heliopausa | Reading

suzume posting in

Title: Chocoholic
Fandom: Suikoden III
Character(s): Chris Lightfellow
Rating: G
Summary: Chris can't get a break.

( Sneaking around, Chris finally thinks she's found a good spot... )

alchemicink posting in

halfamoon

The first character who popped in my head for "Guilty Pleasures" was Shizuru and her cigarette smoking habit. (I don't like real life smoking but I do love fictional smoking 😅)

Title: Rising Smoke
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho
Character: Kuwabara Shizuru
Rating: G
Length: 100 words
Summary: Shizuru takes a quiet moment to herself
Link: here on ao3 or you can read it under the cut below

( Read more... )

tielan

Yes, I'm back with the Georgian trip!

Day 1: Overview | Day 2: Vashlovani Nature Reserve | Day 3: Jvari Monastery and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral

-----

The night of the Jvari Monastery and the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (still Wednesday) we stayed in a little vineyard tucked away in the back of beyond, which required a hike along rough tracks and up and down roads. Our luggage was (thankfully) taken by a very old jeep - Soviet era, we were told. It surely looked it!

A B&B up in the mountains

The vineyard had been owned by a former church minister, and they were still doing it up. The road there was a little rough, and a few of the women struggled somewhat with the path.

There was also almost no signal.

But there were kittens!

This night was a particularly bad case of "we can't eat anything, we're too stuffed full of food". I didn't even take photos of the food, I was so full!

And the next morning was no better.

Ruins and vineyards and buildings on the walk back down to where the bus awaited us in the morning:

Thursday: Uplistsikhe

Yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful...

Uplistsikhe Rock Village dates back to the 2nd Century BC, and translates to 'God's Fortress'.

The carvings and design of it indicate both pagan and Christian residency (a pagan temple's fire altars were filled in when the community converted to Christianity and the space used as a chapel/cathedral), and multiple cultural influences from outside Georgia are indicated by its architecture and decoration before it was sacked in the 12th Century by the Mongols.

There was so much of it to see, but we only had an hour, so it was a very truncated tour of a really interesting historical site.

And I spent long enough in the chapel that I and my roomie (only other non-American on the tour, apart from the 'host' who was local, and the 'organiser' who was ) lost the rest of the group on the way out of the site. I found the chapel particularly fascinating to me for the black Madonna-and-Child portrait, the layout of the space, and the "drooping arms" cross symbol, which is representative of St Nino's grapevine cross she carried to Georgia when she brought Christianity to that part of the world.

Oh yes, and the black Madonna and child!

No, not me! (I just realised the juxtaposition of the photos. XD XD)

More seriously, there was a woman in the chapel who was praying or observing her pilgrimage. I had to be quiet while she was there and even after she left, I had to be quiet because there was a woman manning the shop right outside the door. *sigh*

I find it a bit restricting, actually, that the chapels and cathedrals all demand silence of you. There are times for silence, of course. But there's also time to sing and be joyful - to shout to the Lord! To everything a time and a season, as Ecclesiastes declares. I did manage to sing a hymn in a chapel in Positano, Italy and that was fun!

Anyway, there was a tunnel we missed out on seeing because we didn't work out where the rest of the group went, and then we got stuck at the top and ended up having to go back down the way we came, whereupon we met the rest of the group and went along to the bus.

On the way to lunch, we passed through the city of Gori, which is Stalin's birthplace. Many of the older Americans wanted to hop out and have a look at it, and I hopped out because the architecture looked really interesting!

C'mon, tell me this isn't fascinating to the daughter of an architect!

Gori: birthplace of Stalin

The location is the house in which he was born. The neighbourhood was "bought out" (*cough cough* we know how that goes in the west, now imagine it in Soviet Georgia!) and everything else razed to bring you...this edifice of stone and magnificence...

The Americans exclaimed over the details of Stalin's life. Me? I looked around at the architecture (very interesting, oddly beautiful for what I think of as 'communist brutalism') and then out at the public gardens surrounding it, and the Georgian national flag flapping in the wind. And I turned to our Georgia guide, grinned, and said "Stalin would have hated it." And she grinned back.

It was pretty much a fifteen minute stop because we were already kind of late to lunch. But then, we were still kind of full from the previous night and breakfast, so it's not like we were rushing to get to eat!

