Back in 2011, Alex decided he wanted a dog. He knew he wanted a pit bull, and he knew he wanted to adopt one. We went to the shelter, and he absolutely fell in love with a sweet little pittie... a girl named "Joy." By the time we were able to get the house ready, and set up a chance to meet and greet with my dad's dog who lived with us at the time, Joy had been adopted, and Alex was very sad about it. I remember thinking at the time, though I don't know if I actually said it, "Don't worry; we will find you another dog, and in the end you won't be able to imagine having had a different one."

We went back to the shelter to look at another young, female pit, but during the meeting with my dad's dog she was just a little overly hyperactive for him.

Not quite grudgingly, Alex asked to meet "Montana," a little brown, black, and white male pit bull. He was a cute dog, but not very personable. He stayed in the back of his kennel, not very interested in interacting. We'd completely overlooked him on our first visit, and his informational page said he'd been there for eight months. But the meeting with my dad's dog went well, and he was sweet when we did get his attention, so we took him.

It took us a little while to come up with a name, but we decided on "Cyanide," since he needed a dangerous name, as a pit bull! The shelter said he was two, but considering how much he grew after we had him, we think he was closer to one. (Though considering he'd been there for a while, it probably was closer to one and a half.) We picked New Year's Day as his birthday, since it was as good a day as any.

Cy was one of the sweetest, smartest dogs I've ever known. He really was wicked smart, and it's lucky that he chose to use that genius for non-evil purposes. He was extraordinarily sweet, and one of the most patient dogs in the world. He would tolerate just about anything, even when he didn't need to put up with it. He loved people.

The only thing he didn't like: raccoons.

He had the strongest paternal instinct I've ever seen in a dog, too (though as far as I know, he never fathered any puppies). He adored little baby animals. He was more annoyed by puppies once they got to the exuberant, mostly coordinated stage, but when they were little? He would just melt for them.
At the dog park once, he played tug-of-war with a tiny, floppy little mastiff puppy. He let her lead him around by that rope, just barely sometimes tugging on it, basically letting her win the whole time.
By coincidence we ran into one of my coworkers and his husband at the park once, with their brand new tiny terrier puppy. Cy let that little five pound ball of fluff jump up on him, and then he'd dramatically fall over and roll onto his back, like the tiny puppy had obviously vanquished him.
He adored kittens, too; when we were staying with some friends, they had some orphaned foster kittens who were still being bottle-fed. We let Cy meet them, and he was utterly smitten. He wanted nothing more than to cuddle and nuzzle and groom them. (Probably only partially because they were messy eaters that had cat food on them, haha.) For years after, up until he went deaf, if he heard a kitten mew on a video or something, he would excitedly try to find the kitten.


Cy with Sherlock, our friend's cat. This was one of "his" kittens, though grown up in this picture. (Our friend says she credits Cy with how much Sherlock grew up to like dogs.)


A picture Alex took, Cy at the Chesapeake Bay.


He was a great hiking buddy. This is him at Mt. Falcon.

I wanted to pick out my favorite pictures of Cy, but trick question, because they're all my favorites, so I'm still posting too many.

25 more pictures of my best boy.

He used to have so little white on his face!


Alex and Cy. Just like I thought: couldn't imagine ending up with a different dog.


Me with Cy. We were watching fireworks. He was the mellowest dog; truly nothing scared or bothered him (except being left alone for too long.)


At the dog park, eyes on the tennis ball.


He was always the most majestic sleeper.


On a "cliff edge" at Red Rocks.


Bane of baseballs everywhere!


He used to be so spry! Excited for Alex to chuck the tennis ball already.


Hot dog in the sun at a friend's farm out in Maryland.


Champion slorper.


Helping me carve a jack-o-lantern. <3


His silly hat with reindeer antlers and ear warmers. (It brought joy to the masses, judging by how people in neighboring cars reacted when he'd wear it, haha.)


He loved his naps, and he loved napping on plushies.


My best boy.


Cy in his Pride hat, at fourth of July. Again, bringing joy to the masses. We had so many people stop and smile and comment about the dog in the hat.


His dragon Halloween costume.


Reindeer-on-reindeer violence!


Looking like a model advertising the treats in the background.


His nose. <3


In front of the flowers at the park last year.


Alex took this picture, of both the dogs at fourth of July last year.


Not a great pic, but I think you can tell that this is a cool dog with cool places to be and cool things to do.


He loved blankets so much. All you had to do was hold a blanket up and he would dart over to be under it. He wanted to be tucked in before going to sleep at night.


Fairly recent, I know I shared it already, but it was sweet when the dogs would actually cuddle together.


Cuddling his dragon toy. <3

Today, talk of end of life:

Overnight, around 1:45 in the morning, Cy got up from his bed and was very suddenly extremely agitated. He was making terrible scream-bark-howl sounds, and frantically running around the apartment. It was very scary, and we took him to the emergency vet. They did an exam, and then gave him a sedative that would also help with pain. The best hope was that this was basically "doggie dementia," and that getting some rest would lead to him waking up feeling better, and then we could look at treating the anxiety if it remained.

We took him home around 4:00, but even with their sedative and his usual pain meds, I don't think he ever fell asleep. The physical agitation stopped, and he was laying in his bed, but he was awake and still whining with almost every exhale.

Around 8:00 he started moving around more, though the agitation wasn't where it had been in the middle of the night. We took him outside, which initially seemed fine... then a few minutes later, still outside, he started with the horrible screaming again. Our regular vet wasn't open yet, so we went back to the emergency vet.

