0dense | Entries tagged with my fic

Oh, one thing I got polished up for public consumption! Actually, this was an assignment -- we had a few options to demonstrate our understanding of materials alongside the formal exam, and obviously I took the creative writing route. That being said, I only had 1250 words max to demonstrate a minimum of 30 technical elements, and you would be surprised how quickly that wordcount sneaks up on you! So pacing was a necessary casualty. Also, this one is NOT properly representative of absolutely any known legal system lmao, I took the general idea of "NiF, but it's also modern' that a buddy made strides in elsewhere and ran off with it, careening off the walls on my way! But I love love love the ministers and their cultivation-work <3 so here they are fighting the good fight for clarity in some ambiguous post-canon contemporary-ish setting

Ministers Shen Zhui and Cai Quan for the Defense
Word count: 1239
Caveat lector for: clinical description of offscreen character death by stroke, with complications.

( Read more... )

extra: works originally cited, for funsies:

"Most common site of bleeding in the brain at 50% of hemorrhagic strokes" Chen S, Zeng L, Hu Z. Progressing haemorrhagic stroke: categories, causes, mechanisms and managements. J Neurol. 2014 Nov;261(11):2061-78
Schwab S, Aschoff A, Spranger M, Albert F, Hacke W. The value of intracranial pressure monitoring in acute hemispheric stroke. Neurology. 1996 Aug;47(2):393-8. doi: 10.1212/wnl.47.2.393. PMID: 8757010.
Unnithan AKA, M Das J, Mehta P. Hemorrhagic Stroke. [Updated 2022 Sep 30]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559173/
Peck-Radosavljevic M. Thrombocytopenia in liver disease. Can J Gastroenterol. 2000 Nov; 14 Suppl D:60D-66D. doi: 10.1155/2000/617428. PMID: 11110614

(and actually I do have context, I just didn't have space to fit it in: considering that the new emperor's advisor of mysterious provenance has died abruptly, under the primary care of 1) a doctor who is not a citizen but does represent a well-regarded neighboring entity, and 2) a physician who happens to be the emperor's own mother, it would actually behoove Jingyan to be able to independently state that there was nothing untoward going on. This is a formality, but it's not unreasonable for SZ and CQ to have some anxieties about how their report will be received, considering the previous administrations) (also, yes the other doctor's names are eastereggs for Jin Dong's other projects :D)

Current Music: Baby Storme - this city is a graveyard

I just really hope I can keep writing during the semester! But also I was running the office today, soooo we'll see :?

For now, here's what I've got for the Tarakanov wip -

They’d been in each other’s pockets for far too long. He shook his head and turned back in towards the office. Nikolai was still staring at the door.

“I can't tell, for the utter life of me, whether he's the smartest idiot or stupidest genius I've ever heard speak,” he marvelled.
Boris pulled back a chair and sat down heavily at the table. “Believe me, I know what you mean.”

“Oh, I believe you, no doubt about that. And you say he's always been like this?”

“From day one. Do you know what he did, the first time I met him?”

Nikolai shook his head.

“Guess.”

“Told the west that we're working on reparations.”

Boris groaned, dropping his chin and dragging a hand down his face. “No. God, no, I'd forgotten about that.”

1) fulltext of the wip:
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2) intended outline
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3) citations so far
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4) writing process thoughts and struggles
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If someone's interested in picking up where I've left off, by all means drop me a line! Or for characterization or concrit and things - I've been pretty busy lately, but I'm still very much invested in this fandom ;D hmu!

Current Location: when the office is closed I am my own king
Current Music: wish I knew you - revivalists

Got a work event tomorrow, as we step into the next phase of things, and I'm looking forward to our new structure and all, but also there's the obligatory Madcap Anxiety of all changes in routine. Ai!!

Anyway, to combat that, I chipped away a little more at the Toptunov project! Whether or not I get this to a finished state, a teaser -

As an assistant technician, the majority of Leonid's shifts were paired with the SIURs, instead of directly with Alexander. Andrei Maximovich Glukhov pop-quizzed him on acronyms between maneuvers, and Yuri Danilovich, from the first tour, called it a symphony.

“Have you played piano?” he had asked, early on. He had splayed his fingers over the control panel, watching the steady flickers on the board above them. “A pipe organ might be more accurate, but we’re playing a quartet for Kyiv, here,” he had suggested, patting the desk affectionately.