--

Lunch at Sisters-in-Law winery. The owner used to be in the diplomatic service, but married a guy whose family owned land out in the countryside and now runs a restaurant that they built out of reclaimed everything. All the bricks, all the wood, all the furnishings found and repaired and now reused. It's very permaculture.

books and food and activism against an oppressive government: what it can look like

They're also very socially active (also very permaculture) to the point where they decided to close the restaurant this summer, because they wanted to participate in local protests against pro-Russia government and they were worried about retaliation. That's a dedication to the cause. There were assorted signs and stickers around the place that showed the sentiment of the younger generation about Russia, but the older generations often recall the good times of the Soviet Union and want that back.

Sounds a bit familiar, really.

They definitely had some permaculture books...

Also, there was a wine there that was absolutely amazing, and honestly I'd have shipped an entire crate of it back home except they didn't have any left over from that batch! *sigh*

A beautiful place with a beautiful couple doing good, solid things in the world.

--

Kutaisi
At this point, my memories are growing a little fuzzy. I shouldn't have put off typing this up for so long, and since I've been back, a lot has happened!

But I do remember that the dinner in Kutaisi was a bit ordinary, all things considered...

A walking bridge, quite close to where we were staying, and the last light of day.

kerk_hiraeth posting in

halfamoon

TITLE: The Briefest of Heroes https://kerk-hiraeth.dreamwidth.org/21839.html

PROMPT: Day One - The Innocent

FANDOM: Buffy the Vampire Slayer FutureFic AU

AUTHOR: kerk_hiraeth

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 350,

CHARACTERS: OC Pov & Willow/Kennedy

SUMMARY: Amongst all the Slayers born into new powers; what happens to those alone; untrained and unfound. This is an account of one such abandoned innocent.

A/N: This is set in the summer of 2020, in a world where the Buffy/Faith bodyswap of BtVS S4 was not reversed; there is a cold war between the old Council of Watchers and a new Council of Slayers and their allies set up after the destruction of Sunnydale.

This is not a happy tale with a happy ending

This is the link to the original Dec 2020 post in case anyone is interested https://kerk-hiraeth.dreamwidth.org/12156.html

kerk

tellshannon815 posting in

halfamoon

Title: All Things Truly Wicked Start From Innocence
Fandom: Yellowjackets
Characters: Natalie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Reference to character death, spoilers through S3
Word count: 467
Summary: As Natalie attends a memorial for Javi, she reflects on how he was the only one of them who was ever truly innocent.

( Read more... )

flemmings

The good news is that I got up the street with only a few patches of slush impeding the walker's wheels. Alleyways mostly, which are a pain because snow+slope makes for antsy footing. So I should be able to get to physio on Wednesday. I've been doing remarkably well given it's been nearly three weeks but will be glad of some work on the knees.

The bad news is that I knocked my water pic of the sink this morning and broke something off it. Thus the need to get to Loblaws to buy a new one.

The worst is that the bar fridge stopped working last night. The connection will no longer connect. So it's stairs again for me in the morning.

However, last Thursday as I was pushing my way through the almost impassable slush a bearded guy coming the other way stopped to commiserate. You're very brave, he said. Pure hubris, I said, and anyway I need potatoes. I ran across him again today up the street. Appears he was impressed by my using hubris, a word which he doesn't expect people in general to know. Ah, said I, comes of being a Classics major. Still impressive, he says. Which was nice.

kaffy_r

Music Meme, Day 20

A song with a number in the title:

One of the musical geniuses that Bob introduced me to years ago was Harry Nilsson. Until he helped me take a deep dive into Nilsson's work, I think I'd only heard "Everybody's Talking." After I emerged from the dive, I loved everything he ever wrote or performed. When he was young, his voice was angelic. After a few years of hard, hard living, it was no longer angelic, but it was still sweet.

There are so many Nilsson songs I'd love to share with you - Jump Into the Fire, Good Old Desk, Remember, I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City, and so many more - just for the joy of listening to his robustly, seriously whimsical lyrics. But the meme on Day 20 asks for music that has a number in its titles, so I'll stick with that.

As it happens, there are two Nilsson songs with a number in the title. "One" is the first one, and it's beautiful.

Watch on YouTube

But Nilsson wrote another song with a number as its title: 1941. This is semi-autobiographical and is a perfect example of how Nilsson could mix whimsy with sorrow.

The previous days are available via this link.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Nilsson "1941"

swingandswirl

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

You know, I don't think I've ever sat down and thought through my creative process before. This should be fun.

My solo-written fic, as opposed to my cowrites (/waves to

rhi ,

ilyena_sylph ,

t_vo0810 and others/) is one of two kinds, usually: either it's written for an exchange fic, or a bunny ups and grabs me.

