Porto, Portugal

Oct. 5th, 2025 09:19 pm
tielan: (kathony 1)
[personal profile] tielan
I have never been to Portugal before, and I probably wouldn't have had it on my list except that someone I know lived there, and for a while I thought they might be amenable to me visiting.

I booked the flight before I realised they weren't, and so had a section of my trip that was basically a blank with nothing much planned.

five days, four nights in Porto, Portugal - no plans but what we make for ourselves )

The thing that never keeps being amazing to me is just how steeped in history Europe is, particularly in their architecture and their town design. Like, buildings that are hundreds of years old, still being used in the function for which they were built. Upgraded and developed and retrofitted on the inside, and sometimes the outside, but still...the function for which they were built.

Amazing.

--

Wednesday evening, I went out to the Jardim do Morro, a garden on the south-side of the city, with beautiful views westwards over the river. I ended up at the restaurant just below it that overlooks the river and had dinner, although I was originally planning to have dinner back at the apartment. Gotta say, the food was excellent: squid ink linguine with garlic and tomato prawns, and a dessert of tiramisu.

--

Thursday...I was kind of hoping to do a tour up to Geres National Park, but I didn't book the space I saw in time, and so that opportunity is gone.

I ended up chilling in various restaurants and coffee shops for the day, heading back to the room to sleep and write for a couple of hours. I had a good lunch and a good dinner and a decent sleep, and was ready (so I thought) for the next day's travel...

FIC: Maybe It Might Be Love (Grease)

Oct. 4th, 2025 12:22 pm
anr: (g2: michael/stephanie: shivering)
[personal profile] anr
Maybe It Might Be Love (1494 words) by anr
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Grease (1978)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kenickie/Betty Rizzo
Characters: Kenickie (Grease), Betty Rizzo
Additional Tags: Post-Movie, Kissing, Touching, engagement ring - Freeform, Marriage Proposal, Wedding Planning
Summary: She takes pity on him. "Don't worry about it, Kenick. I'm not gonna hold you to it." She tries to keep her tone light and not mean, not disappointed. "Your offer? You can take it back."

He blinks, surprised. "You're sayin' no?"



the Pride and Prejudice pilgrimage

Oct. 2nd, 2025 07:37 pm
tielan: (Elementary - Holmes&Watson)
[personal profile] tielan
So, the tour I went on in the UK was a Pride-and-Prejudice pilgrimage, where we were going to study the text, in-depth. It was operated by the people who do the podcast 'Harry Potter and the Sacred Text', a company called 'Common Ground' which does pilgrimages based around literary texts (and may have been influenced or created by the podcast creators), and was hosted by Sarah Stewart-Holland of the Pantsuit Politics podcast, who was my initial point of interest in the pilgrimage.

In the course of the pilgrimage, we would wander the fields of Derbyshire, visit Chatsworth House (which substituted as Pemberley in the 2005 Pride And Prejudice movie), walk past a number of influences in the English literature of the era, and explore the characters while ruminating on the text.

Over the week, we climbed hills and hiked fields, climbed over stiles, and skirted rivers.

UK 2025


It was...pretty good.

In essence, it's doing what fandom often does - picking apart the characters and their motivations, their thoughts, and internalities, and reading into the canon. Sometimes more than the canon allows for.

We were headquartered at the Rutland Arms in Bakewell, a small town in Derbyshire, about 50 minutes from the town of Chesterfield. Ever heard of 'Bakewell tarts'? Welp, this is apparently the town.

The Rutland Arms is an old hotel, which is divided into two parts with a road running between. I suspect one was the stables and the other was the main house/hostel - and they've done both up with rooms in which to stay. I was in the 'old stables' part, sharing a room with another woman, and we got along pretty well.

They've done a great job of keeping it in a certain style, and it's warm. So warm. I can sit around in my sleeping stuff in the evening, instead of having to rug up. That's something I'm going to sincerely resent next winter.

--

Day 1 was meeting and greeting, a brief explanation of how the next few days was going to work, and then a brief class before we had a little free time and dinner.

