delga | Recent Entries

i am not really sure how my building connects to the one next to me, so i’m not sure whether the people i can hear speaking are in the flat below me, or in a flat next to me. it’s something i’ve been worrying about in the abstract - this is the first time i’ve heard anyone - because i don’t want my music, or even my current netflix binge to disturb anyone.

i keep meaning to look at an aerial view of the building to work it out, and i keep forgetting.

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here is a song i have been obsessed with this weekend. enjoy.

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current netflix binge: the second season of a series of unfortunate events. the very first time i tried to watch this show i got bogged down by how sad i felt for the characters, and gave up pretty early. then, for whatever reason, the second try clicked and i watched all of s1. i haven’t exercised any patience with s2 at all. i’ve only got a couple of episodes left. all the new additions to the cast have been delightful.

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rome was fantastic, even with the incessant rain at the top of the week. ( rome )

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i spent last monday in a meeting about gdpr (new eu data protection legislation) which honestly went on all day, and then, after a couple of hours on tuesday, suddenly left me with nothing to do. ( work )

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we won our quiz! our team was called Fred the Duck, and we won by a margin of 7 points. it was actually a really good evening, especially after a such a slow day. everyone contributed, too, and we won by more of a margin than the differences between other teams. huzzah!

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on thursday night i came home from work, ate, cleaned up, packed and then headed out at 10pm to catch a train north to chesterfield to see the (ex-) flatmate. ( chesterfield )

i kind of want to make cake now.

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( bfi )

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today: groceries have been bought, vacuuming has been done, remaining clothes have been put away. i’m going to finish my netflix binge, and hopefully some knitting, then i need to make dinner this evening. back to work tomorrow.

Current Music: Grace Carter: Silence

hi i’m in rome!

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i spent my first week in london luxuriating in my new commute (half an hour! reading time!) and going to a heap of events. poetry readings! theatre! crochet class! i hit some kind of hormones-meet-cabin-fever-meets-change-is-weird high on wednesday and spent the whole day in a terrible wreck of sadness. not anxious, which is new; just heavy and miserable and fucking sad, which i thought was maybe homesickness, but a call home made things worse by just being incredibly irritating (we’re really bad at having conversations; it’s embarrassing). i don’t know if it’s a heap of malcontent but i did not dig it at all.

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thursday was a heap of fun! there was a different cast this time - fewer understudies; more primary cast - and we were in the dress circle, which was a better view than the last time. the dude playing king george is bloody funny, in a way that i really wasn’t expecting, and the guy playing hamilton is tall af. taking esther was a trip too; i love other people’s excitement for the show.

afterwards we went to the real greek in marylebone. damn, the food there is so good!

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macbeth was honestly kind of a mess, and it started snowing that morning which threw the rest of our plans into a tailspin. ruthy headed home earlier than anticipated, and my sister and i ended up taking the tube to heathrow to then take a shuttle to our hotel for the night.

getting up at 4am was a pain, especially when the snow delayed our bus, but it sounds like we were lucky to get on a flight at all, and once we were at t5, it was a breeze.

rome so far has been vast and rainy. tomorrow we’re going to the capitoline museum to see some goddamn sculptures and i’m already losing my mind over it.

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i signed out of slack on my phone but forgot to do it on the ipad and accidentally looked through work messages. oops. i’ve sorted that out now. no working on vacation! it’s bullshit, and i am against it. leave is leave, and i’m on it.

hey, so: i moved house yesterday!

during the snow shenanigans i sorted out my offer, deposit and contract, and yesterday i hauled my stuff to the new place and i’ve been unpacking since. well, no, not since. dad and i dropped off my stuff before going to visit one of my aunts who lives 15 minutes away. i knew she was close, but i didn’t know by how much. i’m far enough away to not have an helicopter adults in my life, but close enough that i can pop in on a sunday, and potentially see my cousins and their families on occasion. these are cousins that are older by a stretch so I don’t see them as often as the others, so it’s a good move.

dad dropped me back just after 4, and i spent a couple of hours putting clothes away, and sheets on the bed etc. put a shoe rack together! found my make-up! tried and failed to move the bed! in between, i started the task of letting people know i’ve relocated. some people knew already, but i get a little paranoid when new things happen and i hold off sharing news. i’m the same with new jobs; often i don’t tell people until i’ve started.

this morning i’ve been sorting through the remainder of my stuff, organising things to my liking whilst waiting for sainsbury’s to open so i can pick up some food. i’m living with the landlady, but she’s away this week, so it’s just me for now.

