posted by bzedan at 11:40am on 12/04/2025 under meta
I think one can do pinned here? Or "sticky"?? Anyway, I just went and cleaned up some weird code that the linkback from my WP plugin was doing and figured that I should note: more often than not, what you see here is just mirroring my blog-blog! But I do reply to comments here, obvi, the posts just *originate* mostly from another place.
In the spirit of putting some useful things right up top, here's a the intro from my Tumblr, where I am the most active:
After the rock wall, Tanis had them talking to dwarven warriors and practising fighting moves that Emily gamely tried to imitate. She’d never had to do much with her sword, just quick chops and slashes that didn’t require a precise hit. Using a dummy sword that felt like a decent match for her weapon’s fighting form, Emily was uncomfortably aware that she wouldn’t last long in a true fight.
Tanis, on the other hand, was in her element, putting years of teaching practical self-defence to good use. Emily watched her while trying to parry the moves of a very patient partner. Tanis was practically glowing with joy through a layer of sweat, her fine hair curling with the damp. Emily felt the sting of the flat of her partner’s blade on her leg.
“Next time I’ll bruise you with the edge!” The dwarf, a primly moustached person named Lorien, laughed, dancing out of Emily’s reach, her beautifully filigreed prosthetic arm as gleaming as her smile.
“Probably!” Emily joined her laughter and tried to keep up the pace.
Even Tanis got tired of sparring after a while. She was actually, Emily quickly realised, probably physically tired, instead of just out of breath and bored, like Emily.
“Oh shit, you should eat, woman.” Emily recognised Tanis’ sleepy gaze. “Then probably nap, at least.” She chided herself for forgetting about Tanis’ humanity.
“I should have remembered.” Tanis waved farewell to her new friends and lightly leaned against Emily as they made their way to the dining hall. “But it’s easy to forget when there isn’t any sun to go by.”
“And when you’re having so much fun.” Emily lightly punched Tanis in the shoulder before wrapping her arm around her waist. “Also-and, when you’re so awesome at all you do it’s hard to remember you still have some mortal weaknesses.”
Tanis snorted, but Emily felt her straighten up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, you’re made for stuff like this, I was just born into it.”
The dining hall was as busy as it’d been both the night before and that morning, when Tanis had grabbed a bowl of hot cereal.
“I wonder if there’s ever a lull?” Emily dunked bread into the stew Tanis insisted she take. “Like, some 4am equivalent.”
Tanis shrugged. “I bet not.” She smiled. “Glad I made you eat?”
“Sure, I mean, I don’t mind it and since you insist that it weirds you out if I don’t—”
“It’s like being chauffeured, but with food.”
“Ha. But, yeah, this is a particularly enjoyable meal. I fucking love stew.”
Tanis laughed hard, almost choking on a hunk of bread. Emily slowed her chewing, tilting her head with questioning concern.
Shaking her head, Tanis gulped water, steadying her breathing. “Goofy-sleepy. Though the unrelenting intensity with which you love stew is pretty fantastic.”
Emily just shook her head, but made a show of the next spoon of stew, almost bringing Tanis to tears of laughter. She was still giggling when Emily tucked her into bed.
***
Emily still hadn’t figured out what to do with herself while Tanis slept. If Ian or the hare were around, they’d play cards or argue or sit in friendly silence. With both of them still out, exploring the hold, all she had for company were her own thoughts. Emily snorted. She’d prefer even José right now over the echoing chamber of her brain.
It wasn’t that Emily didn’t like being alone–raising a half-dozen teenagers will teach anyone the value of solitude–but when Tanis slept and ate it reminded Emily of Tanis’ mortality. That had been something they used to share, Emily realised, straightening up from where she’d slumped on a fainting couch in the sitting room. It was the idea of living forever after Tanis’ death that picked at her subconscious.
Tanis wouldn’t age in the Sidhe and she’d never get sick, but that wouldn’t be enough to protect her if she was killed in battle or fell from the top of a rock-climbing wall. Emily crunched herself back into the couch. There was no non-creepy path of thought available, there.
Emily tried some hippy-dippy relaxation breathing Tanis had taught her, but got bored, so she started doing push-ups. She’d never really played with the physical allowances of being Folk in the Sidhe beyond walking genuinely stupid amounts.
If you were a fairy and wanted a gym body, how did you get cut if your muscles didn’t tear and heal? Or–Emily noticed she’d passed her mundane best for push-ups–did they still work the same but the process didn’t cause fatigue?
Emily wished someone else was around to bounce theory off of. She rolled flat on her back and stared at the ceiling, which was more sculpted rock artfully imitating nature. Holding up her hand, Emily looked at her palm. There were indentations from the rug, but no other marks that would indicate she’d been burned by iron a couple days before. She checked her other hand; in case she was wrong about which one she’d burned. Which, Emily mused, was even more upsetting.
She dragged herself upright and stood, looking at the bedroom door. Lurking around while her girlfriend slept wasn’t going to be the best use of her time. She should explore. Dvergr Hold was huge, she should be able to get productively lost in it. Absent-mindedly checking her belt for her knife, she slipped into the hall, softly latching the door behind her, even though there was no way Tanis could hear it from their room and the noise wouldn’t have woken her up anyway.
It’s been a moment since I’ve done a tab cleanout post but please take that as me being a bit more on top of things. A real nasty bunch of hot weeks sapped me for a lot of those small tasks, like keeping on top of links. Time to make up for it!