Day 2: Chatsworth House & Darcy

Day 2 was a 4 mile walk up hill and over dale to Chatsworth House (the externals were used for Pemberley in the 2005 movie version of P&P). The participants were warned about fitness and about walking capability, and given advice on what to pack, and pretty much everyone was ready and able for it. One person struggled a little bit - she was older, and I don't think she'd really considered how much strain the walks would put on her body, but she got through the entire week.

UK 2025 UK 2025


Chatsworth House is pretty impressive, no matter what you think of the 2005 P&P movie. That said, thinking about the degree of wealth that allowed people to build (rebuild, renovate, decorate, develop) places like this boggles the brain.

Everything gleams with artistry and skill, whether the portraits, art, or sculpture through the house, or the design of the rooms or gardens.

Notable things: a portrait of Elizabeth Spencer, portrayed as Diana emerging from the clouds. Leaves from an Australian tree to furnish an artwork by a Sydney artist. The Cascade and Fountain, both of which are gravity fed from a natural reservoir in the hills above the estate.

UK 2025

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And then there was THE ROCKERY. I don't have words for how amazing this was, so have a couple of pictures:

UK 2025 UK 2025


Our study topic the first day was Darcy. Who he was and who he became. The weight of what had happened the summer previous to the story, and the underlying reasons (but not excuses) for his behaviour and sense of pride. Going to the location used as Pemberley for the 2005 movie gave us insight into the kind of family the Darcys might have been, and into how Elizabeth might have felt marrying into such a family.


Day 3: the Long Walk

I started the day with a full breakfast. The hotel offered a hot breakfast as part of our package and rather to my susrprise, given how much I'd eaten the previous day, I was hungry enough to eat it all.

Since it was still before we were due to leave for the day's walk, I headed up to see the church on the hill: All Saints Bakewell. The next day, I discovered there were old Celtic cross stones discovered in the foundations, suggesting its been a place of worship since before the middle ages.

UK 2025


Some of the headstones, though... Multiple children dying before they reached 5, and even those that did teach adolescence of adulthood could be cut off in the prime of life so easily. There was also a set of what looked like coffins, with Human-shaped carvings out of them and a hole in the bottom. Somewhat macabrely, I realised they were probably morgue boxes, made to keep corpses cold, with the hole in the bottom to drain the fluids...

--

Our class contemplation today was on Lizzie Bennett, on the kind of heroine she was, on the choice she made to refuse Mr Collins, and how it came before they learned that Bingley had quit Netherfield (for until that point, it was half-expected that Jane would have married him). With a pilgrimage theme of "status" and a consideration of the precarity of a woman's situation in past eras, there were a lot of thoughts being aired, and we continued to discuss them as we hiked across the countryside with a fantastic local guide, Chris.

There were some lovely oddities along the way: a rubber chicken and a toy t-rex eyeballing us along a laneway, a call to deliver a household of excess appleage, and pears growing over a garden wall. A heifer cow grazed on a hill rather as a goat does, before we walked in silent contemplation by the river swelling past us, while the ducks use it like a roller coaster!

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The hike was long and they warned up - 5-6 miles over the course of the day - and up hill and down dale! But also in the realm of so much beauty and wilderness (and also sheep shit and cow shit), an ancient Roman settlement, and several weirs and cascades.

UK 2025 UK 2025


It ended up being closer to 8 miles! WHEW.


And after dinner, there was the P&P 2005 rewatch, which I skipped and regretted skipping as per an earlier post.

--

Day 4 and 5 of Derbyshire

Our character studies were Mrs Bennett, and Charlotte Lucas, with a little bit of time spent on the sisters. It was an interesting conversation, not least for the variety of opinions given about their motives, their extrapolated history, and the choices they had vs the choices they made.

--

Stannage Edge is a ridge of rock in the Peak District, and is best visually known from the 2005 P&P movie with Keira Knightly standing atop it while the wind swirls her dress around her. I'm sure people have dome the hike in delicate regency-style dresses, but all I had was my emerald green raincoat and Daniel.

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Oh, and clinging to the rock at the top of a hike is a small family joke, c/o B1 who did something like this when she ascended a massive hill in Wales.