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for my first night in london i... went to the theatre, obviously. i’d had it booked for a long time, but only recently realised what it was i was going to see (it was helpfully listed in my calendar as ‘play’).

i went to royal court theatre to see girls and boys, a 90-minute performance by carey mulligan that flips between the story of the narrator’s marriage and memories of the narrator interacting with her children. it’s anecdotal and funny, and sometimes absolutely shocking. mulligan, who is in general Very Good, is fantastic. the character has this sort of cockney/estuary mix, and she’s centre stage for most of the telling, hip-cocked, hand in pocket, other hand gesturing as she tells this story. pointed, and jokey, and absorbing. i don’t know if i was on board with where the story went, but it was very, very good.

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this week: kaveh akbar is in the uk to promote calling a wolf a wolf; teaching a colleague how to crochet; hamilton matinee on thursday; macbeth - which absolutely bombed in previews, so who even knows what that’s going to be like - matinee on Saturday; R O M E.

please don’t rain please don’t rain please don’t rain

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right, a few more bits and pieces to put away, then out for some fresh air. then i can mooch around to my heart’s content the rest of the day.

the thing about missing my ride in the morning is that not only could i then have slept for an extra hour, but it sets the whole day off to a bad start. the first bus doesn’t reach me until 6.40, and doesn’t reach town until 7, so i can’t be on the 7am, and the 7:20 is a seatless nightmare. and it’s one thing if i were late and missed my lift completely, but Nice Neighbour left early, and i was behind him in the street, which means if he’d checked his mirror, he would have seen me.

i’m so annoyed! up at 5 to get in for 9. aaaargh!

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i spent the weekend doing very little. i watched all of hard sun which was a terrible show, and all three aired episodes of collateral which was fairly solid but just boring. it’s a shame because both shows have a compelling cast - agyness deyn is brilliant and emotes really well, carey mulligan’s been doing trade in stoic and shrewd for a while, and both billie piper and nicola walker have parts in collateral which currently feels like david hare saw a nordic drama and decided he could do that too. except it’s four episodes, a lot of the characters are wasted, and it’s very, very boring.

then i watched about 10 episodes of wynonna earp which has been utterly delightful.

so that’s the kind of weekend it was.

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i also hurt my arm from doing too much crochet because i am nothing if not a winner.

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yesterday was my first day back in the office since being snowed in last week, and i was glad to be back, though i am still close to running out of things to do. the next few days will be fine because i will reconcile the accounts on one of our schemes and then put together the financial report, which always takes ages, but otherwise i have been trying to get more put on my plate. i have three projects that are now my responsibility, but one is waiting for information from a third party, the other needs to be divvied up, and i’m working on a third. today i need to get some marketing copy signed off by compliance too but that’s another job where i pass things on to someone else.

there is a box of paperwork sitting on my boss’ desk that contains statements and invoices for a scheme that is now closed, but from which we are due money. i think i’m going to try to pick that up next.

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in three weeks, i’ll be in rome! i’m going with my sister, who really needs to tell me what she needs me to book in terms of early access (skip-the-queue tickets etc) otherwise we’re going to get there and spend the whole time queuing. i’m also hopeful that the weather is dry and warmer than it’s been here. i need some sun!

the plan this year was to do this now, and then two weeks in australia in november, but now it looks like i have to put that second trip on hold again because my cousin in canada is getting married in august and i very much want to be there. it’s a time of year that i typically take time off, so i’m not starving for leave, but it means i can’t do another trip in autumn. i’m hoping we get as many of the cousins out to ottawa as possible. that one is going to be a blast!

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okay, it’s 6:25am, and i have to leave the house again in about 8 minutes. normally when i take the bus i throw two fingers up and take the reduced slow-stop so that i can get a seat, but i want to be in by half 8, so i’m just going to have to stand in the vestibule of the fast service. everything is just a little bit too frustrating now.

okay, okay, okay, i’m making progress.

i have a bunch of craft projects in the go right now, all of which i need to buck up and sew together so that they can be crossed off the list. at the weekend i finished knitting the first of six cushion covers i need to do, so now that needs sewing up. i also need to sew together a dog i’ve been crocheting so my cousin can take it with her when she goes to india next week. i made another elephant with the first pattern i ever tried, and it turns out that the reason it didn’t work great is that i hate the pattern.

i have a number of makes on my to-do list, and i really need to make a physical list if i want any chance of keeping on top of this whole thing.

