my damn mind?

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March Media

2026-04-05T16:45:24Z

In March, I was mostly watching films. In general terms not that many films - five new-to-me films - but given last year’s hideously low number of films that weren’t re-watches I’m going to call it a victory. It took me until August to get to this many films last year, so while my new-to-me books is still looking grim and my audio series list doesn’t bear mentioning, at least my film watching is fairly healthy.

In my quest to actually get something written, given the general uptick in watching new-to-me films, I went on a binge of documentaries in the Storyville strand on iPlayer, and wrote them up for the film blog. (I’ve been full of the desire to write but seriously lacking the inspiration for it.) I also decided after K-pop Demon Hunters that I’d try and watch a bunch of last year’s films that I missed and write those up too, but I only managed Sinners though in fairness, it was an absolute banger. (They deserved every last nomination, acting and sound in particular.) I’m really glad I managed to see it in the cinema - my local arthouse cinema was screening it ahead of the Oscars so I saw it with like 20 other people who’d all either seen it before and loved it or like me and had missed it the first time and were keen to be impressed, it was a good audience vibe, is what I’m saying - because the sound was immense, it really benefited from having the big screen good sound system experience. Speaking of films that benefited from being on the big screen, I saw Project Hail Mary in the cinema this week. Just a delight. (Rocky!) Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller acting their wee hearts out in what is ultimately quite a silly film. Too long obviously, but honestly I barely cared. (Also I’m not really across a lot of pop music, but what do you mean Harry Styles wrote that song? I presumed it was a cover of something 70s but no it’s just a homage to Bowie and glamrock, significantly more impressed with that lad’s talents now. Though mostly I need me a copy of Sandra Hüller singing it.) And, it has my favourite Beatles song in it. There’s a LEGO set I can’t justify but really, really want.

With the election period upon us, I figured what I actually needed was a nice straight-forward knitting project to work on while on the road and generally too brain-fried to deal with anything too complicated. So I’m making a loop scarf in a basic shell pattern - it’s basically one row of straight forward lace shaping and one row of purl stitch, knit until you run out of wool - in alternating colours, so is a nice way to use up a set of hand-dyed mini-skeins that I bought during lockdown and have been waiting for a project since then. It’s excellent TV knitting, though mostly I’ve been doing it while catching up on my podcast backlog. (I’ve spent a lot of this weekend catching up on Gastropod and 99% Invisible) I’m hoping to do a bit more actual TV watching, there’s a bunch of things serieses I want to tackle, but I’m not going to talk about those plans until I’ve actually started them in the hope that they’ll actually happen. It’s always such a crapshoot these last few years what will and won’t catch and hold my attention on that front.

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Glinda Go Zoom!

2026-03-22T18:56:46Z

Oooft, I have missed skating.

(For the newer readers, I used to be a roller derby referee. Roller skating - quad skates - was a big part of my life for the back half of my twenties and my early thirties. I drifted away from it after I moved up to Inverness, but I’ve loved roller skating since I was a little kid, so while I don’t really miss derby these days I do miss skating.)

I’m still on my ice hockey kick after the Olympics and one of the knock-on effects is being really aware of how much I miss skating. I’ve been meaning to check when the public ice skating sessions are and try to convince one of my skating buddies to chum me along to a session for ages, and this weekend I finally did it. And it was great!

I haven’t been on any sort of skates since before the pandemic and I think the last time I was actual ice skates was in Princess Street Gardens just before Xmas 2013 when my then girlfriend decided that would be a cute date idea and then spent the whole session clinging to either the edges or my hand! I wasn’t sure how well it would go, but after a slightly wobbly start it all came back to me satisfyingly fast. (My buddy was even rustier but also got the hang of it eventually, we did a fair bit of skating round holding hands like kids because she’s had a stressful week and was getting into her head about it. That was pretty fun too. We had a lot of fun reminiscing about ice discos from our teen years.) The ice was a mess so I didn’t dare try crossovers or anything too fancy. (The kids team had practice that morning, and I don’t think they bothered to send the zamboni out between sessions as we got there at the start of the session and it was pretty roughed up already.) The rink skates are super rigid so my feet are a bit sore from that - actually I ache all over from nearly 90 minutes of skating, but I had so much fun. My buddy gave up after the first 45 mins of so and went and got a hot drink and heckled from the sidelines while I went zooming around gleefully with a big stupid grin on my face. I was high as a kite, all the good endorphins. We’re going back - or at least we’re going to try the rink at Aviemore instead. I cannot stop grinning!

( I do not need my own ice skates. I do not.)

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Survived February

2026-03-01T22:14:54Z

So yeah, I haven't posted in over a month, and I'm struggling to get over that block. But! As I've been burying myself in doing things and avoiding the horrors I have actually managed to achieve a few things so I'm going to talk about those things!

