Create Your Own Adventure Exchange

As the post title says, I'm on vacation! So this will (possibly) be relatively brief today. The best thing I saw on the drive up was a highway bulletin-board ad that read, "Need legal advice? Don't ask us! We're just a bakery!" A++ aversion of expectations, would eat their cinnamon rolls again, lol. (Seriously, soooooo many ads for lawyers. And controlling women's bodies. o.O)

Anyway, here's where I am for this week:

• Exchanges due in September/October (enemiestoloversex, cuppajoexhange, Come in a Flash, sexpollenplus, ficinabox, trickortreatex, seasonofdrabbles + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I am now at 11/15; I got done exactly what I need to last week! 😊 I'm setting myself a goal for nothing this week, because I'll be on vacation the whole time, so I'm very busy hiking and working jigsaw puzzles. Although I am doing a bit of research into something that might turn out to be a treat. I'll be busy next week for sure (especially since there are a couple outstanding pinch-hits that I am the candidate the grab), but I'll worry about that then. If I feel inspired to write anything this week, that's just a surprise bonus!


• Exchanges due in November/December (fffx, ficinabox treats, seasonofdrabbles treats, yuletide_admin + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): The only assignment out so far is fffx, so I'm currently at 0/1. I did skip both eatdrinkmakemerry and amperslashexchange. I checked on nominations for seasonofdrabbles and am good there. It looks like I'll have a very light Nov/Dec docket, but I have plans for that!


• Exchanges that will go into 2026: au5k & highadrenalineexchange.


• Nope, nothing new on Femslash Salad Bar...


• I did, indeed, get The Tomb of Dragons in time for my trip, and am reading that and enjoying it loads, per usual. Finishing this is one of my few plans for the week!


• I haven't hit the top of the hold queue yet for Nona the Ninth, but I still suspect it will crop up this week and there are decent odds I'll finish this, too.


• Wen Guan by Qi Xiao Huangshu - I didn't do any reading on this. If Nona doesn't come in before I finish Tomb of Dragons, I'll resume this.


• I'm just starting Ch16 of Dear Door, which is proving to be the porny fun I was hoping for, and I'm continuing to read it at my leisure.


• BNHA: S8 has started, but I won't see it until post-vacation! And the movies/OVAs continue to be my back-up treat


• Fall Horror-Movie Season! Nothing this week since I'm away, but I did watch two more last week, and have some thoughts:
  
  
  • Crimson Peak: Well, this movie as a hot mess. But, y'know, some fun gothic aesthetic stuff going on, and I can't complain about Hiddlesbutt. I thought the ending was fairly meh, but I was entertained through the majority of it. I think fandom (and the fact that it's the 'twist' so often it's become cliche) had inured me to incest at this point. My reaction to it is: soooooooo?
  
  
  • 10 Cloverfield Lane: LOLWUT?! 🤣 I enjoy John Goodman, so I was curious about this, even though I'm not a fan of survivalist bullshit, post-apocalypse, OR J.J. Abrams. And I was a bit wary of the blurb sounding a bit like 'Misery in reverse, but with possible creepy rapist vibes if a women is the victim', and that last one fortunately enough wasn't too big an issue. I did enjoy the whole 'trapped in the bunker, is John Goodman completely crazy and gaslighting everyone or not?' bits. There was some decent suspense and mystery there. And I did have the thought at one point, 'If I was writing crack!fic about this, she'd get out and there'd TOTALLY be aliens!' I...did not expect that to be the actual twist. 😝 Like, I figure most people have more sense than me, but then this is J.J. Abrams, ye great master of bullshit nonsense. So, uh, yeah. That was a thing they did, where they grafted a movie with COMPLETELY different tone and aesthetic onto the last ten minutes. Which, I guess, was a choice? I feel like there were two potentially decent movies here, but they did not successfully mesh. So, yeah, that was a thing. This week's selections were not as successful (for me) as last week's, for sure!

September word count: September has ended, and through the end of September I wrote 216k! I am pretty on track to get 250k by end of year. I have 83 works published de-anon at this point (although quite a few not yet revealed.)

Goals for this week: 1) Hiking trip, vacation, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! 😊 2) Finish reading Tomb of Dragons. 3) Maybe read some other stuff if I have time.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah...

So, I didn't write a word last week. I did do a lot of coding for FIAB at the beginning of the week, so that might be where all my energy went. And then I had horrible hormonal headaches all weekend, so I couldn't look at screens, which didn't help. Ah well, this is why I build contingency planning into my schedules! Let us try again with this week's fandom stuff:

• Exchanges due in September/October (enemiestoloversex, cuppajoexhange, Come in a Flash, sexpollenplus, ficinabox, trickortreatex, seasonofdrabbles + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I am now at 9/15, but the "new" completed one there is actually just that when I posted one of the things from last week, it ended up as two things for reasons that I will explain post-reveals. I did post the things, though, which took a good deal longer than I expected! But nothing new written. I had hoped to get 2 things last week, and then 2 things this week, so that I'd be done because next week I'm on vacation. But, alas, 'twas not to be. But I'm setting the same goal for myself this week, because it's a reasonable one: I want to get 2 things done this week, so I will be at 11/15 by the time I leave on my trip.