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i live in the east of england*, and my area has been one of the places hit by The Beast from The East (i still cannot believe that’s what we’re calling it). the cab i was in at 1am on wednesday morning was trying to get me home through snow that had been steadily accumulating for over 8 hours - snow that was still falling as we travelled - and nearly spun off the road at one point, so suffice it to say that i haven’t left the house since. today there’s been a lot of snowfall and sleet - huge waves of very, very small flakesss of snow. i am over it, guys. enough.

i’m hoping that i can get in and back out of work tomorrow, because i really don’t want to do another day in the house. there’s not a lot going on in the office, but i really want my dang laptop. when i left the bar on tuesday night, my boss was like, why are you coming in tomorrow? which, thanks, but at least let me pretend i should come in or i never will. as it was, i ended up slacking him on wednesday morning and telling him i wouldn’t be in. i appreciated knowing in advance that he had no bones about my not being there, but. idk. idk where i’m going with this.

it’s snowing; public transport in the area has ceased to function; wfh meant i managed to continue my slow, happy progress through the new series of queer eye and watch half of the latest critical role. silver linings.

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*) ‘east of england’ is actually a region of the country, as opposed to east england, which encompasses east of england. the whole area is a mix between a number of regions - not really north enough to be the midlands; not south enough to be london; just about west enough to not be east anglia. i don’t know why we’re like this, guys.

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here are some things i have spent money on (that i probably shouldn’t have spent money on, but whatever):

1. my bff and i (ex-flatmate) (oh man, it’s been a decade) are going to see brian friel’s translations at the nash in june!
2. i also bought a ticket to see julie at the nash on the same day because why not
3. i am going to miss most of bfi flare this year (the bfi’s lgbt film festival) but i did manage to book battle of the sexes and call me by your name which are showing on this ‘second chance’ day they do on the closing day of the festival. got in for some priority booking, too, which is always fun

i’m hoping to see lady bird soon as well, but it will have to be in london because it’s not screening at my local.

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spotify rec’d me the new vance joy album this week and i have to say: well played.

jsyk i think about posting all week and then i’m not home long enough to do it. but! here i am.

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the flat hunt shenanigans continued apace this week. saw two places on tuesday, and cancelled a viewing to a third because i knew in my heart of hearts that it wasn’t what i wanted. one of the ones on tuesday was good so now i’m at the mercy of the landlady’s decision, and the other was perfect other than the place itself being a dump. i’ve paused on answering ads for a while because we’re visiting cousins this weekend so i can’t do viewings, and also, i feel like i need to wait for other opportunities.

the good thing about tuesday was that the first viewing was early, so i met my cousin for dinner, which is the first time we’ve managed to do that this year. i’ve seen her a lot, just not one-on-one, which is unusual for us. she’s asked me to make a toy for one of her in-law’s kids so i’ve been cobbling a pattern together for a dog. i don’t like any of the patterns i have to hand, which is annoying, but should be done soon.

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i managed to go to zumba for the first time this month, and not just that but i went both days. monday’s one felt so good, holy crap. wednesday’s was a little more jagged, but some of that was this teenager who comes to the classes with her mum and would. not. move. over. there was so much space to her left, and i had three people to my right. but she wanted to be centre-left, so there she stayed. i’d have gone the other side of her, but there was another woman to her left. there wasn’t space for another person, but there was space for her to JUST MOVE.

the woman who runs those classes is so lovely. i used to think that was a requisite of being a zumba instructor, and then i met this woman in canada and she was nice but not particularly welcoming. anyway, she’s trying to get me to sign up for a 10-class pass, which under other circumstances i would do immediately. but because i don’t know what’s going on with these flats, i’m reluctant. i haven’t really been telling people outside family and a couple of people in london how the viewings are going. i should just get a pass. i probably won’t be moving any time soon, and once we get to april, the train company might not even refund my season ticket, in which case i wouldn’t be able to afford to move until june.

