Writing, writing, writing

Feb. 8th, 2026 12:11 am
luthien: (Heated Rivalry: Shane hand - sweeticedte)
[personal profile] luthien
There was the story I was planning to write, and then there was the much more out there (and potentially much longer) story idea that came up in conversation with a friend last night - when I foolishly said: "I could write that."

Guess which one I've now got 1500 words of?

*sigh*

The word "fuck" has been coming up in my online conversations quite a bit today, mostly coupled with "you". She's an utter menace.

Quick HR/Game Changers rec

Feb. 4th, 2026 01:13 am
luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
This is my favourite kind of established relationship fic, exploring the "learning how to be together" phase of a relationship. Sweet but in a believable and not too sweet way. This one contains some spoilers for The Long Game, but is mostly set after the end of that book.

Heaven Has Got Nothing On Us (Oh, I Love You Even When My Body Turns to Dust)
(39629 words) by overlycaffeinatedgalaxy

Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Summary )

Three Things

Feb. 2nd, 2026 11:48 am
luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
1. The heatwave - or heat dome as the meteorologists have been calling it - is over. There's eight days I never want to live through again. The max got to almost 42C/107F here again on Saturday, but was down to about 30/86 yesterday and we're on track for only 24/75 today. I'm actually sitting here with a light wrap around my shoulders. When I went out at 8.00 this morning it was, like, 9/48 degrees. Talk about temperature whiplash. It's going to heat up again later in the week, but only to about the mid-30s, which is much easier to live with than 40+.

2. I had dental surgery for an implant this morning. It went well, and very glad they could do it under local anaesthetic, but also very glad it's over. Currently sipping tepid coffee on the non-numb side of my mouth and icing the other side of my face. I think I might curl up in bed with some fic in a while.

3. Festivids is live. I haven't had a chance to watch as many as I'd like yet, but just off the top of my head there are several Babylon 5 vids (yay!), a great character study of Gromit from Wallace and Gromit,  and some really inventive Dykes to Watch Out For vids that manage to turn a static source (a comic strip) into something really effective and dynamic.



(no subject)

Jan. 31st, 2026 12:37 am
luthien: (Heated Rivalry: Shane blue - sweeticedte)
[personal profile] luthien
I have the first line of a Heated Rivalry fic in my head, but I'm not sure where it fits in the timeline. It's possible it may be a canon divergence AU.

I guess I'm just going to have to rewatch the whole thing in order to work it out, aren't I? Oh, woe. The hardship.

Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 15

Jan. 31st, 2026 12:27 am
luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
Challenge #15

How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go?

Not as well as previous years. lol. I was going well up to challenge 9, and then life happened and I got behind and it all got too much and I crashed and burned. I did enjoy taking part, though, and it was good to interact with some new people as well as people I already knew. Really, the interaction is what I want out of snowflake more than anything, so in that sense it was a success even though I didn't get to all the challenges.



Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

One more three sentence fic

Jan. 30th, 2026 02:26 am
luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
One more fill for [community profile] threesentenceficathon 

Language!
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Pairing: Shane/Ilya
Rating: T
Prompt: being in so much pain that you’re swearing in multiple languages

“Jesus fuck – putain – Говно – Christ, I need more languages to swear in if the team keeps doing this sort of thing every time I’m out with an injury; watching this is even more painful than my actual MCL sprain,” Shane complained, jabbing a finger at the TV screen.

“There is no need for cursing; he did not miss the goal by so very much – only feet, not yards,” Ilya said consolingly, and leaned in to stop Shane’s mouth with a kiss before he had the chance to direct more swear words – whether in Canadian English, Canadian French, or very bad Russian - at Ilya.

“See моя любовь,” Ilya continued when he lifted his head – not from Shane’s mouth – sometime later, “we only need one language, and it has no words.”

Weather, pets, life

Jan. 29th, 2026 06:14 pm
luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
We survived the high of 42C/107F yesterday - thank you, ducted air con - but I wound up with a particularly bad headache that snuck up on me over the course of the day. It was one of those days when I kept wondering why everything was so hard and I couldn't get anything done. Eventually, when the penny finally dropped and I took some painkillers, my first thought was: I can't think straight. I can't write! This is it. I'll never be able to write again.

I will just point out here that I have lived with chronic daily headache and migraine for literally decades - and yet logic still goes out the window every time I get hit with a bad one when it's been a week or two since the last one. The human mind - what can you do? I think I'll try to write something tonight, just to prove to myself that my mind while in the grip of a headache doesn't know what it's talking about.