I've watched some new-to-me films! I spent a Sunday afternoon at the cinema drifting through four hours of meditive documentary about a French restaurant. (It was a re-scheduled screening from the film festival.) I had a weird cold - took me out completley for roughly 48 hours, before and after which I was entirely fine - and watched K-Pop Demon Hunters which is delightful, though I suspect I may have zoned out at some point during the final third of the film because it seemed to have a plot hole you could drive a truck through so I think I definitely missed a scene! Speaking of Korean stuff, I've been watching large amounts of Korean food programmes lately. Food and nature shows are my perennial favourites for switch the brain off television and currently K Food Show is my preffered sedative.

I've been making excellent progress on a knitting project - a jumper dress that I was ripping back and reknitting as I hated the way the cable was coming out, it's much better now - mostly thanks to knitting while shouting at the hockey (so many intermissions spent rescuing dropped stitches!) but I'm thinking of tackling the second season of Kingdom as my new knitting companion - though probably that's one for the back of the dress not the front!

I had some annual leave to take and while I didn’t consciously plan it to coincide with the Winter Olympics, it was exactly what I needed that week. So many ridiculous sports, such joy on display, I love it. (I have complicated feelings about the Olympics, and the IOC’s tendency to make utterly batshit decisions about some things. Also the completely arbritary rules about what people wear or don’t wear on track.) I have as usual got absolutely obsessed with the ice hockey, and I picked the best week to be off for that, because I got to watch loads of the women’s games before the men’s competition kicked off so I had favourites all picked out to follow and then search the schedules for - the BBC’s coverage of the ice hockey has been…escoteric… I get that Team GB didn’t qualify so they’re kinda working on the assumption that most of the audience don’t care, but the third period of so many games just haven’t been shown when the rest was, I presume it’s a licensing thing because they’re only available on the live streams not chopped up for later use - and there’s been some great games on display. I had a hilarious run of games where Czechia wiped the floor with Finland, then Canada flattened Czechia, and then the US ran rings round Canada. (Czechia! I arbritarily picked them as my team and then they didn’t get to progress, woe.) I’m also amused that after years of various members of my reading list - here and on tumblr - going through phases of Ice Hockey/NHL obsession over the last decade, I recognise like 75% of (mens) Team Canada, but not a single soul on the US Team. (Hockey RPF is my fandom in law, I guess, I have no interest in it myself - I don’t actually find any of these boys attractive - but I enjoy the sport enough that I can just dodge the fic and the tinhattery and indulge other people’s excitement.) Anyway, apparently like the best way to make my Instagram feed actually usable and non mind breaking is to just follow some PWHL teams? It's re-skewed the algorithmn to sports and queer stuff, such a relief.

The other thing I achieved on my holiday was shortening my curtains! It only took me six and a half years but they are both the correct length and also, I futzed about with the way they hang when I put them back and now they no longer require careful finessing to make sure they don't fall open a tiny but annoying amount. Which is good timing as my sleep schedule has been properly fucked this month and I dread to think how much worse it would have been without the lovely enveloping dark of curtains.

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Shoebox of Dreams Kept Under My Bed

2026-01-18T15:02:48Z

Speaking of making a good start on some new year’s resolutions, I thought I’d break myself easy with the re-read/re-watch project with something fairly short.

I was, for reasons, re-reading a bunch of raven’s fic the other night and came across and re-read their Piranesi fic from yuletide (I think?) a few years back. It reminded me how much I enjoyed the book and made me want to re-read it. In a remarkably sensible move, given that I was just sitting at my computer reading fic and chilling to classical music, I got up and grabbed it from the shelf, sat back down and started reading it, planning just to read the first chapter before bed to get me started on the project. I read half the book that night and the rest of it the following morning. (I pretty much only didn’t just stay up stupid late because I got uncomfortable in my desk chair and in getting up to decant to the sofa realised the time and reluctantly made the sensible choice to go to bed.

( Here be Spoilers )

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Hope You Find Someone Better Than Me Tonight

2026-01-17T23:38:50Z

Ooooh fandom_trees got revealed, I went looking for a needy tree over the holidays, found one looking for Edge of Tomorrow and thought ‘oh I have that, I should rewatch it’ and wrote this. It was my last watched film of last year and my first finished fic of this year which is pleasing to me. A nice end to my film rewatch project from last year where I pretty much wrote a fic for each film I re-watched.

Possibly/Probably (The Best Friend You've Never Met) (1599 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: William Cage/Rita Vrataski, William Cage & Rita Vrataski
Characters: William Cage, Rita Vrataski, Dr. Carter (Edge of Tomorrow)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Friendship, final 'first' meeting
Summary: It’s a cliche often repeated, that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Cage tries all the same.

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Old Skills a Little Rusty

2026-01-16T22:13:26Z

This week I've been working on making a good start to one of my resolutions, to start a new recipe notebook. (When I first started learning to cook in an organised fashion, while I was going my post-grad, I took a nice notebook I had and wrote down all my succesful recipes in it. It's a multi-coloured decade's worth of recipes that I refer to regularly even now that I'm a vegetarian and many of the recipes aren't one's I'd ever cook now.) I've been meaning to start a new one for a few years now, but never got round to it, because, well I had my tablet and most recipes I was cooking that weren't in actual cookbooks were on the internet and it was just easier to look them up, but it's really come home to me in the last year when I've gone to look something up and it's just gone. (Not even random people's food blogs, but places I'd expect things to be like the guardian or the good food magazine page.) So I've started in on recipes from my 'cook new recipes' challenges from the past few years, and a significant percentage of them are lost to link rot and paywalls.