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i ran out of things to do at work on monday which, frankly, was a while coming. my boss is sometimes reluctant to give me more than one task to do at a time. sometimes i’ll volunteer to help take stuff off his place and he’ll be like, yeah, but you’re busy too, and then won’t share anything. normally there’s plenty to be getting on with, but other than the first manic week of january, it’s been slow.

he came back to me with a list of four tasks. “you can pick more than one,” he said, eager to get at least one of them off his own plate.

anyway, suffice it say, i took on all four, and a fifth later that day. i’ve fine the legwork on most of them; outright finished two. today i’m working at home because of appointments but i’m going to go over appraisal paperwork. we’ve been talking about the need for more structured l&d and better appraisals for the ops team for a while and it’s finally in, but now that i work for the company, i get to do one too. pretty certain i have more experience with these things than my boss, so that meeting is going to be interesting.

one of the caveats of my moving across with him last april was a role review six months in. we ended up putting that off because certain things about his role changed or got postponed, so we couldn’t be sure about what was happening, but he’s looked at it since then and apparently we’ll review it during the appraisal. i don’t really know what that means for me. my usual method of development is to say yes to every opportunity and then work out my skillset once i am in. there’s less scope for that here, so i don’t know how this is going to go.

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today: force the dentist to take out my broken wisdom tooth (i packed it with chewing gum to stop it from cutting up my mouth but now it has to go); pick up the hire car for the weekend at 4pm; pick up my sister from work to see black panther. oh yeaaaaaah.

it sure has been a week of stuff.

actually, no, it hasn’t, but i’ve been organising and attending flats viewings and it’s been A LOT. saw one place that was really good but had no living space; one woman wouldn’t give me the address; one woman had to cancel because of a migraine; one room got taken up before i could see it; one room came up for grabs out of nowhere and then got taken up whilst i was talking to the landlady. that woman wanted us to keep in touch? why?

in the end i ended up seeing two places today, one of which isn’t going to work out, and the other which got taken up RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME GUYS I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE THAT HAPPENED, and the flat i saw yesterday, without the living space, has also been taken up. i am trying to arrange another viewing for tuesday evening, and hopefully also the migraine cancellation as well. it’s a lot of hassle for something i don’t entirely want to do. hopefully the right thing will come up. i guess i need to feel good enough to say then and there that i want something, but because in my heart of hearts i don’t want any of them, it’s not happening.

bloody exhausting, though.

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after the viewing last night i went to ilford to see an old family friend (the girl who got married in 2014, whose wedding i ended up running in the background) who had a baby in september. it was really relaxed, which was nice. her brother was there for a bit - i’ve seen him every weekend for the past three weeks, but he’s a good guy - and in the morning i got to play with the baby, which is always fun. i handed over the hippo i made back in september, so that has officially gone home.

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i started a knitting project the other night - my first in about a year - and i’ve been trying to get used to continental knitting because the throwing method is kind of doing my arm in. i’ve got knitting down, but purling has proven Complicated. i think i’m twisting the stitch when i do it. it’s visibly not-quite-right. i’ll get it, but i ended up frogging a lot of it to get those stitches right.

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new brandi carlile album dropped on friday, and though i find her stuff hit-or-miss, i like the record a lot. both the opening track and the mother have been alternately on repeat since i first played the album through.

i also got an email about haim playing ally pally in june, and even though i wanted to ask so much more of their second album, i’ve signed up for advanced sales. with any luck i’ll be living in london by then.

so, like, if i want to be more active, then i have to post, right?

the migration of people to tumblr meant that in general i forgot how to do this. i feel a little awkward and ungainly. it's been coming up a lot recently as i try to pimp myself out for flatshares in london. that whole experience has been stressful, in part because i don't really want to share with strangers, and in part because i've never excelled at unironic self-promotion. one of the questions i've been asking myself is: how did i end up with so many online friends, and not a single one in my neck of the woods? i love my pocket friends dearly, but guys, why so many of you so dang far away?

this week i've ended up secluded in the house for more days than anticipated. i'm working from home, but also, you know, catching up with critical role and looking at my c.v. with a vague air of contemplation. do i actually want to change jobs? (no.) do i need to? (i... don't know. how does someone negotiate their salary without leaving their job?) (that's rhetorical.)

it's been over a decade since i started my eljay, and it looks like the most pressing question continues to be: what am i doing with my life oh my god.

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off to make some friends. i guess. ??

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(oh gosh i can't remember any of my own tags.)

dear yuletider, thank you so much for your eagerness! i know i’m a little behind the curve this year. i’m pretty excited about shenanigans, though, so let’s mosey on.

first of all, please know that i am super pumped that we have some shared interests. this automatically makes you A-OKAY. i hope you have fun writing for the challenge this year - yt should be mellow as all get out, and to wit, please know that all optional details truly are optional. i am going to be p s y c h e d whatever you write so if the below does not gel with you, skip it for the story you’ve got bubbling away. that you’re writing for me at all is a gift; thank you, and go easy on yourself.