They did blood and urine tests, wanting to rule out anything they could: infection, organ failure, drugs or other toxins. Unfortunately in this case, the tests came back normal. His kidney levels were slightly elevated, same as his annual exam had showed, but everything else was normal. (My last, quiet hope had been a UTI/kidney infection; I know that can cause neurological symptoms if it's advanced enough, and as bad as that would be when his kidneys were already bad, it would be something we could try and treat.) The emergency vet said that in absence of any physical cause that it was probably neurological, with the most likely causes being a brain tumor or possibly a blood clot. She recommended we look at this as a quality of life question.

His obvious distress meant it wasn't fair to him to drag things out. I called our regular vet, and she was able to get us an end of life appointment at noon, just about an hour after we were leaving the emergency vet. (We could have done it there, but our vet has been our vet since I was a child; for thirty years she's been the one to help our pets pass when it's time, and I'd rather have had him go there. I suspect she was offering to do this at what should have been her lunch break; she said they were basically double-booked for the whole day. They'd offered us a 5:00 appointment, but that seemed like too long to wait, when he would spend those hours upset.)

We went and got a pup cup from Starbucks. The vet gave us some time with him both before and after. He passed very quickly and quietly.

This was something we knew was coming, though we didn't expect something like this to force it. We thought it would be the end last March when we took him to the emergency vet the first time, the day he suddenly couldn't walk. We were hoping at that point for a couple more months, maybe making it into summer... and he was doing well. Then he had a repeat flare of the back problems on Halloween, and then again the day before Thanksgiving, and two bouts within a month seemed like that was the end; we doubted he'd make it to Christmas. And then he made it to New Year's, and another unofficial birthday. And then we made it past our birthdays, and then a year past his scare, and then long enough for him to get another annual exam... Lots of tiny little milestones, but ones we didn't think he'd reach. It's felt like more than a year of borrowed time, and it's time I'm glad we got with him.

I'm painfully glad this didn't happen a week from now, when I'll be out of state for my grandmother's memorial.

I've been a weepy, sobbing mess all day, and I feel like I'll remain a weepy sobbing mess for a while.

Cy was truly my Best Boy Ever. While he was Alex's dog, always first and foremost, he was also my dog, the first one I was ever primarily responsible for. We had him for fourteen years of his life, whether that life was fifteen or closer to sixteen years. It wasn't long enough. I would have wanted fourteen more years with him, and it still wouldn't have felt long enough.

I already miss him so much.

A new season of LJ Idol is starting up here on Dreamwidth.

Idol is a 'weekly' writing challenge where mad (and maddening) topics get posted, and then you have until the deadline to write your entry and post it. Entries are gathered onto a ballot, and votes determine who is eliminated and who survives to write another week longer.

With this post, I'm officially signing up for this season, and I hope you'll join me!

Continuing with the trip through the Denver Botanic Gardens from last week!


A very nice clematis, hiding away a bit.


A Persian jewel, extra bejeweled by the rain.


Another really nice columbine. This color makes me think of strawberry lemonade.

Fourteen more pictures:

We headed up the paths behind the Ellipse, toward the "romance gardens" and the "fragrance gardens."


A more classic, blue and white Colorado columbine.


I believe this is elderflower.


Spiderwort.


Looking back towards the Ellipse and the house, with the irises, roses, pines...


The picture does not quite do justice to just how big this iris was. It was huge, and smelled wonderful.


These poppies were really neat, with the sort of ruffled edges.


Itty bitty tadpoles! I think these are toad tadpoles.


Happy Pride from these larkspurs!


More irises with water droplets!


A ladybug larva! They look like little gila monsters.

Over in the "woodland mosaic":


Young squirrel.


Extra spotty ladybug!

And then in "June's PlantAsia":


I love this art piece.


A very pretty fern. :)

For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I made a GF variant of Emma Goldman's blintz recipe this morning. (It's because for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I happened to have farmer cheese in the house.)

When I went looking for something snappy to turn my blintzes into a post, the first quotation on wikiquote is from a newspaper report after her arrest:

I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.

Anyway I am not an anarchist by any measure whatsoever, but I have generally found reading Emma Goldman to be informative and fulfilling (My Disillusionment in Russia is gutwrenching and honestly I think keyboard warriors should read it). Her wikiquote page is so chock full of evergreen statements that I can't even cherrypick anything else to quote. But how about this one?

The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americanism...the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country.

You can make blintzes vegan, too, if you use banana instead of the egg and flip the blattlach very gently. That can be potato or blueberry blintzes, although I've seen a recipe for blintzes with cashew cheese.

In conclusion, blintzes! Mine had strawberries.

It's another month! A whole week into another month, actually!

This year has been pretty much a wasteland in terms of writing. Fiction writing, at least. I've gotten some wordcount on non-fiction writing, like reviewing books I've read, or the reflections on last year and goals for this one. Not so much success on the fiction front.

May did not reverse this trend, haha.

My goals for May were:
- push through on the current original WIP
- consider what I wanted to do with the Cyberpunk AU
- look into the snowflake outlining method again, and maybe start using it for the "Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity" fic

And how did I do?
- I did not work on the WIP.
- I think the Cyberpunk AU is getting shelved for a while. I still want to write it, but just don't feel any real strong desire to work on it right now. I think it's getting put back into the nebulous "someday..." pile.
- I did look at snowflake outlining again.
- I even started the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity outline with it, though I only got through the first two steps, plus two thirds of the third.

So now...