But the other thing I've noticed - and part of what makes me want to keep the project up - is that my handwriting is really rusty. I've had to make fairly heavy usage of my tippex mouse because I keep missing letters out of words, not even in the analogue version of typos just I'm so out of practice of writing by hand that I'm half-forgetting how to form the letters properly. I used to have a problem with missing out letters when I wrote essays because I was writing so fast to keep up with my brain - the main reason I switched to typing, as it's much easier to keep up with the speed of thought/ideas that way - but I'm just copying out recipes here. Though on the plus-side, forcing myself to slow down, to form the letters properly is making it a more meditive experience than I expected it to be.

I've always prided myself on having nice handwriting. Ever since we did a unit on the Victorians and spent that whole term perfecting copperplate script I've written a minorly adapted version of that. (I adjusted some letters to be more easily read by modern eyes, so I wouldn't get marked down for mis-spelling words because my teachers that didn't recognise my old-fashioned letters.) All through secondary and university my preferred method of studying was to make notes and the rewrite my notes and I still have piles of notebooks about the place in neat multi-coloured copperplate. So it's both weird and minorly upsetting when my handwriting isn't neat despite my best efforts. No doubt with regular practice it'll improve but at the moment I'm falling a low way short of my own high standards for my handwriting.

It's a ridiculous thing to be having feelings about, I am aware, but nonetheless, I am having them. My handwriting isn't as nice as it used to be - less smooth, more effort for less pleasing results - and it annoys me. I'm feeling a little rusty here, it's a thing.

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Media Consumed in 2026

2026-01-04T16:37:47Z

( Books Read )
( Films Watched )
( Audio Series Heard )

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Revolution #21

2026-01-04T16:34:56Z

Bliadhna mhath ur! Here we go again for another revolution around the sun.

It’s been a year. What else can I say. There were high points and low points but overall, it’s just really been a year.

Books wise I read the usual amount of non-fiction books but I barely read any fiction. I’ve been collecting physical copies of the Murderbot Diaries books, and re-reading those as I acquire them but I don’t think I’ve finished a new-to-me fiction book since April. I didn’t even watch that many films this year I watched as many films over the film festival as I did the whole rest of the year. Though I did acquire and re-watch a bunch of films that I already loved and that was a unmitigated success. I got back into writing fic via that medium, and even the films I didn’t end up writing fic about got reviewed for the film blog. I didn’t write as much more than last year as I would have expected given the summer/autumn fic flowering that I had, but it did rescue the year from being the absolute writing disaster it would have been otherwise. (I wrote 30,000 words between the end of July and the end of December, 13,000 of which were fic - and that’s just the stuff I finished.) I didn’t make any sound art this year, but I did a lot of fun going sound recording in new and interesting places - and this year’s big sound related victory was unexpectedly actually seeing dolphins off Chanory Point with a friend and because she was there to be my spotter, I was able to wade out far enough into the firth to actually record the dolphins with my hydrophone. (Also I got myself some dive boots, which makes actually making hydrophone recordings easier as I can just wade in to make a recording rather than worrying about falling in trying to keep my feet dry.) Hydrophone recording is pretty much the only form of sound recording it’s possible to do in a social fashion - I have gone bird sound recording with a birder before, and that works but only because you’re both committed to the cause of not scaring off the birds, you’re not exactly chatting - so as the friend I went with is into wild swimming I see a lot of potential for fun on that front. That was the wider success of last year. My overall resolution was to do more - crafting, spending time with friends, travel, reading, watching films etc - and on the fronts of sound recording, crafting and spending time with friends it was a roaring success.

Resolutions Kept
Do one 'arts' thing a month (go to a gig or an art exhibition, see some theatre/opera/ballet)
Grow some different herbs/vegetables (mushrooms were a success, garlic is still a work in progress)
Listen to a new-to-me album each month (an absolute joy!)
Learn/get the hang of amigurumi making (tension is still a work in progress, but I have the skills now!)

Progress Made
Finish 5 outstanding/half-done craft or home improvement projects - 1/5
Built the storage unit for my bedroom
Finished my big patchwork blanket
Got New Boiler Installed
Complete 5 craft kits that have been lurking - 3/5

47065 / 75000 (62.75%)

So what do I actually want from the year ahead. I want to no longer feel like I’m living in crisis mode. I need to get back into a position where I can love my job again, and if that’s not possible any more, I need to start seriously looking for a new one. Get more joy in my life. Prioritise the things and people that bring me joy. I did some excellent work prioritising taking care of my physical well being this year - lots of good cooking, going swimming, got back into going to the gym and started doing strength work, got regular massages, taking care of my skin and hair - and I think this year’s priority has to be mental health.

