Just a thought...

Aug. 9th, 2025 07:34 am
muccamukk: Maria gestures wildly. (Avengers: I have a point!)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Ben + Johnny + Sex Pollen = fic.

Which, surprisingly, I haven't seen in any version, though it's probably on LJ or something.
muccamukk: Steve standing with his arms folded, looking disapproving. (Avengers: Judgy Arms)
[personal profile] muccamukk
As a follow up to bitching about this in the last post, I thought I'd look and see where I was with watching some of these. The movies are in order they came out. The TV shows are sorta just stuck in there for the year they started, rather than breaking them up by season. I'm too lazy to look up the details of exactly when they aired (especially as I don't even remember some of these existed). I'm only including live action films and tv shows. Long list is long )

Superhero Summer of 2025

Aug. 8th, 2025 01:34 pm
muccamukk: Supergirl determinedly flying forward. Text: "Here we go again!" (DC: Here We Go Again)
[personal profile] muccamukk

Going to the Movies!

(Success Rate: 1.5 out of 4)

In May, we tried to go to Sinners at Local Theatre #1, only to find none of their caption machines were working.

In June, we didn't bother trying.

In July, we tried to go to Superman at Local Theatre #2, only to find that they didn't have caption machines at all. In 2025.

Later in July, while visiting my parents, we went to their Local Theatre to see Superman, only to have multiple caption machines crap out part way through the movie, leaving Nenya to finish it on their speech to text app (an imperfect experience).

This week, I went back to Local Theatre #1 and asked in person if the caption machines were now working (they neither answer the phone, nor call people back if you leave a message). Being assured they were, we booked tickets to The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The first caption machine Nenya got didn't even turn on, but the next one made it through the whole entire movie! Diversity win! (Or something.)

Actual movie thoughts aren't that deep, but it's superhero films, so...

Superman (2025)

So I'm more of a Marvel Girl, though I did like the first Wonder Woman movie and Blue Beetle, but Nenya grew up on the Christopher Reeve movies, and this had been advertised as More Like That, so we decided to give it a go.

It was really fun! I thought the casting was great, and I'm really enjoying the "superheroes' lives are inherently ridiculous" vibe we're currently going with. Also: death to origin stories! It was really nice to see the Justice League International gang (lol), and have a Superman who was doing the Big Blue Boyscout thing in earnest. (I thought [youtube.com profile] Princess_Weekes' video Quentin Tarantino Accidentally Broke Superman had great insights about why people got on the wrong track with the character.) It was silly and had heart, and didn't have joyless desaturation, and I'm here for all of this.

Will happily come back for the Supergirl movie, and am even more invested in season two of Peacemaker.


The Fantastic Four: The First Steps (2025)

I really liked the retro-futurist aesthetic, and was happy they didn't combine them with 1960s inequalities. Also: space! I haven't seen any of the cast in a whole lot, but thought they were great for the roles. Pascal was fully on point as Reed, and managed to capture his pathos without diving head first into manpain, and I really liked Reed/Sue here. I just like his face, also. They toned down Johnny's womanising into a low-key romance that actually worked for me, though even putting Natasha Lyonne in it didn't make Ben's crush that interesting (mostly because we got 2.5 minutes of time with that plot). Given all the natalism in the air, I'm a bit twitchy about movies focused around babies, but I liked that they didn't even consider that Sue couldn't go on the mission while eight months pregnant. I will riot if we don't get Valeria, though.

Which kind of brings me to the mid-credits scene. Spoilers for where this fits in the MCU? )

(Looking at AO3, it seems like people are into Eddie Munson Johnny het, either with the Silver Surfer or with Y/N. Though there is also some team!fic with woobie!Johnny. There's like two Ben/Johnny fic, which is surprising as they had a nice vibe in this, and it used to be the big ship. I'd also like more Reed!whump than I found, but early days.)


Department of "But It's Still Weird that It Happened Twice"

Mild spoilers for both films )

The Friday Five for 8 August 2025

Aug. 7th, 2025 03:03 pm
anais_pf: (Default)
[personal profile] anais_pf posting in [community profile] thefridayfive
This week's questions were suggested by [livejournal.com profile] sparklesalad

1. What is one food (or meal) you used to hate but now love?

2. If you had to give up one of your favorite foods (or meals) for good, what would it be, and why?

3. Which food seems like it should be healthy and isn't, and do you eat it? Why?

4. If you were an item of food, personified, what would you be and why?

5. You've seen tomatoes and pies used for this purpose ... now think of a more inventive item of food one could throw at someone. What is it and why would throwing it at someone be hilarious?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
muccamukk: Nixon looking through binoculars. (BoB: Binos)
[personal profile] muccamukk
I've been knitting and watching shows, which has led me to try to find stuff that's good to watch while crafting, especially things on Kanopy.

