magibrain | Reading

Dream roundup time! It's only been three weeks since the last one, but I've had some convoluted dreams lately.

( Dreams from March. )

Finally: I think I dreamt last night that Robert of The Goes Wrong Show turned into a small aeroplane and Chris turned into an engine? They were indoors - in a restaurant or something, rather than a hangar - so it was a very small aeroplane: still larger than a person, certainly, but able to fit in a room. It was strangely intimate, because Chris was nestled against Robert's aeroplane 'neck', where the forward edge of the wing met the fuselage, and rumbling/purring.

I am now weirdly emotionally invested in aeroplane/engine slash, and I don't know what to do with this feeling.

Wait, did this happen because I was talking yesterday about what it would be like to be next to Robert Grove on a flight?

twistedchick

This is a prayer for Baba Yaga. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for the magic of chicken feet, the heat of old hates, the way old bones hurt. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for hat knitters, sign-carriers, Congress-callers. Old women make up the Resistance.

This is a prayer for casserole-bakers, newsletter-writers, nuisances. Old women make up the Resistance.

This is a prayer for phone-bankers, neighborhood-canvassers, early-voters. Old women make up the Resistance.

When the Moon is full, I call to Her.

I bring coals for Her oven. I bring flour, to cover Her tracks. I bring paprika salve for Her old, sore joints.

I bring a list of complicit women. I bring a doll poked with pins and bound with vines. I bring a bottle of ancient anger.

“Come, Baba Yaga,” I say. “Come find me alone in the woods.”

She comes as she always comes: after a long, scary wait.

She comes as she always comes: riding a mortar, a mop handle, a big, black bird.

She comes as she always comes: hungry, grumpy, alone.

“Old One,” I cry, “We are deep in the darkness. We stand on the front lines, but we are afraid.”
Old One,” I say, “We are tired, our legs get shaky, our fingers are sore.”

“Old One,” I whisper, “It seems to us as if we have worked all our lives and only gone backwards.”

“Oh, shut up,” Baba Yaga says, grabbing all the cookies and putting them into her bag. “Give me those for my cat,” She demands, pointing to liver mousse, sausages, cheese.

She pulls down the skin below my eyes. “Not enough yogurt,” She decides.

“Oh,” She says, turning her chicken hut around and going way past the speed limit, “You’ll be fine. I saw it in some tea leaves. This all works out in the end.”

“Build you a fence made of bones,” She says. “Write this on your wrist: ‘By my mother’s blessing.’”

This is a prayer to Baba Yaga. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for women in sneakers. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for one more phone call. This is a prayer for Resistance.

-- by Hecate Demeter

* * *

She did not write one for Ostara, but I found this one, from near the same time of the year a few years ago, and I think it's suitable on the eve of NO KINGS.

rionaleonhart

Here are a handful of little things I've posted elsewhere recently!

Firstly, I received an anonymous ask about writing on Tumblr, which I thought I'd share here with my response:

How do you write for a variety of fandoms, especially ones you're new to? I can't do that without obsessively reviewing the source material, and consequently don't get any writing done. I want your ability!

My writing process is essentially:

- get into a canon
- devour the canon until I have a good sense of the characters’ voices
- get a fic idea
- OKAY NOW WRITE WRITE WRITE, WRITE BEFORE IT’S GONE

The trouble is that, although there’s a period in which I can hear the characters’ voices clearly, that sense of voice fades very quickly! I have to get the fic written in the narrow window in which I have the characters’ voices in my head, or I’ve missed my opportunity and the fic will forever languish unfinished.

Because writing fanfiction is such a time-sensitive thing for me, my fics tend to be short, and the writing period is often brief and intense; a lot of my fics go from conception to completion over just a few days. Some of my writing takes longer, but, the longer it takes, the greater the risk that I’ll lose my ability to write for those characters. I’ll sometimes go back to a shelved fic and finish it the next time I revisit the canon.

I hope you’re able to get more writing done! I don’t know exactly what things you’re aiming to write, but, if you’re struggling with long things, I can suggest giving shorter fics a try. Everyone’s different, of course, but that’s what works for me!

Secondly,

abyssal_sylph tagged me for a meme on Tumblr: The last fictional character in your photo library is the person you gonna sit next to on a 8 hour flight!

My reaction was very much 'oh, God, I hope it’s not Robert Grove, please don’t let it be Robert Gr—'

(GIF by CornleyPolyTechnicDramaSociety on Tenor)

It’s Robert Grove, of course, and I am his captive audience. I suppose I’d better brace myself for eight hours of him performing monologues at me and expecting applause. At least the experience might cure me of my terrible attraction to him. (Let’s be honest: it will probably make it worse.)

Finally, a tiny Goes Wrong Show ficlet, in response to a prompt from JennyC on Discord: Robert's point of view after Summer Once Again.

