Poet's Corner: For No Clear Reason by Robert Creeley
21 May 2026 03:35 pmI dreamt last night
the fright was over, that
the dust came, and then water,
and women and men, together
again, and all was quiet
in the dim moon’s light.
A paean of such patience—
laughing, laughing at me,
and the days extend over
the earth’s great cover,
grass, trees, and flower-
ing season, for no clear reason.
The Fantastic Journey Fic: Trying To Be Helpful
21 May 2026 06:23 pmTitle: Trying To Be Helpful
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author:
Characters: Willaway, Tarant.
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Setting: A Dream of Conquest.
Summary: While trying to do something helpful, Willaway gets himself into serious trouble.
Word Count: 1095
Written For: A challenge at
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
Fic: Protocol
21 May 2026 06:14 pmTitle: Protocol
Author:
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Aliens.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1562
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Jack and Ianto have an important diplomatic meeting with aliens who are sticklers for protocol.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Weekend Challenge: Songs From Musicals at
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Lychee | Yotsuba&! (!!!) | An as-yet-unmade cake | The tiniest seedlings
21 May 2026 12:37 pmI also have an excuse for a Yotsuba&! icon, but what can you do. There's a new volume coming out (in English) this month!!! Who knew? (Which is to say when I found out from
A few days ago we cleaned out the fridge's freezer, which had been...let's say "a while" and managed to free up some space. I think that was what reminded me that late last summer we'd pre-weighed some frozen blueberries into amounts for a couple of specific recipes that we'd made and really liked last year. Whoops. Fall distracted us a little with apple baking, although we didn't really do much of that, either.
So I went rummaging through the terrifying piles of printed-out recipes, trying to ID what we'd made, and came up not emptyhanded but not triumphant, either; I was very confident that the cake I was thinking of wasn't there. Dreamwidth posts to the rescue! A journal search for "blueberry" reminded me that I was thinking of the Smitten Kitchen Strawberry Summer Sheet Cake, just with blueberries.
We made plans to make the cake! On Tuesday we ate a quick supper and I had had eggs out of the fridge for a while when I realized that not only had I not taken butter out to warm up, we didn't have the right butter in the fridge. In the freezer, yes. Awkward.
When we were out watering the planter last night, we found the tiniest beginnings of lettuce seedlings! (Not of all the varieties, but maybe all but one?) Seeds in the ground Saturday and visible beginnings Wednesday seems kinda amazing, although I did know lettuce grows quickly. It's almost infinitely too soon to declare lettuce-growing victory, obviously, but still pleasing. ^_^
Tomatoes
21 May 2026 04:31 pmThis week's theme was: T is for Tomato
Another straightforward theme this week. I needed more tomatoes, so once I got these home, I quickly photographed them before putting them away in the fridge.

In other news, the hay fever is troublesome at the moment. There are obviously yet more trees flowering out in the woods beyond the bottom of our back garden.
FANFIC: itches in the front (DC comics)
21 May 2026 03:52 pmThis story was inspired by —but not compliant with— Batman #392 ("A Night on the Town"), but it's not necessary to know it to read the fic. However, I'll say it's a fun stand-alone piece any shipper should check out. The basic premise is that Bruce and Selina, in costume, try to have a nice date night in Gotham, but they keep having to interrupt it to stop various crimes.
The title comes from an awful, awful joke on said comic: Bruce jokingly asked Selina to scratch his back, and she replied "What? No itches in the front?". It cracked me up ofc, so there you have it: awful sex pun for a title. It's only fitting.
Title: itches in the front.
Fandom: DC comics (Batman).
Character/Pairing: Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle.
Rating/Warnings: E, sexual content.
Summary: Trying to have a date night in Gotham as a masked man went about as well as Bruce should've predicted. But maybe there's a way things can still be salvaged.
Word count: 1.2k.
read more
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Bruce ignored the weight at the bottom of his stomach, telling him he'd missed his window of opportunity. As the night came closer to the sunrise by the second, his mind replayed each and every time he’d started enjoying himself that night –only for the next perp to appear. It was such an unsubtle condensation of the entirety of his life it didn’t deserve the word metaphor. He knew he was just dragging out his return to the Manor, walking side by side with Selina.
