(no subject)

Jan. 15th, 2026 06:43 pm
[personal profile] shadaras
Sometimes adulthood is going "oh wow for once I don't have anything I need to do once I get off work" and promptly going and doing an errand and then washing dishes and doing laundry once getting home.

Assorted brief notes:


1.
My dojo is doing kyu testing this coming Saturday, which will be delightful. The two people testing are more than ready for these tests. (There's another person who we've been trying to get to test for years and it's just a matter of "please come consistently for a few months and take this test already!" at this point.)


2.
Wednesday evening classes are just. Draining. I do not like needing to be at school from 5pm-8pm. I didn't even when I was in college! Now it's just like "I wake up at 4:30am because of work, why must I suffer like this."

Also next week is going to be very boring because this week was a "oh shit the guest instructor suddenly can't make it" week and so they sort of half-assed an unprepared version of what they were gonna do next week. So. You know. I understood what they were teaching from the half-assed version, the teachers know that, but since most of the cohort was like ???, next week will be them going step-by-step through it with more prep. Which will be useful, and is good pedagogy, but is also going to Bore Me.


3.
h/t to [personal profile] trobadora for talking about Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which mostly got me going back to Star Trek: Discovery, since Academy is set after Disco.

which means I am currently re-watching the first episode of s3, because I watched the first two episodes when they first aired and then fell off because... idk, it was Oct/Nov 2020 and I was running headfirst into QZGS and infinite flow cnovels...? But hey, Disco is a fun show, I'm so fond of Michael Burnham, and s3 is in some ways a soft reboot due to being right after the timeskip, so! Looking forward to actually getting to know the future timeline.

I do think that a huge amount of why I fell off is just... 2020 being 2020. Because I don't think I had nearly as much fun with this the first time I watched it, and now I'm just like "wow this is such good tropey fun, s3e1 is using so much good trope stuff to set up Michael/Book".


4.
god I feel like I had some other things. hm.

A podcast reminded me that Escaflowne exists, and that it's an anime that I probably would have been obsessed with as a teenager if I'd seen it then. Mecha and guys with wings. Normal things. xD I feel like it should be on crunchyroll but it's not? Alas. Probably for the best if I'm going to actually watch Star Trek right now, but I do want to at some point experience this show.


5.
Work is very nonsense.

...I think I was going to give examples, but, idk. just. nah. it's! a lot! and mostly not outright bad, just tiring, and takes too much time, as work does.

Pinch Hitters' Prompts: Round 6

Jan. 14th, 2026 01:37 am
[personal profile] modzilla posting in [community profile] fffx
GREAT GRATZ (gratitude and congratulations) to pinch hitters! We have several outstanding pinch hits to claim.

If anyone has a pinch hit for this round of fffx but did not sign up at the start of the exchange to get both an assignment and a gift, you are welcome to leave prompts of your own here, in the comments. This round's tag set contains fandoms, characters, ships, and concepts that participants are already interested in, but you don't have to stick to what's already there - give prompts for whatever fandom(s) you want.

Please give your AO3 name and specify if you're interested in art, fic, or both. Please do not say whose pinch hit you are working on. Please make sure your AO3 preferences are set to allow you to receive unassigned gifts.

There is no minimum treat length - works submitted in response to these prompts may be shorter than 20 panels or 5,000 words.

Works for pinch hitters (including treats for past pinch hitters, at the tag) can be counted towards the achievements at [community profile] triplecrownofexchanges (should they be resurrected). Or, if you were considering a treat in this exchange (thank you) and the existing requests haven't sparked an idea yet, maybe a new prompt will.
[personal profile] modzilla posting in [community profile] fffx
Happy New Year! Works are now due this year - this MONTH - happily not quite this week.

The following pinch hits are due at 11:59pm EST, Saturday 7 February. That's a little under four weeks from this post, and two weeks after the main deadline. To claim, please reply with your AO3 name, and let me know which recipient/PH number you want. You're also welcome to claim by emailing mod.modzilla@gmail.com. You can swap from your current assignment to a pinch hit; if so, please say that's what you're doing - otherwise I'll assume you're picking up an assignment on top of any current assignments.

Minimum requirements: An art gift must be a completed comic at least 10 pages or 40 panels long; a fic gift must be a story at least 10,000 words long. You can also fulfil a pinch hit by giving two complete half-length works, if your recipient has opted into that for the fandom(s) you are creating in. Any work must be for a fandom your recipient has requested and one character/relationship/worldbuilding tag requested in that fandom, and must avoid their DNWs.

Pinch hits can now be claimed in 5k or 20-panel increments if the recipient has opted into receiving half-length works. Please say in your claim if you're claiming a pinch hit for 5k (fic) or 20 panels (comic), and for what fandom.



Pinch hit #4 - art, fic [varies by request] - 전지적 독자 시점 - 싱숑 | Omniscient Reader - Sing-Shong, Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends, Thor (Movies), Hannibal (TV) )

Pinch hit #18 - fic - Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling, Crossover Fandom x2 [Grimm TV/Guardian TV, Grimm TV/Christabel - Coleridge], 长公主在上 | Zhǎng Gōng Zhǔ Zài Shàng (Web Series), 绅探 | Detective L (TV) )

Pinch hit #23 - art, fic [varies by request] - Shadow of the Leviathan - Robert Jackson Bennett, LitenVerse - Nino Cipri, Stellar Harvest series - Eleanor Arnason, Original Work, Crossover Fandom [Queen's Gambit TV/Man Who Fell To Earth 1976], The Breakfast Club (1985) )