Resolutions for 2026
Make some sound art - figure out what’s getting in the way of this and prioritise sorting that
Finish another 5 outstanding/half-done home improvement projects - 1/5
Pick any 3 incomplete resolutions from last year and do them.
Finish 5 craft WIPs or make 5 stashbuster projects. - 2/5
Take a proper ‘chillout holiday’
Cook my way through my Japanese Home Cooking Book
Watch/re-watch the entirety of Guillermo Del Toro’s back catalogue.
Re-watch/re-read a source I love each month and write them up for the blog - 1/12
Start a new recipe notebook - started
Read ten books or watch ten films that have been on the shelf since before 2025.
Read all my lurking ebooks!

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One Wonderous Sunset, One Final Blaze of Glory

2025-12-28T13:51:12Z

It's the end of the year, and I’ve got time for one last album for this challenge.

In a year when it felt like everyone in my age bracket was obsessed with Oasis going back on tour, the equivalent band for me, Pulp, released a new album and went out on tour. (I was 11 going on 12 when I first heard Disco 2000, it was on a funny shaped sample CD that my dad got as a freebie somewhere, he brought it home, handed it to me and said ‘you’re going to love that one’ and I was hugely annoyed he was right. Different Class was the album that defined my teen years - it rewired something in my brain.) I’m mostly glad I didn’t try and get tickets after all, the surprisingly large number of clips of their Glasgow gig, were up in the gods of the Hydro which is realistically where I’d have ended up and overall if I couldn’t have been down on the floor, I was just as well just watching their ‘surprise’ Glastonbury gig. (It was the 30th anniversary of their classic Glasto performance when they were at the height of their fame.) I really loved both the singles they released from it - I was doing a lot of driving for work, and despite how much 6Music over played them both, I never got sick of either track - and the new bits I heard on the Glasto set so I fully intended to pick up a copy of the album - More. I just never got round to it, until the end of November when I was looking for a pick me up in HMV and spotted a ‘colour’ vinyl edition in the twofer deal - I got Air’s Moon Safari an album I’ve loved for years, but only ever had it ripped from an friend’s copy - and knew that was exactly what I needed.

(And because Pulp absolutely know their audience, particularly for the vinyl edition, there's an insert with both production details and all the lyrics - seriously bands underestimate how much added value having the lyrics provides. Also I got the 'green' vinyl addition and it's just a gorgeous shade of bottle green which makes a gorgeous contrast with the orange on the central label. Just nice simple design. When Jarvis and Candida from the band were interviewed by Jo Whiley after the Glastonbury gig, Candida noted that when they’d all got together to rehearse they’d felt excited to make music together again for the first time in ages and I think you can tell, it really feels like an album made by a band enjoying making music together. I mean they’ve been a band together for longer than my entire life, when they released their breakout album His and Hers in 1994 they’d been going for like 16 years! It’s nice to think they just get back together every so often because it’s still fun to make music together.)

It was a great choice. Got to Have Love and Spike Island are still clearly the stand out tracks - classic Pulp tracks - but listening to it on vinyl, just letting it play while I was doing other things was a great way to let the rest of the album soak into my brain. Tracks I’d probably have skipped over in digital format, or even just on CD for being a bit blah, have settled into my brain and become favourites. It’s such a middle-aged album and I love it, just listening to Jarvis’ wry dead-pan commentary on life and love, that mixture of cynicism and hopefulness that is their trademark, is soothing to me. The stripped back beauty of some tracks versus the lush production of tracks like The Hymn of the North an album that reminds me why I still love this band so much. I was going to pick out my favourite tracks to talk about - Grown ups and Background Noise - but the more I listen to the album the more I fall in love with it all the tracks. It’s not often that one of your favourite bands from your teens gets back together and makes one of their best albums - I’ve been lucky Skunk Anansie came back with a banger in the form of Black Traffic but that was 2013, I think, it doesn’t happen a lot - and I’m so glad they did.

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Lurking in my drafts

2025-12-12T21:37:03Z

I started writing this at the start of the month, and it's been sitting half-written ever since.

10983 / 10000 (109.83%)

I absolutely did not make my stretch goal, and I wrote slightly less than I did last November but I decided against pushing myself too much because I didn't want to burn myself out and then not be able to write anything else this year. I'm really pleased that I'm only a tiny bit shy of 60% of my target for the year, for the first time in quite some time I think I might actually make 50,000 words for the year. (Or at least I was until it took me about 10 days to write this entry.)

44592 / 75000 (59.46%)

I did manage to squeeze in another small DIY success. When I had my ensuite bathroom re-done a couple of years ago *eye twitch* sides of the shower cubicle were too tall for me to use the existing little hanging basket for my shower stuff. My dad gave me one that sticks in place (one of those 'rental friendly options' for when you can't drill holes, as neither he nor I fancied drilling into my shiny new wet wall, and it's been sitting in a bag ever since. I stumbled across it during my epic autumn clean at the start of the month and did indeed get it up by the end of the month which is it's own victory.