Thoughts on Margaret Saville from Frankenreads. I found this in an email to myself (one of my messy ways of taking notes) from 2018 while cleaning out my inbox. A brief and interesting moment of chewing on the shape of Frankenstein. In reply to this email I’d sent myself a wayback link to The recipient of all those letters about Frankenstein writes back at the Washington Post, which is: fine. I feel like I read something really snappy from Margaret’s POV at some point, but if I go looking for it now I’m lost. status: shared
The Kingdomites: Brutal Frontier Three Pack!!! over on Itchio from Hodag RPG. I try not to just buy RPGs willy-nilly as I just don’t play them, and getting things just to read the rules and look at the pictures is not always advisable. Hence this just sitting in my tabs and not even shoved into one of the to-get lists I have on Itch. But! Now I have picked up instead the H’Ween Mega-Zine 2, because what drew me to the Kingdomites was the cover and the drawing style. And this little free zine is all that kind of goodies. status: resolved, I guess is the best way to put it
I Thought I Heard Your Voice Just Then, also over at Itchio, from Hagai Palevsky. This is a good comic that is downloadable for free but for $6 you can look at the development files and I am very eye emoji about it. I just am very bad at spending money, so it’s been sitting in my tabs ages. status: purchased
Both (not)Solitaire from the always great Puzzmo team and Solitaire Alone Together from Nolen Royalty are too dangerous to my time to keep open as tabs any longer. God, I love Solitaire. status: closed, but now I have their names memorised and they’re in my history so I can find them as desired
Fiddlercrab.info is one of those sites that got built early in the internet and remains maintained. It is what it says on the tin: crabs. It’s great. Relatedly is a tab for the Wikipedia entry on Nggam, a divination of the actions of spiders or crabs. status: moved to REF: Assorted
Wikipedia entries for HitClips and their music video progeny, VideoNow. I am not the one in the household who does things with tech but I’m fascinated by the concept of making one’s own HitClips. I think I had the tabs open on my phone so I could go look things up about them, which I now have. Here’s something on Hackaday about modding them. Ooh, and here’s a charmingly, cluttered little set of the user pamphlets on Archive. status: reviewed, finally
This has helped some, though currently I also have several windows with “working” layouts
a thing I’m writing, open in Ellipsus, as are my reference docs, and then also a couple associated “quick lookup” tabs
tabs associated with Yuletide 2026 signup, as well as my notes, Yuletide letter, and the tagset
a scraps window where a movie is playing, but also some tabs are open with Hoopla for what I want to watch next, and also tabs related to the newsletter I’m supposed to be finishing
First off, thank you for writing for me!! I'm already overjoyed. This is my third year doing Yuletide and I shook up what fandoms I selected this year and I'm excited to see what comes of it.
I am fine with all POVs, tenses, unusual formats and ratings (in fact, I quite like when people play with form!). I tend to like short fic, but also I just like to read stories <3
My AO3 name is also bzedan, and I am always open to treats. Both of my fandoms this year are movies so they're easy to take in in a go.
I love (and I don't even know how relevant these are to my requested fandoms, I'm just sharing vibes): found family, hurt-comfort, guard dog relationships, loyalty, praise-kink, epistolary fiction or anything related (transcripts! snippets of archived materials!), queer characters, purple prose and excessive scene and food description, worldbuilding, goofy metaphors and similes, domestic cosiness, animals and nature, "one last job" or "we gotta save the barn!" situations, second chances, time loops, fingers in the mouth.
I'm totally fine with: canon-typical violence, gore, 'depressing' existential concepts, horror/creepiness, emotional loss, change-the-setting/time AUs.
General DNWs: pregnancy of any type or stage, death of requested characters who don't die in canon, real-life current political figures, explicit non-con, bestiality, child/adult sex, faecal play,
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice): Jupiter Jones (Jupiter Ascending), Caine Wise, Stinger Apini, Worldbuilding (Jupiter Ascending)
No canon-specific DNW
Additional notes: I am a big ol' fan of all the stuff in this movie. The trans and queer coded-ness, the EXCESS of everything, being a full ass adult dragged into a fantasy, you could literally write a handbook for their version of the DMV and I'd be like "yes, thank you, I am blessed." Jupiter and Caine's relationship can't even be called guard dog coded, it is just explicitly that. I love them. I don't need sexy stuff with them, but hey, if you're feeling it. I am also just happy with them existing around each other, how does Caine feel about Jupiter's family situation? Has he cleaned a toilet? I love the rugged loner so of course also Stinger Apini. You mean in this movie Sean Bean is in it and he [Grover as Charles Dickens voice] doesn't die! Yes, thank you. This determined single dad with his daughter who has the most opera-style illness deployed as a plot pivot, sure, I love it. This is a fairy tale. What was his life before Caine crashed into it again, him and his daughter and his bees? I could: go on and on but I shall end here.
If you want to scope out things I've reblogged (not that many, but you can take the vibes temp of what I like) for this movie, see my Jupiter Ascending tag on Tumblr. I regret forever I wasn't able to take part in the writing challenge that came up around the movie!! :'(
파묘 | Exhuma (2024)
My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice): Kim Sang-deok, Lee Hwa-rim, Ko Yeong-geun, Yoon Bong-gil
Canon-specific DNW: I personally do not think Hwa-rimand Bong-gil are having sex, and I would not like to see it. At max, that softness/tension you see between early Scully and Mulder in X-Files. These people would give their lives for each other but not from romantic love. Are Sang-deok and Yeong-guen boning? Shit, you could convince me if your heart is so moved.
Additional notes: One of the things that really locked this movie in for me was that the interpersonal relationship between the shaman and the others is so rich and so easily conveyed in small moments, you know how these people work together, how they feel about each other and that there is history we don't know. I would love to see previous gigs the four of them have done together! I would love domestic or work-a-day moments between either pair! I'd happily read a series of bitchy emails or texts between all four, or see how their lives are after the events of the film.
There's some heavy history in this movie!! It is very key to the movie and I am really grateful to see it, for me it's a Gothic horror in that the history and the environment come together to shape the terror. If you feel confident in the scary, go for it but don't feel like you have to.
My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice): Kim Sang-deok, Lee Hwa-rim, Ko Yeong-geun, Yoon Bong-gil
No canon-specific DNW
Additional notes: Listen, very honest here. It was in the low 90fs inside my apartment for multiple weeks this month and so the idea that I needed three fandoms to request slipped my mind until I was signing up. So thank goodness Library of Babel, you're always there for me, Library of Babel.
Anyway, I'm a freak for Borges, I made a Hypercard-esque interpretation of La casa de Asterión. Go off, have fun, there are all the letters in the world and all the ways to combine them.
Later, Emily shook her head. “Everybody here has more vitality than any other group of Folk I’ve encountered.” She and Tanis had claimed one of the rooms in the suite for their own, leaving Ian, the sylph and the hare to figure out their own arrangements. She paced back and forth while Tanis got into bed. “They’re so much more satisfied with life. I mean, the Folk at the Institute are mostly happy, sure, but they keep to themselves, or in their own little groups. Here, though, all those little groups work together.”
