Why do I torment myself so?
Feb. 3rd, 2026 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kantayraSo...yeah. I have another skating competition at the end of the month. That I am already anxious about, because I have a new program that I haven't yet run cleanly (and only once on time). Somehow this dread keeps sneaking up on me! And I only ever have myself to blame. Why do I put myself through this again and again? Who knows!
Also, my synchro team has a competition the same weekend, so it'll be another horrible weekend where everything happens all at once. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!
Anyway, other fandom stuff:
Goals for this week: 1) Get the middle of my Case Fic better blocked out and do some writing on it, so I have a better estimate of how long it will be and how I'll need to pace myself. 2) Some stuff of SOD/3S/Candy Hearts - whatever calls to me most. 3) Finish Heaven Official's Blessing, most likely. 4) Maybe read some of the other stuff. 5) Finish The Night Manager S2.
January Total: 25k (not including 3S, which I haven't counted up yet and will go into February's totals)
Also, my synchro team has a competition the same weekend, so it'll be another horrible weekend where everything happens all at once. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!
Anyway, other fandom stuff:
- Exchanges due in January/February (
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fffx, Just The Tip flash, Fisting Flash, candyheartsex, seasonofdrabbles, threesentenceficathon + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I am now at 11/12, so alas I no longer have 0 assignments. The one outstanding is for caseficexchange, unsurprisingly, and I already have my set-up in mind and the solution/culprit, but I have to work out all the details in the middle. Also, I am afraid of how long this might end up, but there is a long writing period, so even if it went, like, crazy 40k (which I don't think it will), I still have time. I might still do a couple things for SOD, if inspiration strikes, but I've done all the ones I knew I wanted to. I didn't do anything on threesentenceficathon, maybe this week? I remember this conundrum from last year: I have time to go all out on 3S or SOD or candyheartsex, but not all three. Last year I ended up doing Candy Hearts. This year so far it's been SOD. So I'm not sure what my goal is this week: Do a chunk of writing/treating on one of these, which one TBD! - Exchanges due in March/April: I tentatively have no additional plans. There are a bunch of exchanges with schedules announced that I'll keep an eye on for treats/PHs (goreswap, Love You A Latte, spaceswap, wickedloveex, the_mane_event), but none that I'm planning to sign up for...unless some amazing prompt comes along and I really want a gift, too. I've got my eye on worldbuilding_exchange and unsent_letters_exchange, which I expect to announce schedules soon-ish (if they run), because I know I want to sign up for those. But thus far it's looking like a long writing period for Case Fic through April. One that I do know for sure is that fandom5k is opening nominations in late March/early April, and that's definitely on my docket.
- Heaven Official's Blessing by MXTX - I've finished most of the extras (I'm on the last one) and should finish this week for sure, but I'm not in a big hurry here and am knocking these off leisurely.
- When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill - I picked this up as a rare RL rec (and opposed to things I learn about via fandom), and it was...okay. The first 75% was, in fact, riveting and I couldn't put it down. The author did a really good job with the repressed, claustrophobic era of McCarthyism, and all the descriptions about how even the repressed group polices their own repression were really well done. However, the book fell apart for me in two ways: 1) Alex is supposed to be a genius at math and science (as was her mother), but they're both so...incurious, so that I didn't really buy it. And also nothing in Alex's thoughts or approach to the world reflected a mathematical and/or scientific disposition. Every so often there would be a line like "I love numbers so much!" but this was when Alex was post-calc taking analysis, where you will not see any numbers outside of e or pi or 0/1. Like, a mathematician wouldn't phrase things like that. And her "problems" were always vague (and probably shouldn't be phrased like that: proofs, surely?), which just led me to believe that the author wasn't a mathematician/scientist and didn't really know how to write one convincingly, so I ended up not finding that part of Alex or her mother's characterization believable. 2) After the dragons come back, the way the world was presented felt just...twee. It seemed like a lot of smarm and over-the-top "found families" bullshit, and I have very limited tolerance for those themes. I mean, anything would be better than the horrors of the sexism in the '50s, but the fact that I found the alternative presented so unappealing made the ending kind of a slog. Interesting book overall, though, and like I said, the dystopian double-thinky parts were really tense and gripping.
- The Deer and the Cauldron by Louis Cha - I didn't do anything on this last week, because I slipped in the previous.
- Dear Door - I didn't do anything on this one last week, either.
- The Night Manager S2 - I haven't been watching anything for a while now, but I picked this back up last week, because S1 was fun and I saw S2 was almost fully released, and I want to keep up with this one. So far it's good, tense spy stuff, exactly what I was expecting, and holy shit is it SUPER slashy! I mean, there was some of that in S1, but they really dialed it up this season! So that's been a pleasant surprise. I should finish up this week.
Goals for this week: 1) Get the middle of my Case Fic better blocked out and do some writing on it, so I have a better estimate of how long it will be and how I'll need to pace myself. 2) Some stuff of SOD/3S/Candy Hearts - whatever calls to me most. 3) Finish Heaven Official's Blessing, most likely. 4) Maybe read some of the other stuff. 5) Finish The Night Manager S2.
January Total: 25k (not including 3S, which I haven't counted up yet and will go into February's totals)