( generalised general things )

( fandom specifics! )

i guess this year's theme is: big feelings.

this is normally the part where i share a bunch of links but i am horrific at tagging on tumblr, so i don't even know if there are links worth looking at. just in case: these are my previous yt letters; this is my tumblr. i write at a03 under delgaserasca, and if you need to ask someone about things i dig in fic, hit up hestia8 or sonictoaster.

HAVE FUN FRIEND. I DEMAND IT. (kindly.)

xoxo delga

i have never made a post in this dw. huh.

this is a placeholder! but honestly, it's much the same as before. details to follow.

specifically: in the next post that i make. i'm doing it now, i swear.

edit: THIS IS THE LETTER FRIEND I AM SO SORRY

DEAREST YULETIDE FRIEND, PLEASE FORGIVE ME! do not take my late writing of this letter as indication that i do not love you: i do, i do, i do. thank you so much for writing for me! i'm wicked jazzed, you have no idea. ("wicked jazzed" lmao who says that.) it has taken me some time to get off my backside and write this. i hope it hasn't caused you undue stress.

to start with: you are SMASHING. i'm so glad we have overlapping interests! i hope that this yt experience is mellow and full of good cheer. for once i'm going to try to be detailed because i don't have a lot of resources to offer you, and also because my requests were a bit. well. i think they were weak. i should probably look them up again before continuing this letter. you can wait here; i won't be long.

ok, cool. no, i'm good; i'm up to speed. let's do this.

( GENERAL BITS N BOBS )

( SPECIFIC REQUESTS )

( LINKS (...TUMBLR) )

hestia8 is one of my oldest fandom friends and is a good person to ask about my tastes. door knows what kind of fic i read, and i recced a bunch of a++ justified fics to sonictoaster. hit them up if you've got Qs, but overall, please have fun, and definitely do not sweat it! we're already buds, don't you know?

ALL THE BEST, FRIEND,

delgaserasca ex-oh ex-oh heartemoji

DEAR DARLING YULETIDE AUTHOR:

so, after something of a hiatus, i have decided that i would like to do yuletide again this year. i think my requests were pretty comprehensive in detail, but i wanted to outline some wider details.

FIRSTLY, and most importantly: thank you! thank you for tackling any of my prompts. i hope that you have fun and that you find something here that you can work with! if you write something that doesn't bounce off anything in my prompts or anything below, erm, i'm still going to love it? a lot? i am already excited! this is going to be GREAT.

i am, like everyone, on tumblr, and you can find me and my tastes here: notabuddhist @ tumblr.com

( tumblr stuff )

i love character pieces. in all my time writing fic and reading fic and writing for yuletide, i have always, always loved character pieces. i enjoy plot but i also know that plot is not always easy, so i will take a character piece that fits the tone of what canon has given us with a wide and happy smile. my other tastes have changed considerably. i am really far less discerning than i used to be, haha. i like angst with a happy ending; i like fics that hold up to details; i like A LOT OF PINING. i also like to get into what gets people going. i LOVE stories about stories, so tell me story about these characters we love, and i will be immensely satisfied.

( fandom specifics )

( people to speak to. no, but seriously. )

thank you, thank you, a thousand times, thank you. have funnnnnn. don't let the above stress you out. if you get a flash of inspiration, run with it. it's going to show if you love what you're writing and if you're enjoying it and that will make it way more than worth it. go nuts. <3

Hi everyone,

I'm running Duck Cheer again, albeit it on tumblr this time.

Let me know if you'd like to join in.

!!!!! Happy New Year, everyone! I woke up at stupid o'clock this morning to work an entirely pointless shift in my parents' store BUT because Yuletide reveals don't happen until America is awake, there's time to get my recs in, hurrah!