When I sign up for exchanges, I try and craft my sign-up to get specific recipients, although I try and make sure that I can write for all potential recipicients. (I've only hit 'oh God no DEFAULT' levels of DNW a couple of times, which considering my Cursed Exchange Luck, I'm pretty proud of.) Once I get my assignment, I sit with the prompt that calls to me the most, and see what kind of story I can create that fits both the wordcount requirement and what the recip wants. Depending on how much plot there is, I throw myself on rhi's mercy for help, lol.

Once I've figured out what the story is, then I write it. Very rarely, I finish my first draft before deadline; usually I'm butting right up to it. (Being several hours ahead is a wonderful thing, sometimes. It feels like a sneaky little extension, lol.) I use the period between submission deadline and reveals to edit and polish my fic, although (thankfully) I write very clean drafts so there's rarely all that much editing, SPAG aside, to do. Sometimes my brain is a hunk of mouldy cheese and poor

rhi has to talk me down and remind me that I am a good writer and my fic will look better once I have had a snack and a nap.

When it comes to non-exchange fic, it usually starts with a bunny nibbling on me. Once the nibbling becomes too hard to ignore, I sit down and write - sometimes just scenes, sometimes snippets, sometimes whole-ass fic. Then I let the for-publishing stuff sit for a few days before going back over it, then getting it beta'd.

Regardless of whether it's exchange fic or for my own satisfaction, there's one step of the process I find utterly loathsome: titles. There's a reason most of my fics have either lyrics or quotes for titles - titling is the worst, even harder than summaries. I am in awe of people who find it easy. But works need titles, alas, and so far I've somehow managed, lol.

And that's my creative process! Feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

lovelytomeetyou posting in

halfamoon

Day 2 - Guilty Pleasures

Title: Heroism can wait another day
Fandom: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Characters: Sayaka Miki focused, with Sayaka/Kyouko
Rating: General audiences
Summary: Sayaka is going to end this charade and Homura’s little play. Tomorrow, she will do it.
Post-Rebellion, in which Miki (attempts to) right wrongs and ends up procrastinating (just a little bit).

Check out the story in ao3!

jacquelee posting in

halfamoon

Title: Finding Yourself in a New World – Chapter 2: Guilty Pleasures
Day/Prompt: Day 2 / Guilty Pleasures
Fandom: Warrior Nun (TV)
Character/Pairing: Yasmine, Camila, Shannon, Mary, Lilith, Beatrice, Ava
Rating/Warning(s): T / None
Word Count: 6243
Summary: After her first mission, the team takes Yasmine to a bar and they all bond.
Author's Notes: As I said on the first day, this is a continuous story, one chapter covering each day's prompt. The link will go to the second chapter, the first chapter can be accessed from there.

Here on AO3

sisterdivinium posting in

halfamoon

Title: Two callings
Fandom: The Last Kingdom
Characters: Hild
Rating: T
Notes/Warnings: Done with Chinese ink pens and graphite. There's an implied dead body in the frame as a battle takes place in the background. This is also more or less in the same continuity of another

halfamoon entry of mine from 2025 :)
Summary: Hild's faith is steady but using sword skill, as brutal as its results might be, is a pull she cannot well deny...

Over here, at my journal!

linky posting in

halfamoon

Title: Are You A Mirage? (I Hope So)
Fandom: Kamen Rider Gotchard + Kamen Rider Girls Remix
Pairing/Characters: Lachesis/Nayuta, Rinne
Rating: E
Word count: 1107
Content Notes: Post-Kamen Rider Eins with Girls Remix, Post-Kamen Rider Gotchard: Graduations, Angst, Ambiguous NTR/Cheating, Contains References To The Gotchard Final Stage and The Upcoming Gotchard Novel, Ambiguous/Open Ending
Author's note: Also done for the

tokufemslash Femslash February Prompt Meme. Prompt was "Kamen Rider Gotchard: Lachesis/Mikazuki Nayuta + Kudo Rinne - Came back from the dead just to bang your girlfriend in front of you." As said in the notes: the NTR/cheating is ambiguous, so is the ending. It is entirely up to you if this was real, or if one of Glion's followers did this to hurt Rinne.
Summary: Rinne and Nayuta were supposed to have a happy reunion, it doesn't end up that way.
Also on Ao3, or read below the cut:

( Read more... )

cmk418 posting in

halfamoon

Title: Vulcans Don't Feel Guilt (Usually)
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Character: T'Pol (Jonathan Archer & Charles "Trip" Tucker are also there)
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 351
Summary: The Captain was trying one of his getting-to-know you questions on her again

( Vulcans Don't Feel Guilt (Usually) )

cmk418 posting in

halfamoon

Today's theme is Guilty Pleasures.