There was an old church where Little John was claimed to be buried, which was still locally used. It had a full setup for kids down one side of the church, including toys and books to keep them entertained during the service. So I went to look at the music on the organ to work out what kind of stuff they sang. It was a hymn that I knew, and I checked the tune by humming it.

Several people (mostly from my tour group) gave me slightly shocked looks. And I pointed out (in a normal volume voice) that this is an actively used church because of the 'nursery' space which would be very noisy during the course of a standard church service in which there were families.

UK 2025


It was kind of funny, but also a bit sad. They might have just dismissed it as 'that irreverent Aussie', which is also fair. But my faith isn't in a distant, serious God, but a God who made cats and octopus to slide through ridiculously small spaces, stuck gold and steel and carborundum in rocks, and electricity in frogs' legs (okay, that's where they started to realise it could be harnessed), and created the wide and starry universe, but incarnated to the limitations of a human being.

That's not the norm of religious upbringing, I know. But damn, it's a fun one.

Finally, as we left the church area, I noticed some gentlemen maintaining a local cricket pitch... I suspect this passed the Americans by entirely.

The final dinner was quite good. For once, they set the tables up with nametags, picking people to go into groups rather than letting everyone choose for themselves. There were topical questions, and I think they'd done a careful job of making sure there were introverts and extroverts mixed together so there was no one person stuck trying to manage all the conversation at a table.


Overall, the pilgrimage was enjoyable.

And there's another one organised by the same group (and featuring Sarah Stewart Holland) happening on Emma next year. Which I can't afford, because it's in May which is only 9 months away, and I don't even know if I'll be working then. I surely can't afford as long a holiday as I did this time either. Which is a bummer, because I like Emma rather more than I do Pride and Prejudice and I suspect the profile of the people who go is going to be distinctly different from the P&P group...

But the UK! In May! Again! GRARGH.

portugal

Oct. 1st, 2025 04:46 pm
tielan: four lemming toys at the grand canyon (travel)
[personal profile] tielan
I am really enjoying Porto, except for the feeling of having to DO ALL THE THINGS.

But I think I shall go and catch the train across the river this evening to the gardens on the hill and maybe watch the sunset from there (if I don't get crushed by the madding crowds).

I am thinking about an all-day tour tomorrow, to a national park with some waterfalls and suchlike. I was out on an all-day tour of the Douro vallue yesterday, though. And did a walking tour this morning...

eta: tour is booked out, so it will be a quieter day tomorrow. The alternative that I tried to book fell through (he said he had an accident and won't be doing tours until next week, but I suspect that it's as simple as "there's only one person who's booked for this tour and so it's not worth it").

Probably just as well.

New archive just dropped

Sep. 30th, 2025 03:07 pm
beatrice_otter: Miss Piggy in a superhero costume: Were you looking for flying pigs? (Were you looking for flying pigs?)
[personal profile] beatrice_otter
Back in the day, there were a lot of different fanfic archives. And then AO3 came along, and everyone moved there. And there's a lot to be said for having a central multifandom archive! I love AO3! But there's also something to be said for communities having their own space.

The OTW has always said they their code is open source and they want people to use it to make their own archives, but it is ... not very user-friendly, shall we say. But now there are several people who have gotten their own instance of the OTW-A code up and running for their own archives.

And now there is another! There is now a femslash-focused archive called Sunset! It was just created and is still very tiny, but if you are into femslash, either writing it or reading it, you might find it interesting. It is run by Agnes the Alien.

Sunset is a website established in 2025 dedicated to hosting femslash (F/F) fanworks. It holds pro-freedom of fiction, queer and trans inclusive, anti-racist and generally compassionate ideals. We're here to have fun and love women. Sunset is run by one person, Agnes the Alien, who dreamed this up in zher bedroom. Please be nice to zher!

 ...

THIS IS AN 18+ ARCHIVE.

I'd also like to shout out Squidgeworld, Superlove, Ad Astra, and Comic Fanfiction Authors Archive.



