I live?

[domarzione]

I haven't posted here in a month and mostly it's because I don't think I have much interesting to say and partially because I am pretty sure my reading audience here is three and I talk to two of you on other formats. Would that change if I posted here more regularly? Or would I just be less interesting in a void more often? I miss actual fannish interaction.


Life in Central Queens is... well, it is. It's the epicenter of the pandemic in the city and if I don't live in one of the apocalyptic parts, I live in a one-step-below-that part on the mortality map and I try not to think about what everything will look like when we can see the absences in 3-D and not on a chart. It's very possible to do that, to pretend it's like a rainy day and that's why I'm inside. But I went out for my walk today and it's around the periphery of a cemetery and there were six giant mounds of dirt in very close formation from graves being dug out for coffins and... yeah. How was your day?


Sidenote: my IG remains my most upbeat social media because it's my food and my cats. I have periodically bled all over my tumblr, but I've also tried to pass on some helpful experience regarding food safety and good hand lotion. And some really nice fanart from the upcoming Dune movie.


On the food front, Pesach ended at sundown and so I'm sipping Islay whisky and making pasta alla norma with fried chickpeas to celebrate the return of the chametz and especially the kitniyot.

Side convo:
Me: why is my sleep schedule so effed up?
Also me: why haven't you started making dinner by 2130?


I've been writing Qui Habitat for the last month, which is totally understandable to me if not to a lot of others. I've just posted a chapter, I'm almost ready to post another, and I have 5k words excised from the previous to start the next. I think the enthusiasm comes from that when I edited the main story last summer and wrote the introductory In Medias Res, it was all in service of building the universe up and out. And with all of the new people and the new focus and everything I've had to think about in terms of how everyone lives and not just survives, there's a whole lot more hope and joy to be found. The story isn't just the main characters from SGA marching dutifully toward their inevitably crushing war with the Ori anymore: it's a whole lot of people who have spent time and energy and blood and treasure figuring out what they want to preserve out of what's been taken from them and what they are willing to fight -- and maybe die -- for. It's a bonkers Lunar New Year party. It's the booze shop that is actually kinda a therapy session. It's several hundred young children rescued from Ori orphanages and being raised by a city. And right now, in the current chapter, it's Rodney and John and Ronon and a small herd of robo-donkeys in a place on the mainland called Manitoba for obvious reasons. 

Comments

[cofax7]

Robo-donkeys!

I read a bunch of Qui Habitat a long time ago; it might be time to download it all to my Kindle & reread...

Your description of the situation in Queens is just ... ::shudder::

I wish I was able to process by writing, but instead I'm mostly reading old ST novels and fic...

[domarzione]

I feel I should emphasize that I am not food-insecure or job-insecure and I am keenly aware of that safety. But I'm also aware of how little of a protection that is from the wolves prowling around; in NYC the disease vectors are along subway lines and heavier in immigrant neighborhoods and that's where I am.

On a far brighter note:

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road,” Rodney announced as he led the way back toward the rear after John dropped the ramp. He went over to one of the burlap-covered piles and whisked off the cloth.

“Holy shit!” John coughed out a laugh, taking an involuntary step back in surprise and banging into another pile.

Ganged together by strips of burlap were a six-pack of robo-donkeys. The up-armored versions, which were something like Robo-Donkey 3.0 and for which Little Tripoli had been waiting actual years for delivery. The earliest ones had been slow but nimble and Engineering had fussed over them like babies and ultimately kept for themselves because they were more robo-mountain-goat than pack animal and the Marines were willing to sacrifice the terrain flexibility for more speed and carry-weight. The second generation were fast enough to keep up with the Marines at a jog and had greatly-improved load-bearing capacity and battery life, but they did not score well in the durability testing. Which was a nice way of saying that Weapons Company had blown a few of them to smithereens without trying very hard. The enmity between Engineering and the Battalion over the destruction had been very real and very long-lasting and while John had known that Engineering had actually gone back to work, he’d largely given up on the next batch of donkeys being ready to field test, let alone field, before there were battles with the Ori armies. Technically he was right – the Bargashi had won that race – but this was still a remarkably happy surprise.

[lazulus]

Lurker here who happily reads your posts when they pop up on my TL. Although not a QH reader [I find apocalyptic stuff stressful at the best of times and at present...] but your other Atlantis fic are some of my favourites and I read them when I need something meaty and well done in that fandom. I grew to love all your OCs and on the occasions I catch an episode of the show, feel very cheated when none of them turn up!

I am a Londoner who has never lived anywhere else and it is so strange for the city to be so quiet. Even at times when cars are travelling about it is more like early morning on a Saturday than the working week, and it is eerie. The last time my road was this quiet, they had closed it at one end for gas works and now it's like this every day. You can see why so many mid/post-apocalypse films at set in cities.

Anyway, keep well and stay safe.

[domarzione]

Thank you for popping up to say hi!

I don't expect anyone to read my stories, not even my dearest fannish friends. This is never more true than an epic unfinished story that happens to have a respiratory pandemic in the middle of it (written ten years ago!).

I live around the corner from a very major thoroughfare and I'm used to cars honking and just the sounds of heavy traffic and... nothing. I jaywalked a sixteen-lane road last week because I could. It's very, very strange indeed.

[blackrook]

*socially distanced hugs*

[domarzione]

Back atcha!

[vaznetti]

It's good to hear from you.

Passover was kind of crazy this year over here; there were shortages of all kinds of things. I have never been so glad my family started eating most kitnyot years and years ago (my mother made an executive decision some time in the early 90s or even late 80s).

[domarzione]

I know that the Ashkenazi Conservative Jewish movement outside Israel is all "eat your kitniyot and be happy" after decades of the one in Israel adopting the 'when in Rome' of living among Sephardim and Mizrahi. But. BUT. I did it for one year after they made the change and never since. It just... it didn't feel like Pesach, you know? There wasn't enough of a sense of a change, of forgoing foods I regularly eat. I love bread and am currently baking bread at this very moment, but a week without it isn't all that and I don't eat pasta weekly anyway. I come from extremely secular but incredibly culturally-strong Ashkenazi stock; I am the kind of New York Jew who has aged out of cultural significance but used to dominate. I have to do what I always did. And then gripe about it afterwards because I am exactly that kind of Jew. :)