HIStory3: Trapped 圈套 Fan Community

(I have recalled that one can title posts and that once upon a time I did that more frequently xD should get into the habit again, it's fun)

1.
The storm will be rolling in today (probably snowfall starting late morning/noontime), with projected snowfall of over a foot, heaviest in the late evening/early night.

It is unlikely that I will be working tomorrow, based on this. It was one of the big things folk were talking about on Friday! "Do you think you'll make it in on Monday?" on everyone's lips, and the answer was usually "idk, depends on the plows/roads" with a side of "it'd be cool if the work site shut down though, then we could just relax and not think about it". [ETA: Foreman sent out a text saying that we indeed are not working tomorrow "Stay safe, enjoy the weekend, GO PATRIOTS", because obvs everyone also needs to care about Patriots vs uh I think Broncos...? tbh I'd be cheering for the Broncos but really I simply do not care about football enough for that. xD]

New England is pretty good about dealing with snow, so I'm not particularly worried about the storm. Got grocery shopping done ahead of time, I live in an apartment that's fairly well insulated, etc. Shouldn't need to go anywhere until the snow has stopped and the streets are clear.

(A police car just drove slowly down the street, siren on, for the purpose of annoying the people who left their cars on the wrong side of the street into moving said cars to places that abide by the parking ban. I expect that in another hour I might see tow trucks if they haven't. This doesn't happen for normal snow bans—the plows just go around them and leave them a bit buried in snow—but, well, this storm is RATHER BIG and I see why the city would rather that not happen.)

2.
At work on Friday, end of the day, I was about to wrap up when the back door for one of the elevators opened (this is the one that we Do Not Use) and the woman who operates it stuck her head out and was like "I haven't seen you at all today! How're you doing?" at me.

I proceeded to have a Very Normal Conversation with her and then, after she left, my coworker/cohortmate was like "were you FLIRTING with her?" and I was like "No??? Just because you (probably) do doesn't mean I am?"

however upon further review I'm like "yeah no the way I interact with her absolutely could be read as flirting" and also a bit "huh she did not need to start that conversation at ALL", so, you know. (I am not opposed to flirting with her, she's cute, I'm just. too aro for this. xD in a "flirting is fun but it's not going to be serious" way.)

(also there's a bit of me going "god if I'm gonna have cute women flirt with me I want them to be queer, and I present as a dude at work in a way that means I do not expect people to realise I'm not cis/that a woman flirting with me should be a queer act" with this. like. I pass. I do not really care to and in some ways do not wish to, but it sure is useful/safe to know that to most people I'm just another dude working at a construction site.)

3.
At class on Wednesday night (I do not like evening classes! never have!) I was bored for like... all of class... because I already understood what we were going to be doing (I knew this from the week before). Which meant I was drawing, because Why Not. Pencil and paper, that day, because it was a practical class and having a sketchbook out was simpler than having a tablet out.

The teacher, when he came over to be like "so you're bored", was like "nice art", and then one of my classmates was like "wait, is this what you do during class all the time? I thought you were taking notes. you're good!" and another was like "dang, why didn't you go to art school?"

It's... odd. I do not think about my art as particularly good, due to having friends who do art at a (semi)pro level and following a lot of pro artists' work. But yes, objectively I am a Skilled Hobbyist? I can generally draw things that look like what I want to draw? If I focused on practice (especially doing life drawing studies) I'd get better faster but... I'm still pretty good at this, yeah.

Anyway during class yesterday I took the design I was working out on Wednesday ("that looks like Nami from League of Legends", one classmate said, which I do not think is true except for the "looks like a water-person" aspects, but that's sweet anyway.) and drew him out in color to see the design better.

At some point I will name him (his baby name is Sunshine, I think, but that's not his name) and he only exists as a baby/child during the timeline as currently established, though I drew him as an adult, and I still need to write the story about his parents (and when they accidentally conceive him) but hey, here's my pretty boy who's even quarters of dragon/orc/triton/elf. xD (mild nsfw? no clothes but also no detailed genitals and no intended sexiness.)

( two images under cut )

4.
My friend and I have started watching The Story of Yanxi Palace, one of tavina's recs, and we are delighted by it. Mostly we're pointing at Our Protagonist (Wei Yingluo) going "THE AUTISM OF IT ALL" (occasionally going "haha she and Maomao [The Apothecary Diaries] would be so fun to watch interact"). We're also going "look at this bitch! (positive)" about Noble Consort Gao, wanting good things for Empress Fuca, and contemplating how bored Emperor Qianlong seems while bemoaning Qing Dynasty Men's Hair. (He has a very nice smile! He looks good bald! Except then we see his hair and sigh loudly.)

We're only three episodes in and Yingluo has already caused so much chaos and trouble. It's great. This is such a wildly different vibe from the last show we watched (The Story of Minglan), but both shows are gorgeous and care so much about MATERIAL GOODS and this one in particular is set in a SPECIFIC TIME in such a way that one could in fact look up more about the styles of dress and meaning of earrings/hairstyles/etc.

