Somehow I have both more time, and less

[kantayra]

Work is slightly less crazy so far this week, and my mom's able to drive again, so I have at least enough free time this week to post, hooray! I'm also really looking forward to the three-day weekend. Allergy season seems to be letting up slightly (or else that's the cold snap), so I'm currently blissfully able to breathe. I had atrocious headaches the week before last too, which I had tentatively thought might be allergies, but no, are now clearly hormonal. Ugh.

On the other hand, I am panicking like crazy for deadline-related reasons:

• Exchanges due in May/June (hurtcomfortex, pickmeupexchange, idproquo, caseficexchange, seasonsofdrabbles, diegetic_exchange, fandom5k + mystery pinch-hits and treats): I'm now at 4/7, which would be lovely, except that I am perilously close to the deadline for one of those outstanding assignments, and I've been having all sorts of weird blocks on it. I have enough that I could turn one section of my fic into a bus-pass, but it would be a pale comparison to what I want to write but just can't seem to get on page. So my goal for this week is to try to unfuck this situation, which really needs to be sorted this week. And, assuming I do so, I will be in an excellent place with May/June fics. So trying my best to set my brain loose upon that problem. 🤞


• Some more lovely gifts that have come through in the meantime:
  
  • Correspondence - A lovely Harry/Draco fic for unsent_letters_exchange. Really a delightful classic EWE fic!
  
  
  • Before the Rising of the Sun - A double-drabble of Wen Zhuliu and his backstory with Wen Ruohan from The Untamed for seasonsofdrabbles, such a fascinating subject and I love reading different people's takes on it!
  
  
• Aside from the May/June exchanges listed above, I did skip signing up for any others. A couple of them had the odd intriguing request, but I didn't feel like I had enough to complete a sign-up. Assuming I have some time upcoming, I'm planning to start making pinch-hit and treat passes through some of those soon.


• Femslash Salad Bar - Nope, still no progress!


• I'm still very slowly plugging my way through My Hero Academia. I think I'm through a grand total of 6 episodes, lol. It is marginally better than the intro arc, but still not grabbing my interest.


• I finished Scum Villain's Self-Saving System by MXTX last week, but didn't have time to say much about it! But LOVED this so much! ❤️❤️❤️ Such a great combination of humor with the modern-day fandom/social-media stuff and the cultivation-isekai world. It was such a romp from beginning to end, and I'm already poking around for similar recs.


• In the meantime, I've started up Guardian by priest, which was the highest-recced non-MXTX cnovel I got, and it is very different from MXTX so far for sure, but I'm also really loving this one! The supernatural mystery is really engrossing so far, and I'm exceptionally curious WTF is going on between Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei (beyond the fact that they obviously need to fuck, lol). I've got a hard copy of this one, so this is my away-from-computer book, while...


• My library queue finally got me the ebook for The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, which is my on-computer book. And, wow, I am racing through this one! If you had asked me whether I'd like to read the story about some teenage kid's first week after his succession to some fantasy-empire throne, I would have laughed you out of the room, but I would have been SO WRONG! This world-building is so absorbing, and Maia is so likeable, and the court/royalty bullshit is so awful but Maia's very much on my-the-reader's side on this, and it's super fascinating and absorbing. Really loving this! (Although the idea of trying to write fanfic for this is incredibly intimidating - not sure if I'll ever develop the guts for that!)

Goals for this week: 1) Finish the one fic that I absolutely need to finish. That's it, nothing else, I can reward myself with the rest once I finish that.