dbskyler

This has taken me so long to do, I feel almost embarrassed to post it, because unlike some of the more detailed ones I've done, this one was straight-forward, but it was lingering just because I couldn't work out who to cast as one character. (I'm still not sure who it was I must have had in mind, but I found a suitable stand-in. After, er, nearly all year...)


From the isurrendered meme, john_amend_all gave me this prompt. If I had remembered that he threatened to do this several years ago, I would have tried to ward it off, but I didn't, so here we are:

One of those obscure centuries-old cults has a ritual: Once every hundred years, on the night of the winter solstice, the chosen one must stand at a particular place (where ley lines converge) and will become an inspired bard and prophet.

... Except that since the last ritual, an office block has been built on the site, and the mystic powers end up being bestowed on the coffee machine. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.


Which is coming to an LJ near you some time soon as:

( Coffee and Curses )

1. The world out there seems set to get worse and worse in every way at the moment. I feel bad that I have nothing to offer, but frivolous fannish things, but so it is.


2. I have my Yuletide assignment, but obv. can't talk about it. I have mixed feelings about whether I can do it proper justice, but it is a fandom I love and wanted to get, and hopefully I'll manage something decent in the end.


3. In the department of inevitable irony or something, the GRO have resumed their test pilot of offering PDFs for (some) historical certificates online for £6 instead of £9.20. I had been saving birthday money for this moment since May in case it ever came. Guess who finally gave up on that ever being a thing and spent the last of the money on Sunday? Yes, me. (The wretches! The rotters!) Anyway, for those also into UK family history, it's running for three months or so this time, so don't miss out.


4. I wrote a frivolous thing for no reason at all for the first time in forever. It was, of course, still stupidly obscure. Whoever it was - at least two people, I think, or maybe three - recommended me the Daisy Dalrymple books for light mystery reading, I blame you. All/both of you. Ficlet of pure froth: Foiled (G, 490 words, Alec/Daisy.)

I've been trying to finish off a few runaway_tales things, including another AU. This one was also written for genprompt_bingo square "Happy Endings" and hc_bingo square "grief" and is a modern coffee shop AU. I am so proud of myself, even if maybe the coffee shop is probably too incidental. But a while ago, oonaseckar said to me that it would probably be impossible to do a modern Edward/Julia AU and, of course, if someone says that it's impossible to write something, obviously I have to write it. (I wrote Six/Rose and Steed/Baldrick once for the same reason. Edward and Julia managing excuses to have a fake relationship and then be awkward about it in the 21st C was no problem at all.)

But I crossposted it to AO3, as I think it's a fun/sweet enough standalone piece; also it's for two other comms, and also because LJ's word limit forced me into posting it in two parts over at RaTs, which annoyed me, because clearly it isn't a work that's meant to be in two parts. I hoped I'd done enough amputation, but apparently not. (Dammit, LJ.)

Substitute (13480 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Characters: Julia Graves (OC), Edward Iveson (OC)
Additional Tags: Community: hc_bingo, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Romance, Grief/Mourning, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Brief mention of car accident, Community: runaway_tales, Fluff, Humor, Angst
Summary: Julia Graves has perfectly reasonable motives for fake-dating a customer – it’s all about interior decorating, honestly…

b7friday is opening up again! We have a new prompt and everything and I have made banners to promote it. If you want to use them to pimp it somewhere yourself, the code is in the text box:



<center><a href=https://b7friday.dreamwidth.org/><img src=https://i.imgur.com/RHYeGX4.png></a></center>




<center><a href=https://b7friday.dreamwidth.org/><img src=https://i.imgur.com/vn4vIWM.png></a></center>


I have also made a rebloggable tumblr post here.


(I stole these pics from the B7 Image Library, and basically every single B7 group shot on it seems to be everyone looking seriously unimpressed/bad-tempered, so I choose these where they also looked kind of vaguely interested as well as unimpressed. Ish. Oh, B7... <3)

(Sorry if you've seen this several times already - I'm nearly done!)

Only one day late!

What I've Finished Reading
The Mauritius Command, and the series continues to be solidly excellent. Then, slightly to my own surprise, I managed to read The Goblin Emperor, which I enjoyed very much (I can see what people mean about it being a very reassuring read and why some other people also find that annoying, but it suited me just fine right now) but stupidly did so in only about three or four days and was sick for the following three days as a result, which does dampen enthusiasm somewhat. (I don't know why I did it; I think I get a bit panicky that my reading ability might vanish, leaving me stranded halfway through a book).

So, after that I didn't read properly for a week, and then read the v light Daisy Dalrymple mystery I got from the library, Damsel in Distress, by Carola Dunn.


What I'm Reading Now
I'm technically reading Desolation Island (the next in the Aubrey-Maturin series), but not really much at the moment, as I think I was reading too much of them and having less brain than I should have done.

I am also beginning to work my way through my random Seven Masterpieces of Gothic Horror, starting with the first, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. It's very random and its heroes are terribly saintly, but this makes me laugh, especially when some of the other characters would rather be hanging around with less saintly people, or somebody has a moment of sarcasm. (Matilda's maid Bianca would obviously prefer to be in a Shakespeare comedy, but Matilda won't oblige her with even normal curiosity, let alone shenanigans and scheming.) There is also a spooky giant helmet with plumes of doom, and it's only 100 pages long.

I also enjoyed the particularly OTT bit where a Helpful Friar who has turned up to reason with Villainous Manfred accidentally causes Manfred to order the execution of the suspiciously Noble Peasant Theodore and is midway through begging for Theodore's life when he pauses to realise (via a handy birth mark) that Theodore is in fact his long-lost son (and he was formerly the Count of Falconara, because obv. you can't actually have a Noble Peasant. How he carelessly lost his son and her mother, hopefully I will find out before it's done.)

I am (family history) note-taking from Boyd Hilton's A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People: England 1783-1846, but I don't know if it counts as reading, as it is one of the Oxford History of England so more political and so on, so I am doing a lot of skimming through it. (It's a large book. When I'm not using it, I am trying to flatten some paper with it. It's multi-purpose.)


What I'm Reading Next
I think the library has the next Daisy Dalrymple book, so I might get that next week, but otherwise I think it will be something else off my TBR pile. There are several possibilities! If I can be sensible this time, that is. And at some point, presumably the next 'Gothic Masterpiece,' The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve. (It's longer, though - all of 134 pages!)