Here are some ideas to get you started: A bag of greasy potato chips, a racy romance novel, a nap in the middle of a workday, or a clandestine affair with a co-worker- some of the things our favorite characters enjoy the most can be viewed as less than healthy or otherwise looked down on by society. Show us a guilty pleasure for one of your favorite characters.

Just go wherever the Muse takes you. If this prompt doesn't speak to you, feel free to share something that does. You can post in a separate entry or as a comment to this post.

Want to get a jump start on tomorrow's theme? Check out the prompt list in the pinned post at the top of the page. Please don't post until that day.

melime posting in

halfamoon

Title: Never go home
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Character: Victoria Waterfield
Prompt: The Innocent
Rating/Category: T/Gen
Summary: The reality of the situation settles in as Victoria walks into her new room. Her life as she knew it is over.

Never go home

The reality of the situation settles in as Victoria walks into her new room. Her life as she knew it is over.

Everything happened so fast that she didn’t even have the time to think until now. Then she reaches her room in that impossible ship, and it’s so completely ordinary, maybe the first thing resembling normalcy that she had since being attacked.

It doesn’t look like her room, but it’s close enough to it, like it could be the room of any girl that she knows, like it could have been her room, and now it is. It’s thoughtful that they gave her a room like this, the only thing around there that feels like it might fit with her home and her life, but it only serves to make more evident the fact that she’ll never come home again, and even if she did, there’s nothing left for her there. Not anymore.

The Daleks took it all from her, and although the Doctor and Jamie have been kind to her, now that she’s alone it’s impossible not to think of how her father is gone and she’ll never see him again, she’ll never see her home again, she’ll never see a single person that she knew before again. She has never even been abroad, and now she’s on a ship running away from monsters, with the strange man that her father entrusted her care to and the brave boy who protected her.

She has never felt so lost, and she’s equal parts excited for the adventure that she has just started and terrified that she’ll encounter monsters like those again. Everything now is just so unknown, and the only thing that she can be sure of is that her life is never going to be the same again.

dustbunny105 posting in

halfamoon

A set of nine icons, three each from the IDW2 flagship Transformers comic, Transformers Galaxies and My Little Pony/Transformers.

( Read more... )

emylilas posting in

halfamoon

Title: So it's her fault!
Fandom: Fate the winx saga
Characters: Farah/Luna, Rosalind
Rated: G
Content warnings: dealing with grief
Prompt: The innocent.
Language: English
Word count: 1,778.

Summary: Farah is dead, and Luna's looking for someone to blame (preferably, someone that isn't her). She cannot let Rosalind be right when she says Luna had wanted it to happen.
Read on Ao3

suzume posting in

halfamoon

Title: Innocent
Fandom: Suikoden III
Character(s): Yun, Yuiri, & Wyatt
Rating: G
Summary: Yun can tell when someone is coming to visit their village.

( Innocent Yun )

ineffablecabbage posting in

halfamoon

Title: First Lamb to the Slaughter

Day/Prompt: Day 1 / The Innocent

Fandom: 9-1-1

Character/Pairing: Jee-Yun Buckley Han

Rating/Warning(s): Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Canonical Sexual Assault, Canon Domestic Violence, Sexual Harassment, Canon Sexual Harassment, Teacher/Student Sexual Assault, Racism, Non-Canon Sexual Assault, Maddie Buckley Critical, Howie "Chimney" Han Critical

Word Count: 8089

Summary: Jee-Yun grows up in the shadow of all the ghosts of all the people who love her. It is not a particularly easy way to grow up, no matter how much they might love her. (Mistakes may not repeat, but sometimes they rhyme.) The village of people raising her do help soften the blow a little, though. Or: it's Jee's turn for the Buckley Generational Trauma.

Author's Notes: This is strictly from Jee's POV, and is very critical of her parents (as teenagers tend to be.)

On AO3

tielan

pipe bombs in perth

Finally on the 26th of January ("Australia Day"), there was an Indigenous protest march in Perth.

During the march, someone threw a pipe bomb into the crowd. It was packed with metal shards and nails and suchlike. He failed to light it correctly so it didn't explode.

He was white. He was a he. That's all we know about it. And even that was mostly reported by the people who bring online news commentary, rather than mainstream media. (I saw it first with Cheek Media, myself.) You know why? Because "we aren't putting out his name because he is accused of..."