Book review: It Begins by Eule Grey

Sep. 30th, 2025 11:40 am
dannye_chase: (Default)
[personal profile] dannye_chase
 The cover of "It Begins" by Eule Grey. Art by Felix Sadler. A purple background with a frame made of white spiderwebs. A black man in a shirt and waistcoat is embraced by a white man in a hoodie. A shadowy form looms behind them.
ALT

New book review!

It Begins by Eule Grey (Queer romance/horror)

Cover art by Felix Sadler

“Maybe I’m dangerous.”

It Begins hooked me immediately into its mystery, which manages to be both sexy and creepy. Unreliable narrators Sid and Byron do their best to cling to the men they love in order to escape loneliness, confusion, and the horror behind it all: the ghost of an unloved man, trapped in a room deep in Oxford University. The sex is visceral and so are the scares, and the tension in the book never lets up. The author answers all questions at the end, which I found very satisfying.

Check out It Begins for an exploration of some very unhealthy relationships contrasted with some remarkably good ones: romantic, platonic, and familial. Obsession and possession in the book are both a damning influence and the escape from it, depending on who’s pulling the strings. It’s a murky, frightening, at times disturbing story where anybody who wants a happily ever after is going to have to fight like hell for it.

See all my book reviews

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

Quick update

Sep. 29th, 2025 11:07 pm
nonesensed: My cat is a happy cat (Default)
[personal profile] nonesensed
Injured my shoulder, so my writing is going slowly right now. Have a good massage therapist though, so I'll be right as rain in no time. Just extra slow re: my sysiphean catch-up on posts and comments on here - thank you for your patience 💗

Btw, I've been listening to Florence + The Machine's new single on repeat since it came out about a month ago and I still enjoy it greatly:
crantz: Superman and Batman high-fiving like bosses (comics high five)
[personal profile] crantz
I've been pretty unsatisfied with my art lately - just in time to start figure drawing in university! Yay! I've drawn a wiener from life now. Anyway.

As I mentioned last post I think I stumbled onto why while looking at old art where a scanned unfinished comic showed how I used to construct bodies and how it made their posing much more dynamic. I've uploaded the page + the drawing I tried out after using the method of my City of Heroes character Silver Cygnet.

clicky clicky to see pics )

I'm already pretty pleased but as I'm learning in figure drawing I absolutely need to work on doing more dynamic pelvis tilts. They will save me.

I've got to draw a life-size drawing of myself in the style of an artist I've chosen for that class, btw. I've chosen Charles M. Schulz and managed to get an okay from the teacher. Making me the only student who won't need a full length mirror and I'm allowed to use big ol' chisel sharpies.

Uhhh what else.

I'm having lots of Big Emotions lately, but I'm going to bottle those up deep inside where they belong.

I did a list of the movies I've been watching since the start of movie night (and I didn't get all of them) and the list is over 100 movies! Oh my gosh! I think that's more movies I'd seen in my life up until then! It's so neat.

My fellow residents of Hamster Haus are going in tomorrow to interview for a pair of kittens - they managed to choose *identical* cats of the exact type I find most boring but I'm told they're sweet and that's more important than aesthetics. But man, what are the odds. IDENTICAL.

Yuletide is revving up.

I have assignments due for Crossworks and Trick or Treat, but I am confident. OTOH every time I actually post about an assignment it's like I put a dark curse on it, which is weird.

More on the big emotions, I'm picking at stray hairs to the point I've blistered both my index fingers so I think I might be having some sort of ongoing breakdown which I have previously said I'm having with the way I keep checking tags for Yuletide and then before I said the way I couldn't sleep because of Lorwolf and it's fine, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I have grapes in the fridge.
anr: (twd: daryl: without you)
[personal profile] anr
Look Up From the Pavement (1941 words) by anr
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alicia Clark/Nick Clark
Characters: Alicia Clark, Nick Clark
Additional Tags: Incest, Fantasizing, Sex, 5 Times, Pre-Series, Season 1, season 4, Missing Scenes, Drug Use, Masturbation, Pining
Summary: He's starting to sweat again, his gut tightening and his pulse kicking into high gear, his dick hardening like he's not in withdrawal and tangled around his sister, her body warm everywhere it's touching him.

(aka, Five times Nick fantasizes about Alicia while high.)



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