She seemed to have a different idea. With a determined set of her mouth, she grabbed his gloved hand again, and asked him to follow her –“yes, always, please”, seemed to be his default response to that— directing him to the nearby park. Selina stopped them under a lush tree, hiding them from the outside world; though still nighttime, the faint first sun-rays of the day had begun filtering through the leaves.
When Selina looked up to him, her purple cowl framed a barely visible twitch in the corner of her smile that made Bruce’s breath get caught in his throat. She set her palm against his face, gentle, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.
It was the kiss he’d anticipated the entire night. The kiss he’d followed her across the city to get, wet and welcome, open-mouthed and languid. There were no teeth behind it, and he didn’t know why that detail stumped him. She set the pace, and she kissed him as if they had all the time in the world.
She stepped away with a final lick into his mouth, leaving them both short of breath. Bruce’s focus had been thoroughly shot down, but he felt her hands move against his body and looked down. In her hands, she held her cat-o-nine whip, with its solitaire remaining tail after all the action they’d seen that night. Her eyes held a silent question, and Bruce’s reply was to push his back further against the three, his arms held behind its trunk, afraid that putting his eagerness into words would break the atmosphere.
After tying him up, instead of kissing him again, Selina maneuvered her suit to lower herself on the ground, on her knees. She looked up to him, a playful look in her eyes, and swiftly removed his belt, his plate and the lower part of his uniform. It might not be a good sign of his mental health, that it was the removal of his utility belt that left him feeling the most exposed.
For a few good seconds, the only thing he could feel was her warm breath against his already rock-hard cock; she seemed to be pondering a plan of attack, instead of a mere blow job. Her hand came next, holding the base almost delicately, rubbing his ballsack. Finally, her tongue touched him. Fickle, maddening licks that only worked him up more, without providing any relief.
Time seemed to fragment, as she licked up and down his shaft while he tried to remain still. She kissed the tip of his cock, letting it enter her mouth and sit over her tongue. The suction that followed made him groan. He could feel the drops of precum leaking out of him, and had to close his eyes and take a deep breath.
Selina had begun to slowly, frustratingly so, suck him into her mouth, moving her head back and forth. The heat that enveloped him was everything that mattered then, and before he realized he had pushed ahead once, twice, against the back of her throat, making her choke and pull back.
“Well. That wasn’t very nice.”
Her tone had been deadpan, and it sounded like he was being chastised my a high school teacher. Which wasn’t, he huffed with laughter as his cock seemed to twitch and demand attention, exactly off-putting.
“Sorry.”
Selina hummed. Their words, as he’d suspected, seemed to change the ambiance around them, but it hadn’t broken the spell.
She went back to the task, kissing the tip and returning to the quick licks, as a clear punishment. He could feel his control slip away from him and warned her out loud.
“Sel- Catwoman.” A disproportionate sense of shamed overwhelmed him when he realized how close he’d been to say her name in public, and he brutally pushed it down.
She seemed to understand this wasn’t how he wanted things to finish, for she stood up, her knees marked with leaves and dirt. Looking him up and down she nodded to herself, decided, and began untying him, pressing her full body against him, making the shaft of his cock rub against the inside of her leg.
She pushed him down to the ground, sitting still against the tree, and quickly re-tied his arms behind his back, even tighter than before.
“There’s– in the belt, left pouch from the center–”
She pulled out a condom –and there was again the familiar guilt, for not remembering to mention it earlier, even knowing he was up to date with his checkups—, her eyebrows raised in amused disbelief. “That’s awfully optimistic of you.”
“I hand them out sometimes.”
Her laugh was loud and musical and breathtaking. “That, I believe.”
Selina proceeded to sit up in his lap, careful not to touch his hard-on beyond the latex. Her lips returned to his mouth, in one of those unhurried kisses, the potent taste of his precum overwhelming in her tongue, and he let his head rest against the tree, pliant. Carefully, inch by inch, she descended upon his leaking cock, engulfing it.