FUCK THAT SIDEWAYS WITH A RUSTY SPORK.

They had ZERO compulsion about publishing the names of the Bondi terrorists.

But a terrorist action done by a white guy? (It wasn't even billed as 'a terrorist action'. Well, excuse me for bloody well thinking that a FUCKING HOMEMADE PIPE BOMB tossed into a group of people who are supporting a particular racial identity isn't 'a terrorist action'.)

Oh no, can't publish his name!

conservatives, right wing, and please let our electoral system hold

In other political news in Australia, our 'right wing' is going down. Hard. Not only is their current leader (she's technically a "conservative moderate" and has lasted since the election) on the way out, but the Racists And Arseholes Party (known more conventionally as 'Pauline Hanson's One Nation') is on the rise - at least in sentiment. Whether that sentiment can gather the centre-to-right-wing conservatives in Australia is another question.

Our holding institutions right now are pretty much the Australian Electoral Commission and common decency, but how long those will hold is another matter. Watching what is happening in the US, being told what is happening by billionaires who own all the media properties, having a point of view RAILROADED through thanks to a lack of media discernment, and general outrage headlines...

I can't see my conservative friends here in my electorate (strongly conservative - one of the very few suburban electorates that hasn't gone "Teal") voting PHON. And they have to vote, and they can vote for the "least worst" option - ie. preferences. Plus, we have a very large percentage of "not born here" Aussies in this electorate, possibly one of the reasons that Old Guy down the road (and a bit further in) has his house decorated with PHON and Trump flags. Yes, Trump flags. In Australia.

Great moogly googly.

Anyway, we know the guy - he stumped up on Election Day 2025, put his little sandwich board up, stuck a plastic sleeve with the "Trumpet Of Patriots" party 'how to vote' card on, and went away.

That sleeve was touched pretty much twice. Once by one of us volunteers for the other parties gingerly looking to see what they'd recommended (even the conservative volunteers were eyeing it like it was fresh dogshit), and then once by a woman from the AEC whose job it was to go around collecting the 'how to vote' cards for each party in each electorate, so that the AEC could archive them.

We left the sandwich board after we packed everything away, and it was gone the next night.

In the end, hard right-wing support isn't non-existent, and probably never will be, but the current state of world politics, where right wing conservative parties get hollowed out by hard right wing racist fucks is sincerely worrying. I've never thought Australia is immune, but it's a worrying trend to finally witness happening, even if nothing comes of it. Grievance politics is hell on the system.

Maybe it mitigates with mandatory enrolment and preferential voting - we can hope - but if it does, that's on the system and the institution, not on anything else. Heaven knows the parties and the politicians are NOT HELPING.

NOT. HAPPY. JAN.

Profile

heliopausa

June 2019

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9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Page Summary

suzume in halfamoon - Day 2 - Fic - Suikoden III - Chocoholic - Chris Lightfellow
alchemicink in halfamoon - Day 2: Fic - Yu Yu Hakusho - Shizuru
tielan - travel: Georgia - Uplistsikhe and Kutaisi
kerk_hiraeth in halfamoon - Day One Theme - The Innocent - The Briefest of Heroes (BtVS Fic from 2020)
tellshannon815 in halfamoon - Day 1: The Innocent, Fic, Yellowjackets - Natalie
flemmings - (no subject)
kaffy_r - Dept of Memes
swingandswirl - (no subject)
lovelytomeetyou in halfamoon - DAY 2 - FIC - PMMM - MIKI SAYAKA
jacquelee in halfamoon - Day 2 - Fic - Warrior Nun - Yasmine
sisterdivinium in halfamoon - Day 2: fanart, The Last Kingdom - Hild
linky in halfamoon - Day 2: Fic - Kamen Rider Gotchard + Kamen Rider Girls Remix - Lachesis/Nayuta + Rinne
cmk418 in halfamoon - Day 2 - Vulcans Don't Feel Guilt (Usually) - Star Trek: Enterprise - T'Pol
cmk418 in halfamoon - Day 2 Theme - Guilty Pleasures
melime in halfamoon - Day 1 - Fic - Doctor Who - Victoria Waterfield
dustbunny105 in halfamoon - Day 1 - Icons - Transformers - Gauge
emylilas in halfamoon - Day 1 - Fic, Fate the winx saga, Luna/Farah
suzume in halfamoon - Day 1 - Fic - Suikoden III - The Innocent - Yun & Wyatt
ineffablecabbage in halfamoon - Day 1 - Fic - 911 - Jee-Yun Buckley Han
tielan - thoughts on news thingies from the last week

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