Ladystuck Remix progress report

Okay, I have picked a story to remix (in an unsurprising turn, it's the one I kept picking at in my head over the past week) and have made a super-minimal provisional outline. The thing is, this remix will either require me to learn some coding really quick in order to do a certain thing, or I will have to... uh... that would be a spoiler, damn. I mean, there is a relatively convenient fudge I could use in case of emergency, but I'd prefer to avoid that because it will look like I wasn't actually putting thought and effort into mirroring a certain effect in the original story.

I've done a little googling on the programming option, which mostly left me more confused than when I started. And on that note, is anyone willing to let me ask dumbass questions about Unicode and/or AO3 work skins via email or private message?

Liz’s continued kitchen (mis)adventures

I am making bean soup today! I turned the crockpot on around 1:30pm, but this recipe takes at least ten hours to cook properly so it won't be done until midnight-ish. It also takes about six hours to start smelling like Food instead of mismatched raw ingredients and dirty water, but my kitchen now smells pleasantly edible and the broth is slowly thickening into a lovely brown mush, so yay!

(This is not a visually attractive soup. It is, however, delicious.)

Right now I am eating the last of a not terribly successful chicken-and-onion experiment from a few weeks ago, which I doctored up a little with soy sauce and garlic powder and am eating over rice (accompanied by spinach salad with feta, craisins, and balsamic vinaigrette). I have moved the second container of not terribly successful beef-and-onion experiment from the freezer to the fridge to thaw, and I think tomorrow I will reheat it on the stove and try to fix the seasonings a little. (Moral of that story: cheap knockoff Worcestershire sauce is not your friend, especially without knowing what other spices should be used to balance it.)

The last couple things I've made in my crockpot have involved dumping rice (and water, obviously) in for the last two hours, so the grains soak up all the flavor and moisture and I don't have to worry about finding a starch to accompany my premixed meat and veggies. Now they are all premixed! It is very convenient and I wish I'd thought of that years ago. :)

[Meme] First Lines Meme

Found via asukaskerian and ceescedasticity.

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. See if there are any patterns. Tag your favorite authors!

I suck at tagging, so whatever. Play if you want to!

( cut for length )

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I don't think there's any particular pattern. Mostly I am trying to introduce the characters, the physical and temporal setting, the scenario/plot, and the mood, in as efficient and interesting a manner as possible, but which element makes it on-screen first (and how many of them I try to jam into a single sentence) is a tossup.

One could argue that there's a minor pattern (8 of 20 samples) wherein I attach setting and/or plot information to a line of dialogue instead of letting the dialogue stand alone, but that's just one of many methods to squeeze more than one of the four necessary elements into a single sentence -- in those cases, the characters (speaker and addressee) plus whatever else -- so I don't think I'd personally make that argument.