Today has been much better. The headache has departed and the max temperature today was 'only' 35/95. You can really feel the difference in how less suffocating the air outside feels, even though the poor garden is still baking. It's going to get back up to 40/104 again tomorrow and the day after, though, so we'll see how I go. I'm having my weekly massage tomorrow, which should help stop my upper back from clenching up too much.

One other side effect of the hot weather is that we're only sleeping under a sheet atm, so no real surprise that I was awakened fairly early this morning by my feet being pounced on, not long after D had left for work. When I opened my eyes I was surprised to find that it was Abby, who is seven now, and not Olly, who is not quite ten months old. Then she growled, and I realised she thought my feet moving under the sheet were a moving kitten. Even after six months, she is still DEEPLY offended that Olly exists, and, worse, that he exists in her house.

So I rolled over and went back to sleep, and a while later I got woken up by another pounce. This time it was Olly. He didn't let up, so I had to fold the doona back over to protect my feet. Then, when I'd spoilt his fun, he jumped up to play with the blind cord. At that point I incarcerated him in his bedroom. (Yes, he has his own bedroom with his own special fluffy bed, blanket, litter tray, scratching station, water bowl and overnight snacks, partly because he's spoilt to death, and partly because every time we leave him free overnight, he wreaks havoc on the other pets and the house in general. I guess we're getting off reasonably lightly, though. As a friend pointed out to me, think how much worse he would be if he hadn't been desexed.)

Have some pics:
Cat pics )

luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
It looks like parts of western Victoria have recorded the state's hottest ever temperature today. Right now, it's 48.9C, or 120F in the old money.

The forecast is for 42C/107F here tomorrow, which will be bad enough. I'm really glad I don't have any appointments until Friday. I'm not planning to budge from the house. I'm worried about fires, though. Where I live is just far enough from bushland that I don't have to worry about them for myself, but god. There were 900 buildings lost and a big chunk of land all burnt out in the heatwave a few weeks ago, when there were dozens of fires burning across Victoria and New South Wales.

How many fires are there going to be in this sort of heat?

(And still we have politicians trying to say that this is normal. I saw one leader of a far right less-and-less-fringe party call climate change 'rubbish' today. I won't dignify her words by attaching her name to them, but if you're Australian I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.)

Three Sentence Fics

Jan. 27th, 2026 01:31 pm
luthien: (Heated Rivalry: Shane hand - sweeticedte)
[personal profile] luthien
I wrote a couple of fills for [community profile] threesentenceficathon. There could be more, but for now there's these two:

She Knows
Fandom: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Pairing: Percy/Marguerite
Rating: M
Prompt: she knows

Read more... )


Rumours
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters: Hayden & Shane (Shane/Ilya implied)
Rating: G
Prompt: Have you heard the rumors about us? 

Read more... )

Heated Rivalry rec

Jan. 27th, 2026 12:46 pm
luthien: (Default)
[personal profile] luthien
I've been intending to put together a Heated Rivalry recs post, but I think this one needs its own.

Haydenov Phone Swap by icopythefax is a series of three stories, and the premise is what it says on the tin:

After a mix-up leaves Hayden with the wrong phone for three days, he ends up learning more about Ilya Rozanov and his secret girlfriend, Jane.


The first story, I Like Jane For You, is told from Hayden's POV. Initially, I had to suspend my disbelief a bit that:
1. They would accidentally swap phones in a bar,
2. Neither phone had a passcode,
3. They would wait three days until they could meet up and swap the phones back, and
4. Neither of them saw fit to tell Shane about the phone swap.

HOWEVER, once you just roll with the premise, this story turns out to be an excellent outsider POV fic that is both humorous and heart touching.

But the second story, Do Not Text Jane, oh MAN. It's the same sequence of events as in I Like Jane For You, but told from Ilya's POV, and it is a fantastic character study of Ilya. As well as explaining WHY he didn't tell Shane about the phone swap, it also shows just how much he loves and misses and thinks about Shane ALL THE TIME, as well as his more general loneliness and need for some proper friends. (It's probably not too much of a spoiler to say that he ends up with some, though the number remains debatable in the third story. Don't worry, it will make sense once you get there.)

SO YES, then there's the third story, Please Be Normal About This, set a couple of years later:

After the events of I Like Jane For You, the public reacts to Rozanov and Pike as secret friends. Conveyed through text threads, social media, and news articles.


Okay, so this is hardly the first story in this sort of format that I've read in this fandom, but it's the only one I've read multiple times. [tumblr.com profile] Samirant and I read it together in chat and kept exchanging quotes as we went. It's so clever, and utterly hilarious. Ilya's media statement in Chapter 2 in particular is one for the ages, but it's truly one of those stories that if I tried to quote all my favourite lines I'd be pretty much quoting the whole story.

I have a tag on tumblr called Read This - and yes, yes you should.

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