Goals for June:
- I want to try and finish just one more chapter of the current original WIP
(I want to see if this reignites any enthusiasm for the project at the moment)
- I want to outline (or even just jump into) the second iddy story
(This is the story that I catch myself currently daydreaming about at times, and I sort of want to ride the inspiration high for a change!)
- I want to work on the snowflake outline for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity
(This is that endlessly enormous project that's had more than two decades of on and off thought about it, which is excruciating to even consider, and I want to just WORK ON IT.)
- I might start thinking about the stupid holiday AU
(I have so little to show in terms of writing for this year, when "get something into a shareable state" was one of the main things I wanted to do! If I start working on this thing now, maybe I can actually have it in a completed state by the time the actual holidays roll around.)

Goals for July and beyond:
- finish the first draft of the original WIP
- get the second iddy fic outlined
- do the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity outline and plan
- figure out some fanfiction to work on (and eventually post)

My biggest barrier for writing still feels like time. We've been busy, and have actually done things on many of my days off, which is a good thing! But I feel like it leaves me with less free time for things like writing. I've also had strings of days where I can't stay awake after work/non-workday activities, and I end up spending a couple hours napping.

I also feel like I'm lying to myself when I say "as soon as I'm caught up on everything else..." because frankly, I'm never caught up on everything else, lol. Not for any length of time, anyway. Honestly, what little writing I did last month did happen during one of the more hectic weeks. I realize it's a matter of making myself do it even when I've got other things going on... but I also find it really stressful and not conducive to writing when I feel like doing it is making me fall farther behind on other things, so it's a struggle.

I'm at a loss for where to find extra time and energy... Avoiding the persistent napping would be a help, but I can't force myself to stay awake on the days where it's particularly bad. I haven't been as good lately about avoiding the doomscroll... I try to catch myself when I'm just fruitlessly switching between apps, but sometimes I let way too much time go by before I realize that I'm not having a good time, haha. Trying to be mindful on that would probably be good (for multiple reasons.)

We'll see how this month goes!

On Tuesday, in part for late Mother's day and in part for early birthday, we wanted to take my mom to the Denver Botanic Gardens. We planned ahead for a day when she would be back from her New Mexico trip, and that she and Taylor could both take the day off from work.

Unfortunately, this wound up being the *one* day that was forecast to be chilly and rainy all day. (We've had rain basically every day for a bit now, but most days it's only for a little while. Tuesday was going to be overcast and drizzly basically the whole time!)

Mom still wanted to go for it, and was glad for the cooler temperatures, rather than walking around on a hot day. (And I was glad for that, especially for Taylor; last year we went and they wound up overheated and miserable, and had to head back to the car early.) Even so, I was a little apprehensive, because I loathe being cold, and I was afraid the cold rain would make it hard to appreciate anything about the day.

I was pleasantly surprised! It wound up being lovely. It did get uncomfortably cold a couple of times, but for the most part it was nice enough with a jacket. The initial drizzle let up within maybe half an hour, and minus another quick rain shower, it was just cloudy. While I prefer sun, the clouds did mean I didn't get sunburn. It was also nice for pictures - easier to get fairly accurate colors without direct sunlight.

And I took way too many pictures, lol. Even when I was trying to narrow it down very significantly, I think I kept... 70? So this will be split into several posts! Sometimes I try to split the posts into "themes" or something, but this time I think I'll just go for chronological through the gardens.

Hope you like pictures of ~water droplets on flowers~ lol.


One of the most dramatic in terms of water droplets!


Kind of an odd one, but I loved the way the water had collected on the seedpod inside this poppy.


This rose is so perfectly classic it looks fake. :)

Fourteen more pictures:

We waited at the entrance for a bit while we figured out our plan for the day.


There are some wonderfully tall yucca. There was also a very loud sparrow! I'm guessing they have nests within the yucca, which is probably the safest imaginable place.


Water droplets on poppy leaves.

In some of the gardens at the front:


I do like the way the water droplets look like little glass beads.



Then the "perennial walk" and a plaza:


Delightfully goth irises.


A ladybug pupa on a rose.


So ruffly!


Very classic rose!


A hummingbird, perched up high.

On the other side of the plaza is The Ellipse, the gardens around the Chihuly sculpture and in front of one of their admin buildings.


The columbines were having an absolute banner year this year! I don't know that I've ever seen quite so many doing so well.


Nice irises.


I like the burnt orange color.


And some lovely lupines!


And some two-toned ones! Plus the admin building (a beautiful converted house) in the background.

(Today was mom's actual birthday! I did stop by to see her briefly after work. I gifted her Overgrowth and the last six months of short stories from Seanan McGuire's patreon. I'm planning on getting some garden plants for her once I have a chance!)

This week, the Baba Yaga hut sticker from the "folkgore" pin collection, by Kim Kuzuri and Aspenhearted. My teal pen died, but the metallic green almost worked!

This was a fairly good week, but a busy one. Time spent with Taylor at the beginning of the week was good. Though as busy as the week felt, I didn't really get very much done. Maybe it was just that work felt like a lot. The concert later in the week was great, and I was very glad we went. Feeling some pressure over how much I have going on next week and how much I also feel like I need to catch up from this week... Not sure when I'll have a good chance to, but I'll try to do more.