I was going to do a bunch of these in a post, but the first got long, so stand by for further knitting show thoughts.

North and South (2004)

(I haven't read the book, though I keep meaning to get into Elizabeth Gaskell, who is recommended when you run out of George Eliot.)

A star crossed romance between Daniela Denby-Ashe as an impoverished daughter of an auto-defrocked churchman from Hampshire, and Richard Armitage as a self-made cotton mill owner in Lancashire "Darkshire"* (amazing name, thank you, Mrs Gaskell). He's in the middle of putting down a strike, and she's in the middle of being appalled by the violence of literally everything that's happening. The main attachment between them seems to be that they are both stunningly beautiful, and appear even more attractive when they are sad. Which they are a lot.

So... he's a strike-breaking mill owner in 1855, who sets the army on his workers? (Which they are careful not to show in detail because it might distract us from how very beautiful Richard Armitage is when he's sad.) Absolutely no one talks about where all the cotton's coming from, other than "America."† He does, later in the show, come to be more sympathetic to the workers, and start actually talking to them and shit, but the strikebreaking is a lot to get past. If you're likely to spend much of the show humming "The Internationale," then maybe give this a skip. If you don't mind/can ignore that, the pining is excellent, and the actors are very beautiful.

Quality as knitting show: 4/5, would knit to this again.

End Notes )
badfalcon: (Crowley Aziraphale Kiss)
[personal profile] badfalcon
Today was a hard one. I ended up taking the day off because the anxiety and depression hit hard in the wake of the airport sale news. The lack of sleep, the uncertainty, the way it was announced - it all caught up with me.

But I tried to take care of myself, even if I felt a bit hollow.

📚 I curled up with books and started gently planning out the rest of the year’s reading challenges
🧼 I spent the day focusing on soft, non-demanding self-care (blankets, quiet, no pressure)
📝 I wrote some very self-indulgent tennis dads smut - and honestly, no regrets

It wasn’t easy to find glimmers today. But they’re there. And I’m proud of myself for looking.
badfalcon: (Sunflowers)
[personal profile] badfalcon
It's always so nice to find out that the airport you're working for, and the one you're based at, are both being sold by the parent group.

You know what else is super fun?
Finding out from a report on BBC news yesterday before we were officially notified this morning.

So that was... um... delightful. Today has been a tough one, it's been very heavy and I've been struggling for most of the day. It's been tricksy to find the glimmers and good things for today:

✨ Glimmers - August 4th ✨
🧁 I didn’t overindulge, even though the office was full of tempting cakes and treats
🧠 I’m working on brainstorming a fanfic idea that actually feels fun and exciting
🧸 I curled up with a soft plushie and let it soothe some of the sharp edges
badfalcon: (Time)
[personal profile] badfalcon

 I love writing goal posts. I love reviewing them slightly less, because inevitably I have to admit that I did not finish the Big Thing I meant to finish. But also: I did do some really cool stuff, and my brain kicked off several brand new projects like a chaotic little goblin in a fic mine, so. Let’s talk about it.


 🖋 July Writing Goals:

Finish A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack — absolutely not. It’s still sitting there, gentle and ominous and unfinished. I’m choosing to believe this is just a simmering stage.

Update:
You Wouldn’t Take My Word for It If You Knew Who Was Talking — noooope
I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You — also no, but I did think about it a lot
The Courage of My Convictions — YES. A new chapter and a spin-off/prequel side fic. I’m counting this as a win for narrative momentum and gay priest chaos.
Wolf-Tethered — untouched, though not unloved

Maybe post a one-shot just because — I’m counting the Darren/Simone scene from the priest AU, because it came from somewhere deep and tender and needed to exist....

Also. I may have started two entire new AU series, because apparently July was the month Bob! said “yes, but what if…?”

🌿
 July Life Goals:

Make a doctor’s appointment about the arthritis diagnosis — did the thing. Proud of this one.
Day trip to the RAMM + sushi — no museum trip, but we did buy most of Yo!Sushi and I did spend roughly £200 in the Lucy & Yak sale, so I have no regrets and very colourful trousers. It was a good trip
Visit Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm — lions and elephants and giraffes achieved
Reclaim one chaotic space (maybe the laundry chair) — 🌀 kind of? Started rearranging my work clothes and moved some piles around. Progress is happening in slow, meandering steps.
Come back to Dreamwidth, and stay — 🌀 back-ish! A few posts, a bit of lurking, and some genuine joy in reconnecting with long-form fandom space. Still holding this one as a soft goal.
Cook something that feels like summer — 😅 not really. But I thought about tomatoes a lot.
One proper lie-in, no guilt — absolutely achieved, 10/10 would lie in again
One evening offline with candles, music, or silence — does scrolling Tumblr with one candle lit count? No? Thought not.

