teach me the art of war

I'm home and recovered from my visit home over Easter. Family holidays are always equal parts restorative and draining, but mostly I'm just glad I got to GO this year. The dogs were great; the horses were great; the birds were a bit unfriendly, but that's normal. Also my folks have a cat now, despite the fact that they and all their children are painfully allergic. She's an absolute darling and well worth the industrial quantities of antihistamines I had to take to be able to pet her. I took my rats, who found the change of scene alarming in a way that's probably good for them. Shake off the ennui a bit. Change their sleepy little lives up.

Anyway, I have some flist catch-up to do soon. I also have updates on both fandom stuff and media consumption. It's all a bit of a hodgepodge.


Fandom

My exchange, kinkluckydip, is all wrapped up! I'm really happy with how it went and still working my way through the collection of amazing works people produced for it. I got six (!!!) gifts, all of which I adored and can whole-heartedly recommend:

a little egg transfer between friends by snickfic  - MCU, Minn-Erva/Valkyrie - oviposition and alien heat/breeding cycles with belly kink, cervix penetration and tentacles. This fic was WILD in the greatest way, and I enjoyed the fun, carefree dynamic between Minn-Erva and Val every bit as much as the iddy kink content.

Feeling Zabimaru by cherryontop - Bleach, Byakuya/Renji - insanely hot, manga-accurate art with bondage and weapon play (because we ALL AGREE every shinigami has at one point or other fucked their zanpakuto, right??).

In the Middle by ambiguityisnoonesfriend  - Star Wars, Poe/Finn/Ben with background Poe/Finn/Ben/Rey - double penetration and inappropriate use of the Force. The balance of attraction and resentment was perfect, and the smut blew my tiny mind, it was SO HOT omg.

Lady Lion by filigranka - Star Wars, Leia/Phasma - beautifully callous First Order Wins noncon. This late treat came in right when I already thought I'd been spoilt to perfection, and made everything even perfect-er. Fair warning it is DARK, but that's why I love it.

lay him down on a bed of thorns by lamiacalls - Star Wars, Ben/Rose - needleplay, skin-sewing and some bloodplay. This was my first time reading anything of the sort, and I was blown away by both how sensual it was and how well it suited the characters. Angst and self-hatred and aaall the good shit.

Sketches by TheseusInTheMaze - Descendants, Evie/Mal - foot kink, clothing kink and loyalty. This was the perfect, kinky Descendants-for-grown-ups treat that captured everything I love about the ship while making feet hotter to me than they've ever been before.


Viewing

Hobbs & Shaw and The Fate of the Furious - I've now seen every single Fast & Furious movie, which is unfortunately the price I pay for marital harmony, only this time I wasn't even mad because Hobbs & Shaw is actually GREAT. No shade on Vin Diesel, but there's only so many hours I can watch him brood before it starts to get old. I liked having him out of the way for a movie. The Rock and his one-liners never get old. I don't think there was a single joke in whole thing I didn't laugh at (yes, I laughed my arse off at Mike Oxmaul and Hugh Janus; yes, there's a chance I'm closer to the target audience for these ridiculous movies than I like to pretend). Seeing Jason Statham shoot up terrorists while nursing a tiny baby also bypassed my entire neocortex and went straight for the lizard brain. 10/10, will almost definitely watch again with friends, pizza and large amounts of beer.

SCP: Overlord - I know next to nothing about the whole SCP thing, but this short film piqued my interest. It was exactly my kind of horror, creepy and atmospheric and mercifully gore-free. I don't have much to say about it except that I loved the concept, thought the execution was really impressive, and would like to see more.

Traffic Cops - I know. I KNOW. My mum, a lifelong fan of police procedurals, has been branching out into reality TV. I decided to take a polite interest. Next thing I knew, I'd spent two full days of the Easter long weekend parked on the couch with every other female family member, white-knuckling it through car chase after car chase and thirsting over Derbyshire PCs Jason Potts and Alex Boniface. Fucking hypnotic, I'm telling you. They've made 21 seasons of this shit. God help me.


Reading

What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro - I went into this book with a healthy amount of skepticism, because I associate the study of body language mostly with dumb urban myths about how if you touch your nose or glance to the right then it proves you're a lying liar who lies. Actually, Navarro is emphatic that there's no reliable way to detect dishonesty through nonverbal behaviour. What you can detect is discomfort, which might mean someone is lying to you but might just as well mean they're afraid they left the stove on or your perfume reminds them of a hated ex. I hope this knowledge reaches the general pop-psych enthusiast community soon. I have heaps of involuntary behaviours straight off one of those 'how to tell you're being lied to' lists, and they're all purely social anxiety related. No, I'm not lying to you because I broke eye contact and put my hand on my neck! I'm just replaying the last joke I told on loop, trying to crystal-ball discern if your laughter was fake and you actually think I'm an unfunny loser.