Pinch hit #28 - art, fic [varies by request] - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon) x2, Overwatch (Video Game), Slow Horses (TV), Brew Solves - Fandom, Dangan Ronpa Series, Death Note (Anime & Manga) )

Pinch hit #30 - fic - 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, The Fall of the House of Usher (TV 2023), 成化十四年 | The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (TV), Among Us (Video Game), F1 (Movie 2025), One Piece (Anime & Manga), 重启之极海听雷 | Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (TV 2020) )

Pinch hit #32 - fic - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (TV), Murder She Wrote, Jem and the Holograms (Cartoon), G.I. Joe (Cartoon), Voltron: Lion Force (1984) )

PARTLY CLAIMED - Pinch hit #39 - fic - Stargate Atlantis, Kolja | Kolya (1996), Cesta do pravěku | Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies) )

This pinch hit can be fulfilled with one 5k story.

Pinch hit #41 - fic - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, DCU (Comics, Numb3rs (TV) )

Pinch hit #45 - art, fic [varies by request] - Dragon Age (Video Games), Breaking Bad, Succession (TV 2018), The Owl House (Cartoon), Falsettos - Lapine/Finn )

Pinch hit #47 - art, fic - Hetalia (Anime & Manga), Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The White Vault (Podcast), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) )

Pinch hit #49 - art, fic [varies by request] - NoPixel (Web Series), Crossover Fandom [various], 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs, Video Blogging RPF, 薬屋のひとりごと | Kusuriya no Hitorigoto | The Apothecary Diaries (Anime), Sakamoto Days (Anime), Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (Video Blogging RPF) ここは今から倫理です。| Koko wa Ima Kara Rinri Desu | From Now On We Begin Ethics (Manga), 吸血鬼すぐ死ぬ | Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu | The Vampire Dies in No Time (Anime), Bandom )


Click for links to CLAIMED pinch hit requests!
Pinch hit #40 - art, fic - ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon, The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells, Superman (Movie 2025), Original Work, The Amazing Digital Circus (Web Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)

Pinch hit #48 - art, fic [varies by request] - Final Fantasy XII, Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1995), Original Work x2, Vampire: The Masquerade, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Video Game)

Pinch hit #50 - art, fic - ヲタクに恋は難しい | Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii | Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku (Anime), Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga), Haikyuu!!, 月刊少女野崎くん | Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, Dramacon (Comics), And Another Lovely Day (Webcomic), SK8 the Infinity (Anime), 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney, Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types


(no subject)

Jan. 7th, 2026 07:14 pm
[personal profile] shadaras
The thing about Martha Wells' Queen Demon is that I really adored Witch King and then was mad about the fact that it wasn't a stand-alone book because I didn't feel a need for more in that universe.

Queen Demon is a perfectly serviceable book. I generally like Martha Wells' writing and her casts of characters. However. One of the things that I did not mind in Witch King but do mind in Queen Demon is the dual timelines. I suppose they weren't precisely directly connected in Witch King either, but there it had the effect of explaining who Kai was and providing all the backstory to the world. In Queen Demon, it's like...

I can see echoes but it's not direct. It ended up feeling like I was intercutting between two novellas with a shared world/cast, rather than one book that built its thematic/narrative push along a split timeline.

And yeah that probably wasn't helped by how I read it (in three sittings, more or less, each a couple weeks apart), but...

The main feeling I had about this novel was that every chapter seemed designed to end on a cliffhanger, which is perfectly reasonable design/structure for a novel, but also way more annoying when you know that you're not going to be immediately following up on that bit of time when you begin the next chapter.

This then leads into my biggest "I didn't like this" about the book, which is that it ends in much the same way as any of its chapters end, just on a bigger scale. Which, like, yeah, that's normal for a book in a series, I guess? But it's not how I'm used to Martha Wells books in series ending! She is usually pretty good about wrapping things up instead of ending on "here is a dramatic change in status quo that we are not even providing characters time to have an emotion about before cutting from".

...which then leads to the biggest question I have about bk3, which is:

So if the naming schema so far has been "magic-user + royalty title", does that mean the next book will be named for the Immortal Blessed or the Hierarchs?


spoiler-tastic specific ??? about the ending )

(yes I will read bk3 when it comes out but I still think that I liked Witch King as a standalone more than Witch King as a series.)

(no subject)

Jan. 6th, 2026 04:07 pm
[personal profile] shadaras
Over the last ~week, [personal profile] hafnia and I went "sooooo what if we ran a multifandom remix event" and now it is up and ready for signups! We're hoping it'll be a fun time, and we'd love to have you join us. <3


Remix Through the Seasons is a quarterly, trope-based multifandom event hosted on ao3.

Participants will write one new story (between 1-5k) and then be assigned another story written for the event to remix. These stories can be in any fandom (including Original Work). Matching will be based on the stories' tropes (and creator DNWs) rather than pairings/fandoms. Remixing works from one fandom into another is allowed (even expected).

Schedule:
Signups open: Now!
Signups close: January 24
Assignments sent: January 31
Original works revealed: January 31
Remix works due: March 14
Remix works reveals: March 21
All author reveals: March 28
All due dates etc are at 11:59pm GMT on the listed date

DW Comm: [community profile] seasonalremix
Ao3 Collection


(getting everything finalised involved spending a couple hours on a discord call editing the gdoc full of rules and only occasionally getting distracted talking about other things, which tbh is pretty good for how many moving parts there can be for stuff like this and how easy it can be to get sidetracked talking to your bestie. we think the rules are clear! ask questions [preferably on the comm] if they aren't! <3)
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