First off: SOMEONE WROTE ME SAZ KAUR FIC. It is GREAT. It is all about unravelling the numbers in her brain, which I really, truly love because Some Girls is a comedy and so a lot of the nuance in the characters is played for laughs. I think Saz gets a tough deal sometimes but I also think I'm sensitive to her characterisation. BUT THE FIC! It is so good! It nails a level of alienation that is backed up less by cultural norms (which is also a thing, but also NOT a thing) and more by personal circumstance. AND it's funny and warm and sad and just GOSH lovely Go read it: greater than or equal to (Some Girls)

Sometimes the best Saz can do is to take what she’s observed and combine it with what she’s seen other people do and try to extrapolate how she’s supposed to behave. That’s probably just how human interaction is supposed to work, only it’s meant to be subconscious. When Saz was with Joe, and then when she wasn’t, she paid a lot of attention to what her friends’ boyfriends were like. Rocky, for instance, couldn’t go five minutes without texting Viva to ask if she thought aliens had pets and would leashes still work with no gravity, and Brandon would go completely mental if he didn’t hear back from Holli right away, and whatever delinquent Holli was not-banging in any given week was sure to be slobbering after her all the time, and everyone said that if she and Joe were going to be long distance, communication was even more important, so Saz communicated.

Other recs! I actually did all my yuletide reading yesterday and I found I just didn't know most of the fandoms. So here is best of the 15 that I read.

Five Women Ryan Stone Met On the Road (And One Man She Technically Never Did) (Gravity/other fandoms)

The girl with the CHICAGO cardboard sign bends down to look through the opened passenger's side window and introduces herself as Cosima Nie-Holy-Shit-You're-Ryan-Stone.

THIS FIC. In an effort to deal with her mounting PTSD symptoms, Ryan takes to picking up hitchhikers. The fic includes crossovers with Sleepy Hollow, Orphan Black, The X-Files, Elementary and The Heat, and is on-point and in character. LOVELY.

(You should read ALL the Gravity fics because they are all haunting and deft and just lovely. But this is kindlier.)

the wine on our breath puts the love in our tongues (Frances Ha)

So she decided to call this chapter of her life spartan and minimalist. Other words for that could be empty and lonely but she made the active decision not to refer to her life at present as either of those things. Those words, she decided, could exist on the opposite side of the aisle, amidst the collection of all the things she does not have.

Frances throws a party - in Sophie's place. What I really loved about Frances Ha - apart from everything - is that Sophie is not a great friend and you slowly learn that across the course of the film. You learn it as Frances learns it, and that's cool - you love your friends regardless of their faults or they're not your friends. This fic does a great job of amplifying Frances' awareness but also that middleground you meet when it's necessary to do so. I also really love the reported style which I think does a great job of replicating a) that arch way Frances and Sophie have of speaking, and b) the greyscale used in the post-production. I can't quite explain how tone achieves that but I think you'll know what I mean.

#knemma (Emma)

GK
But
what happened between you and Elton?

Emma W
what
lol
it was super awkward
he was like “I’ve loved you since forever”
by which he meant Halloween
(Haz and I posted our Elementary cosplay pictures
and he went on about it, remember?)
and I was like
“what???” and “I THOUGHT YOU LIKED HAZ”
and had to block him from this account
because he kept insisting
and then he made a cryptic post in his DW
but it wasn’t cryptic enough because his girlfriend
who's not only real but has a tumblr
totally understood and started messaging me
so I had to block her too.
WTF.

GK
There’s a fandomwank report.

OH MY GOD A MODERNISATION OF AUSTEN'S EMMA THAT IS SET IN FANDOM. It's all in chatspeak, but fuuuuck, it works. I love this. Shut up. It's fab.

Annum Novum (The Eagle)

"Seven days you've been gone," Esca snapped, unable to contain his anger.

"My uncle forced me to stay and rest for a night, or I would have been home earlier." Esca saw now that Marcus was shuddering, with either cold or exhaustion, or both. "I am glad to be back, now."

"You're a fool." Esca stepped up close and fisted his hand in the front of Marcus' cloak, and Marcus came forward, leaning against him with most of his weight. They embraced. After a while Esca became aware that his hand was twisted tightly in the hair at the back of Marcus neck. Marcus did not protest it.

There are SO MANY "and then they live on a farm together" fics for this fandom and I love them ALL. I especially love the following: PINING; continued lack of understanding over one another's cultures; Esca worrying about Marcus' leg; MARCUS WORRYING ESCA WILL LEAVE. I also greatly enjoy reading baout their attempts at farming and the difficulties they have to overcome. This fic has all of that and is just. Yes. Excellent.

Former Detectives Club (Broadchurch)

"Why did you leave Scotland?" Miller is pretending to squint at the setting sun—but even sitting next to her and looking out at the harbour himself, Alec can tell she's got her head on one side and is actually peering shrewdly at him.

