Fic: Uncharted Road (mature) McShep

Feb. 6th, 2026 06:10 pm
melagan: John and Rodney blue background (Default)
[personal profile] melagan posting in [community profile] sga_saturday
Uncharted Road (4161 words) by melagan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Elizabeth Weir, Carson Beckett
Additional Tags: Soulmates, Canon Universe, Light Angst, Happy Ending
Summary:

An off-world ritual results in John and Rodney hating to be touched by anyone except each other.

preposterous puzzle: thoughts so far

Feb. 6th, 2026 10:45 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

The context is Simone Giertz's Incomplete White Puzzle, which A got me partly to troll me and partly because they thought I'd enjoy it and partly because getting the bundle of all three puzzles gets you 20% off individual list prices.

Current status: 105/"500" pieces in their final positions, plus another 57 no longer singletons. I have several semi-sorted categories including (in the halves of the box) "could plausibly have come from a reasonable puzzle" and "bullshit", and (on the table) Swoopy Bullshit, Offset Noses, Weirdly Straight, Multi-Nose Bullshit, and Featureless Curves.

THOUGHTS )

I am having a very pleasant and soothing time, and I am trying to break up the hyperfocus by instituting a rule of Get Up And Do One Unit Of Something Else After Every (Contiguous) Piece Placed, and yes that is me rules-lawyering after the fact...

I gotta get another hat. . .

Feb. 6th, 2026 05:18 pm
rolanni: (Default)
[personal profile] rolanni

What went before Thursday: So, I bought a stability ball today -- also known as a Giant Yoga Ball -- on suggestion of PT, and by doing so I learned several things.

Thing One. I had to go to Wal*Mart to obtain this item. Now, I haven't been in a Wal*Mart for at least 8 years, and at that time, I was in the Augusta Marketplace store and it was filthy and ill-kept, misfiled, and nerve-wracking to be in -- you know, like all the stores are now. The Waterville store, today, was -- spacious and well-lit, the shelves were stocked appropriately, signage (with a notable exception, which I will share) plentiful and easy to see. The gentleman in the red vest and ID tags who I stopped to ask where I should look for a Giant Yoga Ball told me that I would be going to the back of the store, to the Sports section, and then he used his phone to tell me that Giant Yoga Balls could be found in Aisle I-15.

Thing Two. Being as I had to walk to the furthest corner of the store to find Sports, I did have plentiful opportunity to look about me, and discover those things reported in Thing One. When I got to Sports, however, I found I-14 and I-17, but not Aisle I-15, which would be my luck. I asked a young lady who was stocking shelves, and whose face immediately said she didn't want to have anything to do with me why there was no Aisle I-15, and the young man who was her partner said, "Oh, no, I'll show you," which he did (I-15 is, in the Waterville Wal*Mart, where they file the bicycles), and when I said, "There are no Giant Yoga Balls here," led me to the exact shelf, which is where I learned Thing Three, which is!

You have to inflate the Giant Yoga Ball when you get it home. It comes with a cheap, plastic, manual air squeeze, and it will, conservatively, take me three days to inflate this thing. However! I have the ball in house, and have started on the inflation project, and I'm calling that progress.

I am now needing to get to my backlogged email.

Tomorrow Sarah comes in the morning to do the cleaning, and I believe I will be blocking out the rest of the day, which will give me 4.5 days to concentrate on reading/writing until I'm next needed elsewhere. I may, in fact, make a weekend of it, and order in, so I can keep focused on the WIP, with short breaks to blow up the stability ball.

So! I have what passes for A Plan. I note that this Plan may mean that I will be not much around the Internets. It's OK; I'll be working.
#
Friday. Cold and intermittently sunny. Sarah changed her hours to Saturday.

Woke up at 5:30, got up at 6, sat with the Happy Lite, ate breakfast and was reading the WIP before 8. Read 200 pages, did a couple loads of laundry, broke for lunch -- chicken Alfredo from ... I have no idea, actually. Pasta Americana? It was good and I have leftovers, which is also good.