If he’d thought her previous rhythm was maddening, it was nothing compared to this. She moved up and down his shaft as if she wanted to feel every millimeter against her walls. Her muscles pressed against it and Bruce felt so, so close. Their kiss was no longer a kiss, but two mouths breathing and panting almost pressed together, and finally, he could feel her tense up above him, shudder, as she pressed her face further against his to drown her moans when she came.
Bruce was barely capable of believing he’d held off long enough. Selina stood back and he felt something akin to nostalgia when the cold breeze touched his erection. Her hand replaced her heat, and it took only a few strokes, with just a hint of her sharp nails, to finally bring him off.
He had to let out a groan when he saw her teasingly lick his cum off her fingers. For a moment they sat there, together, with Bruce’s arms still tied together behind his back, putting by then a lightly painful strain on his shoulders. Selina bit her lip, and after a millisecond of hesitation, she brought one finger up to the edge of his cowl, and pulled at it ineffectually, playful, a tease.
His heartbeat went up, but despite that, he didn’t move or struggled against his restraints. A show of trust.
It was rewarded with a blinding grin. He wondered what she was thinking, as she kept staring at him with bright eyes. Bruce was under no delusions of how he looked with the cowl up and the lenses down –unsettling, not entirely human. But in her expression, he read nothing but fondness.
She then untied him and helped him up, so that he at least could pull up his own pants. The sunrise now colored the scene, though the tree’s branches afforded them some privacy.
Selina gave him one final, chaste kiss on the cheek. “Until I see you next, spooky.”
A/N: (Selina calls him spooky in that issue and I love it. Fave Bruce nickname ever, tbh).
(no subject)
21 May 2026 01:38 pmLast week when I had the first letter about the hospital appointment I sent them a message about it, but the email bounced back and I didn’t expect to hear anything about it. Yesterday I had a call and it discussed options to do with the current course. I was given three options but my head was feeling fuzzy at the time (and I’d just eaten) but I was told not to worry, I’d be sent an email with the info about them and links about what to do that afternoon.
It’s about 24 hours later and I’ve still not received anything. It wouldn’t matter too much but she expressly said one option had a time limit: Friday. And she said to contact her if I had any questions..l but didn’t give me any contact info (and I, assuming the email would come through and be enough, didn’t ask) and just.. ugh.
My mood pretty much collapsed last night too, not helped by a nap which I had and woke feeling worse after it.
I had hoped to watch welcome to Derry but the bad mood, combined with a headache meant I didn’t. (I did watch an ep of amazing digital circus before my head worsened.
Ugh.
Good thing though, the new SFX came yesterday which is just another reminder I’ve not watched interview with the vampire. It did let me know that Touch Me is out, which I didn’t realise it would be. I might have to order that soon to see if it’s good.
As for today? I’d planned to do uni stuff but cause I’m in limbo after the call I just shut down until it was time to walk Naryu.
(And then I noticed my stranger things bracelet has lost the charms, I hope they’re just somewhere in the house. All that’s left is the d20)
Hopefully tonight’ll be better (and tomorrow) but right now I just feel… ugh.
Horror (and horror-adjacent) movies watched
21 May 2026 09:02 pmThe Lighthouse (2019): Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are 19th century lighthouse keepers who go nuts while keeping their lighthouse. This is a critically acclaimed, multiple award-winning movie, and I am sorry to say that I heartily disliked it; imo it was one of those works of art that is so busy being clever and referential, it forgets to actually say a single word for itself. The production was gorgeous, though. It was shot in black and white with an unusual squarish ratio and the soundtrack was absolutely exquisite: grinding, ominious music; long silences; the endless beating of the sea and the violent, maddening blare of the lighthouse's foghorn. Enjoyable aesthetic experience. Plot-wise, fuck no.