Goals for the week:

• I did get together with Taylor from Sunday - Tuesday
• We went to our concert on Thursday
• I did not finish the third snowflake exercise
• I did finish reading Overgrowth
• I did not cancel my dentist appointment
• I did not go to the bank
• I did do the June tracking grids
• I did not put my laundry away
• I did not finish my May book reviews
• I did go get crickets for Berry Mad

Tracked habits:

• Work - 5/7
• Household Maintenance - 3/7
• Physical Activity - 2/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
• Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
• Meta Work - 4/7
• Personal Writing - 2/7
• Other Creative Things - 0/7
• Reading - 6/7 - mostly on Overgrowth, but also a good chunk of Installment Immortality with Taylor, a little bit of Duma Key with Alex, and a little bit of my ebook side read
• Attention to Media - 6/7 - Sunday listened to some youtube and music in the background at work, listened to a Re: Dracula episode and then more music; Monday a very short Re: Dracula and more music; Tuesday, listened to music early and later abandoned place videos; Wednesday had storm chasing in the background and another Re: Dracula, plus music; Friday we finished the last two episodes of The Handmaid's Tale; Saturday a Re: Dracula episode and some paranormal videos in the background.
• Video Games - 2/7 - Taylor and I played some more Final Fantasy XIV. We played through the second and third parts of the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raids (the Nier crossover), finished the Dark Knight and Red Mage job quests, then another extra quest for the general class quests, then the Sorrow of Werlyt trials. Finally next time we can do the next part of Shadowbringers!
• Social Interaction - 4/7

Total words written: 0

On Monday, we took Bella to a FastCAT competition. It's rare for them to be on anything other than a weekend, so it was nice to get to go for a change! This is only the second time I've been able to go with her.

Alex let her go at the start of the run, and I caught her at the end. The first run felt really slow, but was actually a better time than I'd expected. The second one was a fairly decent time, though she'd started to slow down a little bit by the end.


It's Bella!


I was using the selfie camera to try and get a better pic of Bella in the car, but then we took an actual selfie. Sort of, haha. Me, Bella, and Alex. I am not actually choking her.

Five more pictures:

This event was at the Adams County fairgrounds, which had a nice little pond to look out on.


Pelican attaaaaack! (Half-flying across the pond to check out whether some people might feed it.)


Bella's times weren't amazing, but were respectable! Not her best times, but it wasn't *that* long ago that I didn't expect she'd ever get times like these, ha. (They accidentally wrote "2" on her first run tag, but the top one was run #1.)


Little Bella no-ears.


Too Many Pelicans.

After the FastCAT, we were reluctant to head straight back home. We ended up heading out east toward the plains a bit, just to kind of take a drive and see if there was anything interesting. We were hopeful maybe some dramatic thunderstorms might come up, but those didn't happen until later in the evening.

We did stop at a rest stop for a while, and I got to see a bunch of great-tailed grackles, which are quite different than the usual common grackles we get. They're much bigger!


Looking up through the branches of a tree, lots of grackle nests!

We also saw turkeys! And a hawk swoop down and come up carrying a snake, which was pretty impressive. (Sadly, no pictures.)

It was a nice drive, even though we didn't actually get any exciting weather.

I have got a LOT to catch up on, I feel like. I'm not even entirely sure how I got so far behind, except having a night devoted to the concert and a couple nights where all I did was fall asleep, ha.

I will try to get comments and posts caught up on tomorrow! (Though we also have a FastCAT with Bella!)

Back up to six books read for the month!

Awakening Delilah by Abigail Barnette
M/M/F Paranormal (shifter) Romance - ebook novella
4/5

Delilah is a deer shifter, the only shifter in her family. Raised in Boston and told always to keep her "condition" utterly secret, she eventually takes a huge chance: moving to Glenn Close, a community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula dedicated entirely to shifters. It will be the first chance she's ever had to be around her own kind after a lifetime of hiding.
There she encounters Miguel, a wolf shifter, and Darius, a bat shifter. The two rescue her from a close call in the woods, and then all three end up sleeping together. Delilah is sure that this was a one-night stand between her and the couple, but Miguel and Darius feel differently; they're sure that she's intended to be their mate, a third member of their pack.

My thoughts, minimal spoilers:

I enjoyed this one! I think I bought it because I wanted to support the author (Jenny Trout; Abigail Barnette is a pen name) when I was reading some of her entertaining recaps of bad books. This was one that she was excited to get the rights back to, and republished for herself, so I bought a copy, since I like poly romance... but that was years ago, and it took me forever to get around to reading it, haha.
I was struck how similar the setup is to the M/M/F story that I didn't particularly enjoy from a couple months ago. ("Breaking the Rules.") The initial setup could sound almost the same: woman moves to a new area, has a minor crisis, and is rescued by a pair of men more established in the area, who are already connected to each other, and the three sleep together; after, the woman expects it to be a one-time thing, while the men want it to be more. The details were very different, but the broad summary is basically identical! Despite that, the the execution was not especially similar at all, and I think this one was a lot better.
I liked the characters better in this one. This is maybe just personal preference, but while Delilah still has some hangups about her past, her arc is a lot more about wanting freedom rather than escaping shame. (Maybe it's more that the other protagonist's escape from unhappiness also came with a push toward seeking conformity, which is probably really the part I didn't connect with.) I also liked that Miguel and Darius are an established couple, as opposed to the "we couldn't be a couple; we aren't gay! We just fuck sometimes" guys from the other book.
This also did not at all do the "oh no, a threesome is so dirty and wrong and forbidden!" thing. Like, Delilah does think a little bit about how it's a new thing for her, and there's a bit of "what would my mother think!", but not at all the same tone. The setting itself is fairly poly-normative, though I don't recall if there were any other background poly relationships portrayed, though there were other queer background characters. Miguel and Darius talk about how forming "packs" of more than two people is common for shifters (even though the species they shift into are all different).
I found the sex scenes less offputting, too. Fewer descriptions that made me wince, lol.

Lord of Souls by Greg Keyes
Fantasy - physical novel
Book two of a duology set in the Elder Scrolls universe; read with Alex
3.5/5

After their failed attempt to kill the master of Umbriel, Sul and Atrebus are cast back through Oblivion, and must go on a dangerous quest to find a monstrous, possessed sword that may help them succeed the next time. Annaig continues her ruthless climb through the ranks of the chefs of Umbriel, eventually gaining access to the lords. Her desire to entirely destroy the island puts her at odds with her long-time friend, Mere-Glim, who has grown to know and care for the ordinary servants and denizens of the island. Back in Cyrodiil, Colin thinks he has uncovered who is behind the plot both to kill Atrebus and to bring Umbriel into the world.