( The Goes Wrong Show, Robert and Dennis, 250 words, set after Summer Once Again. )

If you have any Goes Wrong ficlet requests of your own, send them my way! I am, of course, going to be biased towards suggestions involving Robert; I am willing to have a crack at non-Robert-centric concepts, but I can't guarantee that Robert won't sneak in there.

rionaleonhart

Every so often, I post an analysis of how I chose my recent fic titles! I wasn't expecting to be posting another roundup only three months after the last, but I've launched into this year with a startling quantity of writing.

In reverse chronological order, my fic titles so far this year:

( Rambling about why I chose fic titles. )

My last couple of Goes Wrong Show fics have been less popular than my others on AO3; it's a small fandom, so nothing gets a huge readership, but the drop from around fifteen kudos to two kudos still caught my attention. I'm not panicking about this - they got a lovely response here on Dreamwidth, so I'm happy! - but it did make me wonder whether there was a reason. Did people drift away from the fandom after Christmas Carol Goes Wrong ended its run in theatres? Did I mess up the summaries somehow?

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise the answer: my last two fics heavily reference Robert banging Chris's mother, and it simply had not occurred to me that this may not be a selling point for the majority of Robert/Chris shippers. I forget sometimes that not everyone is as delighted by this as me.

rionaleonhart

Yet more Robert/Chris Goes Wrong fanfiction! And, yet again, I have managed to sneak Robert banging Chris's mother in here. It's my favourite thing.

Title: The Verge
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 14
Pairing: Robert/Chris, with some Robert/Celia
Wordcount: 3,500
Summary: Chris steels himself. “Do you ever feel something might... happen between us?”

( The Verge )

rionaleonhart

By wordcount, The Goes Wrong Show is now my fifth most written fandom of all time, even discounting the fifty-plus Goes Wrong fills I wrote for the Three-Sentence Ficathon. This is an insane development; I started writing for this fandom two and a half months ago. Everything else in the top five is something I've been into for a decade or more.

I wonder what's made me fall so hard into writing for this fandom; slapstick stage plays are not my usual fandom fare! My best guess is that it's a combination of factors:

- There's enough Goes Wrong canon for me to get to know and care about the characters, but, at the same time, there is not enough Goes Wrong canon to satisfy me, so I'm uncontrollably driven to create more.

- In particular, there's very little Goes Wrong canon that shows the characters offstage! There's enough to get me interested in what happens offstage, and a couple of fascinatingly insane canonical details about the characters' personal lives (I am never going to be over the fact that Robert has canonically slept with both Chris and Dennis's mothers), but their offstage lives are left as a largely blank canvas that I can't resist painting on. There's a very obvious stretch of unexplored territory, and that sort of thing is always going to invite fanworks.

- Although this is a small fandom and my fics for it don't generally get a large readership, it's got enough life and passion in it to feel like I'm sharing with an enthusiastic small community, rather than dropping my work into a void. I've received a lot of really lovely comments, which have been very encouraging ♥

- I find Robert and Chris's voices very easy to get into. They're both middle-class, English and inclined towards slightly pretentious and/or old-fashioned phrasing, and, let's be honest, so am I.

- I'm very attracted to Robert Grove (as played by Henry Lewis), which is a fun novelty; it's pretty rare for me to find anyone seriously attractive. As a consequence, my writing about him has a refreshingly genuine horniness that I hadn't realised was lacking in a lot of my shipfic! It's very easy for me to write about Chris being attracted to Robert, and to believe wholeheartedly in that attraction, however unhappy Chris might be about it.

- Robert Grove is just a very fun character to write. I think a large part of it is as simple as that. He's loud, he's imposing, he's larger-than-life, he blithely causes problems for everyone, and everything he says or does is ridiculous. Plus he's straightforward in a way that proves extremely handy when writing shipfic; I've often had to struggle with characters who refuse to acknowledge their own feelings or dance endlessly around each other, so it's refreshing to write a character who will decide 'we should have sex' and then make that opinion very clear.

- It's been a long time since I last got heavily into a comedy fandom, and I'd forgotten how much fun it is to write comedy!

I'm so glad I was introduced to this stupid show. This is the best time I've had in a fandom in years.

sholio

We went and saw Project Hail Mary this afternoon. It was terrific. I loved it.

You can read my (positive and spoilery) reactions to the Project Hail Mary book at this post from 2024.

If spoilers matter to you, I recommend very strongly going in as unspoiled as possible, including not watching the trailer.

( Talking about the movie some more, and movie vs book )

sholio

I posted some more Babylon 5 fic in the last couple of days: a new Londo/G'Kar fake dating fic plus a new chapter of the B5 catacomb WIP.

It's been a year this month since I started watching the show - my first post under the B5 tag was posted March 3, 2025 after watching the first couple of episodes. Still completely gone on it! I regret nothing!

