Viridian5's House of "...What?"

For 2025, I posted 8 fics and one WIP in progress, which is a pretty good output for me for recent years.


( The fics )

Meanwhile, I have some long WIPs I'm working on, even aside from "Long, Long Way to Go."

+++

One of the LJ accounts I'm trying to import, Aya's, has failed at the "Verifying username/password" stage four times, and since nothing else happens without verification, nothing is importing. DreamWidth Support says it's probably an issue on LiveJournal's side; hope things work out for you! Which is not helpful. The other LJ account I did, Schuldig's, didn't have this problem. WTF do I do now?

Wait for another time, I guess, and see if a different day makes a difference. I'll have to manually keep retrying, since the verification attempt is a one and done thing. It failed. Oh well.

+++

A longtime fandom friend of mine has gotten into The Pitt, and I managed to catch the last two episodes of season one during an HBO marathon this weekend. It's fun having a fandom in common I can talk about with her again.

+++

I put up my 2025's threeforthememories post.

I'm currently working on a few Encanto WIPs, one of them at 17,500 words. The large one especially involves the large family cast of characters, which I'm enjoying writing.

For reading, I've been mostly frequenting the Murderbot (TV), Thunderbolts*, and Encanto pages at AO3. I'm not accustomed to being fed this well, fannishly, over the summer.

+++

I tried shooting at St. John's Cemetery the other day but only had great lighting for a few minutes at a time and never in the areas I wanted to take photos in so I ended up with nothing. The last time I checked Thursday, none of the Manhattan stores I frequent had new window displays that interested me.

+++

"Deku's Surprise"
A shippy, comedic fan video for the BakuDeku pairing in My Hero Academia [Boku no Hero Academia] that I enjoyed enough to watch several times. The voice actors sound a lot like the dub VAs, the camera movement on the art works very well, and the sound effects add a lot. (The sound when Deku's head meets Katsuki's chest sounds a lot like a squeaky toy!) Then there's the intrusive thought moment on Deku's part....

Having seen Lazarus to the end, I like it better now. I would've been happier if it didn't wait to explore who these characters are until the final episodes. It hits better on the second watch, knowing them now, and you pick up seeds it came back to later.

Some parts of it and the conclusion still make no real sense though.

Toonami's marathon of the original Japanese today makes me regret seeing the dub first, because so many characters have so much more personality and often sass in the Japanese voice acting, like the AI helicopter in the clubbing episode, Popcorn Wizard in general, or Axel saying, "O. ne. gai?" with such attitude. I like the characters better in the sub! I especially like Axel better.

+++

I worried that all the hype might contaminate my view of Sinners when I saw it, and I was correct. I had issues with the pacing and tone shifts, and the major action sequence was sometimes an incoherent mess for me. Sometimes I was bored. ( spoilers ) But it's cinematic, some of the scenes are really great, and the music is lit. I probably would've enjoyed it a lot more if I saw it in a dark theater on a big screen with the speakers up instead of on my TV at home.

But I fully support less corporate, more original passion projects with different points of view and something to say.

+++

I watched Thunderbolts* via several reactions on YouTube and mostly enjoyed it. Something character-driven where it doesn't feel like CGI has eliminated all feeling of weight? Yay! Having so much done practically makes a big difference for me in the action scenes. The emphasis on mental health gave a nice angle, and it being a sympathetic view is much appreciated considering how Thor was treated as a joke in Endgame. The humor felt more appropriately used, instead of destroying or undercutting a lot of emotional moments like in many Marvel projects in recent years.

I like Bob, and Lewis Pullman does a great job, though I do side-eye Marvel for his presentation. The oversized and soft clothing, the floppy hair, his angsty, tragic white boyness.... It suggests Marvel is aware of certain things.... I'm amused that some fic posits that Bob's body had to have been reworked in many ways, since his drug abuse should suggest that ( spoilers ) I'm curious to see how Sentry is deployed in the future given all the risks using him invites and how OP he is.

It was nice seeing Bucky getting a heroic, hopeful-sounding musical accompaniment as he rides up on the motorcycle. The Winter Soldier theme was very, very cool, but it was a horror story.

The movie seems to find the idea of Congressman Barnes as ludicrous as I do.

I didn't like the 14-month time skip at the end. It glosses over a lot. And why does Bucky look awful in it?

I'm very tired of Marvel movies having characters get thrown around several times in ways that should seriously injure or kill them, even the super soldiers, but they're always fine afterward.

I've seen some things online that say that ( spoilers ), and I agree. ( spoilers )

+++

Checking out the recent volume of translated My Hero Academia has me back on that, and some recent developments in it make me feel like the author has course-corrected on or justified some things I had problems with previously. It's nice to get out of the section where the art was so busy I sometimes had no idea what was going on.

A problem with getting back into MHA is seeing some online fans convinced that Bakugo Katsuki never did anything really that wrong, and the ways he's improved are enough to negate all the bad stuff in his past and how he continues to be a bit of an a-hole. They're like, "God, a character bullies another child for several years, including burning him at times, and tells him to jump off a roof and kill himself, and you haters will never get past that? He apologized! (Once.)" Correct, I won't. Some of them still wish he was the protagonist.

Like I'm not thrilled by online fans convinced that the MCU's John Walker never did anything really that wrong.

Watching My Hero Academia AMVs on YouTube have given me a greater appreciation for Deku's evolved fighting style, specifically the kicks, which he started using and developing after the ability he was given was too powerful for his body so he kept tearing up and breaking bones in his hands and arms and needed to shift some of it to a different part of his body as he trained. (Deku continues to learn and adjust over the seasons, but the kicks started it.)

+++

I've also followed the Murderbot TV show through reactions on YouTube and enjoyed it. Having David Dastmalchian in it certainly helps. That season finale was really something, and I'm glad it's getting a second season. The PresAux team didn't make much of an impression on me in the books, aside from Mensah.

+++

I'm not used to having so much new stuff to watch and think about over a summer.

I finished/posted more fic in 2024 than I have in recent years, ten, though a lot of that came from getting inspired by A Quiet Place: Day One. The power of a new fandom! Too bad, as far as I've seen, it's a tiny fandom with only a little fic. Of those ten, only two could comfortably be called slash, which is unusual. ("The Ice Is Getting Thinner" is a gray area to me.) None of it with a rating higher than PG-13 either....


2/23/24: Saiyuki: “The Ice Is Getting Thinner”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13.
SPOILERS: None.
SUMMARY: Will Sanzo take things too far?

3/27/24: Saiyuki slash: “Therapeutic”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13.
SPOILERS: None.
SUMMARY: It’s not quite physical therapy.

8/13/24: A Quiet Place: Day One gen: “Anything”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG.
SUMMARY: Bonding through trauma is a hell of a thing.

8/26/24: A Quiet Place: Day One gen: “The Safest Place”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG.
SUMMARY: It’s a long walk from Chinatown to Harlem.

9/5/24: A Quiet Place: Day One gen/het: “Lit Me Up”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13.
SUMMARY: One of the methods Samira uses to try to end her insomnia in the church goes wrong in a way she didn’t expect.

9/15/24: Weiß Kreuz slash: “All of This and Nothing”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG.
SPOILERS: Glühen and a bit of Weiß Side B.
SUMMARY: Ryou remembers more of his former life as Yoji... and some of Yoji’s former relationship with Aya, so he calls Aya with some questions. It’s painful on both sides of the conversation.

9/27/24: Saiyuki gen: “Already Fighting Me”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13.
SPOILERS: None.
SUMMARY: Sanzo has no patience for being sick. This causes issues.

10/19/24: A Quiet Place: Day One gen: “Human Wreckage”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG.
SUMMARY: Eric is lost, then found.
NOTES: Restoring/implying a bit of Eric’s deleted backstory.

12/14/24: A Quiet Place: Day One gen: “Going Forward”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG.
SUMMARY: When the future looks grim, try to make the best of now.

12/16/24: Saiyuki gen: “Bullshit”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13.
SUMMARY: The Sanzo ikkou, playing games.

+++

From dine, who saw this meme on bluesky:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

My fic site, The Green Room version 3.0, has been at its current URL for 20 years as of today. Thank you kindly, Shrift!

+++

While driving around St. John Cemetery June 14th, I saw and photographed this. I've been wandering this cemetery for nearly 20 years, driven past this mausoleum more times than I count, photographed the door while standing right in front of it, yet it wasn't until today that I really noticed the stained-glass window while driving past and seeing the light shining through it. It truly was meant to be, because about 10 minutes later the lighting changed and the window no longer drew attention to itself.