“They have a community.” Tanis snuggled under the thick duvet. “It’s how they deal with the whole boredom of immortality thing. Ivonne was telling me about it in the dining hall.”
“Was Ivonne the one with the gothy earring chain?”
“No, that was Able. Ivonne had the John Waters moustache.”
Emily bit her lip. “Right. So, is their artistic pursuit of technology part of dealing with ennui too?”
“It’s always theory with you. Come to bed.”
“But I don’t need sleep,” Emily frowned. Realisation dawned. “Oh.” She smiled.
***
Tanis was still asleep when Brids brought around coffee and cake the next morning. Ian stopped trying to teach José cards and descended on the tray like a hawk.
“Dude, leave some for the person who actually has to eat.” Emily made shooing motions with one hand, pouring cream into her cup with the other.
“She can go to the dining hall too,” Ian protested around crumbs, but he stepped back from the tray.
Emily turned to the dwarf, who was smiling at their exchange. “More importantly, we are grateful to you Brids, for your hospitality and that of Dvergr hold. I feel comfortable in saying we truly owe you.”
Brids bowed. “I am honoured at your faith in our trustworthiness. We enjoyed your company last night and hope that your business allows you to either stay with us longer or visit again when your journey is over. There may be many of us, but visitors are still a joy to our community—equal to any hospitality we can provide.”
“Speaking of which, now is the time to talk business. The hare—” Emily looked around, giving Ian a questioning glance when she didn’t see the animal.
“He took the camera some hours ago to ‘go document’,” José offered.
Ian and Emily sighed simultaneously, Emily adding a head shake as she continued talking to the dwarf. “The hare, who I hope is not making a nuisance of himself, said that the expansiveness of your folks’ domain made you an excellent source of information.”
“True.” Brids turned the braided end of his moustache around a finger. “Though I can’t guarantee we know exactly what you need.”
“As we know nothing, any scrap will help.” Emily looked down, into Brids’ eyes. “A woman named Abby, who I raised as a child, has disappeared. She kept regular communication with me, so a break this long only points to trouble.” She gave Brids all the information she had, from Abby’s mundane origins to the forest she was last associated with. The dwarf listened well, asking few questions of clarification.
“Right.” Brids nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll see what our networks know. Like I said, I can’t promise we’ll be of much help, but we pay attention to the dryads and there’s a mutual friendship between our groups. That provides us with a better chance of our knowing their movements than something indifferent, like sylphs.” He smiled at José. “No offence intended.”
“None taken. We’re pretty much indifferent about everything,” the sylph inclined his head politely.
Emily scoffed, not quite under her breath. Brids nodded once more and told the group they were free to make themselves at home while he gathered information.
After he left, Emily stomped her foot. “Shit, I wanted to ask about that ‘winter coming in’ comment he dropped when we first got here.”
“It can wait until he gets back.” Ian shrugged. “Right now, you should probably wake up your lady before I decide to risk her wrath and eat the last cake.”
Emily gave him a light shove and went to her room. She took her time waking Tanis and when they re-entered the suite’s shared sitting room the breakfast tray was bare except for a note from Ian.
Tanis laughed as she read it. “He says, ‘Worth wrisking’—that’s with a “w”, by the way—’wrath, not fair you get to have cake and eat it too. Speaking of empty air, we’ll see if I can figure our jolly friend.” She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, alliteration and abstractness.”
“It’s obviously contagious.’ Emily grinned at Tanis before glancing at the note. “He’s out with José, trying to make nice and get his story.” She added, with a grin, “and he ate your breakfast cake because we were otherwise occupied.”
Tanis shook her head. “You guys are weird.”
***
Emily let Tanis take the lead for their day. That meant after a rousing and delicious breakfast in the dining hall for Tanis and possibly the best cup of tea Emily had ever had, they ended up in a gymnasium of sorts that boasted a frighteningly expansive rock-climbing wall.
“Makes sense, though.” Emily squinted up at it, glad to see the majority of climbers were wearing rigging.
“Wanna give it a try?” Tanis’ eyes sparkled.
“Oh, hell no. You go wild, though.”
Before Emily finished her sentence, Tanis had skipped off to the dwarf who appeared to be in charge. Emily smiled and glanced around before sitting on a bench carefully designed to look like a natural outcropping of rock.
“Not your bag, eh?”
Emily turned to the dwarf leaning against the wall next to her. “Not so much, no.” Sitting, their heads were at the same height and she was grateful not to have to crane her neck. “Did we meet at dinner last night?” She blushed. “It’s not that I can’t tell people apart . . .”
“No, but I can understand you being uncertain. It’s a whole mess of faces in the canteen. I’m often unsure who I’ve met there.”
“You are totally politic, I’m impressed.” She smiled, adding, “you can call me Emily.”
“A pleasure and an honour. I go by Tegan, more often than not.” They cocked their head. “You’re with that motley group looking for the dryad girl, right?”
Emily raised an eyebrow. “As an example of how quickly and accurately Dvergr hold gets information, that is quite impressive. I should stop worrying about finding out what we need to know.”
Tegan laughed, throwing their head back. “Well, I’m also a professional incorrigible gossip, so I get news first.”
“To spread it around?” Emily watched Tanis traversing the climbing wall, reminding herself that both Tanis and her belayer knew what they were doing. “It’s your job to go to communal areas to distribute and collect information?”
“Quite.” The dwarf’s brow furrowed. “I can’t tell from your tone what you think of that.”
Emily kept watching Tanis. “In human society, or a lot of it, it’d probably be considered spying and big-brother-y, which is a bad thing. But it makes perfect sense in a group so spread out, with little long-distance communication. Gossip is also a great way to manipulate a group.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.” Emily looked back at Tegan. “Unless you all are hiding a cruelly treated slave caste somewhere that we’re not seeing because we’re tourists, then this is probably the most stable, sane and least stagnated society I’ve seen in the Sidhe.” She chuckled. “Hell, even if you did have a dwarven impoverished world you’d still be better than most, here or home. So, what I think is bravo, friend.” She clapped the dwarf on the shoulder. “Of course, it helps that I benefit from the practise.”