Crochet has been going well, the crab continues to progress well - 'turn' did mean what I thought it did - I didn't make as much progress as I hoped while I was away for work as I ended up reading a third of my new non-fiction book - The Golden Road by William Dalrymple - and I found a little cross-stitch kit in my rucksack and ended up stitching quite a bit of it instead. Also I did another class this weekend with my crochet buddy M - she was originally a roller derby pal, but neither of us skate any more and we've started doing craft classes together this year - to make crochet baubles. They're super cute and I learned a bunch of skills in the process - I can change colours, and add in new balls of yarn and learned the 'granny square stitch' and using slip stitch to join thing - so that I now feel that I've 'leveled up'? I'm starting to be able to look at a row or stitch and see where I've gone wrong. Not just noticing I've gone wrong and thinking 'what've I done?' but able to see what's wrong. Not always but sometimes.

In deeply middle aged news, I bought an air fryer. ( kitchen rambling but no evangelising below )

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Definitely More of an Autumn vibe

2025-11-28T19:28:21Z

So, yes, I am in fact writing these out of order, but writing the last one made me think about this album and as it was also gig related I thought it was a natural companion piece to follow up with. So this album choice was a result of two different gigs. As noted previously I went to see the Scottish Ensemble and Anna Meredith doing their collaborative album Anno at the Barbican at the end of September, and then at the end of October I went to see the Scottish Ensemble here in the Inverness again. To my intense amusement, working with Anna Meredith again had clearly reminded the ensemble how much they enjoy playing her work, because the whole second half of the Inverness gig was pieces by Anna Meredith re-arranged for string ensemble. Mostly from her first electronic album Varmints - the lead violin noted with clear irony before they played Nautilus that that piece had been intended as a clear break from her previous orchestral work - and having experienced it as something akin to a transcendental experience - I virtually floated home afterwards - obviously I had to go and actually listen to the album in question.

I didn’t initially love this album, despite it being much more what I was expecting from Anna Meredith - before I encountered Anno I knew her mostly from her film scoring work - but as I’ve continued to listen to it across the last month, I’ve come to the conclusion that I like it more the further away from the gig I get. For example, I can now listen to Blackfriars and feel it’s glorious rhythms combine happily with my memories of my recent holiday in London, of standing outside Blackfriars station at rush hour, hearing bells and clocks striking all over the place, feeling the ebb and flow of traffic around me and the rumble of the tube below - I have a whole bunch of field recordings I made in and around that tube station - and think, yes, that part of London does indeed feel like that. I also feel like I’ve been able to fall in love with Nautilus and Scrimshaw all over again in their own right, without constantly comparing them negatively with their reimagined versions. (Honestly I want to hear Nautilus re-arranged for brass a la that Hannah Peel album I wrote about earlier this year.) I do think I need to go see Anna Meredith live in her own right next time she’s touring, because I think her work really lends itself to live performance, to variations on a theme and interacting with visuals and graphics, a proper multimedia experience. However, now that I’ve got enough distance from the gig, I can happily also enjoy it, lying on the sofa with low winter light and just the fairy lights on, through big headphones and let it transport me to other places.

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A Fable of Summertime...

2025-11-27T20:06:26Z

Sometime this summer, I rediscovered my fic writing muse. Which has been great, but has unfortunately also meant that I’ve fallen quite behind on writing up my monthly albums - I have several months of backlog! Fortunately, I have still actually been listening to the albums and noting them down, so I’ve been able to look back at my list and write them up.

First up, we’re all the way back to the summer, for my August album, which was Fable by Ainsley Hamil. (I really thought I’d at least started this post, I definitely remember sitting down in the days after the gig with the album on and the intent to write about it. I suspect I probably started writing it into the ‘create entries’ page and lost the draft.) I mostly know Ainsley Hamil as a Gaelic singer - competed for the Gold Medal at the Mod a couple of time - and this album is split pretty evenly between songs in Gaelic and English, with a Burns number thrown in for good measure. Personally I think if we’re talking traditional Gaelic modes, she’s better suited to puirt-a-beul than the strictures of the Gold Medal - I’ve seen her do puirt live and she’s very good, it’s not easy to keep up that level of articulation at that speed especially not in the middle of a gig! She has such a rich, warm singing voice, it’s a pleasure to listen to her sing, and always so tempting when the album finishes, to just stick it on again for another play through!

Unusually, I was listening to this album extensively because I was going to a gig, rather than going to the gig because I’d been listening to the album a lot. My local art centre hosts a folk music festival in a tent on it’s lawn every summer. (Not in one intense weekend but two bands per session, two sessions a night, five nights a week across two months.) Living near by and being a regular gig go-er, I go to a lot of these sessions, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, sometimes pre-planned, others spur of the moment because I walked past and thought ‘oh they’re good’ and stayed. The Ainsley Hamil gig was planned fairly far in advance, as a friend texted me just after the programme came out and asked if I fancied it, and as I did and it was a day I was on a helpful shift, we booked it and went. As it was her idea, and I’d agreed on the basis that I remembered what I’d heard of Hamil’s latest album being good, I thought I better swat up beforehand.