“In a C sharp,” Leonid had agreed. Yuri had looked at him skeptically. “Down below, the turbines put off around 40 hertz, at 3,000 megawatts. I wrote my thesis on Chernobyl’s acoustics,” he had explained, and the SIUR had laughed out loud in astonishment when he realized Leonid was being serious.

“In that case, Maestro, play us a coolant rod circulation.”

Because did you know, but he did write his thesis on using harmonics to monitor the reactor, which, combined with Hildur’s choice to record the Ignalina plant, means that I spent the evening with the Chernobyl soundtrack trying to decide what key it operates in. Unfortunately, real confidence attempting to ascribe classical notation to something that was not designed as an instrument is beyond me (see: my frustration at what defines ‘music’ all together); without tuning, we’re in chromatic territory at best, but that feels like a cop-out. Nevertheless, and despite this, I decided that the inside of the reactor (Door, Turbine Hall, Pump Room, Gallery) is closest to an harmonic minor environment. Ofc, no, Ignalina wasn’t running at all when Hildur went to record, so I have no idea what it would really resonate like while operating, but if the pitches present in the soundtrack can be taken as representative of the spacial acoustics, I’m gonna go so far as to say that C# harmonic minor is possible in an RBMK reactor.

(Pulling exact pitches out of the soundtrack is interesting because it isn’t founded in notes, it comes from textures. An E in my notation can be expressed three ways simultaneously (Turbine Hall), according tone and placement. It’s hard for me to call the whistling of an industrial space a gliss, though.)

Current Music: Гололед

IF WE WANT THE REWARDS OF BEING EDITED, WE MUST SUBMIT TO THE MORTIFYING ORDEAL OF BEING KNOWN

- i holler, emailing a draft out into the world

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: angeleyes - abba

guess whose interview for promotion is finally coming up? and guess who's .....actually decently confident that he's got a good shot at it, but also convinced that he's making a professional fool of himself??
it's meeeeeeeeeee
it's happening, I'm going in and sitting down for real tomorrow, putting my cards on the table and myself into the hands of the promotion circle. Knocking wood and going to bed relatively early, for best shot at it!

anxiolytic measures I found today:

reached almost 6k on the doc for my sad mystery project
- that includes my notes to self and such, so the actual prose of it is lower, but still, wordcount is rising and I'm pleased with that! Short and sweet is well and good for character studies, but I'm getting to develop my dynamic more, now :) ~~I love these sad dudes so much the more I get to know them, why am I doing these things them~~
- I've been having a dilemma about exactly how sad to make this section, though. I could A) keep what I've got, even though it doesn't have the same level of Drama as my other idea, because it's really not bad material and I can make it work with a little more tweaking. also it was a pain to write and I don't want to throw it away. B) start over and replace it with something both solidly sad and even kinda bad which would also give my last scene, which is already very both sad and bad, all the more justification. In my defense for the badness, for once I wouldn't be giving them anything I haven't had myself so like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- C) is, of course, finishing and posting what I've got so far, and then adding the other scene for further development, buut I'm not sure on that. Or, I'd like to have a full first draft before adding scenes that weren't blocked. There's a beat I'm going for in this section, and I'm not confident I wouldn't derail myself by going off-book without more concrete idea of what I'm really working towards. idk.
returned to a half-baked doc and realised there's something decent there if I can remember where it was supposed to be going
- the general is a lot of fun to write??
watched some Avatar with shorm
- every time I wander back towards Avatar, it stands out more and more that they're such little kids!
- also, zuko sounds a hair like balem abraxas, which is hilarious

and regardless of how tomorrow goes, when I get back from the city, sister and I are going to the new tea shop to try their parfaits. so that's something to look forward to!

Current Mood: restless
Current Music: Does Your Mother Know - ABBA

do yall ever get halfway through writing something and then surface for a minute and come back and realise it's somehow gotten sad as hell? like, I thought I was going for bittersweet and gentle, but this is just depressing. and I'm the author, there's no one else I can be mad at about this slide! aah, I just want to give characters happy endings and then. I do the opposite of that lmaooo

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: does your mother know - ABBA

(ten fathoms deep in care / ten fathoms down in an element denser than air)

-Edna St Vincent Millay, Above These Cares

Skurge Voice: Behold!
my latest fic: the pressure that obtains (2654 words). gen, teen and up, no archive warnings apply, but heads up for discussion of valery's early moves towards suicidal behavior: somewhere back down the line I heard that he wouldn't take his dosimeter badge with him everywhere onsite, and I think I had to literally stare at the wall for a good moment after that. So, I had to explore that.

