aelfgyfu_mead | Reading

I'm not sure if this is complete enough for AO3, but I got a delicious hurt/comforty prompt on Tumblr, and ended up writing 1800 words for it. (Prompt and fic under the cut.)

Update: Now posted on AO3 as Soft Reboot.

( 1800 words of forced drugging )

Tags:

( Spoilers for the whole show )

Tags:

tv:murderbot

Okay, vid-source-assisting enablers, your reward is here. ♥

Watch on YouTube

With every broken bone, I swear I lived. Team/family vid. (Contains some sci-fi violence as per the show, flickering/flashing lights in a couple of scenes, and canon pairings in the background, but it's mostly focused on team + Murderbot.)

Song: I Lived
Artist: OneRepublic
Length: 03:57
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67565471
Tumblr: here

Having made this in a fit of exploding feelings today, I plan to get subtitles/downloads up soon (as soon as I remember how to do all of that; it's been ages since I made a vid!).

Temp download: Download from Dropbox (286 Mb, it's huge)

Tags:

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

Watch on YouTube

I watched this like 4 times in a row. It definitely contain spoilers, but it's divorced enough from the actual plotline of the show that if you don't mind SOME spoilers and want to get an idea of what the show is like, this might be a nice one to watch. (Warning for some gore.)

On AO3

Tags:

scioscribe gave me a delightful Murderbot TV-verse prompt, hidden because it's somewhat spoilery for the finale:

Click to view

Post-finale Gurathin, burdened with all these memories of Sanctuary Moon, still doesn't like the show but now can't resist getting into nitpicky arguments about it on futuristic forums, where he and Murderbot keep crossing paths and gradually realize who they're talking to and get very fond about it without admitting to anything.

( 600 words or so of future fan forum shenanigans )

Tags:

I wrote another Murderbot 1x10 episode missing scene.

Echoes (gen, 2500 words, Gurathin-centric)
Summary redacted because of spoilers; basically Gurathin's POV on some of the events of the finale.

A few notes on the fic (spoilery for both fic and episode):

under here

• I kept tweaking Gura's final line to Murderbot, so it might be a bit different if you read an earlier version. (I felt like I needed to soften it from how it originally was. They are hard to write! Especially keeping their edge when they're so soft in the final scene.)

• We know Murderbot has trouble figuring out what it's feeling, but I also think it's very plausible that Gurathin has the same problem, if not as badly. He's repressed so much for so long. Asking himself to identify exactly what emotions he's feeling is something that some therapist or other taught him to do.

• This is not necessary context for the fic and it's entirely subject to interpretation, but what I was thinking when it wrote it is that Murderbot using "its" for augmented humans in its last line of dialogue to Gurathin is actually MB doing roughly the same thing (except more emotionally positive) that Gurathin is doing in the episode of the show where he's arguing with Mensah and calls it "he" and then corrects himself to "it." It's over-identifying and doesn't even realize that it's doing so; I mean, it's worried about Gurathin, obviously, and that's why it's here, but there's also a certain amount of "we are the same kind of creature" going on here, even though it doesn't realize it's relating to him on that level. It knows that he might have damaged himself with the data overload because it also knows that it might damage itself in a similar way, and he has much less storage to handle it. And it's just kind of subconsciously being concerned about him as it might be concerned about a fellow construct, or itself, having taken damage. Of course neither of them parses all of that consciously.

In other events, Terrible Temperature Troubles Flash Exchange revealed gifts tonight! I got two absolutely delightful gifts - An Official Complaint Against the Universe (Babylon 5, Vir & Londo, hypothermia and h/c) and Consequences of Cold (Biggles, Biggles/EvS, snuggling when chilled). I loved them!

And finally,

hurtcomfortex author reveals were tonight. I wrote Sleepover (MASH, 1700 words, Margaret POV) with huddling for warmth and light comfort after nightmares.

Tags:

This week's questions were suggested by

silent_r_infork .

1. What was the most sick that you've ever been?
i had tonsillitis (or something similar) when i was 12. it really hurt to swallow and i was very weak.

2. What disease are you afraid of getting?
all of them, really.

3. Are you a big baby when it comes to taking medicine/shots for your illnesses?
if it's a big pill i have to swallow, or some nasty cold medicine, yes. also, any kind of shots. especially any that i'd have to do myself. i've heard that getting ones in the stomach area are bad too.