Monster (2003): This is a biopic about Aileen Wuornos, an American serial killer who was executed in 2002 for the murders of seven men who picked her up for sex along highways in Florida. Possibly one of the most harrowing, heartstring-tugging things I have ever watched? Charlize Theron plays Wuornos with a desperately traumatised intensity as she pins all her hopes for love and salvation on her girlfriend Selby, who expects her to support them both through sex work while turning a blind eye both to the terrifying sexual violence Wuornos faces out on the streets and to the brutality of the solution she has found for her own safety. (Selby has her own issues: she's a young lesbian from an extremely strict, repressive middle-class Christian family. She is hopelessly naive and sheltered, completely unequipped to support herself alone but forced to leave her whole support network behind due to their homophobia.)
It doesn't feel right to have ~opinions on something that is true crime based, with families of victims still living. So all I'll say is that I can't actually imagine a version of the Aileen Wuornos story that wouldn't leave me feeling a high degree of heartache for her, whether she killed all those men because they tried to rape her (as she claimed) or out of pure hatred and greed. I daresay I'd be consumed by hate too if I'd led Wuornos' life.
The Fog (1980): On a small US coastal town's one hundredth anniversary, a mysterious supernatural fog rolls in to wreak vengeance for the sins of the founders. This is a fun, silly ghost story with a likeable main cast and some immaculate spooky vibes. I don't have much to say. The villains are ( SPOILER ) and I switched my brain off and enjoyed.
The Exorcist (1973): Twelve-year-old Regan gets possessed by a demon; her desperate mother, tired of endless rounds of agonising medical tests and psychiatric appointments that lead nowhere, finally enlists a Catholic priest to exorcise her. Father Karras has been suffering a crisis of faith, but helping Regan reignites the spark of his vocation. This is a wonderful, psychologically rich and nuanced film with a cast who are all impressively well developed; a lot is going on in their lives, and the plot is a little slow to start because of the time we spend getting to know them first, but I definitely don't think it was time wasted. Father Karras had an electric screen presence; every second he was on screen, my eyes were glued to him. (He was also a sad man with floppy dark hair who could throw a punch, so consider this parenthesis to be my legally mandated disclosure of bias. I am probably not eligible to serve on this jury.) I also loved Regan's mother Chris, and everything about the portrayal of Chris and Regan's mother-daughter relationship: Chris is a single mum with a busy career as a successful actress who relies on a great deal of hired help for childcare and home maintenance, but she is also shown to be a devoted mother. She and Regan deeply love, trust and moreover clearly like each other, and the movie manifested exactly none of the Oh No Working Mothers handwringing I was braced for when she was first introduced.
I did not, regrettably, find The Exorcist very scary, and am metaphorically pouring one out for it and all the other trailblazing movies that get so unfairly eclipsed by later, lesser movies rolling their flashy cars down that nice pre-blazed trail. I've seen all these scares before, and I haven't even been watching horror for that long. It has been too influential and as a sad result I'm too desensitised to fully enter into its intended atmosphere of supernatural terror. But even with all the shock value stripped away, it's still a genuinely excellent film that I'm glad to have watched and can see myself watching again. (And okay, fine, the crucifix masturbation scene did give me one decent-sized scare.)
Recent reading
21 May 2026 09:02 pmI think it is good for me to read small bits of things I hate, because then I went home and read the first page of Helen Oyeyemi's White is for Witching. I have owned that book for years, and read the first page at least three times, but this time I went, "Oh my gosh this is so much better than those books I picked up at random," and kept reading.
White is for Witching is great. It is about a girl called Miranda, who we learn on the first page has vanished, perhaps died. It has the most beautiful descriptive language and it is about an extremely eerie haunting (one of the narrators is a house) and it has a strong sense of structural coherence despite having twists and turns that I could never predict. One of the things it's like is if Oyeyemi read two Shirley Jackson novels and decided to combine them. I am not entirely sure I know all the things I could know about the plot's causes and consequences, because I paused in the middle to read a whole different book and that was a bad idea, but that's okay, I will want to read it again. As well as the rest of Helen Oyeyemi's books, possibly.