The story is not nearly as terrible as I had feared. In fact, it's pretty good. So that's a relief. I have 68 days until I have to hand it in, and even though I have to Really End It, excise those 9,000 words, and probably write ... two? more fill-out scenes, I should be able to make that deadline.

Beta Readers! If you are still reading, do not despair! My Method is to do my read, then read your comments, once I have the story in my head in its present shape. You are, in a word, Still Relevant -- very much so! -- and I look forward to your notes with anticipation.

The stability ball has been inflated, and the cats are of the opinion that nobody needs a ball that big.

Dead River, after assuring me yesterday that my delivery was scheduled for today -- has not yet delivered. I'm in no danger, but I would very much like to know why it's suddenly become difficult to deliver oil to this address.

I still need to finish my Remarks and choose something(s) to read for my Event on the 21st.

The missing 1099-MISC arrived today, which would be my luck, because I wrote to the issuing party regarding its whereabouts yesterday. I now have to block out the better part of a day to enter everything into the accountant's portal, because the thing is purposefully designed to force you to fill it in All At Once. In former years, when I was working from paper, I would have been filling the forms in as columns were added, and paperwork arrived, and the manifesting of the last 1099 would mean that I filled in one final line, reviewed, and took the whole packet down to Oakland on Monday morning.

Stoopid portal.

What else? The now-called Business Office, formerly Sharon's Office, looks like a bomb hit it again. I used to write and do business in here, and . . . I can't figure out how I did -- oh, no, I do know. By this time in the Proceedings, the manuscript would have taken over the living room, and Steve would be reading it while I did the taxes, and I would have been able to keep up better with the day-to-day paperwork because Steve would have picked up the laundry and the cooking and the dishwashing, because he would rather do those things than the taxes.

deep breath

Nope.  Still Not Preferring this timeline.

Last night, I collapsed into bed earlyish and asked the Boox to read Cuckoo's Egg to me. Now, I have read Cuckoo's Egg manyManyMANY times. It is, in fact, one of my favorite books. I know this story. But listening to it is a Whole Nother Experience. I have not had this particular sensation of . . . newness . . . with the other books -- all old favorites, because I'm still learning -- I've listened to, so that's interesting.

And that I think catches us up. I'm going to take some time to excavate my desk.

Ah.  Today's blog post title brought to you by Rocky and Bullwinkle.


sovay: (Silver: against blue)
[personal profile] sovay
It has been snowing lightly and steadily since I woke this morning. Those five hours of sleep were the most I have gotten in a seven-day week. At the moment a sort of bleach-silvered effect has started around the overcast sun: it seems to make the west-facing windows across the street reflect mercury-green. There were sunshowers in the snowfall, but not while I was out walking.

I caught the stone that you threw. )

I can tell that my ability to think in media is reviving because in twenty-six years it had never occurred to me to fancast Stefan Fabbre and all of a sudden I thought that, fair-haired, dry-voiced, the moody, unsteady one in the family, in 1975 he would have been in Clive Francis' wheelhouse. [personal profile] gwynnega has suggested that Millard Lampell deserves his own Library of America volume and I'd order it in a hot second.

2026 52 Card Project: Week 5: Maeve

Feb. 6th, 2026 03:28 pm
pegkerr: (Default)
[personal profile] pegkerr
So I have recently had something non-terrible happen. I have acquired a new car, a 2023 Hyunda Tucson. This has been an extraordinary leap forward in technology for me. In fact, I have remarked that driving it after years of driving my old 2000 Toyota Camry, I feel rather like I am piloting a spaceship.

It has seat warmers! It has a video console! You can move the side mirrors in before entering the garage! It has a backup camera!

This may seem like old hat to you--to anyone who is driving anything built in the last decade--but it is entirely wondrous to me.

I name my cars in alphabetical order, boy-girl-boy-girl. My last car was named Lafayette, so this one needed to be a girl's 'M' name.

Given recent events, I decided that I needed a warrior queen's name and settled upon Maeve.

Image description: Background: deep space, seen over the surface of a planet. A black car (Hyundai Tuscon) sits on the planet surface. A sleek spaceship hovers overhead.