In other news, NYT gift link to an article about Paul Brainerd, creator of Aldus PageMaker and inventor of the term "desktop publishing." This was a fascinating nostalgia read for me because, while I had no idea of the actual history, this guy (and Adobe and Apple) created the professional world of my young adulthood. My first job out of college in (I think) 1998 was working in the layout department of a newspaper that had just recently (last few years) gone from paste-up to an all-Mac layout room using a program similar to PageMaker from a third-party software maker that no longer exists. PageMaker - which I also learned to use in the college computer lab, and later at work - was the direct predecessor of InDesign, widely used even today. It's interesting to think back on those old newspaper days and how thoroughly they shaped me and continue to shape me. The computer/layout/marketing experience I got as a layout artist in the late 90s and 2000s has been immensely useful for my current self-publishing career.

It continues to be horrendously cold. We've been sitting under a high-pressure ridge and have had gorgeous sunny days that are absolutely freezing. It was -20F when I got up this morning and it's 0F out there right now. My husband's (uni-age) students are over here today because they wanted to help him dig out an ancient non-working snowblower that someone gave us ages ago from a snowbank and try to get it working again. (We do actually have TWO other snowblowers. This is just for fun.)

I took this picture on a walk up our driveway to the highway to get the mail a couple of days ago:

a long expanse of snow-covered road with piles of snow on each side

At least at this time of year, the sun warms it up SOMEWHAT during the day - in January it can sit at -40 24/7 for weeks; at this time of year we're still experiencing 20-40 degree increases during the day .... which is still barely enough to push us above 0F. The 10-day forecast shows that it will be glacially (haha) warming up, but still may not have crawled into above-freezing temps by the end of the month. UGH, I'M READY FOR SPRING.

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: bouncy

rionaleonhart

I think this is the worst title I've ever given a fic.

Fun fact: I've now officially posted an entire quarter of the Robert/Chris fanfiction on AO3. I think this means there's not enough Robert/Chris fanfiction on AO3.

Title: Mixed Beans
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 14
Pairing: Robert/Chris, with references to Robert/Celia
Wordcount: 2,700
Summary: Robert books a romantic getaway with Chris's mother. There is a misunderstanding.

( Mixed Beans )

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

rydra_wong

James Davis Nicoll: Let’s Talk This Over: What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed

Yes I pre-ordered it blind, have you even met me.

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: cheerful

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

rionaleonhart

Yet more fanfiction for The Goes Wrong Show!

Here's a game you can play: see if you can guess what Chris named the main characters in his play before you read this, on the assumption that Chris just asked himself 'what names do gay men have?'

Title: Ad Libitum
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 14
Pairing: Robert/Chris
Wordcount: 1,800
Summary: Chris and Robert play lovers on stage. Things do not go as planned.

( Ad Libitum )

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: happy

sholio

... resulting from making that vid this past week.

One thing that I was thinking about is the sheer challenge of costuming this show, because most of the costumes are directly patterned after their manga/anime looks. So whereas most of the time in most shows, you can probably source the characters' everyday wear from basic mass-produced clothes or even vintage or secondhand shops, aside from really specific superhero costumes or whatever, this is more like a historical production in that everything has to be made from scratch. (Only, if possible, worse, because unless you're doing an unusual time period, normally you could probably go to the warehouses of Elizabethan or Regency costumes or Roman togas that no doubt exist.)

Here, even the relatively normal clothes are directly echoing something specific, like the patterns on

season 2 character's

Tashigi's

distinctive shirt, or

another season 2 character's

Miss Valentine's lemon-patterned

dress.

Anyway, it's just interesting to think about. Even the simplest costumes are more complicated than they seem, because it's not just an unusual shirt that the costume people found at a vintage shop; they're having to explicitly pattern-match or color-match or style-match items from the manga and anime.

( More specific spoilers about characters' fighting skills )

Profile

magibrain

Navigation

April 2019

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Page Summary

rionaleonhart - And Only Two Of Them Feature Robert Grove. Which Is Admittedly Fifty Percent Of The Dreams Here.
twistedchick - This is a prayer to Baba Yaga; this is a prayer of resistance.
rionaleonhart - When The Plane Landed, He Would Invoice Me For My Attendance.
rionaleonhart - I Can't Help It If I Have Immaculate Taste.
rionaleonhart - Fanfiction: The Verge (The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Chris)
rionaleonhart - Unhand Me, You Fiend.
sholio - Project Hail Mary movie
sholio - A quiet Saturday
princessofgeeks - Catch you on the flip side
rionaleonhart - Fanfiction: Mixed Beans (The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Chris)
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec
rydra_wong - NEW CAMERON REED NOVEL OUT APRIL 7. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
princessofgeeks - You're all fired
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec
princessofgeeks - vid bunny
princessofgeeks - fic discussion needed!!!
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec
rionaleonhart - Fanfiction: Ad Libitum (The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Chris)
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry vid rec
sholio - A handful of random One Piece Live Action thoughts ...

Style Credit

Style: Night Sea for Tranquility III by branchandroot

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Mar. 28th, 2026 08:04 pm