“Doesn’t it always?”
They watched the rock climbers in companionable silence. Tegan pulled out a pipe and Emily rolled a cigarette, keeping her eyes off Tanis, who was near the top of the wall. Emily hated to watch people come down, always picturing the worst possible crashes into rock. As she concentrated on lighting her cigarette, she heard Tanis’ “whoop!” of joy as she descended.
Freed from the harness, Tanis high-fived her belayer, exchanging words. With a nod, she trotted over to Emily. “Hey, babe, I’m gonna work belay now. You’re not bored?”
“Nah.” Emily pointed a thumb at Tegan. I’ve got a gossip-spy for company.” Seeing Tanis’ confused look, Emily explained further, “they’re part of the network finding out about Abby for us.”
“Oh! Neat!” Tanis gave Tegan a quick smile. “We’re grateful. By the way, folks have been calling me ‘Lady.’” She stuck out her hand.
The dwarf looked at her for a moment before shaking her hand heartily. “I’m often called Tegan. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lady.”
Tanis flashed the dwarf a smile, winked at Emily and trotted back to her partner at the climbing wall.
“A good catch, that one,” Tegan observed around their pipe stem. “Fully human?”
“Yep. And didn’t know my truth until quite recently.” Emily’s eyes crinkled as she watched Tanis. “That one is more than a good catch, she’s perfect.”
Tegan looked at her from the corner of his eye. “You know perfection doesn’t exist.”
“Let me enjoy my hyperbole, gossip.” Emily sighed. “I’m in love.”
It was nasty hot this month and I was in a Libby holds lull, so I didn’t get into much longform reading in September. But, I did turn to physical books more because they’re more pleasant to read when it’s warm, since it’s not a hot little square.
I think this is the one, the Vonnegut book woven through the most things for me—other than Cat’s Cradle, which is it’s own thing honestly. The way it moves forward while building a path to the past, the layers and layers, so simple each alone but building up depth like glaze. And funny as all hell.
A re-read of the household copy. For such a short little book it has so much in common with Moby Dick, doesn’t it? The meandering narrator avoiding what is coming with little divergences that seem unrelated but all nonetheless part of the greater weave.
I really liked this, the world as described by our main character and the POV(s) that drift up later is rich and real. The texture of world before and the world after (and the world after that) describes the constraint then freedom, then community in a way you can feel in your bones. More old lady main characters!! More non-human characters treated as people!!!
This was another pull from a Reactor Mag rec list. I really liked it. I love love love a tired and curious old lady as our POV, I adored the introduction of non-human people, the world building did that thing where it was clearly robust and existed but we only interact with the bits that are relevant to our POV character so it feels real and lived-in.
This ended up in a recent newsletter reading recommendation section, as well.
I enjoy re-reading Eberhart’s tight little mysteries. This one starts with such a wild premise and then just twists itself up into an even more complex knot as it goes.
I have a grip of Eberhart’s books that I snagged from Murder By The Book‘s sale shelves back when it had a physical store. They’re always solid, Eberhart just wrote reliable mysteries from 1929 up through the 1980s and put interesting women in them. There is nothing as good a reliable go-to mystery, tbh (see also my bunch of English Horseracing Mysteries).
Here are the titles that didn’t quite make it to the top three – ignore the sad blank for Unknown Quantity, I went and added the proper edition to Storygraph after pulling the image.
Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser actually had the same rating from me as Unknown Quantity, but it’s not the one the graphic grabbed. It’s basically a brilliant little twist on Cinderella’s step mother but what really made it fun for me was a pretty grounded feeling understanding of life in the vague middle ages of fairytales. Householding! Hawking! Apples, so many apples. Also a good understanding within the story and the characters of what marriage is.
Honestly, for the first half of the book I was not won over but it got me in the end enough to enjoy it and recommend to folks looking for a different kind of “fairy tale retelling.” Recommend clicking through to the Storygraph link up there and checking the community content warnings, though.
I only JUST finished the non-fiction that ate up the back half of the month for me, so you’ll see that next month.
Their time spent waiting swung between comfortable and tense, depending on if they noticed José or not. Tanis ate twice and napped once more before part of the wall seamlessly slid aside and a dwarf stepped out to meet them. A cheerily lit tunnel framed him.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was rough, but soft. “We almost never monitor this access door. And with Winter moving in, the visitor signal went ignored.”
“It’ll only be short wait, you told us.” Ian scooped the hare into his basket and slung it over his shoulders.
José hadn’t moved from where he sat since they’d given him a use name. He stood stiffly, a hand against the wall. Emily stepped over to offer help.
“You good to walk?” She lightly touched the back of the sylph’s arm. He started to twitch away, then relaxed, letting her off-set some of his slight weight while he got his feet back. Emily nodded at the dwarf. “Sorry, we’ll be a minute.” She glanced at the others before adding, “what do you mean about winter moving in?”
The dwarf inspected the ancient callus on a finger, but didn’t reply with more than a meaningful look that Emily couldn’t translate.
She sighed. “Okay then.” She nodded at Tanis and Ian. “Let’s get going. I’ll bring José along behind.” With a light but unyielding touch she steered the sylph after the others, into the new tunnel.
They blinked in the light cast by decorative globes set into the ceiling at regular intervals. The floor was more even in this tunnel, Emily walked closer to the wall, so the perfect arch of the ceiling centered over José’s head.
While they walked, José leaned on Emily less as his legs woke up. Soon enough she felt comfortable letting go of his arm.
“That was appreciated.” The sylph spoke quietly.
Emily waved her hand in dismissal. “It was nothing. I couldn’t leave you behind, or let you hobble along on your own.”
“And also for earlier. I was being presumptuous and stupid.”
“Those are often the same thing.” Emily side-eyed him. “Are you going to throw a tantrum like that again, is this a thing you do?”
“Emily!” Tanis chided over her shoulder.
“What? It’s a legit question.”
Before José could answer, Ian turned around, walking backwards confidentially. “Emily is good at talking people down, even though she’s a jerk about it. She’s talked me out of more stupid rages than I can remember.”