He sighs and leans against the back of the park bench. "I've got a heart condition", he says. "Had to get away from all that fried food, didn't I."

The best part of the show was Alec and Ellie's double act, and this fic continues that in the kindliest manner. The characterisation is spot on; I can't commend it enough.

Lastly, a rec for an app/site. Do you read fanfic or anything on the internet? Use POCKET. Seriously, best app I've used in ages. You can add things to it from your phone, tablet, laptop, browser etc. and read things on the go. Download quickly when you have a net connection, and then read your longfic on the go. It also has organisational features, and makes it easy for you to share things with friends. Sometimes I let out a siren call for fluff recs, and the next thing I know, wliberation has sent me a handful on pocket. AMAZING. Get it here: http://getpocket.com

Dear Yuletider,

Hello! At long last, a proper letter.

Firstly, a confession: I had to default on my entry to this year's Yuletide because there's not a chance I will be able to complete it, though I will try to do stocking fillers. On that note, if you also want to default, I won't blame you, especially as I have been sort of useless with communicating. I do think my previous letters make a good starting point, but I promised you an actual letter, which you wholly deserve. Before all that, you should know that I am always thrilled by fic that is written for me, so I don't want this to cause you any stress. I already know that whatever you write is going to be exactly what I want. If you have an idea outside of what is below the cut, run with it. I love to be surprised!

( fandom specifics )

Thank you so much for writing for me! If you have any questions about my likes/dislikes, hestia8 is probably the person to ask. Have fun, yuletider!

Love, delgaserasca ex-oh ex-oh (tumblr | yuletide tag)

Current Music: The Lumineers - Big Parade (Live) | Powered by Last.fm

Dear yuletider,

Assignments came out today, but I am heading into work and still haven't sorted out my letter which is terrible. I'm so sorry!

You should know first up that I am going to be full-on excited for whatever you write. I wish I were a better recipient! Don't let details upset you. Write what feels right. I want this to be nothing but a pleasure for you.

I prefer-character driven stuff and I enjoy thought-out plots; I am big on female friendships. That said, I read pretty much anything these days. My biggest fandom at the moment is full of slash, so. Yeah.

I will be back to populate this part with more details re: individual fandoms but if you hit up my Yuletide tag, you'll find my previous letters and there'll be a lot of crossover, so please make use of them.

Yuletide writer, I love you already! I'm sorry I'm so tardy this year,

delgaserasca kiss kiss

Holy wow, guys, Only God Forgives is easily THE MOST VIOLENT FILM I HAVE EVER SEEN. And it's not like I didn't know Winding Refn's repertoire , but I was STILL shocked by some of it.

My parents left this morning to bring my sister home from uni, so that's a thing that's happening.

Other things I have seen in the past week, a list: ( films & theatre. )

Last night I met up with my cousins for dinner. We were all falling asleep at our seats and then, as the night went on, we perked up. They're a riot, and I love them, and I needed to see them. We saw each other in the middle of May and then, because of work, I missed out on the next meet-up. There's going to be a larger gathering next weekend when we have our (almost) annual musical weekend. It's been a couple of years since the last one, so we are long overdue. After that: summer. With that in mind, I really need to get back to this Raft Race paperwork...

Current Music: Chris Pureka - Shepherd | Powered by Last.fm

I am beyond relieved that this is a three-day weekend. Admittedly, I still haven't managed to type up the minutes from the last Raft Race meeting, but at the same time, I have managed to do half a beta (I AM THE WORST), lose half a tooth (don't ask), and get caught up with Orphan Black (now I have to wait a week for the gd finale).

Huzzah?

Work has been a maelstrom of late. I know that I complain when there is fuck all to do, but I've worked a fortnight of late nights, and had a family wedding in the middle, and am quite cross about the whole thing. I've got at least the rest of this week to have to deal with it some more, a couple of weeks of peace, and then I we have to do the whole thing over again. Luckily, when I spoke to my line manager about running the next cycle using a rota (I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR OVER A YEAR) she finally sounded amenable to it. Progress! I'm am quite pleased about this because it means a) this should be less stressful next time around and b) if I ever get my act together for new jobs, I now have a concrete example of problem-solving to call upon in interviews. Fuck yeah.