 


 

🌻 August Goals: gentle momentum, storybrain chaos, and maybe some tomatoes 

 Writing/Fandom Goals
Actually finish A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack – even if it’s just in bullet-point plan format
Update Wolf-Tethered - or at least open the doc and reread it. Or smell the forest in my head and cry about Simone.
Keep working on The Courage of My Convictions - more priest AU, more Jannik/Simone quiet intensity, more religious yearning and repressed gay disasters.
Return to I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You — the booktuber romantasy AU deserves more petty feuding, more yearning in comment sections, more mutual pining over tropes.
Make space for the new AUs - if my brain is going to go chaotic, might as well let it do so on purpose.
Maybe write something short and weird and self-indulgent. Just because.
Keep sharing. Even when it feels scary. Especially when it feels a little raw - that probably means it matters..

🌿 Life Goals
One genuinely slow, nothing-is-urgent weekend.
Book one fun thing for August, even if it’s tiny.
Get my new tattoo (appointment booked for the 30th!)
Properly reclaim one corner of chaos in the house. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just has to be better. My work clothing storage isn’t working for me right now.
Keep gently decluttering my digital spaces - Dreamwidth tags, folders, etc.
Go outside for something that’s not an errand. A walk, a sit, a stretch in the sun.
Remember: lie-ins are good, my body is not a machine, and my stories are worth telling.
Keep up the shoulder, hip, and knee physio - consistency counts more than perfection.
Aim to lose a little more weight if it feels good and manageable - but keep it soft and low-pressure.
 


Tell me your August hopes! Or the weird thing July gave you that you’re still thinking about. Or the AU your brain started without asking. I’ll bring the snacks, you bring the story chaos. 💛 

badfalcon: (Tennis Darren)
[personal profile] badfalcon
A little sparkle, a little serotonin, and one very important tennisdad sighting.

🖤 My Li painted my nails for me, they're black with rainbow glitter — peak cozy gremlin vibes
⚖️ Lost 2lb this week — small steps, slow and steady, still worth celebrating
🎾 Darren spotted in Cincinnati!! After the rumours he might not be at the USO with Jannik, I am delighted — tennisdads remain undefeated

💫 Sometimes it really is the little things.
badfalcon: (Don't Stop Believing)
[personal profile] badfalcon
Today’s been a quiet one - not a lot of spoons, but enough softness to hold onto.

🛌 I actually slept well last night, which already felt like a win
🍝 Made a really good dinner: cheesy beef and bacon bolognese gnocchi bake with pesto garlic ciabatta (yes, it was as good as it sounds)
📖 Curled up with Love on the Brain for a while - sometimes a fluffy romance is exactly what I need

Trying to notice the moments that feel good, even when they’re small. That counts too. 💛

🦴 Ancestors – Alice Roberts

Jul. 30th, 2025 09:49 pm
badfalcon: (Dark Side Cookies)
[personal profile] badfalcon
🦴 Ancestors – Alice Roberts

Listen. I’ve had a crush on Alice Roberts since her Time Team days, so this was always going to be a win, but Ancestors genuinely delighted me. It’s tender, nerdy, and full of big feelings about bones and burial and the stories we try to tell about the dead. I laughed, I got a little misty, I googled archaeological sites I’ll probably never visit but desperately want to.

💬 Quiet awe, prehistoric people, emotional damage by way of funerary rites.

🔗 [Full review’s over here at [personal profile] bibliollama]

Reading for Lughnasadh

Aug. 1st, 2025 04:09 pm
muccamukk: Arwen in a white dress in the candlelight. (LotR: Evenstar)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Reading from [instagram.com profile] thewitchoftheforest.

1. What needs harvesting in my life?
The Fool

2. What is blooming and coming to fruition?
Six of Wands

3. What needs more time to grow?
King of Discs

4. How can I nurture myself now?
Seven of Swords

5. Ways my harvest will help others.
The Devil

I love the idea of the Fool as a harvest, and the Devil as helping others.

The Friday Five for 1 August 2025

Jul. 31st, 2025 04:23 pm
anais_pf: (Default)
[personal profile] anais_pf posting in [community profile] thefridayfive
This week's questions were suggested by [livejournal.com profile] angelich

1. What is something you collect? Why?

2. If you could make one ice cream flavor, what would the ingredients be and what would be the name?

3. What can't you go a day without?

4. What position do you sleep in? *back, right side, left side, stomach . . . etc.*

5. What is your typical morning routine before work/school?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

**Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.**

Murderbot TV plot bunny

Jul. 29th, 2025 04:10 pm
muccamukk: The PresAux team hug Murderbot, who looks confused. (Murderbot: -hugs-)
[personal profile] muccamukk
(Up for adoption, if anyone wants it.)

