Update 06/04/2023
Good afternoon,
The weekend is nearly upon us, and that means it's EasterCon time!
I'll be around at EasterCon for the whole of the long weekend, so if you're around, absolutely feel free to come say hi! I'm pretty distinctive with the anchor I wear on my cheek and the dots and x at my eyes, and I'll be in suits every day. If you have a copy of Heart of Stone and you'd like for me to sign it, I can do that for you!
I will be on the Queer Pirates panel at 3pm tomorrow (Friday April 7th), alongside Ryann Fletcher, Juliet Kemp, and F.D. Lee, with the panel moderated by Kate Heartfield.
Our Flag Means Death and other pirates: a panel discussion including fandom and canon of Our Flag Means Death and other series such as Black Sails.
It'll be the Sandringham room, but EasterCon is hybrid and you will absolutely be able to attend online with your virtual membership!
Ahead of the panel, I've put together a list of some favourite pieces of pirate-related media, including some podcasts, some books, some TV series and films, and a few other pieces of miscellany! You can find it here.
I've also started using ChillSubs - it's been my ambition to submit to more magazines and publications this year, and as well as having the Shousetsu Bang Bang on my list (deadline is on Monday for April's issue!) and the Bury Your Gays anthology deadline coming up next month, I've been digging through and searching for other pubs to submit to.
ChillSubs is a big database of publications and magazines that lets you narrow down searches by different factors, and also lets you track your submissions to different publications! I recommend it.
Also, another reminder that Monstrous May is coming next month!
These are the prompts for every day of the month of May! You can also check these prompts and the challenge out on Twitter and on Tumblr.
Media Recs
Not that much this week!
First, The Illusionist (2006, dir. Neil Burger). A lot of low reviews for this movie are comparing it to The Prestige (2006, dir. Christopher Nolan) and saying it sucks in comparison, which is wild to me because that movie fucking sucks and I hated it, and this one was actually a lot of fun. It's just a simple, engaging, self-contained story - you can tell that it was adapted from a short story, and while the end is a bit cliché, as a lover of magic and sleight-of-hand I really loved how it was done and how it unfolded. Just a beautiful piece of cinema.
I've started watching The Cleaner (2021--), which is a sitcom from the BBC starring Greg Davies, and I'm really loving it! These are great little episodes that are primarily Davies playing off against one other person in each episode - he plays a crime scene cleaner, and each episode is him being dispatched to someone's home or another location to clean up a body or other violent scene. It's basically a deeply weird and bizarre man who's ultimately fascinated by the ways in which other people are deeply weird and bizarre, and engaging with them on that basis. It's fun and it's sharp and it's very silly!
And I've gotten really into watching terrarium and vivarium videos this week, so I'm gonna rec some of those before! These videos are really gorgeous and a lot of fun.
Firstly, this movie is off this guy going to pick up some swarming bees and it fucking rocks. When most bees swarm they're typically not aggressive because they're focusing their energy on migrating and finding a new hive, which is why apiarists can often handle them pretty easily without them getting aggro - this video though is. Wild!
DrPlants' One Year Ago I Built an Ecosystem, This Happened - This guy built a paludarium with vampire crabs and mourning geckos and it's so cool.
DrPlants' My Pet Wasp Colony Escaped - This is exactly what it sounds like, and is lowkey a nightmare, but the paperwasps are so beautiful and so gorgeous, the way they look and the way they move. They even gently eat honey off of his hand!
SerpaDesign's Jumping Spider Vivarium - This jumping spider is so cute, and I love this guy's tiny little set-up for him, it's so wonderfully done and so pretty.
SerpaDesign's Arid Bioactive Bearded Dragon Vivarium - This one is my favourite, like... So the first DrPlants video I recced and this one I just found entirely hypnotic to watch, because it's just really cool to see these vivaria take shape and see the different species that live alongside one another and keep each other in check. It's just really cool and interesting work, and so beautiful.
And I've recommended his videos before, but if you enjoy Serpa and DrPlants' videos, you might like AntsCanada's stuff.
New Works Published
Guide: Wearing Waistcoats
Finding waistcoats, choosing a fit, and wearing them. 10k.
Just a deep dive into wearing waistcoats and how to look into buying them, what sort of fits you might prefer, and so on!
Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon
Erotic Short: The Hot Springs
A man meets his match at the hot spring one morning.
Rated E, 4k, cis M/trans M. Some good old porn without plot — a man goes to the hot spring every day and crosses paths with a sexy blacksmith. Set in 1600s Japan. Size difference, manhandling, vaginal sex, creampies, a bit of anal play, a lot of oral and face-sitting, some banter and dirty talk, multiple orgasms, overstimulation!
Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon
Romance Short: Hit Me
A re-published piece on Wynward H. Oliver's Homo-Work!
1.7k, rated T. A blackjack dealer notices a lonely young man. Just some quiet companionship and bonding over loneliness in the early 1800s.
And speaking of re-publications, I've been getting on top of some TweetFic adaptations, and at the same time, I've transferred my fanfic TweetFics over to Ao3!
Here they are:
Growing Older - DS9, Garashir, 730w. Garak and Bashir have a conversation about showing their age.
Beauty Beheld - Disco Elysium, Kim/Harry, 2800w. Kim tries to comprehend Harry’s train of thought as Harry asks questions about beauty.
Patience - The Untamed, Xiyao, 320w. Just a short snippet of JGY riding LXC.
Considering Happiness - Our Flag Means Death, Steddyhands, 4k. Stede and Ed attempt to punish Izzy in the aftermath of the betrayal.
Rut - Our Flag Means Death, Steddyhands, 1500w. thinking about stede who’s a tentacle beast of some sort and ed who’s had sex with other mer-people in the past and… oviposition. trans izzy getting filled with eggs.