I have been very bad at updating eljay, and very bad at updating the tumblr I set up to review things, so I think I'm going to do a series of posts called Have You Been Watching...? which will summarise (mini-)series I have seen recently and then forgotten to talk about. I think I'll post them here, too, just to get back into the swing of updating.

Speaking of, I saw The Hothouse at Trafalgar Studios this week. Uproariously funny, but surprisingly dark. I enjoy Pinter a great deal, and his wit never fails to get my sides aching, but having known nothing about this play in advance, I was incredibly surprised by the setting and subject matter. Brilliantly staged.

I did actually start doing admin for the Raft Race yesterday (have I talked about this? I don't remember. Anyway, I'm the secretary of a committee that has been put together to run an event in our town) but I got interrupted by several phone calls, my Dad asking me to help him with some admin for another local event, and then the arrival of some of my maternal cousins who were passing by on their way back from a wedding. It was one of my cousins' birthdays, so I made some cinnamon cupcakes. By the time they left, Baby Cousin turned up, and there went the evening. I have a feeling I'll have to leave the minutes until tomorrow, but they're almost a fortnight overdue. (See: work.)

At the end of this year I am going to get rid of my domain hosting which I wasn't able to utilise the way that I wanted, so if you go back through any of my older posts (I don't know why you would) and find there are images missing, that's why.

~~Ten~~ NINE I AM AN IDIOT years ago today I started a livejournal because I was procrastinating on completing revision for my AS Levels.

I thought that maybe I would delete my eljay once I hit the ten year mark, mostly because I am active everywhere but here, but I still read my flist every day, and I still think about updating every week. (I don't do it because I am lazy.) This weekend I spent a lot of time with my family and I talked about things I don't normally talk about out loud, and I've been thinking about that this evening as I wondered what to update with. There's been a notable shift towards melding the various faces I wear. Where my online space was once anonymous under this username, I'm now linked, one name at a time, thorough various social networks. Eljay was useful in a lot of ways, because I didn'tt have to put a face to my name, or a name to my thoughts; I could just say what I needed to say without really feeling the repercussions. But I am better at saying things out loud now because I have had time to consider the foundations of my character. It's a work in progress, but there's less work to do now.

Eljay has been great, and I'm not shutting it down. I still need it. I met good friends via it. I still read it every day. But it's strange to think I've had a presence that was solely designed by me anywhere for ten years, let alone on this corner of the internet.

There was a wedding this weekend, which I typically hate for two reasons. Firstly: what a faff. Secondly: I don't do well in situations where I have to stand next to the expectations of the culture I was raised in, mostly because I am super conscious of not really meeting the mark. I am mostly okay with this, except for the part where I have to face other people's judgement, because whilst it doesn't really matter what the elders in my family think, I still feel it. I grew up wanting to meet and/or defy expectations, and I hate the side of failure that is other people.

But the wedding was great. My family was really more interested in being around one another than in dealing with the specifics of the festivities, and it ended up being an opportunity to be around one another in a warm, positive way. There are good parts and bad parts, but I do love them. The benefit of most of us having left school now is that the age gap has suddenly become irrelevant. At four o'clock this morning, there were six people in my room, aged between 18 and 39, and although my eldest cousin sister can't give up the opportunity to bemoan her history when her audience is in a confined space, even her constant lament that "things were different when I was growing up" couldn't erase the fact that at that moment our respective ages didn't really matter. We were all there, in one another's confidences.

So time passes, quickly, slowly, relative to each one of us, and the more things change, the more they stay the same, which is longhand for the tenderness in constancy, for which I find myself more grateful every single day.

Happy eljayversary to this username, guys. Let's do this thing.

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planning the revolution

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i took my own lunch to work on tuesday which sounds basic but isn’t something i’ve done since school

i was supposed to write a post last week but there was a lot going on

in the course of writing that last post i ended up leaving my glasses at home that days

i worked late yesterday to do a demo that never happened and missed zumba.

i’m a little worried about the horses in the field next door.

the problem with not posting regularly is Things Happen

look, i’m an extrovert, but this shit is too much

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yuletide 2017 letter!

yuletide 2017!!

Yuletide 2016 Letter

Yuletide 2015

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{ Duck Cheer 2014. }

{ YULETIDE RECS. JUST UNDER THE WIRE. ALSO MY WINDOW MIGHT BE BROKEN. 2014!!!! }

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{ tell me what you like and i'll bring it to you / this is what you do to me, this is what you do. }

{ into the water; into the truth; in your reflection; he lives in you. }

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