The book I read in the middle of that one was The Works of Vermin, by Hiron Ennes. I had been waiting for it at the library for ages. (Leaflemming has several times asked why I don't just use Libby, the library ebook app, and one reason is that I'm out of the habit of reading on an e-reader, but the other is that I have so much access to books that the library reserve system is a useful filter.)
The Works of Vermin takes place in a city built into and on top of a giant rotting tree stump that straddles the poisonous River Catoptric. One of the protagonists, Guy, is an exterminator, whose team goes out and deals with the weird creatures that keep climbing out of the river and infesting the tree; he is poor, his job is poisoning him, and he's barely keeping ahead of the debts tattooed onto his body. The other protagonist, Elspeth, is a genius of a perfumer in the upper city; she is materially comfortable but has been poisoned by the city in a different way, and chafes under the close watch of an employer she cannot escape. When a giant centipede arrives in the city and begins causing trouble, their lives become entangled as they deal with the consequences.
This is a very queer book full of parasites, much like Ennes' first novel, Leech. It is a giant weird magical city book whose focus is surprisingly small and personal. It did not work for me perfectly but it did work for me really well.
Also reading: the only book that has so far grabbed me into reading on in my bookstore random reading is Edward St. Aubyn's Mother's Milk. (Spoilers if you care, but in this case I suspect you don't.) This is in fact the third book in a loose series, and it does a very sneaky job of starting with a whole section from the perspective of a baby. The baby's narration is impossibly un-baby-like - this is not trying to do naturalistic child perception like Jane Smiley does in Some Luck - but in its manneredness it is vivid and funny and interesting, even if it's just a bit too much like someone who thought about philosophy of language in undergrad. But there is a question about how much of it is being reconstructed afterwards which makes that interesting, since as the baby grows into a small child he knows he's already forgetting and overwriting some of his past. Good descriptive writing, story zips along, people are rather given to contempt, but maybe any minute now some of this insightful characterisation will be applied to something other than faults.
And then there is another section and Edward St. Aubyn has deceived me into reading a book about a middle-aged man having an affair during a mid-life crisis. In a way I am grateful for this deception, since I have never actually read the classic novels about these, since all my sources of recommendation warn me away from them like good trustworthy lighthouses. This one is wry and absolutely embroiled in psychoanalytic self-destruction. I will keep reading and see if the section from the point of view of his wife helps any, but Edward St. Aubyn's good initial sales pitch has soured greatly.
Just One Thing (21 May 2026)
21 May 2026 08:17 amComment 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!
It's so very rainy
20 May 2026 11:18 pmI popped to work to put the plants in the greenhouse and then down to Gallipolis to return and book and see Copper Moth to fix that necklace. Well she exaggerated about that. The old Woolworth is an antique mall with various vendors. They've never even seen her. Eye roll. I ended up trying to fix the necklace and my malocchio one as well. I have SO much jewelry bullshit that I feel guilty about it. But not. one. silver. jump ring! I found some but they're these weird double loops that you can't get into easily. I ended up using 2 copper ones and using an old bracelet to extend the necklace I needed the longer chain on.
Had the writers group meeting tonight. that was good.
What wasn't good, I looked over that Undead Appalachia open call and it had a strange caveat: email us for submission guidelines. Why isn't that on the web page? I email and it keeps bouncing back as a non viable email so I poke around the webpage which...has nothing but two open calls. Now I got this from a trusted source but it looks like someone didn't do their due diligence (self included) so I guess that story probably isn't going anywhere just now.
On the other hand I just found a demon open call by flame tree press (very small window of chance) and I know them. They are legit. I might send them my woman of no consequence. It's about 500 words outside the sweet spot but I'll try anyhow (they're taking 4 stories so I'm not going to twist this story so it's 4K like I just did to my ghost story because they would not read outside of 4k)
What I Just Finished Reading:
That Which Feeds Us - Hawai'ian Gothic, very creepy, low gore horror, one of the best things I've read this year so far
We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune this didn't work for me
What I am Currently Reading:
The Gay Disaster Detective Agency - one of my arcs. I usually like Lev AC Rosen but this isn't working for me.