(It’s a lovely album, but gosh, live really is her forte, she was such a compelling and warm presence on stage, making her music come alive. In both Gaelic and Scots, her delivery on the album is more precise and probably more technically correct, but live she was so much more natural and felt much less constrained.)

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Progression Ahoy!

2025-11-17T22:34:58Z

7971 / 10000 (79.71%)

I held off on making this post until today, as it’s my last day of annual leave, so the last day of my dedicated writing time. Writing has been going well, I’ve now written as many words as I had by the end of the year last year so I’m officially caught up. As I started November 6000 words ahead of where I was last year, I’m hoping to maintain that, ideally I’d like to be able to say I wrote 10,000 more words this year than last but we’ll call that a stretch goal! (The return of my fic writing ability/motivation means that I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to spend December writing a bunch of treats and pinch hits, thereby getting a decent word count for the final month.) An interesting thing about this year’s writing is that it hasn’t consumed everything else. For a start, I’ve finished the non-fiction book I was reading this month, and I’ve started another.

My other personal target for this month was that I wanted to finish the little crochet crab that I’m making. It’s the first proper amigurumi that I’ve tackled so getting it successfully finished will tick a bunch of boxes. It goes in fits and starts because I keep having to take it to my knitting group to get help. (Being a very beginner crocheter and working between UK and US instructions can be complicated - I was taught by someone who uses US terms, one of the ladies at knitting uses UK terms and the other is Dutch!) So I have finished the body and a leg, and I’ve made half a claw but now I’m stuck until I can get to knitting and have someone show me what’s meant by ‘turn’ in this context. I have, however, found a good video for doing magic circle so hopefully by the time I finish the legs - there’s eight - I’ll have that down pat. I’m travelling for work this week, so I’m hoping to get the rest of the legs and both eyes done while I’m away. That way I can ask about both the claw and the eyestalks while I’m there and get both sorted out. It’s fun looking at the progress that I’ve made on it, I’m quite pleased with the stitch texture I’m getting now, and I’m pleased to have mastered decreasing but already I can see where I’ve improved and got better. Like, I’m having moments of realising ‘oh that’s why keeping the stitch count right was so hard’ and ‘oh that was silly, of course I should do it this way instead’. (I did, as predicted end up breaking the flismy little plastic hook that came with the kit - my tension is tight! - but actually now that I’ve dug out a metal hook of the correct size I feel that I’m getting on better, I don’t know if it’s just that I was worrying about snapping the old one, or if it’s actually easier with a hook of a different material.) I’ve been zooming through my podcast backlog while I’ve been working on the crab, which has also been quite satisfying.

At the start of last week I kind of felt that I wasn’t making much progress on many things I wanted to have done this week, but looking back on it, I think I’ve done everything I needed to do. There's definitely more things I wanted/intended to do but the time critical stuff - things that needed ordered and bought by deadline, stuff that was expiring both food and digital stuff have been dealt with - has been done, I've added a bunch of lights to places in the unending fight against the lack of light. I got some more cute decorative lights, fairy lights and a snow globe style one. Also while i was tidying out other things, I found some stick on press lights that my dad gave me ages ago and had no idea what I'd do with them, and it dawn on me they'd be ideal for the meter cupboard so now the cupboard with the fuse box and the electric meter and the cupboard where the gas meter lives have little press lights so I don't have to juggle my phone's flashlight when I'm trying to send my meter readings.

I didn’t get my curtains dry cleaned in the end because when I took them in to the dry cleaners, they were like ‘oh no’ because they’re both thermal lined and from Dunelm and apparently they’ve had a run of those where there’s something wrong with the thermal lining, so they stick together in the machine and the lining shreds when you try to separate them again. (Sometimes they’re fine, but they’re not often that they’ve got a special report and letter they give people to get their money back/replacement curtains from Dunelm.) The dry cleaning lady recommended - as mine were dusty rather than actually grubby, I vacuumed them when I took them down - hanging the outside on a nice dry breezy day and giving them a febreeze! I even got my good sewing shears sharpened - now if I could just find my chalk I could get to work on shortening those curtains. Though I do now have...concerns about ironing the new seams...

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Having emotions at the picture house (isn't that why we go?)

