chocolatepot | Network

This post will consist of various silly Goes Wrong Show-related things I've posted to Tumblr recently!

I posted a poll to Tumblr, asking people for their favourite member of the Cornley Drama Society. The poll closed at 149 votes with Trevor firmly in first place (27.5%), followed by Chris (21.5%), Max (13.4%), Vanessa (10.7%), Annie and Dennis (8.7%), Jonathan (3.4%), Robert and Sandra (2.7%), and Lucy (0.7%).

(I don't think Lucy is an official member of the drama society, but I created this poll to see how things had changed in the three years since

personinthepalace asked the same question, so I thought I'd better make sure I had exactly the same options.)

I'm surprised and a little wounded by my beloved Robert's unpopularity! I'm just going to have to love him hard enough for everyone. (This will not satisfy him.)

Anyway, I wrote a little snippet of the characters reacting to the results:

( The Cornley Drama Society react to my character popularity poll. )

Another poll I've contemplated recently was this one from

questions-about-blorbos: Would you let your blorbo tie you up and do whatever they wanted with you?

My immediate reaction to this was 'oh, GOD.' Awful!! I think the only one of my blorbos who I actually find sexually attractive is Robert Grove of The Goes Wrong Show, but any sexual encounter with him is guaranteed to be regrettable, and involving bondage would be catastrophic. He ties me up and then gets distracted by an argument with Chris and then rehearses without rest for several days straight, and I am left tied to his bed for seventy-two hours.

Whilst I currently answer blorbo-related polls with Robert in mind, on account of being actively insane about him, the character I usually call on for these polls is Light Yagami of Death Note. Also a terrible idea to let him tie you up! I'm not sexually interested in him, he's not going to be sexually interested in me, and, perhaps most crucially: if he does want to tie me up, it's going to be because he wants to either kill me or frame me for murder. All things considered, I'd rather he didn't.

Finally: for Valentine's Day, I posted a Valentine's message from Robert Grove.

Please accept this as an extremely belated token of my affection for all of you.

js_thrill

February 18th: The Only Thing I Know
February 19th: Duke Ellington
February 20th: Against Agamemnon
February 21st: Full Flower
February 22nd: Orange Ball of Pain
February 23rd: Blood Royal
February 24th: Going to Scotland

Of thew first four tracks, I am mainly going to write about Against Agamemnon. I liked the first two pretty well, but don't have much to say about them. Against Agamemnon has both the Mountain Goats sound that I like, and the annotations do a nice job of situating the classical reference (Sophocles's Ajax, in which the titular figure is tricked into thinking he has slain his foes but has only been battling sheep, and kills himself from the embarrassment, and Darnielle's reflection on how he is not that tragic figure, but only by dint of maturing a bit more than Ajax got a chance to.

Orange Ball of Pain is fine, especially compared to Blood Royal, which is doing discordant things that are really not working for me. Going to Scotland feels too cutesy, I think, but it may just be that I am trying to catch up on 8 songs at one go. If I had done this song by itself, I'd probably have liked it just fine.

February 25th: Going to Reykjavik

Watch on YouTube

Okay, this is a song I genuinely am enjoying. Serendipity that it is the last song, and it sort of confirms my judgment that Going to Scotland was too cutesy. I still probably would have liked it better if it was on its own. But this song is landing very well, even as the eighth song of the day.

I am glad I am not a music reviewer. Sometimes I have the thought that I like reading books, wouldn't it be great to get paid to read books, but then I think about what that job would actually be and I realize I am very lucky that I am not a professional book reviewer or slush reader or anything like that.

Current Music: Going to Reykjavik — The Mountain Goats

oursin

What I read

Finished Eleven Hours to Murder and went on to Death by the Dozen, which combine the cozy antics of Cat Caliban and her posse with mysteries tending to be rooted in past historical events in and around Cincinnatti. And Cat is after all pursuing a career as a PI, rather than taking up some quirky midlife career and just stumbling over bodies. And her partner is a retired cop who used to work in Juvie, not homicide. So counter to a lot of the recurrent tropes....