Ian spun on his heel, cheerfully flipping Emily off over his shoulder as he turned back.
Facing them again, the hare’s ears drooped and he sank back down behind the wicker, staring over the edge at Emily and José.
The dwarf leading them seemed to be hardly aware of the conversation. He didn’t look back or give any indication of how far they had left to walk. When he stopped, finally and suddenly, Ian and Tanis nearly tripped over him.
Another chunk of wall slipped away, revealing a gorgeous elevator that looked like something from a fancy, 1930s hotel. The dwarf held back the beautifully wrought accordion doors and gestured for them to enter. They did with a collective shrug that became a sigh of relief when the dwarf entered too.
“For real, I was ready to expect some horror-movie shit.” Ian shifted the straps of the basket, jostling the hare, who was practically nose-to-nose with Emily in the confines of the elevator.
The dwarf carefully adjusted a lever and Emily’s stomach gently jumped into her throat as they began to descend. “I was too forward before. The information we have for you shouldn’t be blathered casually like a piece of gossip. Better to wait until we’re properly in the Dvergr domain.”
“But we’re in a mountain.” José looked like he was going to be sick and the others gave him room, pressing against the walls.
The dwarf looked pityingly at the sylph. “It’s a mountain, not a Faraday cage.”
Tanis laughed, then had to explain the joke when she saw everyone else’s uncomprehending faces. She was trying to describe magnetic fields to the hare when the dwarf finally pulled the elevator to a stop.
“Welcome to Dvergr Hold.” The dwarf held the doors as they exited. “I’ll show you to your rooms and let you get settled. It’s about supper time, so we’ll feast and rest, then tomorrow we can get down to why you’re here.”
They walked down halls decorated with mosaic inlays set into the living rock. The dwarf swung open the doors of a sitting room connecting two bedrooms.
“That should be enough space, eh?” He pointed at what looked like a fancy trumpet horn sticking out of the wall. “Refresh yourselves as long as you need, then give a shout in here and we’ll send somebody up to take you to the dining hall.” He nodded cheerfully and turned to leave, but half-turned back before he reached the door.
“I realise I forgot to introduce myself! You can call me Brids. No need to worry about reciprocating right now, we’ll have plenty of time later.” He gave a wave and shut the door behind him.
Ian, Tanis and Emily all fell to examining the rooms with the thorough excitement of people who didn’t get to visit hotels often. José sat on a couch and watched.
Tanis called from an alcove, “a shower!” Water ran, followed by a joyful squeal, “hot water!”
The hare hopped casually into one of the adjoining bedrooms. His voice was muffled, “the dwarves have always admired luxury, which is convenient, as it seems too often be a by-product of their industry.” There was a scrabbling sound followed by a thump. “These beds are too high.”
“Must be guest rooms reserved for the taller, bipedal Folk.” Emily mused, running a hand along the rock wall. It was warm and textured lightly, as if the rooms had been gently hewn instead of blasted out or reshaped from existing caves. There were no hard corners to the rooms, just an elegant organic background to more technology than Emily had ever seen in the Sidhe.
Rather than lanterns and lights that were little more than contained magic or bare fire, the rooms boasted multiple lamps, lit by bulbs with what looked like actual filaments—though none were plugged into the wall nor had an obvious energy source. The lampshades ranged from fanciful stained glass to the kind of fabric shades that made Emily nostalgic for certain design elements that had been popular when she was young. “Hare, do you know if all the dwarves have nice things like this or just Dvergr Hold?”
The hare padded out of the bedroom. “Pretty much they all have the same kinds of gadgets.” He joined José on the couch. “Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity. There isn’t much of this sort of thing elsewhere.”
“That you’ve seen.” Ian joined them in the common room.
“Right, ’cause you’ve seen so much more of the Sidhe? So, in your many, supervised, couple-hour long visits, have you encountered higher or more common levels of technology?”
Ian shrugged, “no but, like, there could be.”
“You guys would argue theory forever,” Tanis stepped out of the shower alcove, towelling her hair. “When what it really comes down to is the dwarves have hot running water and therefore are awesome.” She grinned, “their toilet isn’t as fancy as the one at the Institute, but I’m not complaining.”
Nobody else felt the need to clean up before joining the dwarves, though after a sharp look from Tanis, Emily did use a looking glass while she ran fingers through her cropped cloud of wiry curls. She doubted Tanis had thought to pack her comb for what was supposed to be a short excursion, and Emily certainly hadn’t.
Ian shouted joyfully into the intercom and a young dwarf, acting as pageboy, took them through the maze of caves and tunnels to the dining hall.
Dvergr Hold presented a good spread. Everyone ate buffet-style, some clearly having a meal break between work shifts, while others looked like they were having a night out, dressed up in velvets and intricate jewellery. Tanis held Emily’s hand, smiling.
Brids greeted them with a grin and a hearty clap on the hare’s back that quite nearly knocked him over. “Now, remember, no business tonight, just good eats!”
Ian and Tanis loaded up plates and joined a table where a vigorous conversation about timepieces was going. To Emily’s surprise, José also took a plate, daintily adding a few items in careful arrangement. As they ate, the faces at the table rotated as people joined them or finished their meals and left. Emily mostly listened, sipping something like spiced hot chocolate, watching Tanis, Ian and the hare laugh and argue with the dwarves. José looked tired and wasn’t eating, but did seem to be politely chatting to an older dwarf who was fishing for advice on wind power.
I don’t know when I got a tattoo of a (translated) line from Borges’ La casa de Asterión. I remember picking the font (a typewriter-y serif) and I remember looking online at different quote tattoos. What I wanted, notably, was to make sure I wasn’t picking one of those quotes everyone gets. Because, you know, so many people get Borges quotes tattooed. Anyway, probably sometime in the mid 2010s I had the following added to my body:
will he perhaps be a bull with the face of a man?
Like many queer people, monstrous characters like the Minotaur–and specifically Borges’ interpretation of him–have an importance to me. Also, come on, it’s a brilliant approach to a well-known story.
So, of course I eventually got an idea to interpret it as a text game. I’d been trying to figure out when I sketched this idea out, and it looks like… 2022? Lol whoops, that’s been on my plate a while then, uneaten.