My thoughts:

Parts of this book felt a little bit more... video-game-y than the last book. (Particularly Atrebus and Sul's part, on their quest for the sword. It felt like a game objective.) This is a tie-in for a video game franchise, so that isn't a complaint, exactly, but parts of it felt like they'd be a better game than a book.
The first book felt a little more cohesive... there weren't really too many new characters introduced in this one, but it felt like the perspectives hopped around more. Annaig, Mere-Glim, Atrebus and Sul, Colin, the orc soldier (Maz Gar? I think she was new to this book, actually)... it's a lot of hopping between them. All of those perspectives added to the whole, but some were definitely more interesting than others, I thought.
I don't think I found anything in this book surprising. It was pretty straightforward in terms of what was happening, who was behind it, how they were going to be stopped, etc. The first book wasn't full of shocking twists, but it had a few: the reveal about Atrebus' reputation and heroism, how Umbriel-the-island was creating its workers, who Umbriel-the-being was before he was Umbriel, etc. In this book it felt like we already knew basically everything, and were just watching it play out the conclusion. It was satisfying to see how all the different characters finally got to interact with each other, though.

Aftermarket Afterlife by Seanan McGuire
Urban fantasy - physical novel
Book 13 of Incryptid; read with Taylor
4/5

Mary Dunlavy, ghost babysitter for the Price family, has been freed from her job as a crossroads ghost, leaving her duty to her family as the only job she has. Unfortunately, The Covenant of Saint George has escalated their attacks on the family and on the cryptids of North America, conducting coordinated assaults on various communities. The only thing the family can do is try to take the fight to them, to make the fight too expensive in terms of loss of life for the Covenant to continue. Mary may be happy as a ghost, but she will do anything she can to keep her family among the living.

My thoughts:

A reread for me, reading it with Taylor. This one is good! I enjoy Mary as a protagonist, and getting her perspective on everything, which is by necessity very different than the living family members'. The fact she's been with them so long lets us get little insights and memories of some of the characters we haven't seen in the series proper, like Fran (Alice's mother, who died young, but would be great-grandmother to most of the protagonists.) This was a much darker entry into the series in a few ways, and a bit of a downer at times. There are deaths, and they are tragic, largely for the ways in which they ended those characters' arcs, the things that will be left unfinished for them, as well as the grief left behind for the other characters. Which is good in terms of narratively making those deaths matter! But it sucks!
It also very significantly escalated the conflict with the Covenant. I said it when I read it last year, but I still appreciated the grappling with revenge and the fact that it's not a morally pure act, even when it's the good guys doing it, and even when it may be the best option there is.

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco
Fantasy (background f/m/m) - physical novel
3.5/5

Remy is a member of the Reapers, an elite organization dedicated to fighting vampires in the country of Aluria, and he is very good at what he does. Unfortunately, the rest of the organization doesn't seem to agree, allowing political infighting and dislike of his father to affect how they treat him. Vampires Lady Xiaodan Song of the Fourth Court and her fiance Lord Zidan Malekh of the Third Court come to Aluria seeking a peace treaty. Remy is extremely drawn to Xiaodan... and a bit more reluctantly to her fiance, as well. When a bizarre new infection takes hold in the country, mutating its victims into horrific monstrosities, the three agree to work together to find the cause... and to stop the incursions from a group of vampires who are extremely disinterested in anything resembling peace.

My too-extensive thoughts, minor spoilers:

I wanted to love this book, but I couldn't quite get past some of the issues that I had with it, though I did still like it.

Good points:
I did really like the characters and their relationship. I always love poly ships, and canon ones are a joy to me. The characters themselves were all interesting, and I enjoyed their chemistry with each other. They each have their sad backstories, which also interact in interesting ways, and make for good tension. I'd love to keep learning more about all three of them!
It felt a lot like the sort of story I wanted to be able to write when I was a teenager. It reminds me of the sorts of things I'd imagine, now put to page, and that was extremely fun in a lot of ways. Though along with that (and perhaps showing some of the same influences?), this definitely felt like a story and a world where "rule of cool" gets to take precedence sometimes. That isn't a terrible thing, and I was glad it was established pretty early, so that I could read the rest of it with that mindset. Like... Breaker, Remy's super special vampire-hunting weapon, sounds wildly impractical if not impossible to actually use... but it also probably looks cool as fucking hell. Stylistically, it felt like the sort of rad-but-unlikely weapon I'd expect an anime or video game protagonist to have, but I'll willingly buy in because it's cool, even if I don't think it's realistic.
The places where it sort of blends genres are really fun... the setting is a sort of ambiguous historical fantasy, set in a fictional world, but clearly inspired a bit by historical-England-but-with-more-diversity. I thought it really stood out where it bordered on horror, and especially the parts that are essentially mad science. Having parts of the fantasy setting brushing up against in-universe scientific study was interesting. (Emphasis on scientific understanding being something that Malekh was interested in was also a cool aspect of his character.)
I did have fun reading it!

