Scales and Tales

I think this subject line is the best reason for choosing my username. :D

October seems as good a time as any to climb back on the posting bandwagon! So here I am.

The weather here remains mild, but I shiver in anticipation of colder temps.

The cats are well, although one tried to puke on me this morning. I keep meaning to make a post about them - I even started one, flocked it so I could come back to it with photos, and then never did get back to it - so that can go back on my To Do list.

Fannishly, I'm a bit... stalled? I've been rereading fics from old fandoms, mostly FMA, along with YOI fic, but no new canon has appeared to seize my attention. I really need to make some rec lists for YOI, so that can go on the To Do list, too and give me actual fannish content to post!

Been rereading Foreigner a bit today, and wishing for fic. I really want either Ian/Julio or Ian/Manadgi fic that explores the first contact and the nascent office of Paidhi in more depth (which is to say, any).

Still on Dragon Cave, kind of low-key annoyed by the frequency of releases this year but excited to see what the cute new Pygmy breed will look like, grown up!

Thanks to someone else's post, I now want to make okonomiyaki on Saturday. Will have to go shopping first, though, as I don't think there's a vegetable in the house that isn't a frozen green bean or pea. Nor are there any eggs, and I was thinking about making bread... Really need to finish the ice cream I made the base for last week, too.

Weight loss has been going okay, but with the change in work schedule and the change in weather I'm not able to keep up with my walking. Last week my weight didn't change from the week before, so I've been mulling over ways to maintain my physical activity through the fall and winter. I'm too cheap to pay for gym membership (and I hate exercising indoors; I just won't do it) but I may just have to pay for a gym membership. Alternately, is there any way I can cram a treadmill into some corner of my house? *tilts head curiously* I really don't see where, short of something radical like removing the Useless Giant Bathtub. But it would be nice to be able to do my activity here, with cats and without strangers, and not have to drive somewhere else.

How are all of you, my beautiful reading list?

I still want 2018 to be the year I post more regularly on DW!

In the spirit of "post what's happening, not what you think is interesting" and "three things make a post," here is what I've been up to lately:

* Watching Yuri!!! On Ice and loving it so far! Halfway through; may finish tomorrow. I know Many Spoilers because of its general popularity and my not being the sort of person who is vigilant about spoiler avoidance. So far it's fabulous; I'm not much for most sports or sports anime, but figure skating is one of the few sports I do enjoy watching and YoI is doing such a good job with it!

Please, YoI fans on my reading list, hit me with all your squee and meta and fic recs! I am so ready to have a newish, active-ish fandom again and I already love all the characters I've met so far! I also need all of the vids of their skate routines, and I offer up this fabulous AMV by MoonlitxShadows in the spirit of giving what I want to receive. :D

* Took a random day off work because I was feeling stressed and burned-out (boss was off sick for two weeks, I've been basically doing her job for those two weeks). Didn't make any particular plans, except that I was going to do Something Productive with the extra day. Ended up cleaning out my bedroom and closet, a project I've had on the to-do list for at least three months.

Guys, the amount of clothing I own is insane. I'm the W O R S T when it comes to hanging onto old stuff; either because it's still wearable, or I'm deludedly convinced that I'll lose enough weight that it will one day be wearable, or because it has sentimental associations of some kind, or whatever; there's a list of excuses as long as my arm. I'm also the laziest git on Earth where laundry is concerned, because I hate every step of the process and am prone to procrastination. So basically I had laundry on every surface of the bedroom and closet. Sometimes I'd try to sort a little, but there was nowhere to put it and the sheer volume was overwhelming.

I had this moment, once I started, when I was staring into the depleted box of 50 new hangers, when I thought, Well, if I run out, I can buy more. ...What am I thinking?! Nobody needs that many hangers; if you need 150 hangers then what you actually need is fewer clothes. I made myself try on everything that wasn't already on a hanger and make an honest judgment, and ended up culling two huge bags of stuff to be donated.