Maeve

5 Maeve

Click on the links to see the 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.
cornerofmadness: (Cherri drinking)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness posting in [community profile] halfamoon
Title: Bad Girl Gone Good(on AO3)

Fandom Hazbin Hotel

Characters/Pairings, Cherri Bomb, Cherri/Sir Pentious

Summary: Cherri finds herself doing things she never imagined herself doing like writing letters and thinking about changing her ways.

Rating: teen

Content warning canon typical violence and bad language

p.s. I could use a Hazbin Hotel tag, thanks

Good day

Feb. 6th, 2026 08:54 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Today's Teddywalk took us a slightly unusual way -- I let him choose, within reason. He didn't spend as long sniffing the grass triangle as before, and afterward when I wanted to drag him more directly back toward his house he scampered off the other way. This took us to a tree-lined residential street where he decided to poop next to one of the trees just as a man parked his land barge just behind us and the kids that got out of it were entertained by this free show.

This route also took us past a school where, even though it was nearing 5 o'clock, kids were going toward the school, with their grownups. They kinda looked like they were wearing pajamas? Some were in bathrobes or oodies. Some seemed to carry pillows or soft toys. One was almost hidden behind a Stitch that must have been fully half her size. It was adorable.

I had a pretty good day otherwise too.

Work was oddly satisfying.

A bunch of things happened to coincide today: I presented my new train report twice, first to a panel of subject-matter experts and accessibility advocates that I'm on, where people were very kind about it (especially as it was at the end of an hour and a half meeting that some people had to leave early and/or thought was only an hour long; one made sure to apologize for leaving halfway through but told me he'd read the report and it was good, which was very sweet).

Then in the afternoon I presented it to a group of lived-experience campaigners, a group I attended back when I was a volunteer who didn't have this job yet. They did their usual thing of wanting to vent their spleens on any tangentially-related topic, but I'm used to that and I kinda love it. Afterward, my colleague who runs these meetings messaged me to thank me and say she appreciates that I always handle the questions so well. I didn't think I'd done anything special! But despite that (or actually because of it!) this was really nice to hear.

And as well as feeling particularly competent with the different audiences my work is for, I also had a quick one-to-one(ish) with my manager which indirectly addressed the stuff I've been stressing about lately and where seemed much happier than I'm used to hearing with the work that I have done in the last year and the stuff that's coming up this year.

It's funny because the other day, on our way to the theater, D pointed out where transgym yoga had moved to: one of those "not actually far away but hard for me to find/get to on a bus" places. So I actually looked at yoga on the transgym website and not only was it on this Friday (it's every other week), but it was back at its old location! My hips are so much happier now, and it'll be good for my brain too.

And now, after a week that was really truly about a month long, it's the weekend! We have basically no plans, and the fascists aren't even yelling at the hotel this Sunday!

So many good things.

smallhobbit: (Default)
[personal profile] smallhobbit
Today's [community profile] thefridayfive questions

1. What did you want to be when you were a kid?
Astronaut

2. What is your proudest accomplishment so far?
Having raised two kids and launched them into the world where they are now productive adults.  Having raised a considerable sum in grants for the charity I volunteer at.
Alternatively - I'm still here.

3. What is your dream job?
I'm retired.  I no longer dream about having a job.

4. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Maybe here, maybe somewhere else.  Definitely not moving as fast.

5. What does it take to make you happy?
Cake

[syndicated profile] dorktower_feed

Posted by John Kovalic

Most DORK TOWER strips are now available as signed, high-quality prints, from just $25!  CLICK HERE to find out more!

HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)

Fannish 50 2026 #06: *sigh* my turn!

Feb. 6th, 2026 10:48 am
elayna: (UV Mike "sigh")
[personal profile] elayna
I got a spam comment on a fic. It says things that seem nice but make no sense, and that make no actual references to the characters or anything that truly shows the commenter read my story. It then encourages me to check out the commenter's instagram/discord name. I guess it's preferable that it's a nice one rather than a critical, nasty one, as I've seen some people get?