4. Is going to the doctor really THAT bad?
it depends on the doctor's attitude. and what kind of doctor you have to go see. anything that you have to get naked, or particularly naked, for is pretty bad.

5. Would you have the flu twice a month if you were paid $1,000 for having it?
it depends on the severity of symptoms and how long they would last. 5-7 days of mild symptoms would be ok, but if it's for 2 weeks you'd be constantly sick. even with mild symptoms that would be tiring.
and is this $1,000 per bout of sickness? or $1,000 per month?
if it was 5 days of mild symptoms & $1,000 per bout of sickness, then i might do it.

other answers over here

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: the fan trying to keep me cool

Tags:

friday 5

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

( Finale spoilers )

( Brand new thought about the finale )

SEASON 2 WHEN

Tags:

tv:murderbot

Finished the season finale, immediately turned around and wrote an episode tag.

Arrow (~2K words, gen, Mensah & Gurathin)
Set right during/after the end of the last scene in the episode.

I also saw on Tumblr that it's been renewed for a season two. Something delightful to look forward to!

Tags:

I ended up nominating a few things for Enemies to Lovers (hush, I'm using it as a bribe for finishing my other assignments xD) and this made me spend some time thinking about which of my ships actually qualify - I had some trouble coming up with a third fandom, and trying to figure out where exactly I'd draw the line. (Like, I wouldn't call Sam/Bucky E2L - more like people who mildly antagonize each other to friends/lovers. But some might!)

So I got to wondering how other people define it. I selected check boxes since some people might have more than one answer. I mean, *I'm* not even sure where I fall in all of this!

Poll #33342

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 59

View Respondents

How would you define Enemies to Lovers? (or Enemies to Friends, if you're not a shipper)

View Answers

Must try to kill each other (or at least want to), or be on opposite sides of a conflict with life-or-death stakes
21 (35.6%)

Rivalries like sports rivalries are fine, but there needs to be a strong personal element and/or unhealthy fixation on each other (not just regular sports team conflict)
26 (44.1%)

Any kind of rivalry or antagonism will do
12 (20.3%)

For me it's about the Vibe™ - from distrust/antagonism to trust, whatever form that takes
26 (44.1%)

I do not accept it as proper E2L if there's any softening at all - they must remain antagonists
0 (0.0%)

I know it when I see it but don't get too fussed about definitions
9 (15.3%)

My thoughts are too complex for your ticky boxes (answer in comments)
2 (3.4%)

Not my trope so I don't care, but I want to click something.
3 (5.1%)

Tags:

I have discovered Enemies to Lovers exchange. o deer.

THAT being said, I really need to put a cork in the new exchange signups for a bit. Summer of Horror and Temperature Flash both reveal somewhere around this weekend, as well as that being the Casefic submission deadline. I have a pinch hit, I have things to edit, and I haven't even started Just Married.

Today it's rainy AND smoky, a wonderful combination.

Tags:

exchange:misc

Ellie is a Lipan Apache teenager in a world where magic, vampires, ghosts, and so forth are known to be real. She’s inherited the family gift for raising ghosts, though she only raises animals; human ghosts always come back wrong, and she’s happy with the companionship of her beloved ghost dog Kirby, not to mention her pet ghost trilobite. But when her cousin, who supposedly died in a car crash, returns in a dream to tell her he was murdered, she finds that knowing who killed him isn’t as helpful as one might imagine…

Ellie’s cousin Trevor told her the name of his killer, Abe Allerton from Willowbee, but he didn’t know why or how he was killed. Ellie enlists her best friend, Jay, a cheerleader with just enough fairy blood to give him pointy ears and the ability to make small lights. More importantly, he’s good at research. They learn that Willowbee is in Texas, near the town where Trevor lived with his wife, Lenore, and their baby. Jay brings in help: his older sister’s fiancé, Al, who’s a vampire.
All of them, plus Ellie’s parents and a ghost mammoth belonging to her grandmother, play a part in the effort to solve the mystery of Trevor’s death and bring his murderer to justice. And so, in a sense, will a major character who’s long dead (and not a ghost) but who’s a big presence in Ellie’s life: Six-Grand, her great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, the last person to have a gift as powerful as Ellie’s… and who vanished forever into the underworld.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I mean, come on. GHOST TRILOBITE. GHOST MAMMOTH. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s heartfelt, it has lovely chapter heading illustrations, and it’s got some gorgeous imagery - I particularly loved a scene where the world transforms into an oceanic underworld, and Ellie sees a pod of whales swimming in the sky of a suburban neighborhood.