Unfortunately... there were a lot of parts that bothered me. (Mostly clustered in the first half.) The fact that I have so many things to mention here really isn't because I think it was bad... It's more like it was so close to being something that I would have LOVED, I wanted to dig into what kept it from being that.
I really think that most of the issues could have been fixed with stronger editing, both on the copyediting side and the developmental side. While the developmental stuff is more subjective, some of the objective errors absolutely should have been caught by an editor, and it frustrates me how much it seems those standards have dropped in professional publishing.
The parts that bothered me:
A few wrong word uses, which I think an editor should have caught. "It appears we were lapse in our investigation." Not the word you wanted!
There were also multiple incorrect plurals, which again... editing! ("Her hair was so long they brushed the floor behind her throne." There were at least three I noticed within a span of two chapters, but the other one I remember was minorly NSFW (it amounted to "her breasts was...") and I forget the third.) I try not to be TOO pedantic about errors like this, but these are things that should have been fixed, and they happened often enough that it didn't feel like just a random errant typo. It was frequent enough to be distracting.
There were some continuity things that bothered me, too, which I also think a round of editing would have really helped. I'm afraid this sounds like nitpicking, but it's more that these individual things are just examples of a trend that I felt throughout; like the book didn't lean into its own worldbuilding quite enough, and ended up unintentionally undercutting its cool ideas or significant details by not following through on them. (Which I fear is a weakness in my own writing, which may have made my reaction to noticing it stronger, too.)
One was fairly minor: there's a pretty big deal made about Remy sleeping with a noblewoman in exchange for information. She is able to get someone to copy documents that are given to her husband, and then she passes this information along to Remy. But then later, when he's looking at these copied documents, he says he recognizes a specific man's handwriting... The tech of the world would not support this being a photocopy; the implication is that her source copies them by hand, so am I supposed to think that source is accurately mimicking handwriting?? It super threw me out of the exciting intrigue plot.
Another I found confusing... we start with Remy getting a mysterious bit of information from an informant, about a string of killings that he plans to investigate. When he does go look into it, he encounters the first of the Rot-infected creatures, which seems like a big deal. He doesn't know what it is, he's shocked and horrified when he can't kill it, had no suspicion that something like this was the culprit... then they come back to the city, and suddenly it seems like everyone is aware of the Rot. I'll buy it from the Reapers, who are known to withhold information from Remy, but if random civilians are aware of it, he should have been, too. (I was also confused about what the victims of the Rot were supposed to be, since initially it seemed like it was vampires, then no, vampires were actually immune, so it was humans, then yes it was vampires, but only new ones, then maybe it was both new vampires and human victims? I think part of this was the back cover copy inaccurately calling it "a new breed of vampire" and that sticking in my head, so I won't lay that entirely on the writing.)
One other continuity thing isn't an error per se, but threw me off as a reader. We get some exposition about how the First Court—the terrible, evil, and extremely elusive vampires that Remy is personally invested in hunting down—are marked with a tattoo. Then it's explained that it is almost impossible to tattoo vampires (presumably their healing prevents the marks from taking), without one of the Ancient vampires getting their blood involved somehow. That way the characters (and by extension the readers) know the markings are legitimate for identification, since they'd be near impossible to fake. This was a fun detail that I thought was cool! 
A chapter or two later, we hear from an informant that there's a group of vampires killing villagers! They have a distinctive tattoo that the informant doesn't even want to describe! Oh ho, I think, we have our extra evil vampire group sighted! ...but nope. It's an unrelated group of vampires that just also happen to have tattoos, with no explanation given as to why. (It also wasn't even an actual red herring, as none of the characters assumed it was the First Court. But having just established the details about the tattoos, I'm not sure why the characters wouldn't have been suspicious. If it was meant to be hinting at this second group also having connections to an Ancient vampire, I would have expected that to be of interest to one of the characters as well.) Especially coming so close on the heels of the details about the rarity and special-ness of the tattoos, it just felt like it was undermining its own worldbuilding, because apparently that isn't actually a particularly distinct or unique detail after all.
Last bit I want to whinge about: consequences seemed super variable based on what was convenient for the plot. The second time we meet Xiaodan, she uses her special sun-bringer power to rescue Remy, and it leaves her unconscious and incapacitated. After that, they talk about it tiring her, but until [redacted spoiler] it never wipes her out that way again, even when she uses it more often and against bigger/stronger/more targets.
Another example: later in the book, they find out that Xiaodan and Malekh are no longer welcome in Aluria, and it's sort of a cliffhanger to a chapter... But then they have no trouble at all getting into the country. The vampires are turned away when they reach the capital... but the next we hear about them, they're meeting with the queen in the city. This isn't an "error"; I can believe they snuck in somehow, but them being barred from the country seemed like it was going to impede them in some way... and then just was zero barrier at all. It would feel more meaningful if they actually had to overcome the challenges that are set up, rather than just... breezing past them with no evident effort or consequence.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, but I wish so badly that some of the worldbuilding had just been made a little more cohesive. A lot of the ideas are really cool, but then something else sort of contradicts or undercuts them, which was always disappointing.
All that said, I've still added the second book to my TBR, though I don't know when I'll get there!

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
Book 7 of Wayward Children
Fantasy - physical novella
5/5

Ever since returning from The Moors, Cora has been haunted by the Drowned Gods she encountered there. They whisper to her from the shadows and in her dreams. They want her back, and the world they offer may be underwater, but it is not the beautiful world of the Trenches, where she was a mermaid. Fearful that their claim on her means she'll never be able to find the door back to her correct world, Cora asks to be transferred to another school, the Whitethorn Institute. This school is dedicated not to helping the children of the doors to make sense of their experiences, but to helping them forget them entirely. They promise that their graduates all become perfectly normal, and ready to integrate into regular society.
The students there are ostensibly there by choice... but it becomes clear that that may not always be true, and that there is something sinister behind the promise to help the students to move on.