There's still clothing all over my bed, but I feel a lot better! Tomorrow I can finish up. And I vacuumed the bedroom floor for the first time in months!

* Related to both items above, I've decided that it is beyond time to lose weight. My current weight makes me unhappy, my current wardrobe isn't up for it (whereas I have plenty of clothing in smaller sizes, in good condition), and watching a bunch of fictional athletes do amazing things is reminding me that there are some forms of exercise I enjoy and would really like to get back to. I'm mulling over plans, now.

* Also trying to get back into the writing habit. If I can write just a couple of sentences in any story each day, it would really help. I think of myself as a writer; if I'm not writing, then I feel frustrated with myself.

* Got my hands on the latest Foreigner novel and am halfway through! I, uh, still tolerate more than enjoy the Cajeiri-POV parts, but am ultra-excited at the idea of Bren and aishid actually going to Mospheira! Breaking new human-ateva interaction territory (which it feels like we haven't done in a while, since Bren got lordship'd) and so much opportunity for fish-out-of-water and culture-clash fun from the opposite side! I hope it lives up to the potential.

* Foreigner icon, because I don't have a YoI icon yet!

I spent far too much of today reading Prince of Tennis Silver Pair slash! I haven't watched PoT in forever, but it was like somebody reached into my head late Saturday night and twisted a dial around hard; I have quite methodically worked my way through the eight pages of Ao3 results and every working bookmark in my collection.

If anyone has any non-AO3 recs, I'd welcome them! Or just babble at me about this (whether "this" is Prince of Tennis, or getting ambushed by weird fic cravings, or that one fandom that you never thought you'd be into) in the comments.

As tends to happen when I fic-binge, I've ended up thinking a lot about what works for me and what doesn't, both for a specific canon and more broadly. This fandom definitely hits a couple of bulletproof narrative kinks for me - especially 'struggling with an unwanted attraction'/'questioning one's orientation' (with a side of 'concealing it in a hostile environment'), and 'deep platonic loyalty' - and that might explain why I'm so invested in a couple of characters from a shounen sports anime, despite having no interest in school settings or sports.

Does anyone else have an "outlier" fandom or OTP that helped shed light on your narrative kinks? (Also, why are a bunch of mine so hard to describe? It's difficult to go looking for more of something when it takes a paragraph and a half just to summarise the basic concept!)

This meme stolen from melannen and extrapenguin, to help repair the lack of posts in my journal lately.

( 21 Questions, With Answers! )

I went out today and bought the next volume of Fullmetal Alchemist!

...Or so I thought.

Instead, I bought the same volume that I bought a month ago, so I have no new FMA to read today after all, and I'll need to go back to the bookshop to get the correct volume. (That, however, is probably going to be a project for tomorrow.)

To make matters worse, my plan was to buy FMA along with the next Foreigner novel! Only the bookshop didn't have the newest Foreigner, so I left with just the FMA.

I think that *facepalming* is the only appropriate phrase for my current level of chagrin.

Well, I'm falling behind on my resolution to post more, already; fandoms to the rescue!


Guess who just got Kings Rising and devoured it in a matter of hours? That's right, this snake! What a great finale - the juxtapositions went a fair way toward letting everyone have some "resolved" feelings about their past conflicts.

( More spoilery comments below the cut. )

I've also been rewatching the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime lately, and have just about decided - after browsing a whole lot of fic and having to skim over all the manga-verse and Brotherhood-verse choices - that it's time to pick up one or both of those, too. There's just not enough fic, especially longfic, for the 2003-verse! Not sure yet which I'll go for first; it'll probably come down to "whom do I know that will loan me theirs" and/or "which can I manage to download first." So we'll see!

Fellow FMA fans on my flist, which did you like best? Where would you recommend starting? Do you have any fic recs for me, either for now (from 2003-verse) or for later (after I've started the manga/Brotherhood)? I can hardly wait to have another thing to squee about!