The Death Card - currently struggling to get into it
The Antique Hunters Guide to Murder - I'm enjoying it
The Kindness of Strangers - another arc and I'm not sure this is going to work for me
What I Plan to Read Next: some of my looming arcs
And finally here are my pictures from last weekend in Louisville. evil_little_Dog took the pics of me.
( all the pictures from Louisville and the con )
Gyn exam, D&D, and some sadness
20 May 2026 10:24 pmI took the 20 bus to the 46, and around there realized that my appointment was for 2:00, not 1:00 and I was going to be a lot earlier than I expected.
So I took the 46, and then when I walked to the medical building, I detoured through the shopping mall. I went to Target, just to walk through and enjoy the AC (it was hot, and I was wearing my jacket because yesterday it had predicted rain for the afternoon. It was changed to the evening, but I discovered that too late)
Then I went to Barnes and Noble, the tiny little one they have there, and picked up the free tote bag I get for becoming a premium member. I also looked all around and got two of the "buy one, get one for 50%" books, a YA fantasy, and a mystery that was recommended by the sales woman. So I popped the books in the tote bag and headed off to Red Mango for lunch.
It was 1:00 by then and I wanted to head across the street to the medical building by 1:30, so I didn't linger. I had taro and mango yogurt, with strawberries and mango and coconut on it. I put my umbrella, which I had in my purse, and my coat in the tote bag with the books, and went to the gyn.
Sure enough I got there with about 15 minutes to spare, but they took me early. The exam was fast, as I thought she did a pap smear, checked my breasts, and the internal exam. Not fun but not bad.
I dressed and headed home. Got a text from
I texted the Kid to tell her about the gyn eam, that everything looked good, and she texted back.
Got home and got on the computer. Got a message from Croesos that Isis has died of lung cancer. That was a shock, though I knew she had it. I had tried emailing her, but she never got back to me, so I feel bad, I would have like to have gotten back in touch with her before it was too late.
Really long time readers will remember her as the person
I emailed the FWiB, and Facebook messaged Herschel and Doc, all of whom knew her, and told the Kid, who didn't but who texted me on something else just then, and
Anyway, I eventually Teamed the FWiB. We talked about that of course, but only a little. I got off at 8:00 for my D&D game.
The game was small. just two players and the DM, but we had a bunch of NPCs to help and we killed a lot of hobgoblins.
After the game ended I fed the pets and made dinner, and then I started here.
Gratitude List:
1. The FWiB.
2. Barnes and Noble.
3. Good gyn exam.
4. Old friends still alive.
5. Memories of Isis.
6. My D&D group.
Jokes
20 May 2026 07:36 pm* What do you call a pudgy psychic? A four-chin teller.
* If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims.
* What do you call a hippie's wife? Mississippi.
* How can you tell it’s a dogwood tree? By the bark.
* What did the buffalo say when his kid went to college? Bison.
* What's the stinkiest planet? Poopiter.
* What did the pirate say when he turned 80? Aye matey.
Crunchy questions.
20 May 2026 07:30 pmI don't think I'm creative, but I love making mood boards. I love the silly things. They're so easy to make and fun to do. ❤️🌹
May questions
20 May 2026 07:22 pmBow tie pasta.
19. How’s your gut microbiome? Your gut is linked to your immune system, so eating a large variety of plants each week (at least 30), and eating fermented foods regularly (such as live yoghurt, kefir, fresh sauerkraut and kimchi) is said to have a huge impact on your gut health and therefore your weight and immune system. Do you make an effort to do that every week?
Heck no. I just ate a couple caramels, is that good? 😂😂
20. It’s International Customer Support Day. When was the last time you had to contact customer support? Were they able to help you?
It was today and it had to do with my medical stuff going on. They were great.
About In to a bar assignment.
20 May 2026 07:07 pmSunday Secrets
21 May 2026 12:13 am








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