• Exchanges due in November/December (fffx, ficinabox treats, seasonofdrabbles treats, yuletide_admin + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): Here's what I know I'll be writing in this period. The only assignment out so far is fffx, so I'm currently at 0/1. I'm not signing up for omegaverseexchange, but there's one prompt that I have promised myself I will claim if it comes up for PH (and maybe I'll treat anyway?). eatdrinkmakemerry has dropped back onto my iffy list, given that nothing RTMI has been requested so far. And I'll keep a skeptical but curious eye on amperslashexchange.


• Exchanges that will go into 2026: au5k & highadrenalineexchange.


• Gifts! enemiestoloversex went live last night, and I got a lovely Third Doctor/Delgado!Master fic from Classic Doctor Who: Locked room - exactly the sort of ridiculous trap-that's-actually-flirting that I have come to love and expect from this Master!


• Nope, nothing new on Femslash Salad Bar...


• I finished Grief of Stones! And, nooooo, they can't take away Thara's ability to hear the dead! 😭 Curious how the series will progress with this and the new job. (I mean, he's already basically a homicide detective anyway in a society that doesn't have that job, so I expect it will be similar, but I always look forward to the way things spin in this world.) These books are a delight as always, and I really like the addition of the "apprentice" (now Witness for the Dead!). I'm #1 on the library wait-list line for the next book, so I expect to have that on my vacation (if not earlier) and greatly look forward to it!


• I also suspect Nona the Ninth will come up in my queue this week. Lots of reading ahead, perfectly timed for my vacation!


• Wen Guan by Qi Xiao Huangshu - I didn't do any reading on this, what with everything else, but I did start...


• Dear Door - Porny manhwa! It's not very long, so I expect I'll get through it in not too long. I'm only four chapters in, so still getting the feel of it, but it seems like it'll be fun.


• BNHA movies/OVAs: Didn't get to these last week, probably won't this week, and after my vacation I'll have S8!!! Still, I'm holding these in reserve as treats for myself if I have a shitty day at some point. Mostly, though, I've been watching...


• Fall Horror-Movie Season! I have two more to pick up at the library this evening: Crimson Peak & 10 Cloverfield Lane. Here are my thoughts on last week's picks:
  
  
  • Midsommar: I looked at the cover for this and asked myself "Is this going to be The Wicker Man (1973) but in Sweden?" Then it started, and I had an "uh-oh, is this going to be one of those 'mental illness is a monster' movies?" But then, no, it turned back around and was, indeed, Wicker Man in Sweden! And, y'know, I loved Wicker Man (the original, that is - I have not seen the Nick Cage version and have been warned against it, lol), and I enjoyed this too. They did a good, creepy job showing how she was susceptible to the cult and her fall into it. Nice horror flick to start off the season!
  
  
  • Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: I loved these books as a kid, but was a little baffled that I'd decided to give this a shot 2 years ago when I first put in on my queue (I didn't get a chance to watch last year, due to The Events). But then I picked it up and remembered why I'd been curious: Guillermo del Toro as EP! Given how creepy the drawings were in the original, this is exactly the sort of person I want involved in a movie attempt. And it was pretty solid! They did get some of the visuals down very well. And they wove the frame story around several of the classic stories competently. (I caught The Red Spot immediately, and was heartened that the movie reinforced every kid of my block's opinion that that story wasn't SO bad because, while very creepy, at least the girl in that one lived! 😝) I had a fun time with this one, some fun classic horror here mixed in with childhood nostalgia.
  
  
  • Split: And this one, alas, was "mental illness is horror". I have very mixed opinions on this movie. James McAvoy did some fantastic acting in it, and the plot was gripping, and I did really like Unbreakable back when it came out (although it's been a long while since, so dunno if it will hold up). But jeebus, do we have to villainize DID this much? If this also came out 25 years ago, I could forgive it more, but nowadays it comes across as really tone deaf, to the point where I found it actively distracting. And it's not like they couldn't have made basically the same movie but not have it be about a mental-health condition (like they already did with Unbreakable). So it felt like an unnecessary add-on, too. I will probably eventually watch Glass, just so see what the overall 'vision' for the trilogy is, but this just feels like such a waste of what could have been a perfectly enjoyable movie.

Next week is my vacation, whee! Not sure when/how/if I'll post next week, but I'll make a (maybe very half-hearted, lol) effort.

Goals for next week: 1) Complete writing for 2 FIAB assignments, 2) Watch more horror movies, 3) Read some Dear Door, 4) Prep for my trip!