Overall it was a good book. A lot of it boils down to putting labels on the kinds of subtle physical cues we often pick up on instinctively, but labels can be helpful, I think. 'Jim spent the whole meeting thinning his lips and angling towards the exit' is a lot more compelling than 'Iunno, boss, I just get the vibe we don't have full team buy-in yet'.


Listening

I've set myself a mini-project to include more female vocals in my music - harsh female vocals, especially. I gravitate towards genres that are unfortunately still a bit of a sausagefest, but there are some amazing women out there making metal just as raw and heavy as any male growler.

This week I've had For I Am King on repeat a lot. They're melodic and catchy and have a cool backstory: Alma Alizadeh is an Iranian refugee who started her music career on bass and taught herself to scream on a whim. I'm completely obsessed with their whole second album, I. Prey, Forever Blind and Misery are particularly my jam. 

I had the most glorious recovery day yesterday. The reasons I needed recovery are not very interesting, and have less to do with external pressures than with my own eternally self-defeating conviction that this time, unlike every other time, I'll be able to should myself into having more energy than I do. 

Anyway, I got the house to myself for most of the day, and I used the quiet time for a self-indulgent gothic wallow: I listened to Bauhaus and Dead Can Dance; I cracked out the Good black nailpolish with the nice matte finish, even though my nails are stubs and don't deserve it; I read The Mysteries of Udolpho, which I've never till now gotten past the first few chapters of, because Emily and her father spend the full first 80 pages weeping at the beauty of nature and the purity of their rural lifestyle. I've now made it through the soppiest part and the old man has died, which at least gives reason to Emily's constant weeping. I'm greatly looking forward to the 600 pages of melodramatic creepiness to follow.

I also finally signed up for May the 4th exchange! I'm annoyed with myself for letting it get away from me so long, because it's one of my favourite events of the year and I always hope to lure other people to my ships with an early signup. But the problem with consuming so much Star Wars is that I keep collecting more and more ships, and the letter-writing process gets more and more intensive, and with everything else that's been going on I kept pushing it back. I've squeaked in just under the signup deadline, and my assignment will be a complete surprise, because I've YOLO'd the fuck out of my offers. Usually I at least have a vague idea of the handful of ships I might match on. Can't wait to see what I get.

But most importantly, I've taken a drastic next step in the 2021 Lucy Stop Doomscrolling initiative: I've deleted almost all the time-sinks from my phone, and moved the survivors off my homescreen so I can't idly click them. I'm not banning myself from discord or meme or reddit, but if I want to use any of them, I have to set up my laptop and make a whole thing of it. No checking just because they're there. No taking my dopamine dispenser to the kitchen or the bathroom with me. No waking up, switching off my alarm, and getting straight online because it's right there in my hand.

I feel like a new woman today. It's like the crankiness and fatigue have melted right off. Udolpho has put me in the mood for the outdoors, but it's raining, and I haven't yet decided whether to brave it or to stay home in the nice cosy dry and bake cookies. Either way, it's nice to wake up feeling so calm, with nowhere specific I've promised to be and nothing specific I have to achieve. I should do this more often.

The only guide you'll ever need, from someone who's just done it herself.

Step 1: don't.

My main resolution for 2019 is to give some neglected RL stuff more attention, which kind of clashes with any major fandom projects I might want to set myself. Time and energy are hard enough to come by as it is.

But I'm going to do more fic exchanges - getting into that scene has been so much fun. I love writing prompts. I love writing for other people. I love exploring stories that might never have occurred to me if someone hadn't asked for them. And god, I love the gifts I've received! I swear nothing in fandom has ever felt as heartwarming and sitting down to read fic that some wonderful creative person has tailor-made with my interests in mind. 

I'm going to finish my fucking eternal Reylo WIP, and the rest of that porn AU that I promised to a few commenters. I'm not going to attempt any more novel-length works because I've learnt my lesson and life's hard enough already. For now, with my schedule the way it is, I'll stick to writing short and mid-length fic I can enjoy without stress.

I'm going to lose a lot less time down internet  distraction holes. I'm letting less fandom wank and negativity seep into my headspace so that there's more room for things I actually enjoy.

And I'm going to try - try, mind you - to open myself up a bit more to new media instead of rehashing the same small handful of canons over and over again. And to follow through on the recs people give me. Maybe 2019 is the year I finally make a proper dent in my 'to watch' and 'to read' lists.