I took this picture shortly after sketching this out, the resulting four (!!) years have put it in a much more smudged state.
I poked at the idea for a while in Twine. Which, I like Twine! It is great. But it is a language that I lose easily if I’ve not worked in it recently and there were things I wanted to do that I was struggling with. If you want, you can check out the scenes I did finish right at this link here. I kinda figured, maybe I’d never get it to work out.
This year, one of my goals was to do a game or writing jam and I did! I learned a new engine for it, Decker, which is a very cool game engine styled after HyperCard. I didn’t really delve into the retro HyperCard vibe for that game, but the possibilities were itching at my mind.
In plotting out what I wanted to do in September I was like: let’s do it, let’s finally make this Asterion adaptation, and use Decker. I built the paths before dropping in any assets, because I knew I am so easily sidetracked. Big BIG thank yous to lokeloski’s Pet the Cat and his post about the code that made it. And also thanks to the robust Decker community, where I was able to find the answers to many of my questions–my brain is not code-first, so clear use-forward explanations are very helpful to me.
Code-wise, there wasn’t much fancy going on (beyond the event-counting I learned from Pet the Cat), just very applied use of visible/invisible buttons. I wanted a feeling of looping and inevitability as options reduced. Pairing those with stacked buttons and a bit of event logic did the trick.
I do not want to talk about how long it took me to figure out the grammar to set a button solid or none.
So, then it was images. I delved deeply into Wikimedia Commons, looking at caves and stone tunnels of all kinds. The dithering in Decker is gorgeous and I think carries a lot of the work in setting the vibe. One thing I wanted to do though, was to not keep things in a solid black and white.
I’ve mentioned before how I’d spent a lot of library time playing Spelunx. One of the computers in the library had the capacity for colour and when the torches in one section lit up in colour I remember being absolutely enraptured.
Thank you Moby Games for having a screencap of the colour effect.
I don’t think I necessarily landed the spot colour aspect that well in this game, but I enjoyed the challenge (and it was fun to make a hex set to use!). In the end, I didn’t follow my original plan that tightly–the change of engine and also keeping the project in scope (made in half hour to hour chunks in the evening a couple times a week, partly during a heat wave).
Anyway, that’s how the game sausage was made, taking both four years and one month to finish. The deck is downloadable and unlocked on the Itchio page, so if you’re curious you can open it up and judge my baby code. Folks on Tumblr, particularly, seem to be liking it.
Anyway, it’s free, online, and playable in your browser, even on mobile.
“I wasn’t surprised when she decided to move completely to the Sidhe.” The hare tapped at a card and Tanis discarded it for him. “She was the quickest to unlock her abilities. The girl took to dryads like roots to water.” He groomed his whiskers slyly.
Ian rewarded him with a disgusted grin. “Yeah, Abby always was a tree-hugger.”
“Ugh,” Emily groaned. “I forgot about the puns. I’m so glad the rest of you didn’t turn out to be things that were such easy targets for grandpa jokes.”
“I wish I’d been able to meet her.” Tanis drew a card for the hare, re-ordering her hand by his direction. “She was your age, right?” Her eyes flickered over to Emily, then back at the cards.
“In the end, yeah. Or practically was, anyway. She was starting up her senior year when I came back. How old she is now, I don’t know.”
“I don’t even know how age matters to trees.” Ian shifted, stretching a leg out.
“What does age matter to any of us here?” The hare leaned forward, bracing a paw on Tanis’ arm as though she were a wing chair. Emily smiled and Tanis sighed, the hare ignored them. “Even the human could live as long as she wished.”
Tanis snorted. “Clever wording. Depressing and clever.”
“It objectively is terrible, but yeah. Even so, Abby was always about utopias, or at least she had that change-the-world optimism when she was nineteen. She wanted to inject life into the Sidhe.” Emily shook her head. “She has a thing she says,”
“Uh, ‘the Folk need a catalyst or they’ll stagnate.’” Ian showed his hand and they all groaned. He grinned. “I was like, check your human privilege!”
“No, you weren’t. Not that eloquently, anyhow.” Emily dealt new hands. “Not that I was that pleased by her reasons for moving here, either.”
“None of us were.” The hare squinted at his cards. “The girl wanted to rearrange things she couldn’t understand.”
“At least she has a good glen, they seemed to, ah, ground her.” Emily explained for Tanis, “a glen would be like her family unit. Abby’s was a ‘wandering glen’, dryads who could range a fair distance from their body trees.”
“She had to pick who she’d be living around forever? Like, hella forever? Or can’t a dryad um—”
“Uproot themselves? Only with a considerable amount of pain, difficulty and hassle.” Emily threw a sidelong glance at Tanis. “It’s no different than getting hitched, really. For richer or poorer, in dry rot and in health.”
“It seems more permanent.”
“Both seem like traps to me.” Ian made a face. “Forever is a long time. Especially here.” Emily and the hare nodded in agreement.
“I am starting to understand your commitment issues, Emily.” Tanis tried to shift her position while keeping the hare balanced in her lap. “At least, where they come from.”
Ian smiled over his cards. “Hey, hare, you ever have a special somebody?”
It turned out that he’d had several. They played almost a dozen more games while he told them, stopping for a while in the middle so Tanis could eat and stretch her legs. Emily called him a little Scheherazade and regretted it about an hour later, when she was still explaining One Thousand and One Nights.
***
They tried to deal the sylph into the game, but he barely acknowledged them. That didn’t stop Ian from talking at him.
“Do you have a use name?”
The sylph didn’t stop pacing.
“Did you catch all of ours? I’m Ian, that’s Emily, Emily’s lady and the hare.” As Ian pointed at each of them with a hand full of cards they tried to see what he held. Ian was winning this round. “Obvs, you don’t want to chat, but do you have any like, interest in where we’re going and why? Speaking of which, why were you in that bag?”
The sylph glared at Ian. “I am not going to answer your endless questions.”
“It was only three.”
“Four,” corrected Tanis as she laid down a card for the hare.
Emily glanced up that the sylph. “Willingly bound or not, you’re stuck with us. Fuming and pouting is something I don’t give a shit about.” She drew a card. “Ian’s needling you because you’re an easy mark—”
“True.”