2025-11-09T23:22:26Z

3661 / 10000 (36.61%)

Which is decent progress for the first week, even if I haven't been managing to post every day - 5/9 days so far - I have been writing every day. I've also managed to space my festival film going out enough that I've not got caught in that thing that sometimes happens to me where I do pretty much nothing but watch films, write about films, eat and sleep. I've managed to make decent progress on reading my current non-fiction New Vampire Cinema by Ken Gelder, and to do lots of boring but necessary house stuff. My parents were visiting at the start of the week so I spent A LOT of last weekend doing lots of 'having visitors' cleaning. Which was exhausting and really not how I wanted to start my annual leave, but hey, at least that got a lot of stuff out of the way early doors so that now when I have time to do house stuff, it's stuff like taking the curtains to the dry cleaners and potting up the finally sprouting garlic. Speaking of the curtains, shortening them is on the half-finished projects list as they've been half-pinned up essentially since I got them when I moved into this flat. When I was off in September I ran out of time to do the project but pinned them up properly to see if the shorter length was too short and when I was happy with their new coverage determined that was a job for this leave. Also in the process I noticed that there was a lot of dust in the fold that had been pinned up, which meant they were likely hideously overdue a wash. I took them down today double checked the measurements (and wrote them down) and vaccuumed the worst of the dust off so I could put them in the machine this evening, only to discover that the reason it's been so long is that they're dry clean only. So now I have to take them to the dry cleaners first instead. They are at least now all bagged up ready to go, and my first film isn't until 4.30 tomorrow so there are worse times to have made this realisation - I can make tomorrow a 'running errands' day and get a few things out of the way.

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How is it November Already?

2025-11-01T22:44:25Z

So my revised target for writing this year has been to start each new month with more words than I finished that month the previous year with. Largely due to the fic part of my writing brain having unlocked itself back in July I have been solidly making that target since then. This month however was always going to be a challenge because, well, last November I wrote nearly 13,000 words. However, while I did not come anywhere close to that I will be starting November with 6000 words more than I started last November with - which given that my monthly target is around 6300 words, feels true to target.

33609 / 75000 (44.81%)

Once again I'll be doing mini_wrimo with a target of 250 words a day. (Signups are still open if you're doing a writing challenge this month and think it might be useful.) I'm also doing Nablopomo as usual, so between here, my film blog and my food blog I'm planning to blog every day. (We'll see!) I'm giving myself an overall target for this month of 10,000 words with a stretch goal of 15,000. Given that according to my spreadsheet my daily target for this month is 333 words a day (which has a pleasing ring to it) I should really have signed up for that, but that would require me remembering to put the figures in the spreadsheet before signing up and I did not do that. Also I know from experience that 250 words is sustainable over the month so why set myself up to fail?

385 / 10000 (3.85%)

Also, I am now on holiday from work for a fortnight. I very much need it. *basks*

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And Now For Some Light Relief

2025-10-28T21:48:35Z

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for starting a fic title? One fic per line, ‘A’ and 'The’ do not count for 'a’ and ’t’. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

I pinched this one from thisbluespirit (though I've seen it since all across the f-list) and started from my most recent fic and worked backwards snagging the first instance of each letter.

A - Another Day, Another Disaster (Good Omens, Aziraphale & Crowley, Adam & The Them)
B - Between Stimulation and Reaction (Leverage, Eliot Spencer/Parker/Alex Hardison, Eliot Spencer/Sophie Deveraux, Eliot Spencer/Others)
C - Cola, Bleach and Other Dangerous Chemicals (Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn, Cassie Cain, Joker)
D - Done Deal (Leverage, Eliot Spencer/Parker/Alec Hardison)
E - Eilean a 'Cheo (Rivers of London, Beverley Brook/Peter Grant, Abdul Haqq Walid, OCs)
F - Four Meals (Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley)
G - Gold Standard(The Thing in the Tunnels Wants Rather More) (The Thing In The Walls Wants Your Spare Change, Caro, Aly, Dragons)
H - Hiding in Plain Sight (Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau)
I - If Wishes Were Spaceships (Wolf 359, Doug Eiffel/Hera)
J - Joined By The Westering Wind (Pacific Rim, Rayleigh/Mako)
K - Knives Out of Context (Leverage, Parker/Alec Hardison)
L - Like the Arms of the Ocean (Birds of Prey, Cassandra Cain & Harleen Quinzel)
M - Midnight Special (Leverage, Eliot Spencer/Mr Quinn)
N - No Happy Ending (Forest 404, Pan/Daria)
O - Of Salt and Candles (Good Omens, Aziraphale & Crowley)
P - Practical Arrangements and Practical Jokes (Ghostbusters, Jillian Holtzman/Abby Yates)
Q -
R - Robots Need Hugs Too (Wolf 359, Doug Eiffel, Hera, Alana Maxwell)
S - Someone You Couldn't Lose (Ocean's Eight, Daphne Kluger/Debbie Ocean/Lou Miller)
T - Taking The Shine Off The Stars (The Mummy, Ardeth Bay/Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell)
U - The Universe Is Drifting Apart (Ghostbusters, Jillian Holtzmann/Patty Tolan)
V - A Voice From The Stars (Wolf 359, Doug Eiffel, Hera, Mr Cutter)
W - Weapon of Choice (James Bond Movies, Bond/M, Bond/Q, Bond & Moneypenny)
X -
Y - You Wear It Well (Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau)
Z -

23/26 from 200 fics on AO3. Unsurprisingly no Q, X or Z - I did wonder if I might have a Q somewhere, but if I do it must be a drabble or comment fic that never got archived. I thought it was going to be a much worse turn out as after a strong start there was a lot of repetition in first letters but my Wolf 359 fic did me a solid with I, R and V after nearly two pages of nothing but Cs, Ls, Ms, Ss and Ts it felt like.