We were just rewatching the last two episodes, and Spoilers for 1x09 )
badfalcon: (Garcia)
[personal profile] badfalcon

Journaling Prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?

I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. It started with Space Invaders on the Amstrad CPC 464 in the mid-80s - that clunky green-screen magic, the beep-boop intensity, the sheer novelty of it all. And I never really stopped.

Over the years, I’ve collected a fair few consoles: SNES, Gameboy, Playstation, PS2, Wii, Switch. I’ve still got them all, too. There's something oddly comforting about holding onto those pieces of plastic and circuitry, like keeping a time capsule of different versions of myself.

I’m definitely a solo-gamer. Always have been. I think it’s the introvert in me. I like slipping into a gameworld on my own terms, no pressure, no voice chat, no audience. Just me, the screen, and whatever rhythm the game wants me to fall into.

My favourites fall into a few categories:

Old school side-scrolling platforms
Tight levels, tricky jumps, that sense of flow when everything clicks. Still satisfying as hell.

Racing games
Especially Rock & Roll Racing, which lives in my memory as pure, chaotic joy. The soundtrack! The mayhem! The fact I can still hum the menu music unprompted!

Millennial dream games
AKA my happy place. Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley, Palia. I will always love games where you can farm, fish, befriend villagers, decorate your house, and wander around making little To Do lists for yourself. Peak comfort.

I know gaming is a social thing for a lot of people, and that’s great, but for me, it’s always been a way to unwind, to self-soothe, to get lost in a world I don’t have to share unless I choose to. A quiet kind of joy.

Two cozy-living titles are landing in August that have me genuinely buzzing - Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar and Tiny Bookshop

Grand Bazaar is a remake of the classic Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar, rebuilt for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and PC. It looks like it'll hit all the familiar beats of the series - the crops, the bazaar, the friendships - with some extra structure and energy, like planning your stall layout, managing inventory, ringing the announcer bell, all while engaging with townsfolk and growing relationships

Tiny Bookshop 
feels like someone peeked inside my brain and made a game out of it. You run a little travelling bookshop in a seaside town, stocking shelves, making recommendations based on people’s moods, and slowly building relationships with the locals. I played the demo earlier this year and it was fantastic. It's out next week and I can't wait!

Both games feel deeply me. They’re about building worlds, making meaningful (but low‑stress) choices, and finding comfort in routine. Can’t wait to build my bazaar stall and decorate my little bookshop by the sea.
badfalcon: (Stop Look Listen)
[personal profile] badfalcon

There’s just something deeply compelling about watching two characters navigate uneven ground - whether it’s age, experience, authority, or institutional power - and still manage to build something charged and intimate between them. Not despite the imbalance, but through it. That slow burn of restraint. The ache of wanting something they shouldn't. The negotiations of trust, timing, control, and care.

This is especially compelling when both characters are competent in their own right, but operating from different registers: mentor/student, coach/player, commander/civilian specialist, master/apprentice. The imbalance isn’t about helplessness - it’s about the impossibility of an even playing field, and the intimacy that arises anyway.

These dynamics can be messy and complicated and so emotionally satisfying when done right. They let fiction stretch into questions of loyalty, respect, control, vulnerability. What does it mean to choose closeness, when there are rules saying you shouldn’t? What does it cost, to reach for someone who could say no with a word?

Some personal favourites:

Jannik Sinner/Simone Vagnozzi – restrained affection, a coach who holds himself too tightly, and a player who sees straight through him
Jannik Sinner/Darren Cahill - built on loyalty, history, and the kind of attention that feels more like possession if you look too long
Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi – power wrapped in devotion, connection shaped by discipline, love made sharper by its impossibility
Jim Ellison/Blair Sandburg – the sentinel and the grad student who never stops talking, thrown together by biology and staying for each other
Jethro Gibbs/Tony DiNozzo – command and obedience with a side of locker room banter and unspoken everything
Jack O’Neill/Daniel Jackson – sarcasm vs sincerity, orders vs ethics, saving the world one lingering look at a time

 

And yes, this is entirely about fiction. These dynamics let us explore things that might be fraught or even dangerous in real life but that, in the hands of a good writer, become vehicles for emotional tension, character growth, and that delicious blend of intimacy and restraint.

Give me the power imbalance that heightens the stakes. Give me the age difference that adds weight to every decision. Give me the mentor figure trying not to fall. Give me the younger one pushing every boundary, knowing exactly what they're doing. Give me the slow unravelling, the look that lingers too long, the moment someone steps just half an inch closer than they should. Give me the ache of wanting what they shouldn't - and wanting it well.

I want characters who should know better - and want it anyway.

I want stories where love is inconvenient. Where it’s earned. Where it burns, quietly and ferociously, just beneath the surface.

I will never be over it

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