Emily threw Ian a teacher glance and he returned his focus back to the cards. “In short, let’s all play nice and try acting like genuine people instead of righteous assholes. I imagine it is no fun being in this mountain, all out of the free breeze or whatever. But you’re not the only one at a disadvantage. This lady here,” she gestured with her chin at Tanis, “is equally out of her element.”
“I think the lot of you probably have enough in common to be polite, if you’d crawl out of your ass about the situation, Aeric.” The hare sat up tall. “I think I have a straight!” He pushed at Tanis’ wrists. “Show them my cards.”
Tanis collapsed the hand and peered down at the hare. “You know his use name?”
“It’s not his use name, that’s part of his real name.” The hare tried to tug the cards from her hand to lay them out himself, but his paws found no purchase on the plastic coating.
Ian and Emily laid down their hands to look at the sylph. Even in the windless cave loose strands of his hair stirred in an invisible breeze. His finely featured face looked carved from dark ice, lit from the side by a particularly blue patch of softly glowing fungus on the wall.
The hare pawed once more at the cards before giving up with a sigh. He looked at the others and shifted uncomfortably. He started grooming his whiskers.
“How did you know that?” The sylph’s words were clipped. The petulant anger as gone and what was left was very real and cold.
“I just asked some folks if they knew you and why you might be hanging around us.” The hare moved from whiskers to combing his ears. Tanis laid a soft hand on his bristling scruff.
“When?” Emily asked, but kept her eyes on the sylph.
“When I was in my basket. I was bored in there!” The hare puffed his chest. “I was trying to be helpful.”
“Appreciated, hare.” Emily stood, resting a hand on her hip, fingers by the knife. “Okay.” She glanced at him, wondering what he’d smuggled into his basket. She shook her head. “Sylph, let’s back up a little here. Why don’t you tell us your use name and we can forget the hare slipped part of your true one.”
The sylph didn’t reply. Emily’s eyes narrowed.
“My man, I recognise rules are important to you. And you’re super creepy, sure, we’re all impressed by you being a moody, professional assassin. I am not asking you to forgive the hare’s slip-up, or anything, just to step off and help us find a way to make this situation more tenable.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible.” The sylph looked down at the hare. “Though I could challenge him for my honour.”
Emily’s sigh was very tired. “I’m sure. Pistols at dawn is for babies, etcetera, whatever. I’m also pretty sure that whatever obligation you’re under bars you from doing anything rash to us.”
The non-existent wind stopped tugging at strands straggling loose from the sylph’s braid and his eyes actively focused on Emily. “I do not owe that creature, however.”
“Okay, fair. Well, he’s an idiot and won’t,” she threw a look at the hare, “he won’t do it again and even if he didn’t actively free you, he’s still one of us so I’d say technically he’s off your murder dance card.” She shrugged. “Any chance our rude little slip up negates your obligation?” Her tone was hopeful.
The sylph shook his head.
“Dang. Worth a shot.” She bit her lip, thinking. “I’m going to make a guess that you either don’t have a common use name or you aren’t allowed to tell it to us. So, I’m just going to start calling you José.”
The sylph made a face, losing anger in confusion. “Ho-say?”
“Close enough.” Emily folded her arms, bringing her hands away from the knife.
“Why not Rumpelstiltskin?” Tanis asked.
Emily answered without turning around. “Too long. And what if he’s real? That dude is way more trouble than this one.”
The sylph tried the name again. “José. You are going to call me José.”
“And to make it even, why not address us each by the use names Ian told you earlier.”
Frowning lightly the sylph, José, looked at each of them and said their name, calling Tanis “Emily’s lady.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Not really.”
“Well, better is relative, isn’t it?” Emily purposefully turned her back on him and went back to the card game. As she picked up her hand she added, casually, “y’know, Ian, my lady and I don’t have use names. We only have the names we were given when we were born. You just used Ian’s and my true names. You’ll note we didn’t shit ourselves about it.”
“And your lady’s?”
“You don’t get her name. Nobody does.” There was a soft edge in Emily’s voice.
“Huh.” Tanis smiled. “I hadn’t noticed nobody was using it.” She absent-mindedly petted the hare. “Good job guys!”
Emily winked at her. “That’s ’cause you’re my lady, baby, gorgeous, killer.”
Tanis’ smile spread into a grin. “Omigod.” She clapped her hands. “Can I be ‘Ladykiller’? That’s like, a drag name.”
Ian raised an eyebrow and Emily snorted, rolling her eyes. Tanis flamboyantly flipped hair she didn’t have, voguing the best she could with a confused hare in her lap.
Apparently forgotten, José the sylph sunk down, sitting with his back against the wall, crushed fungi outlining him in darkness.
I’m writing something. I’ve been writing something—and not in the way where like, I’m always writing something—but like a book. I’m going for pure indulgence here, writing for me, to play with things I like and try stuff, all the fun things.
It’s one of the many ding-dang things I’m doing, of course, I’m always doing something even if it’s “just” reading. Plus work and life and the things around that. So there isn’t that much time to devote to putting words onto the proverbial page (unlike most longer stuff I’ve written this isn’t being written by hand first! another fun experiment made possible thanks to how enjoyable Ellipsus is to use). What I can (mostly) guarantee myself is about ten minutes a day. Often well at the end of my day, in the space between other projects and getting-ready-for-bed activities.
It’s not much! But it’s something. And some days I get more, or I get in a groove. Some days I skip or I’m just putting in outlining structure or looking things up. But it all counts.
This is but one tab in a document that is frankly, ridiculous because I can’t not be who I am about structure.
Because this project is being written across a bunch of different sub-documents, I am keeping a separate log for the word count, because it’s nice to see a bigger number and also: spreadsheet. By the time 2026 started I had about 25k words in, which is not bad! I’m now at some 43k, which is also not bad, considering that it’s all in so many small pieces.
Let’s have some numbers.
On average I get about 316 words a session, that’s not bad!
The minimum I’ve written a session is 80 words, which I will note is appended with the note “so sleeply” [sic]
The maximum I’ve written a session is 1213 words, which is quite nice!!