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October Kind of Disappeared on Me

2025-10-26T16:11:13Z

So I came back from London, cheered on some friends in the local 10K/Marathon and got my flu shot. And then clearly had a cold working on me before I got my vaccination because what I thought was a surprisingly strong reaction to the vaccine (normally I just a bit tired and stuffy nosed for a couple of days afterwards) turned out to be a stinker of a cold. And once I was better from that it was full on Mod season and then everything just kind of got away from me? (I did my first Radio OB by myself this weekend, and I got the 80/20 placement with Archiving I've been campaigning for the last six months to get. Achievements, but ye gods I'm tired.) I'm definitely not going to make my target of having more words at the start of this November than I had at the end of last November. I've a couple of things almost finished that I might get in before the end of the month but that's probably 2000 words at the outside and I'd need to write at least another 4000 words on top of that so I doubt it. I'll still be starting November with 6000 words more than I started last November with even if I don't write a single countable word between now and then so, that's something at least.

In somewhat related news, I'm now 2 for 2 on picking up pinch hits for movie fandoms and stress writing 5000+ word fills for them. Oddly this one was for aspecex but as the prompts were all on the aromantic end of spectrum - sex and sexuality as performance, platonic kink, sex as a tool stuff - it has problably more sex in it than I normally write? (The Craig!Bond films go really hard on both the idea of Bond performing his persona and also his desperate need to belong to someone. I rewatched Skyfall for this, or so I thought, actually after the first hour I remembered none of the plot so I think I might only have seen the first half of the film - maybe I fell asleep watching it one Xmas? Anyway, this film was absolutley made for the prompts I was writing to.) I had a lot of fun writing this one, though it has reminded me of the meme in Doctor Who fandom back in the day of Bond as timelord, and now I kinda want to write it.

Weapon of Choice (5336 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: James Bond (Craig Movies)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James Bond/M | Olivia Mansfield, James Bond/Q, James Bond & Eve Moneypenny
Characters: James Bond, M | Olivia Mansfield, Q (James Bond)
Additional Tags: Aromantic, Asexuality Spectrum, Kink Negotiation, Devotion, Sexuality As Performance, Loyalty, Friendship, Submission
Summary: Sex is Bond’s weapon of choice. The withholding of sex is Moneypenny’s. (M has a whole arsenal of them, she calls them agents.)

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A Change Is As Good As a Rest (But Rest Also Helps)

2025-09-27T10:26:05Z

I’m in London for a few days. I did intend to post about it and see if anyone was about and free to hang out, much as I intended to message a few analogue friends who still live here and see if any of them fancied it either. And I just…didn’t. It seems as though, actually what I wanted/needed was just a few days in another city just wandering about seeing some art, going to a gig, looking at interesting buildings, making sound recordings and eating good food. I haven’t had a conversation more complicated than ‘yes I did knit this jumper myself’, or ‘no I don’t know if this train stops at x place’ in a couple of days. Absolute bliss.

( Read more... )

In less pleasing news, all the walking about has proved that my favourite smart winter boots are going to need replaced. They’ve been re-heeled several times over the years, and I’ve replaced the insoles a couple of times, but I think they’re officially done in. I replaced the insoles on Thursday morning before I left for London - I took the bins out just before I left and thought ‘oooh that’s not comfy’, thankfully I did had spares in the house - and while they are much improved by it, after I’ve worn them for a while I’m still getting blisters on the balls of my feet so I fear the end is nigh. It’s annoying because the uppers are still in perfectly good nick (I polished them before I set off and they came up almost good as new) but they just don’t seem to make non-hiking boots to withstand any decent amount of walking.

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After The Apocalypse

2025-09-22T09:49:38Z

This story ended up being much longer than I'd intended - or would have reasonably planned for a pinch-hit - but honestly it wanted to be twice the length it turned out.

I saw this pinch-hit (for justmarriedexchange) a couple days after I'd picked up a DVD copy of Pacific Rim - I'm on a Guillermo Del Toro re-watch kick - thinking that was a fun film, I can re-watch that and knock out a quick, fun fic this weekend, no bother. I enjoyed the film the first time, I loved it this time round, full on down the rabbithole stuff. The moment I realised I was in trouble was when I ended up pages deep in the Japanese Minsitry of Foreign Affairs website. (This fic did not need my thoughts on refugee protocols in a post-Kaiju world...Nor the digression on Hanko...) Many thanks to the folks at little_details for their help with sources.

I haven't had a story grab my brain like this in I don't know how long, but it was a fun ride!

Joined By The Westering Wind (5944 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori
Characters: Mako Mori, Raleigh Becket
Additional Tags: The Drift (Pacific Rim), Soul Bond, Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Pining
Summary:

Love is not always a helpful word. For them it means 'where you go, I will go, for the rest of our lives'. It might mean something else to other people.

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