Then I realised, oops, that next meeting of in-person book group appears to be next Sunday - though I have not received any further notification since exchange of emails after the last meeting - so I have been reading Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life (2023), which is blurbed as 'genre-bending', meaning it does things I am not that on board with, i.e. the writer's personal stuff/odyssey and b) fictionalising bits as narrative. Though I am marking it up somewhat for her realisation that her Great Hero G Orwell was A Horror. I daresay a lot of his trouble with being basically incapable in managing matters and practicalities was down to class and educational background but you'd have thought he might have cottoned on to some of that? rather than blithely eating up the whole of their butter ration? (fairly minor in the overall marital picture).

On the go

Read a bit more in I Am a Woman but still feeling a bit bogged down, even if Laura has finally had a night of sapphic passion.

Elizabeth George, A Slowly Dying Cause (Inspector Lynley Book 22) (2025). Fortunately this was a Kobo deal. Phoning it in. Also getting rather bogged down. 20% in and only just getting a sight of Lynley, let alone Havers. Includes great chunks of autobiographical reminiscence from the corpse.

Have also made some progress on volume for review.

Up next

Have apparently manifested, in place where I would never have thought to look for it, GB Stern, The Woman in the Hall (1939), which I had been fruitlessly looking for elsewhere, with a notion of maybe recommending for book group, as has recently been reissued for the first time since 1939 by British Library Women Writers.

badly_knitted posting in

drabble_zone

Title: Cuts And Bruises
Fandom: BtVS
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 490: Amnesty 49, using Challenge 474: Hurt.
Spoilers/Setting: Season 2.
Summary: As the Slayer, Buffy gets hurt a lot.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.

Cuts And Bruises

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

heleninwales

The novel (A Deadly Giftis still progressing. It's slow going because I haven't pre=imagined the ending in detail and only know what needs to happen rather then exactly how it happens. But I have either written words or made plot notes every day so far this month. The Get Your Words Out challenge is still working.

It's interesting that though I'm focusing on keeping the writing habit going, I am writing a decent number of words. I have always known that if I actually start to write, I will produce a reasonable amount of words. In the past, slow progress was mostly due to spending a lot of days not writing.

Writing progress
February writing goal: 8,000 words

A Deadly Gift

Total words this month: 7,063 / 8,000 (84%)
Words in novel (to nearest 100 words): 88,500

petra

A friend was talking about dissociation in show tunes, so I got my Anthony Warlow on this morning -- Jekyll & Hyde - Confrontation, in which he sings a duet with himself as Jekyll vs. Hyde, and City of Angels - You're Nothing Without Me in which a hack writer sings a duet of loathing with his noir protagonist.

Next up, The Nausea Before The Game / Love Me For What I Am from In Trousers, the former of which does a bang-up job with "Oh, I am supposed to be having sex with the person. Um. Sure. I can. Do that! It sounds like. An. Idea. A GOOD idea, I mean. As opposed to... not my thing."

And if you need to know whether Imelda Staunton can sing, the answer is Fuck Yeah. National Theatre's Follies, "Losing My Mind," a song of obsessive love with a moment of complete executive dysfunction.

*

I am not up-to-date on the great project of making musical theatre about anything. Do you have a favorite show tune about dissociation?

Current Music: Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor

muccamukk

ETA: Code Tour: 2024-12-01 to 2026-02-25. Some longed for fixes in there. Hopefully we get a code push soon.

Fun Art & Stuff!

PBSVoices: How Navajo Weavers Keep an Ancient Art Alive (Video: 10 minutes).
This short film follows two Navajo weavers whose work preserves memory, identity, and ancestral knowledge.
Very cool! I don't know anything about Navajo weaving, and would love to watch a longer project about it.

spankulert: Icon post #122.
Including The X-Files, Star Treks: Starfleet Academy, Voyager + Discovery, Fallout and more.
Really nice to see the ST:SA icons!

NationalTheatre: Take Your Seats | Announcement | National Theatre at Home (Video: 30 seconds).
On Thursday 12 March (7pm GMT), lose yourself in the hit production of The Importance of Being Earnest at our free YouTube premiere. Can’t make it? The stream will remain accessible on demand, for free, for one week only.
FINALLY! I believe it will go up on the NT's subscription streaming site after that.

The Tyee: They Lit the Path for Women Photographers.
A couple of exhibit reviews for shows I can't see. LOLSOB.