Anyway, the point of this all is that a little bit at a time still is a viable way to approach something. I’ve written 18k words on this story since the start of the year and that’s pretty cool! That’s 18k more words than if I hadn’t been trying to put at least 10 minutes a day in as I could. It’s easy to say “but if you’d never skipped a day there would be more words,” or “if you commited to longer you’d have more words,” but like? If I had done that then I wouldn’t have necessarily done other things I’ve enjoyed this year.
I’m meeting myself where I am and it’s going fine.
The other side of the jump was rocky, with a brisk wind that raised goose bumps on Emily’s arms.
“Oh wow, what a view!”
Emily stepped out of the way of the jump and stood next to Tanis, even though it was very close to the cliff’s edge. The view was amazing. A deep green valley spilled below them, far below them, fading up into bare grey rock ornamented with stunted shrubbery. Emily held Tanis’ hand as they drank in the sight.
“Oh cool, we’re going into a mountain!” Ian smiled, pointing at the cave opening Emily and Tanis hadn’t noticed.
“It’s a bit of a walk down.” The hare tried to peer around Ian’s shoulder to see the cave. “But we should encounter a dwarf pretty quickly and then we can take a cart down.”
“Like in cartoons?” Tanis clapped her hands gleefully.
The hare blinked slowly at her. “Sure.”
The breeze picked up and the sylph appeared.
“Fuck me, you followed us here?” Emily stepped close to him, staring the air spirit down even though he was nearly a head taller. Tanis and Ian flanked her instinctively. Scrabbling sounds came from the carrier as the hare tried to turn in his basket and see what was going on.
The sylph spoke casually as he flipped back his braid. “I wasn’t going to let you make me a fool.”
“Get over yourself, if you think we’re dumb, what does our opinion matter?” Tanis scoffed.
Ian snickered, “I am thinking of like three metaphors around learning how to change the channel when you don’t like what’s on, but I don’t think you’d get ’em.”
Watching an angry copper flush across the sylph’s face, Emily slowly grinned. “Hold up guys, I think I know what’s going on.”
“What is going on!” The hare was trying to climb onto Ian’s shoulder.
“Shut up, hare.” Emily didn’t look away from the sylph. “You owe us and are bound, aren’t you? Because we cut you out of that bag, so now you’re obliged to us.” She laughed. “How long are you stuck with us—do you have to save one of our lives or what?”
He practically spat his answer. “You are correct. I owe you. The whole stupid bunch of you, except the rabbit.”
“Hare.” Tanis corrected.
“And so, I am obliged to accompany you.” He spat, waving a hand at the cave entrance. “Even into living rock where no wind blows. Do you have any idea how wretched that is?”
Emily cocked her head. “Any way we can pre-emptively free you of this obligation?”
“No.”
Holding his stare, she waited for more of an answer. When it was clear the sylph was through talking to them, she shrugged and went to the cave entrance. “Well, gang, let’s go.”
***
Emily had been apprehensive about going into the mountain. Closed spaces didn’t bother her, but journeying down into untold depths was something she’d done before and it hadn’t gone well. Even so, once they’d passed the artfully strewn bones in the mouth of the cave that the hare insisted were set dressing, Emily began to enjoy the tunnel. The floor was just uneven enough to keep walking from being monotonous and their way was cleanly lit by the pretty pastel glow of mushrooms growing wherever they could on the walls.
Tanis caught up to her easily; the tunnel was low-ceilinged, but wide. “We should go spelunking when we get back.”
“If we get back.” Emily regretted the words as they left her lips. “I’m sorry.” She reached out to touch Tanis’ arm.
“It’s okay.” Tanis shook her head as if to clear it. “It’s true. Besides, we’re spelunking now, right?” Loose stone and grit crunched under their feet and they held hands for a moment.
The sylph walked behind Ian, hunching even though he had a couple inches clearance above his head. Emily could hear the hare trying to engage him in conversation, without much success. She smiled at Tanis and they rolled their eyes in unison.
Rounding a bend, the tunnel widened before ending in a larger circular space that felt more like a lobby than a cave, with clusters of the glowing mushrooms and raised areas of the rock floor for seating.
“Hare?” Emily circled around Ian as he entered the cavelet, the hare leaning forward in his basket, paws on the edge. “Now what?”
“We wait. Someone should be here shortly. They monitor the entrances.”
Everyone but the sylph sat down to wait. He paced the small circumference, keeping his distance from the group. Tanis ate an energy bar and rested her head against the wall, closing her eyes. Emily wasn’t certain if she was dozing.
It seemed like they waited a long time. Ian pulled out his pack of cards and they played in the dim, but sufficient, light. Tanis cracked her eyes open and watched them play a few hands before she sat up with a grimace and left the cave, going past the bend and into the tunnel. She looked sad when she returned.
“I feel bad, peeing in someone’s tunnel.” She sat on the ground in front of Ian and Emily. Ian dealt her a hand. She started to pick up the cards, then motioned at the hare. “Come here, you can sit in my lap and I’ll hold the cards for you.” He bounded over and gingerly stepped onto her criss-crossed legs, watching his nails.
The hare lost as much as he won, but was an enthusiastic shit talker and turned out to be fantastic at bluffing.
“This is an utterly simplistic game, I don’t understand how any of you lose.” The hare tapped three of the cards in Tanis’ hands and waved his paws dismissively for her to discard them.
“You did just get rid of half your hand.” Ian shook his head and dealt the hare three fresh cards. “That sure of yourself?”
“I always am.”
Emily laughed. “Never a truer thing said!” She threw her cards down. “I’m out.”
“You know we could try to read Tanis’ face for tells, instead of yours.” Ian sorted the cards in his hand. “Your little bunny face is basically inscrutable.”
The hare puffed up his chest and stood fully, his ears flicking straight back indignantly. He pointed a paw at Ian. “I am not a bunny, you two-legged lummox!” He pushed on Tanis’ wrists so his cards would show. “I’m a spectacular specimen of Lepus and that you are unable to fully discern the rich and varied range of my emotions is merely further proof of your own ignorance.”
Ian looked at the hare’s cards. “Okay, but you did lose though.”
“Luck is granted more generously to the truly stupid,” the hare huffed. “Deal again.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