5.
I thought I had another thing xD uhhhhh some rapid-fire stuff since apparently I don't want single-paragraph sections otherwise:

a.
Still slowly watching ST:DSC. xD s3e4 was a meditation on how Trill work now and how Adira is a very cute character but also very much A Teen and meant to be relatable to teens more than me, an adult. More interested by how Discovery has a personality and watching the bridge crew (plus Georgiou) have a dinner party that goes bad and then make up with each other. And Michael not following strict Starfleet protocol.

b.
Reminded myself, this week, of the difference between talking on the phone for "migraine means I can't look at screens but I am BORED and I wanna talk to you" reasons vs "I am awake and wanna hang out with you but there's stuff I gotta do that requires my body but hey I can talk on the phone while I do that" reasons. It's a lot nicer when one's a person and not a lump, oddly! One feels a lot more like they're participating equally in the conversation that way! Wow! Such surprise!

c.
The remix event (seasonalremix) that hafnia and I are running got SEVEN WHOLE SIGNUPS (including the two of us), which is tbh pretty good for the first time we're doing the event and how it's a rather atypical sign-up/event structure (and that we weren't promoing it particularly hard). It's a good number for hand-matching, too, since there's variety but not an overwhelming amount of data to sift through. Excited to see how it'll shake out!

d.
I wanna work more on writing Rhei and Ames' story (since, y'know, I now know what their son is gonna look like :P), and as part of that have started writing down my mental outline/figuring out a timeline. Might post excerpts here as I write, once I get to actually writing? It's fun sharing things as I go! And also with dw I do not need to worry about character limits the way I sharing bits with friends on discord. xD

1.
threesentenceficathon began yesterday! I've posted... more fills than I think so far. xD I started listing them and then went HM OKAY THAT'S A BUNCH ACTUALLY:
Leverage ot3 fluff
Obi-Wan/Asajj post-PT AU [also on ao3 because it got away from me a bit xD]
Julien's unrequited feels for Aranessa (CR Araman)
Silt Verses, godsummoning
Olruggio/Qifrey angst (WHA)
Kara/Lee (the thin line between fighting and fucking) (BSG 2003)
Thimble+Occtis reunion (CR Araman)
Jyn/Cassian, after the war (I wanna clean this up into a proper fic xD)
Jyn/Cassian, nightmares
LHoD, Genly Ai+Estraven, nightfall
Hal+Bolaire, theater (CR Araman)
Obi-Wan/Padme, "love is stronger than hate"
Sophie/Howl, "I've never done anything wrong in my life"
Teor/Wicander, nonhuman cocks/first time (CR Araman)

I also posted some prompts. They're hiding in there somewhere. But mostly the fun is in making little ficlets, for me.

[eta: I'm adding to this list as I go, mostly for my own records/ability to find them again later]


2.
I've watched through s3e3 of Star Trek: Discovery, and I adore Starfleet Honor but also every time Georgiou is on screen making snarky comments and beating people up and looking at Michael with maternal pride I care naught for Starfleet Honor because I'm too busy thinking about how much Georgiou is delighted to see Michael get rougher around the edges after her time alone in the future.

This also means I have just met Adira Tal, who I know will become a major character and who is also going to come out as nonbinary once we get more into that story, and I am curious about how that'll unfold considering that Adira has a Trill symbiote and I have some feelings (mostly sighs) about nonbinary characters and the plurality aspects of such an arrangement. But hey, can't really have proper opinions on it until I see how it plays out in the show, you know?


3.
Testing at my dojo went very well! Love to see two people take very good tests perfectly appropriate to their level! Love also to see one of them have a worse randori than usual simply because he was clearly exhausted by the time he reached it, but hey even that was still perfectly reasonable for the level the test expects; I just know what he's capable of.

It was also like "HUH OKAY" seeing him do one technique (hanmi handachi shomenuchi iriminage) because I saw my own technique in how he did it. I get it! I know why! I did it with him a bunch when he was learning it! I just!

I do not think of myself as One Of The Sensei despite it being pretty clear that a lot of the white belts absolutely do think of me that way. This is mostly because I don't teach regularly, and so nobody calls me sensei on the regular.


4.
This weekend has been full of CLASSIC WINTER SNOW. After testing yesterday I detoured to the local state park and spent an hour walking a path that was very covered in snow and also icy beneath said snow. There were a couple other people out in the closer bits of this path, but once I turned onto the loop fewer people tend to go on anyway, it was clear that nobody had been there for at least a hour, so it was all FRESH CLEAR SNOW and that was gorgeous and really peaceful to spend time in.

I know intellectually how relaxing and restorative it is for me to spend time in the woods, especially if I can find woods where I won't hear/see other humans, but it's always a bit of an oh! right! feeling when I experience it again. Shall try and hold on to it, but it's always easier to go out into the woods during the beautiful times than when winter fades once more into dreary slushy/icy grayness instead of this perfect high-contrast fresh new fluffy snow.

Pictures under the cut! I took way more than this but I didn't feel like uploading all of them and I think these are nicely representative!

( four photos from a snowy walk in the woods )