It's marketed as young adult and Ellie is seventeen, but the book feels younger (and so does Ellie.) I'd have no qualms handing it to an advanced nine-year-old reader, but it also appeals to adult me who misses the time when "urban fantasy" meant "our world, but with ghosts, elves, and so forth."

Tags:

Especially while it's at 75% off in the sale, making it 62p:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/406150/Refunct/

For anyone who might want to sample some easy platforming with a very very low entry threshold.

Chill and rather lovely environment (okay, probably depends on you liking brutalist architecture, but still -- there's a day-night cycle! there's sunshine! the water is gorgeous! the music is gentle!) with no time pressure and no penalties for failing a jump hundreds of times (except that, at worst, you fall in the water and have to swim about and haul yourself out again).

N.B. Most reviews describe this as a half-hour game, and there are achievements for speedrunning it in under 8 minutes or under 4 minutes.

It took me over five hours of playtime to beat it, which should be indicative of the co-ordination and skill levels I'm working with here. And yet it did not at any point feel stressful or humiliating for me. It felt like a pleasant, relaxing environment in which to fail repeatedly and experiment.

It started at a level low enough that I could manage it, and then had a really satisfying difficulty curve. If I was stalling on the next objective, I could still run and parkour round the environment purely for fun (and sometimes ended up working out how to pick off the optional achievements in the process).

Towards the very end, I started to think that the last jumps might just flat-out exceed the limits of what I am currently capable of, and it felt like if that did happen, I would still be able to walk away pretty happily having already got way more than 62p's worth of enjoyment out of it.

Will absolutely be playing it again.

Tags:

games

"The Gate of the Feral Gods" and "The Butcher's Masquerade." I'd say this series is pretty solidly scifi now, so I'm tagging it that way.

( Random spoilers )

Moving on soon to book 6, "The Eye of the Bedlam Bride"! No future spoilers, please!

Tags:

books:scifi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

movie

hurtcomfortex released today! I happened to be driving a backcountry highway with no cell service at the time (coming home from Mom Things), but it was lovely to find my gifts waiting for me when I got back.

Hold a Candle To (MASH, 3400 wds, gen) delivered some lovely Charles drug withdrawal h/c with teamy affection, and A Way Out (Biggles, 4400 wds, gen) let me roll around in excellent Biggles & von Stalhein enemies-era reluctant cooperation and sympathy. Truly a lovely haul!

Tags:

exchanges:hurtcomfort

A whole world of games not playable on Mac has opened up to me, and it's Steam summer sale time!

Please rec me your favourite games, bearing in mind that I have very limited reflexes/co-ordination.

(I'm not completely ruling out games involving them, but the threshold for entry has to be very very low. I am currently enjoying Refunct because it allows me to try some simple platforming in a very chill and pleasant environment with no time pressure and no penalties for taking several hundred tries to get a jump.)

Tags:

games

i was looking at posts i had made about ncis: new orleans ~~to torture myself~~ for no good reason & realized that the final episode was in 2021. four freakin' years ago!

if it was not canceled this year would have been season number 11 for them. but despite my disappointment, 7 seasons is pretty good for a tv show. especially one staring scott bakula.

confession time; since the show filmed in new orleans* whenever there was a national weather report during the filming season (july to march, i think) i would look at the new orleans area to see what the weather was like. yes, i realize that i most likely do need professional help.

*other ncis shows filmed in a studio in los angeles & just did outdoor shots on location.

Current Mood: nostalgic

Tags:

Aelfgyfu

Al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shal be wele

Murderbot ficlet involving spies and forced drugging

Stray Murderbot thoughts

Murderbot fanvid: I Lived

Nautilus (2024)

Murderbot fanvid rec: Bohemian Like You

Murderbot fanficlet: Sanctuary Moon forum flame wars

Another Murderbot TV fic, Temperature Flash, and Hurt/Comfort-Ex

friday 5; health

Murderbot’ Renewed For Season 2

Murderbot season finale (1x10)

Starting to think I need a Murderbot icon

Enemies to lovers

(no subject)

Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger

Finished Refunct over the weekend and genuinely cannot rec too highly

Dungeon Crawler Carl books 4 & 5

The Day The Earth Blew Up (2025)

Hurt/Comfort Exchange

I am now the proud owner of a secondhand Steam deck! Rec me games!

what is time anyway?

Profile

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags