edenfalling: headshot of a raccoon, looking left (raccoon)
It is Ladystuck reveal day! I wrote three fics this year: my assignment, a pinch hit, and a treat. I will discuss each in a separate post.

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Raiders of the Deep Caverns: Wherein Aradia Megido, intrepid explorer and amateur archaeologist, discovers an abandoned brooding cavern complex and invites her hatefriends Terezi Pyrope and Vriska Serket to assist in the exploration of its wild and dangerous depths. Featuring six pesterlogs, three dialogue-only passages, four third-person limited POV sections, a brief beach interlude, a tenuous framing device, and worldbuilding that flies right over the various protagonists' heads and horns. (6,300 words)

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This is my assignment, written for [archiveofourown.org profile] lyricalIcarus in response to the prompt: Scourge Sisters! I wonder about their friendship with Aradia because they are all badasses. Which is self-evidently true, so I wanted to write a story that showcased them being badass. I also wanted to write about them being friends, which is why I avoided writing about a Flarp match.

This is a very, hmm, structured story, for lack of a better word. There's a defined rhythm to the order and type of scenes -- traditional narrative from one character's POV, three conversations (whether chatlog or traditional dialogue), narrative passage, three conversations, narrative passage, three conversations, narrative passage. That wasn't intentional at the outset. I jumped straight into writing the first chatlog, between Aradia and Terezi, backtracked to write the opening scene with Aradia and the waterfall, decided I should write two more chatlogs to show the other pair interactions, and somewhere in the process of the Terezi-Vriska or Vriska-Aradia chatlogs, the structure appeared full-blown in my mind. Then it was just a question of writing very fast, and trying to make sure the dialogue-only passages were clear, both in the sense of who was saying which lines, and the more general sense of setting and action.

Overall, this was a very fun story to write, and I hope it's enjoyable to read. *grin*
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
These works are from page 8 of the Ladystuck 2013 archive, as sorted chronologically. I meant to finish page 7 as well, but I got a bit distracted by other things, whoops. [ETA: Now with creator names attached!]

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Ladystuck 2013 rec list, part 2
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WRITING - 5 fics )

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ART

1. i will never look away: Artwork for Homestuck Ladyfest 2013. Calliope/Roxy. (by schellibie)

To quote the prompt: 'shy, tall, calliopes and confident, small, roxys just warm my heart when they're together'

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Hmm. Possibly I should write up my reveal day posts? Yes, I think I will go do that.
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
It's a bit frustrating to have an archive expand on you while you're trying to read through it. By which I mean there are now 200 Ladystuck works rather than 196. The Treats archive has also expanded, but I expected that to happen which is why I planned to leave it until after I worked through the main archive. I guess some people have been posting additional works in the main archive rather than the Treats archive for whatever reason, which... I mean, they do qualify by length, but that sort of extra gift is precisely what the Treats archive is for, so...

Well, mostly I'm just annoyed because if even one more work is posted to the main archive, it will muck up the pagination of my rec lists, which is a very silly reason to be annoyed, all things considered, so I will shush now. *wry*

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In other news, today I bought postage stamps, deposited a check (my semiannual dividends from Vanguard, which I never include in my budgeting and therefore form my emergency 'oh shit how do I pay for this???' fund), discovered that Thayer Appliance does not carry the type of range drip pan I need, was told that County Wide Appliance Service (which has the simultaneously most minimal and terrible website I've seen in a good long while) might have what I'm looking for, acquired Eric Rutkow's American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation from the public library, bought more vodka since I'd run out last week, and finished reading G. R. Elton's Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell which is slightly overdue to Olin Library and which I plan to return on Friday. Also I made stir fry, because food is necessary to life.

...

I claimed a slow-cooker recipe collection as one of my free magazines from work this week -- every smoke shop employee is allowed to claim six of the to-be-returned magazines per week -- in anticipation of getting a crockpot for my birthday. Frankly, that cannot arrive too soon. I get so tired of standing over a stove keeping an eye on food, and the delay between deciding, "Oh, hey, I should do something about dinner" and actually getting to eat is incredibly frustrating... which is why tonight I actually ate a frozen Stouffer's dinner before I cooked. *wry* The stir fry is currently in my freezer waiting to be thawed in four or five days, depending on whether I bring home takeout between now and then to supplement the three baked chicken thighs (plus beans & onions, because yay vegetables?) that I cooked on Friday and moved into the fridge to thaw tonight. Leftovers are my friends.

(Saturday dinner will be pizza at the grocery store, since bus schedules mean I always have twenty-five minutes to kill between arriving and starting to shop.)
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
These works are from pages 9 & 10 of the Ladystuck 2013 archive, as sorted chronologically. I will try to get another post for the next two or three pages up by Friday evening, and will plow duly onward until I finish, even after authors are revealed. I am not posting AO3 warnings and tags; you will have to read them in the header information of the works themselves and decide whether to scroll down from there. [ETA: Now with creator names attached!]

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Ladystuck 2013 rec list, part 1
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WRITING - 8 fics )

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ART - 6 works )

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And now to bed, since I have a lot of errands to run in the morning. :-)
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
The thing about the Ladystuck archive is it has 196 works. Which is awesome, don't get me wrong! But I have decided that I should read (or view) all of them, because yay female-centric works in a fandom I love! Then I intend to comment on all of them, because people put a lot of effort into these words and art and it sucks not to get feedback in a gift exchange.

I have previously commented on my own two gifts, plus one other random fic. I don't have to comment on my own works, for obvious reasons. That leaves 191 works. Tonight I got through eight.

...

This is going to take a while.

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The reason I am running a couple days behind on my Ladystuck project is that Mom visited this weekend. She arrived Saturday evening, whereupon we went grocery shopping and then cooked our own dinner: salmon, rice-a-roni, broccoli, and green salad. On Sunday morning we went to church, and at 4pm we returned to my church for the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble concert that was the ostensible reason for the visit. The program was Ernö Dohnányi's Serenade in C for String Trio, Op. 10; Paul Schoenfield's Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano (which is massively dissonant, but in a good way? and clearly inspired by klezmer music; also, I have mad respect for the clarinetist, because that must be a doozy to play; my lips were getting sore in sympathy by the fourth movement); and Johannes Brahms's Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 60 (popularly known as the Werther Quartet).

Between church and concert, Mom decided to clean my oven. I vacuumed my floors so as not to feel useless while she worked; then we went to Agway and Home Depot in search of a new range fan filter and new range drip pans. This was something of an exercise in futility, since it turns out all modern stoves are made with drip bowls, not dead-flat metal pans; I will have to go to a specialty appliance store to have any hope of finding parts for my ancient stove. *sigh*

Sunday night we ate at the Boatyard Grill, which I believe does not much predate my arrival in Ithaca back in 2000. It was all right back then, but it has definitely improved over the years. :-)

On Monday we had breakfast at the Lincoln Street Diner, which is just a couple blocks from my house, after which Mom headed back to NJ and I went to work.

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And now to bed.
edenfalling: colored line-art drawing of a three-scoop ice cream sundae (ice cream sundae)
The Ladystuck 2013 and Ladystuck Treats archives are open!

I got two gifts -- one fic and one picture, interestingly in response to the same prompt -- and they are both glorious.

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First, the picture:

Cat Up a Tr33: Terezi and Nepeta have adventures in the forest. (High resolution version)

This is beautiful and dreamlike, with sort of ghostly sketch lines and an impressionistic treatment of background textures and colors. Nepeta's body language is pitch-perfect feline, and despite the blood -- these girls play hard -- there is a sense of camaraderie.

Go heap praises upon the artist!

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Second, the fic:

I See A Wasp With Her Wings Outstretched: You know you can't keep her here furrever. But you've never heard a live troll talking before. (4,050 words)

The author says this started out as "Five Times Nepeta Decided Not To Eat Terezi." That's not quite where it ended up, but that should give you an idea of their first meeting; that they finish as possibly each other's best friend, doing their best to be there for each other within the limits of Alternian culture, is amazing, beautiful, and in the final scene, painfully perfect.

Go heap praises upon the writer, too!
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I made extensive edits to my Ladystuck pinch hit (by which I mean I actively added a bunch of other characters and dialogue, and smoothed the most awkward, spiky, wtf-this-has-no-foreshadowing bits of the world-building, for a net gain of nearly a thousand words), chose a slightly differen paragraph for the summary, and picked a new title. This is the third title the story has had -- the first was a deliberately ridiculous working title, the second was a blunt description of the plot excuse on which I have hung the character stuff, and the third is... kind of pretentious, I guess, but at least less awkward than the other attempts.

I am now debating whether I want to try writing a couple treats -- little things, more overgrown drabbles than proper fics -- or whether I should go to bed. I think I will at least look over the request list (also available in a sortable form, courtesy of inklesspen!) to see if anything speaks to me. But I make no guarantees.