Nanaimo News Now: Nanaimo’s Maffeo Sutton Park shines during ‘Lighting a Path’ public art exhibit.
Really cool way to do an art show!

Dead Language Society: How far back in time can you understand English?
I made it to like the fourteen hundreds. I'm sure most of you can get further back.

ecc-poetry/Elisa Chavez: What You Need to Be Warned (Or: Inventory and Appraisement of Neil Gaiman, Hereafter "Decedent").
I'm going to nominate this for a poetry Hugo. I'm haunted by the line: Even at your worst, you are replaceable.

Technology Bullshit:
The Conversation: This TikTok star sharing Australian animal stories doesn't exist – it's AI Blakface.
Fantastic. Just what Indigenous communities need: computer-generated Pretendians.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: So, You’ve Hit an Age Gate. What Now?
Advice for how to proceed with age verifications, since that's going to be part of our fucking lives now.

The Tyee: AI Is the Elephant in the Newsroom. How Are Journalists Reacting?
Ask yourself, why are you using the tool to do this? Do I have nine other things to do, and this will make my life faster? Or am I trying not to pay a journalist?

404 Media: This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby.
You might have to get a free account to see this? Anyway, nice that people are trying to code around other people's appalling privacy violations? Even if you don't get the app (which I haven't), good info about the stupid smart glasses.

Gender Bullshit (mostly men, tbh):
Comics Beat: Multiple women accuse Spider-Gwen co-creator Jason Latour of misconduct.
This is actually a few years old, but I'd missed it at the time (or forgotten it entirely). FFS.

Maureen Ryan on BlueSky: 'll just add, as someone who's been doing investigative reporting for decades, all publications doing real journalism (i.e., not a sockpuppet or Some Guy on the Internet)--they have MANY layers of editorial & legal review.
Thread about how real journalism is supposed to work. In this section due to the inciting incident.

The Politics of Dancing: Abuse is still rife in dance music: Here's how we break the cycle.
Great essay about structural problems.

The Tyee: SOGI Is Under Attack. Educators Say It’s Never Been More Needed.
It's a municipal and school board election year in B.C., and I think we're in for a fucking fight. PROTECT OUR KIDS!

kingstoken posting in

fanart_recs

Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Ilya/Shane
Content Notes/Warnings: N/A
Medium: Pencil (I think)
Artist Website/Gallery: _deathofseasons_
Why this piece is awesome: Beautiful drawing of Ilya and Shane as Knights, and Ilya cradling Shane
Link: Instagram

mount_oregano

Spanish poet Antonio Machado was born in Seville in 1875 and died in February 1939. His health failed while he was escaping Spain as its government fell to the Fascists at the end of its Civil War.

Spain had long been divided. Although its Civil War began in 1936, Machado named this split “the two Spains” in his book Proverbios y cantares (Proverbs and Songs), Poem LIII, in 1917, and the name stuck.

Roughly speaking, one side of the two Spains was conservative, religious, rural, and traditional; the other progressive, secular, urban, and modernist. There were also differences between regions and between people with privilege and people condemned to poverty. The split ran deep and complex.

As Machado wrote in this poem, twenty years before the brutal war began, one Spain had a death grip on its position, the other was just waking up, and the future did not look good:

Ya hay un español que quiere

vivir y a vivir empieza,

entre una España que muere

y otra España que bosteza.

Españolito que vienes

al mundo te guarde Dios.

Una de las dos Españas

ha de helarte el corazón.

My translation:

There now is a Spaniard who wishes

to live and begins to live,

amid one Spain that is dying

and another Spain that yawns.

Child of Spain, as you come

into the world, may God help you.

One of the two Spains

is going to freeze your heart.

stormsyndrome posting in

fic_promptly

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

neonvincent

I decided it would be more interesting, fun, and evergreen to write CNBC explains 'How America Got Hooked On Cars,' a driving update.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Tinderly Twitch stream

james_davis_nicoll

What could possibly go wrong with playing along with an unhappy teen's delusions?

Babel no Toshokan by Tsubana

sakanawords

Check-in post for day 25!