But I'm just... what is the point of this? Okay, well, to drive engagement to an insta account. I guess you set those bots going and they go and go and so maybe you get several new people checking out your insta? IDK, I just don't relate to the whole 'click' culture. It just seems lies and deception, and we don't need more of that in this world.

It is a registered user, which surprises me, but every time I've seen warnings about AO3 being scraped by bots, there's always the suggestion to lock all your fic to registered users, and I've thought, can't a person just log in the bot as a registered user? And then let it go scraping away? I don't really understand much about how these things work (and admittedly don't really want to).

Anyway, off to figure out how to report a comment as spam, a new task! Yay?

(no subject)

Feb. 6th, 2026 02:40 pm
adore: (i woke up and chose violence)
[personal profile] adore
Something I'm grateful for recently is that I got a scholarship/free spot for a writing workshop series, Writing for Rage. My friends Trish and Venky recommended it to me. It's six sessions, and after the first two, I find myself better at experiencing my anger as anger rather than hardening it into depression. We were given journal prompts to write about in our own time:

How do you envision your rage? Envisioning how I want my rage to express itself. I want my rage to be powerful. Because I have felt the most enraged when I was made helpless, when control was wrested from me, and when I was unable to protect myself. I wish to be destructive with no consequences. My rage so powerful that I don't have to say NOBODY MESS WITH ME, everyone gets it. It's a foregone conclusion. And so nobody dares mess with me. Because whatever they do to me, my rage will do worse. I think of Kali. Vengeful rage that ensures there are no repeat offenders.

What would the world be like if anger was normalised? People would be more honest. It wouldn't be a matter of who is allowed to be angry, and at whom, and who isn't, who has authority over you and who doesn't. One's sense of when something is wrong would be sharper. Less guilt for making someone else uncomfortable when confronting them about how they made you uncomfortable.

This month's horoscope for Libra by Alice Sparkly Kat also talks about anger, with journalling questions about the safety of expressing it.

February horoscope )

Questions for Libra for February 2026:

What happens in your body when you piss someone off?
My body feels like my life is under threat, even in a verbal confrontation.
TW: physical violence
My childhood consisted of physical punishments whenever my mother was angry, including beatings and one time when she strangled me. My body's reaction to anger directed at me now, as an adult, is a hangover from those childhood experiences when I felt scared for my life.

Is there anyone who you are comfortable pissing off?
Nope. I wish there was. This isn't just about being safe when their anger is directed at me, but about how willing they are to make repair efforts if we hurt each other's feelings. What if I am, but they aren't?

How do you want to make more decisions in those relationships where you are free to argue?
I don't think I have any such relationships. But if I did, I would try to understand why we each believe what we do. I would stand up for what I believe in.

(no subject)

Feb. 6th, 2026 12:14 pm
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
When I took the food scraps out to the compost bin yesterday in the late afternoon, I stayed out longer to shovel some more of the snow away from the front of my car since it was still full daylight and if anything, a degree or two warmer than it had been when I was shovelling in the morning. The snow immediately in front of the car was more icy than the rest because people (including me) had been walking there and had compacted the snow, but I was able to shovel out a clear enough path in front of each wheel that I should be able to get the car out if I need to. I felt quite accomplished after that.

I slept well last night and nobody woke me up before the alarm this morning, but I did wake up just after 3 am with that ear pain, and although I went back to sleep with the ear pressed into the pillow, when I woke up in the morning the pain hadn't completely gone. I lay down again for a couple of hours after breakfast but it's still lingering, but it's not nearly as bad as usual and I feel that I can function perfectly well in spite of it.

I started reading a novel about a grandmother recounting her time at Woodstock to her teenage granddaughter, and I have to keep going to YouTube to listen to the music she talks about. I of course heard about it at the time it happened, but the actual logistics of that many people being concentrated in one place with not enough basic facilities (toilets etc) for the sheer numbers didn't register with me. Now, reading this book, it all sounds just horrible. The narrator casually mentions "going to the bathroom" in the woods, and I can't help thinking what it must have been like if even a fraction of the 100,000 or 200,000 or more attendees did the same. Plus there were two hour or more queues for food and water; the attendees were outside without cover when it rained; people were passing around bad drugs. And so on.