My (brief) thoughts:

I really liked this one. I do love me a good evil boarding school. The quote from the school when Cora shows up, "Here, we don't require you to be sure. Here, we're sure enough for everyone." is just skin-crawlingly awful in the best villainous way.
I had enjoyed seeing how Cora got to interact with the Drowned Gods, that whole "something adjacent to the right world, but still wrong" thing, and having that bleed over for her was interesting and I liked it, even though Cora absolutely does not enjoy it in the slightest!
I was glad to see Regan again, our protagonist from the last book.
Fun implied cameo of a cuckoo child (from Incryptid), with a kid mentioned to be certain that they'll escape as soon as they "get the math right."
Overall, it was just a fun story, and the kind of "escaping a controlling evil" adventure that I really enjoy.
While the existence of another school has been mentioned before, it was always fairly neutral in the previous mentions; an alternative option for the students who find their memories of their adventures through their doors distressing or traumatizing, and would prefer to move on to something resembling a normal life. Considering how traumatic some of the experiences in the other worlds can be, that seems like a reasonable thing for some people to want... so finding out that there is something sinister behind that option is something I imagine will become an ongoing arc in the story.

Overgrowth by Mira Grant
Sci-fi/Horror (background m/f) - physical novel
4/5

When Anastasia Miller was a child, she went into the woods and found an alien flower. She never came home, but something that looked like her did. The new Anastasia has never hidden what she is - she is the vanguard of an alien species that plans to arrive on earth, a fact she is compelled to share with everyone she meets.
Even she isn't completely sure that she's telling the truth, and very few of the people in her life truly believe her. Then the signal comes, announcing the approach of the alien armada. Suddenly, people do believe there's an invasion impending, and they do not react kindly to the aliens already hiding among the human race. Stasia herself is torn: are her loyalties with the species she's always actually been, or the world that raised her?

My thoughts, minor spoilers:

I really enjoyed this one! I like Mira Grant (pen name for Seanan McGuire's more thriller/horror work, as opposed to her urban fantasy) and it was nice to have another book from her.
The thing I think I found most impressive, personally, was that I felt like I was going through the same arc as Stasia was, in terms of loyalties, and that was a believable conflict to me. Not that I think that a species that routinely and repeatedly destroys every other species it comes across is a good thing... but I found it was at least presented in a way that made it sympathetic as well. I can't say for sure which "side" I'd come down on were this situation to present itself... but I think ultimately I'd almost certainly make the same choice that quite a few of the human characters do.
(The mild twist, which I won't spoil, about how humans and/or any other species the aliens come to could have avoided their fate was very good, imo.)
I appreciated the ways in which Stasia and Graham complemented each other... while it's not at all a 1:1 comparison, the fact that they bonded over believing each other about their own identities (Stacia as an alien, Graham as a man) was a thing I liked about them.
I also liked that part of Stasia's early thesis about why her species sent infiltrators like her to live among their target species is that they want them to learn to hate the species, and that it is the lesson that some of them end up learning. But later there is the realization that a lot of the aliens, like Stasia, did end up finding relationships and loves within humanity as well, and that the range of emotions matters.
This did not latch onto my hindbrain the way Feed and the rest of Newsflesh did, but I had a good time the whole way through.

I am currently in the middle of four books:
Maeve Fly, my current main read
Buchanan House, my ebook side read
Duma Key, reading with Alex
Installment Immortality, reading with Taylor

Finished This Month

Comply with PT exercises
Go out to photograph 12 times in 2025
Read 50 books 2025
Watch 200 educational videos 2025


Progress This Month

( Progress )

Thursday night we went to a concert! First one in quite a while.



Beborn Beton is a German synthpop band. Apparently the last time they were in the US was back in 2002, as support for Apoptygma Berzerk (Alex's five-ever favorite obsession.)

If you've ever heard of them, it's probably from their hit (within the goth scene) from 1997, "Another World."

-

I got off of work slightly early, having come in slightly early, which was good... but we still wound up running late. (Had to make a grocery trip that I assumed would be done before I was off of work, ha.)

It took a bit to find parking, though we wound up not too far away. Then of course it took a minute in the car to pre-game.


A very small ladybug landed on the car window as I was getting out.


Rainbow crosswalk.


I like the snake. And of course the queer stuff in the window.

We ran into PJ outside the venue and chatted with her a while. It sounds like she's doing well, which is good. She and Mark broke up last year, which was sort of a shock to everyone, I think, and then she also quit basically all social media (minus a wordpress blog that I never remember to check in on.) But sounds like she's happy in her new apartment, maybe has a new boyfriend, is doing well at work, etc.

Sadly we missed Faces Under the Mirror/Jake's set. ;_; We got inside just as he was finished and packing up. We did get to talk with him for a little while, though.

We were there in time for Voicecoil! (Mark) He played some things that are new to the live rotation, which was cool. Also the single off the album that will be coming out sometime this fall.



Got to chat with him for a bit after his set, as well. He's also doing well, it sounds like, minus some potentially-scary eye surgery stuff coming up.

Then Beborn Beton!


The struggle, even in a small venue, to get all the members of a band at least sort of in focus under stage lighting...

They did play quite a few favorites of mine. I'm a basic bitch who loves the singles, so I was very glad (if utterly unsurprised) that the single from a couple years ago, "Dancer in the Dark," got played (with a joke about whether we should go hang out at a nearby bowling alley, since the music video is, inexplicably, the band bowling.) A few others that I really like from that same album, like "I Watch My Life on TV" and "Last Chance."

Their intro to "Newborn King" was about how yes, it was 1997, and of course he was obsessed with Dana Scully... (the song being about aliens coming to earth.) I mean, same, bro.