I have this and a few more St. John Cemetery shots at my Flickr.

I got news Thursday that a college friend in Pittsburgh has only weeks to live. The tumor they'd removed came back quickly with a vengeance. She's the person who got me into internet slash fic because in college in the early 90s I'd loan her so many slashy books. Longtime fen in The X-Files or who were aware of my Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place thing back in the late 90s might've been aware of her as Woodinat. Or Small Woodinat Creature. (Links lead to some Buffy fic via the Wayback Machine and two Two Guys fics at my fic site. There's also X-Files fic by her at AO3, imported when Down in the Basement relocated there.)

She has family to help her at least. She's decided to do hospice at home for the remainder of her time.

These days we live 400 miles apart and I'm researching how I can go to see her. I don't trust my Elantra in its current condition--or me, in my disabled 50-year-old condition--to handle a 400-mile and 7- to 9-hour each way trip driving alone across two states so that's out. So, bus or train. The options aren't great, partly because I hoped she'd be able to have family provide me a ride to her place from the station I'd be let off at but she's plugging taking a local bus from there ("though schedules get iffy after a certain time!"), getting a cab, or renting a car(!!!). Taking a bus to Pittsburgh lets me off 10 to 12 miles away from her home, ditto the train. Letting me off after dark, in January, in Pennsylvania in the winter, in a part of the city I don't know. I haven't been to Pittsburgh in about 20 years. Also, I am not made of money.

I also need the days involved to get an actual dollar amount for a bus or train. Ticket prices vary widely on the same day for a trip maybe an hour later for reasons I don't know and can't figure out. Some days and times cost more, and supposedly tickets cost less if ordered further in advance. I'm pondering upcoming storms, flooding in NJ, weather conditions in three different US states.

Dude, I miss travel agents.

It amazes me when a fandom seems to have no fic I'm interested in reading. The one I'm talking about now is Heaven Official's Blessing. And it's not a fandom where I can do the thing of "If it doesn't exist, write it yourself" because I don't feel I know enough about Chinese culture or xianxia to do it well. What I do know is mostly from reading The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System fic.

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong vol. 4 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

Everyone is so much more unlikable in these extras than in the main story. Is this the difference between hearing the POV of someone who's ultimately a fanboy (Shen Qingqiu|Shen Yuan) of the people and world against the more outside views given here? I don't know.

( spoilers ) But I didn't enjoy a lot of this volume, and I'm glad I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it.


But it brought up an interesting point for me: that the fanfic I currently read for Scum Villain can work okay for what I saw in the first three volumes but presents a far rosier view of these characters and their relationships than what we see in these extras. Using just the extras, fan authors have really woobified the characters and heavily increased the "found family" aspects.

( includes spoilers )

But I can connect the fanfic better to the first three volumes of canon, the main story, and it's far less jarring.

It's kinda weird.

I haven't watched The Walking Dead regularly in years but decided to check out the series finale, which was mostly okay, though it didn't fully feel like a finale since it has spin-offs coming soon. ( spoilers )

But the finale did give me some interest in some of the spin-offs. The least interesting to me is The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, since the appeal of his character to me was always in his relationships to other people. I might've watched if Carol were in it, but her actress pulled out from not wanting to film in Europe. The Walking Dead: Dead City I may check out just to see how they handle the setting being New York City. Will it pass muster? Negan's in it, and I don't care about Negan. The ( spoilers ) we saw at the end of the series finale may make me check out the so far untitled Rick and Michonne series.

+++

I don't have any better idea of how Mastodon works now than I did the last time I heard about a fandom exodus to it. Hive sounds like a bit of a scam, and it being app-only, no desktop option, isn't great either.

I just got a comment on AO3 of "omfg the first obimaul fic ever" and my first reaction was "Hardly!" but then I looked things up and saw that I am... on Archive of Our Own. It was in the Sith Academy universe, where that story is #57 chronologically. Not all of them were ObiMaul by any means, but I wasn't the first to hint at the attraction. That doesn't even count all the other things coming out on different sites after the release of The Phantom Menace. (Only 25 of the Sith Academy fics have made their way to AO3, out of 181.)