=========

Huh. The ear pain disappeared completely while I was writing this post. Phew.

The light is rising

Feb. 6th, 2026 05:10 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
For the first time this year I've left the office and it wasn't pitch black outside. Dark, but not *night*.

(Sunset was at 16:56)

(no subject)

Feb. 6th, 2026 10:45 am
lotesse: (Default)
[personal profile] lotesse
If there was ever any doubt that the US Republican party are racists, let it end now.
lovelytomeetyou: (Default)
[personal profile] lovelytomeetyou posting in [community profile] halfamoon
Day 5 - The Outlaw  

Title: Sentence
Fandom: 12 Kingdoms | Juuni Kokki
Characters: Nakajima Youko; Rakushun
Rating: Gen
Summary: How could she properly judge the one in front of her for committing the same crimes she did? Youko reflects on her past, when she first arrived in this world.

Story in ao3

A ficlet for once since I tend to write too much hah. The women in this series are so good, each could have a day of her own.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
[personal profile] larryhammer
I’m an aloha shirt kind of guy. Not all of my wardrobe is brightly floral—I need a few more subdued patterns for less informal occasions, such as starting work in an office where I haven’t confirmed aloha is acceptable business casual wear. But a fair number are, most of them tasteful.

This is mostly by temperament—they signal (though let me asterisk that * ) a laid-back temperament, which is both true and helps me through interactions with strangers. Mostly, as there’s also a practical component. I’ve mentioned this a couple times, but I come across IRL as taller than I do online: I’m 6'4" / 193cm. Finding men’s short-sleeve shirts that are long enough for my torso to stay tucked in is a challenge. (Paradoxically, it’s easier with long-sleeve shirts, as “long” sizes is a thing for those.) Aloha shirts, however, are designed to not be tucked in, and indeed look worse that way. Win!

But then there’s that asterisk: * I’m graying enough, both hair and goatee (which last I’ve been keeping for two years now), that I can sometimes be misidentified as a Boomer, and a Boomer in an aloha shirt signals a different temperament than a younger guy in one. I’m lean enough I don’t entirely lean into that stereotype, but still. I’m older Gen X and … touchy … about being mistaken for a Boomer.

The goatee is starting to annoy me in other ways, anyway, so maybe shaving it will help—it has the most white. Or I could, yanno, suck it up and deal. Be laid-back. Just like the shirts claim.

---L.

Subject quote from We Can Work It Out, The Beatles.
hamsterwoman: (Hardinge -- tea then)
[personal profile] hamsterwoman
stuff i love

[personal profile] dreamersdare is hosting a Stuff I Love – Top 10 Edition weekly challenge throughout February, with the first week being media one-shots.

I’m not going to try for a ranked top 10 for this or other weeks, because that way madness lies, but I did want to try to get to a list of 10 things I love that fit the challenge.

I pondered just a free-form list of one-shots of different mediums and genres, but eventually what coalesced is this: a list of standalone SFF fiction. One of the things I really love about SFF is the long series, the magical sagas, multi-volume explorations of worldbuilding, sometimes across real-world decades and in-universe millennia – your Tolkien Legendariums, your Earthseas, your Dragaeras, your Vokosigan Sagas. So it’s particularly notable when I enjoy a SFF standalone, which manages to pack that worldbuilding and that sensawunda into a single piece. Sometimes even quite a short one, because I included short stories, novellas, and novelettes in scope of this.

In no particular order, and selected by starting with a considerably longer list and picking things from it until I felt like I’d picked all the right ones.

top 10 )
sisterdivinium: a smiling bibi from bad sisters (bibi garvey)
[personal profile] sisterdivinium posting in [community profile] halfamoon
Title: Their own idiom
Fandom: Bad Sisters
Characters: Bibi Garvey and Ursula Garvey (Eva, Becka and Grace are also in many of the frames)
Rating: G
Notes: Image-heavy post.
Summary: A collection of Bibi and Urs' glances at one another throughout the show. They certainly do this quite a lot.

At Tumblr, my journal or simply below the cut :)

Read more... )

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