RatCreature's Journal

So based on that theory that putting something positive out there might make feel yourself better in turn, I decided to try doing a drawble meme.

I haven't drawn anything in ages, so I'm bound to be even more rusty than usual.

The original drawble meme format is as follows:

1. Comment and I'll pick one or two of your DW interests and draw you a picture.
2. You have no say as to what I draw for you or as to how much it will suck.
3. Copy this and the pic that is drawn for you into your journal. (Optional)

You can also prompt me, for example if you don't list interests, but prompts tempt people to ask for fanart they'd really like to see (their favorite rare pairing or character or such), and that ends with disappointment for everybody. Them, because they get a doodle totally mangling their cherished idea, and me because I feel inadequate at fulfilling a real wish.

The reason I like the drawble meme in the first place is because it allows me to do absurd little doodles that aren't demanding, so I don't experience that vicious-cycle that I get with "proper fanart": feeling I suck because (of course) drawing attempts never look like what you imagine with your idea, and then never draw anything and thus never get any better.

Anyway, you can offer prompts to me instead going with your interests, but keep in mind that these are quick doodles, so for a prompt that is a description of some epic scene you've always wanted to see realized in fanart the results aren't going to very satisfying for you (or much fun for me). Also, I don't draw porn, and I'm not good at portrait likeness.

Do they really think that the pandemic is going to be better by Christmas, after winter and the school year will have been going on for months, than in October? That release date is like some vanishing cryptid, always just around the corner.

I have read 128 books this year so far (well, a few were novellas and short stories), but only fifteen of those were on my Goodreads TBR pile before this year, so that explains why that hasn't been getting any smaller.

I had a vague New Year's resolution to read at least two books per week on average and reduce the number of unread books I already own, so I guess I've been doing well on half of it at least?Though I don't always add ebooks to my Goodreads right away, but they just pile up on my reader, so it might be slightly better than the stats indicate.

But I also bought more new books than in the first half of last year. Then again, my local comic store unfortunately discontinued its US comic subscription service as unprofitable (before the pandemic even) and rather than looking for a new comic store for the few series I was still getting, I reallocated that part of my entertainment budget to books.

I read all four Kat Holloway novels, and one novella, by Jennifer Ashley over the last few days, and really enjoyed the competent heroine and the cast of side characters. I'm also mostly okay with the very slow burn of Kat's relationship with her love interest/fellow sleuth Daniel McAdam, though the drawn out yet repetitive revelations about his secretive government or government-adjacent investigator/fixer/secret agent job (whatever it'll eventually turn out to be) have been getting a bit tiresome by novel four.

Though I'm still bummed that having read the newest that just came out, I'll now have to wait quite a while for the next book. I'll have to look for another decent historical mystery series, since it looks like I've been having good luck actually finishing novels in this genre, when reading is still hit and miss right now.

Do you have any favorites? I tried the Ian Rutledge series, but felt a bit meh, after the first three. A while ago I started the first Sebastian St. Cyr mystery by C.S. Harris, but got stuck and lost interest a little bit into it. Maybe I should see whether I can stick with that now. Or I could try another of Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt books. I think I read the first three of that series after coming across a random later one some years back, and liked them okay, but didn't get completely sucked in.

For similar reasons that I find the BBC Historical Farm series soothing, I also like historical fiction that makes everyday life details come alive and be interesting, particularly things you wouldn't really think about or necessarily expect to be different, instead of just glossing things over. Like stories that describe how tools look and work, that you don't use anymore today and stuff like that.

I enjoy this regardless of the period, e.g. I liked the details how prehistoric life might have worked in Clan of the Cave Bear. I actually like those details in mundane science fiction too, like I enjoyed that aspect of The Martian.

I'm not entirely sure what quality exactly makes this delightful rather than tedious to me, but there's often some overlap with competence kink and/or service kink in examples I particularly enjoy, and also the author being really into the period or craft or such.

Do you have any recs for original fic or fanfic that provides a lot of immersive, everyday detail of this type? (Also it needs to be fairly non-tragic...)

Are there any Highlander pandemic fics yet?

While reading another HL fic (as I still do ocassionally) it occurred to me that current events would work well with classic HL angst and themes: immortals feeling survivor's guilt because they don't get sick or die when everyone around them does (and you could do flashbacks to previous epidemics too), immortals working as doctors or medics or volunteering because they know they can't get sick, the chance for exposure of their secrets because of more medical scrutiny (I don't remember whether there's any canon on whether their blood even develops normal antibodies or such if they have to undergo a blood test), in general evil immortals taking advantage of upheavals...

I get that not everyone likes current events encroaching into their fanfic, but just as many others do, so surely there's bound to crop up some?

I have a bunch of bananas that for some reason have just failed to turn from green to yellow, despite waiting quite a bit longer than that usually takes.

Could I cook or roast these unripe and just use them as a starchy thing, as if they were plantains? Would that work? Or would they still taste as gross as raw green bananas? I dislike that mouth coating feeling you get if you do try to eat them green.

I'm particularly thinking of oven roasting them in their skin in hopes to get that off more easily, but I never tried this.

Amazon got the new Rivers of London to me a day early! *off to read False Value*

By chance I read two historical romances with dyslexic heroes close to each other ("It Takes Two to Tumble" by Cat Sebastian and "Lord Sebastian's Secret" by Jane Ashford in case your interested), which reminded me that I had actually read this trope in a historical romance before, i.e. a dyslexic hero is ashamed of his difficulties with reading, and him concealing those figures into the plot somehow.

But I just can't remember which book (maybe even several books?) it was. I tried googling and going trough Goodreads list, and had no success finding anything familiar again. I did find out that apparently Unveiled by Courtney Milan and Jackdaw by K.J. Charles both feature dyslexic heroes, but I have read neither.

It doesn't help that initially I only entered physical books I own into my Goodreads list, so I might have read some ebook, I didn't enter there to find again, and in my Calibre Library I have a ton of random ebooks that I haven't read, but just downloaded because Amazon offered them for free or maybe 99c at some point and they looked interesting enough to get for that.

And all of those aren't sufficiently tagged to find anything.

Argh.

Anyway, if you remember reading historicals with this trope, feel free to comment with them, maybe it will jostle some memory. Or at least I can pick up some recs. I rather like this trope.