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Oh, for anyone who might have been worried: yes, there is flooding in Ithaca right now. Ice jams in Cascadilla and Fall Creek have been backing up storm sewers in Northside and Fall Creek neighborhoods, which floods basements, which kills furnaces. Thus far, my street(s) have been safe, and there are extensive efforts underway to break up the worst of the ice jams before fragmented ice from upstream comes floating down to make everything worse. Hopefully my house will continue unaffected. *crosses fingers*

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ETA, 1:30am Wrote one treat, going to bed. :-)
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I hate deadlines.

Nevertheless, a rough draft of my Ladystuck pinch hit is now complete and posted to the archive, and I will edit the (inevitable) mountain of mistakes, omissions, and general wtf-was-I-thinking passages tomorrow.

For now? Bed. Because while I slept a good nine hours last night, I was still operating on zombie mode all through my shift at the smoke shop, and I'm pretty sure if I am similarly zoned out on Friday, Boss Lady will be seriously pissed off. Bleh, jobs.

(On the bright side, my assignment and pinch hit alone have kicked me over 10,000 words for January -- that being the per-month minimum needed to write 120,000 words a year. I try to take pleasure where I can. *grin*)
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I am perhaps halfway done with my Ladystuck pinch hit. I also think I might be coming down with a cold, since my nose has been moderately but persistently stuffed up all day. I would like to stay up and write some more, but I suspect it would be more sensible to go to bed so I won't be a zombie at work in the morning.

Bleh.

In other news, this evening I called Cat to wish her a slightly belated happy birthday, and we talked for the first time in a year or two. It was good to catch up.

We have agreed we should talk more often, and I will try to put that into practice. I manage to call Susan every two or three weeks. It should not be difficult to do something similar with my other best friend. :-)
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
1. The Commons reconstruction project, which was hoped for lo these many years and finally manifested in 2013, is apparently on track. Which means that phase 1 -- rip up the central "street" part of the pedestrian zone and do lots of cool-but-invisible utility work -- is more or less done, and phase 2 -- resurface the whole shebang, put in new lampposts, plant new trees and hedges, and build pavilions, benches, and other features -- will commence in the spring once the weather isn't vicious evil cold. But for the moment, the whole area is a giant unfinished construction site, and that has discouraged a lot of casual foot traffic to the smoke shop.

In response, we are now closing at 7pm until spring -- which means sometime in March or April, exact dates yet to be determined. Boss Lady and I are doing some sales analysis to hopefully convince Mr. Speakerphone that this should only be a temporary measure and not a permanent shift, but for the moment all my sense of time has been thrown off. Also, all my shifts now start at 11am instead of noon. It's weird.

On the bright side, it does mean that if things go wrong, I have oodles of spare time after I lock the doors and cash out my register. So if, say, a couple comes in and wants to buy a pack of cigarettes with eight dollars in loose pennies -- which happened tonight, and I gritted my teeth and said, "You really have to stop doing this, but I will let you slide this one last time" -- I can do half my closing checklist after 7pm instead of before it, without making my work day feel like it's eleven hours long.

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2. Last night I picked up a Ladystuck pinch hit, mostly because one highly specific prompt from the recipient's list pinged me exactly where I live. I'm not sure the resulting story will be obvious, because the element I leapt upon is something from an original fiction world that I've never managed to write an actual story in, nor have I posted any world-building files online. But oh man, talk about your childhood dreams! (Literally, come to think of it. *wry*)

I made some basic edits to my assigned Ladystuck fic tonight, and have begun a preliminary outline for the pinch hit. I have Wednesday off work, so I should be able to get a bunch of solid writing time, even though I will be in and out of the apartment doing laundry during the afternoon.

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3. My mom will probably be coming up for a brief visit this weekend, ostensibly to attend a Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble concert for which I have two tickets. The exact scheduling will depend on weather, but conceivably she could arrive Saturday evening and stay until Monday morning. (The concert is Sunday afternoon.) I have removed myself from the RE teaching roster on the 12th in preparation, and already arranged to have Saturday evening and all day Sunday off from work. I'm not sure what we will do between church Sunday morning and the concert at 4pm, but I'm sure we'll think of something.

Oh, hey, I should check the Johnson Museum and see if they have any exhibitions that sound interesting. :-)

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edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

May 2025

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