And of course, "Another World" as the final encore. (With "yeah, I guess it would be a dick move not to play this one...") Afterwards, Alex said he had forgotten about that song entirely which was very funny to me. That's like... their one song that they're known for, lmao. I'm pretty sure that was one of the songs he sent me before we were dating!

Five more pictures + two youtube links:

Voicecoil! On keyboard is a new partner, Kat. I didn't get to meet her, but it seems to be going well.


One more of Voicecoil.


Beborn Beton, doing their introduction.




I do love catching everyone in a weird position, lol.

Watch on YouTube

The "Dancer in the Dark" music video.

Watch on YouTube

"Another World," definitely what they're still best known for.

At the end, I got one of the setlists!


Which I did get signed. <3

Mildly bummed that "Dr. Channard" (though a deeper cut) apparently replaced "Burning Gasoline," which is one of my faves, but it was fun to hear, too.

It was a very fun show, and I'm glad we had a chance to go out. We haven't been out since... last fall?

One more show coming up next week, too! We were really spoiled for a lot of excellent shows coming through between this and next week, but we had to be choosy, ha.

As a lifelong resident of greater boston, I will never, ever, forgive these assholes for making me root for harvard.

Speaking of the Murderbot TV show, I have written a thing for the first time in quite a while. It's about Gurathin, who is, predictably enough, my favorite.

Unsatisfied (1003 words) by kindkit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murderbot (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dr. Gurathin (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: Backstory, Character Study
Summary: Five things Gurathin has wanted and not been able to have.


The fic is archive-locked on AO3 (all of mine are, due to recent AI scraping incidents). So I'm also pasting it in below.

( Story under the cut )

The state of me in general:

Meh. Nothing in particular to report, just, you know, everything.


Reading:

Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet. I'm a bit more than halfway through with this, but stalled at the point where the main character is about to make another very bad, self-destructive choice. There are other novels by Waters I like more.

T. Kingfisher, A Sorceress Comes to Call. Kingfisher's novels are always worth a read. I found this one quite harrowing on an emotional level--something about the particular brand of abuse the main character goes through really gets to me. But Kingfisher never just drops her characters into hell and leaves them there, which is an assurance I need these days. Bonus points for how she plays with the "lonely girl bonds with a magical horse" trope.

And I'm re-reading the Murderbot books (after having finally finished the series) to see if I get more out of them this time.


Watching:

The Murderbot TV show, which (at the risk of heresy) I'll admit I like more than the books. I've never found it easy to connect emotionally with Martha Wells' writing, so I think the story benefits greatly from being performed. Alexander Skarsgard is very, very good as Murderbot, managing to convey huge amounts of layered characterization using mostly his eyes, his voice, and some body language. And David Dastmalchian, whom I'd never heard of before, almost steals the show as Murderbot's semi-nemesis Gurathin. The two of them play off each other very well, as two similar personalities who, naturally, can't stand each other and are incredibly awkward about it.

Leverage: Redemption, which I like fine but which can't quite hold up to the original show. The (mostly) lack of Hardison changes the emotional dynamic I loved in the original, although at least, mercifully, the show quickly stopped trying to make parenthood its new dynamic. I do like Breanna, and I like that there's now a canonically queer person in the main team, but it's just not the same.

I'm still watching, though. I'm only up to the first episode of S3, so no spoilers past that, please.

Taskmaster S19 is a delight. I love this series' cast and they are very, very funny together. I was nervous about Jason Mantzoukas, because I only knew him as Derek from The Good Place and that character irritated me, but he brings beautiful chaos to Taskmaster.

Had a hard time thinking of something to use for this week. Since I was reading Overgrowth, decided to go with plants... but ended up picking nice, well-coordinated ones more than anything evoking alien invasion, ha.

This week was... meh. Fine. The near-all-nighter when Bella was sick was rough and led to a couple rough days after that. I spent several days also feeling like I was on the verge of getting sick, but seemed to fight it off successfully. Did get a lot of cleaning done, even if it was under the minor duress of an impending inspection. Writing was not zero this week, which was a nice change. Okay amount of reading. I really did make it through most of what I wanted for the week, despite getting sick and too little sleep. Looking back, I described work as "hectic" on at least three different days.

Goals for the week:

• I did read more of Overgrowth
• I updated my reading page, at least partially
• I did try to sort out my upcoming calendar (busy couple of months coming up)
• I bought tickets for two shows coming up in the next ten days or so
• I did not work on the current WIP
• But I did do part 2 (and started part 3) of the snowflake outline for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity AU
• I did get some outside time!
• I cleaned up my bedside table (and the drawer)
• Apartment inspection was Wednesday

Tracked habits:

• Work - 5/7
• Household Maintenance - 6/7
• Physical Activity - 2/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 1/7 - one day over 500 words, plus two days of less than 500 words
• Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
• Meta Work - 4/7
• Personal Writing - 3/7
• Other Creative Things - 2/7
• Reading - 7/7 - I mostly read Overgrowth, Alex and I read a bit of Duma Key, and I tried to read a bit of my ebook side read but only got through about a page before I got called away, ha.
• Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday had some youtube on in the background at work, we watched some storm chasing (mostly in Kansas, but there were a few tornadoes in eastern CO), and I listened to Re: Dracula and then some music; Monday, storm chasing in the background; Tuesday, storm-chasing in the background, then later abandoned places videos; Wednesday, more abandoned place videos (including, surprisingly, one that Alex was familiar with from when he lived in Maryland, which was a sort of bittersweet shock when it came up); Thursday and Friday, storm chasing in the background; Saturday, more background storm chasing, and an episode of Re: Dracula.
• Video Games - 0/7
• Social Interaction - 4/7

Total words written: 1040 all on planning a fic