Days 1-14

Day 15:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

chanter1944,

Day 16:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

chanter1944,

Day 17:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

sakana17,

chanter1944,

Day 18:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

chanter1944,

Day 19:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

Day 20:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

Day 21:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

Day 22:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

ysilme,

goddess47,

sakana17,

Day 23:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

ysilme,

goddess47,

Day 24:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

ysilme,

Day 25:

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

luzula,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

the_siobhan,

brithistorian,

cornerofmadness,

katriona_s

During the oddly warm days on the last weekend, a lot of pollen must have been released into the air :(. Since yesterday I can’t stop blowing my nose, and now my throat is sore and I have a headache :( Terrible… X(

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

William Dean Howells’ My Mark Twain, which is half reminiscences of Howells’ friendship with Mark Twain and half a collection of reviews Howells’ wrote of Twain’s various books. The first half would make an amazing buddy comedy: Mark Twain the eccentric humorist as the comic and Howells as straight man, going on adventures like “visiting Gorky in his hotel room to help him raise money for the Revolution, only to end up embroiled in Publicity when Gorky got kicked out of the hotel the next day for checking in with a woman not his wife.”

The second half unfortunately made me want to read some Mark Twain. I say “unfortunately” because historically I have struggled with Mark Twain, having attempted and failed to finish The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, AND Joan of Arc. But maybe if I try something aside from Twain’s historical romances…? His essays, his autobiographical travel books….? And I’ve always felt a sneaking suspicion that I really ought to read Tom Sawyer.

Gerald Durrell’s Marrying Off Mother and Other Stories, which I thought was more uneven than most of Durrell’s work. A couple of stories struck me as mean-spirited (particularly “Ludwig”), but I really liked “The Jury” and “Miss Booth-Wycherly’s Clothes.” I believe these are both fiction dressed up as memoir, but if anyone was going to run into a former professional hangman who was now a drunk in the jungles of South America, it would be Gerald Durrell.

What I’m Reading Now

After long cogitation, I’ve decided that it’s time to reread Katherine Patterson’s Jacob Have I Loved. As a child I found the narrator unbearably whiny about her perfect sister, but I’ve long harbored the suspicion that I might see something more or at least different in it as an adult. So far, I’ve been appreciating the strong sense of place and time, both in the lyrical landscape descriptions and the clear picture of the community on Rass Island at the beginning of World War II, and noticing that Louise does indeed have some endearing qualities: for instance, she loves to use long words, but often pronounces them wrong, as she’s only ever seen them written.

…I was not however wrong to remember that Louise spends a LOT of time whining about her sister Caroline, enviously recounting that every time they suffered a childhood illness, Caroline nearly DIED, thus making herself the center of attention YET AGAIN. So we’ll see how I feel about this in the end.

What I Plan to Read Next

Fascinated/appalled to discover that American Girl is releasing a novel about grown-up Samantha: Fiona Davis’s Samantha: The Next Chapter. Opposed to the whole endeavor on the grounds that everyone ought to be free to imagine Samantha’s future as they wish, whether it’s marriage to Eddie Ryland or rabble-rousing as a lesbian suffragette. However, I may nonetheless prove unable to resist reading the book.

sabotabby

Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. This continues to be really fun. I wish there was more Ana, but her more distant presence in this is balanced by just how weird and gross the worldbuilding is. All magic in this world is drawn from the blood of leviathans, giant eldritch horrors that live in the sea and during the wet season, come on shore to try to kill everyone, and the murder plot revolves much more around the technicalities of this than the first book did. I'm here for weird body horror and squishy stuff so this works for me.

I am a wee bit confused over Din's motivations; he wants to join the Legion, which is the division of the military that blows up leviathans, rather than investigating crimes with Ana, which is a fairly major switch from the first book. But he can't do it because he's deep in debt to an insurer who covered his now-dead father's medical bills, and the job is so dangerous that the insurer would never be able to collect. Which, do not get me wrong, is a cool motivation! But it does seem like a break from the way his character is initially presented, and so far the only reason for the switch seems to be that he hooked up with a soldier at the end of the first book.

Anyway I just got to the part where he goes inside the Shroud, which is a giant cyst in the water where they extract leviathan blood, inhabited by augurs, who are altered to be incredibly good at working with vast amounts of data but go insane after three years and can only communicate by tapping. It's super cool.

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: happy

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!