This is the first of the two I started back at the end of may before the series wrapped up, and >22.1% was fun but I feel like this one goes much deeper. I got pointers from Caterina, tryingtobealwaystrying, and Cam, and think it all came together in the end!
I also had this much longer to muck about in background reading, and came up with even more than could fit in the post-text note box on archive, so here we have, in full:

Radiation exposure symptoms rundown*: Tan (1), sore throat (2), loss of appetite (2), pancreatitis (pain that lets up when leaning forward) (at a certain point, eating can have severely negative consequences, but that’s in later stages) (2), insomnia (anxiety, nicotine, radiation) (1, 2). Alopecia (shown in the first episode) is starting to bend the rules, waiting as long as he did. Light sensitivity and difficulty in decontaminating thicker skin eg the palms are general side-effects of radiation exposure.

*I don’t want to actually get into his serious symptoms. And I don’t know the exact timeline of when each would start to manifest. This is as much detail as I want to get into, right here, but I also don’t want to seem like I’m pulling them out of the air for the text.

“The on-site head of the commission rotated every two weeks starting 9 May 1986, with various deputy premiers serving their turn as director. These included Ivan Silayev, Yuriy Maslyukov, Lev Voronin, Vladimir Gusev, Genadiy Vedernikov, and Boris Shcherbina.” (3) Shcherbina was also hospitalized sometime around early June, for probable-but-not-confirmed radiation sickness (4), so I guess that puts this sometime past August, at least. But I’m not really counting like that; if Legasov only started to take ill when his hair fell out after several months, movie magic is certainly in effect and things matter less and less. Exactly how much time is Legasov taking offsite? That information has to exist somewhere, but idk, I’m only a pendant when it’s convenient; if I can shape around it that’s nice but I’m not holding to it.

I have no idea what Silayev was like. But he’s first on the list, so I pulled him out.

Izyumov isn’t anyone at all. But speaking of him, now that I look at when I’ve ballparked this, there was actually a cement shortage in the Ukraine sometime in late August 1986 (5), which is why having proquest and insomnia is a perilous combo for me. So who knows, maybe they’re related. Really, I was just thinking about the high-voc stuff that cures quicker vs the kinds used in domestic structures.

Works cited:

Yaroshevsky, Alexey. “Chernobyl blast:Valery Legasov's battle”. RT. TV-Novosti, pub. 27 Apr, 2008. Ed. 28 Apr, 2008. via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpvvccmG2dE
Самоделова, Светлана. “Как убивали академика Легасова, который провел собственное расследование Чернобыльской катастрофы” Mk.Ru. Московский комсомолец, 26 апреля 2017 https://www.mk.ru/social/2017/04/25/kak-ubivali-akademika-legasova-kotoryy-provel-sobstvennoe-rassledovanie-chernobylskoy-katastrofy.html
1. Samodelova, Svetlana. Trans. Google Translate. “How Academician Legasov was killed, who conducted his own investigation of the Chernobyl disaster.” Mk.Ru. Moskovsky Komsomolets, 26 April 2017
2. I know gtranslate is far from perfect, but I’ve had luck with it for technical jargon despite syntax issues, and ‘myelocytes’ is pretty unambiguous, so I’m rolling with it but will defer to a better translation as soon as it exists
3. NB that this one also talks about the dosimeter issue itself
USA. CIA: Directorate of Intelligence. The Chernobyl’ Accident: Social And Political Implications [redacted]: A Research Paper. December 1987. As sanitized for release 2012/09/12. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP08S01350R000300900002-4.pdf. Also has a code SOV87-100786, fwiw. Thank you someone for getting an FOIA on this, but it’s also a complete headtrip.
Schmemann, Serge, "CHERNOBYL MANAGERS PUNISHED PRAVDA: SOME WORKERS MISSING, 'ON THE RUN'" Orlando Sentinel, Jun 16, 1986, pp. A1. ProQuest, doc id 276842170
Peracchio, Adrian "ANALYSIS Nuclear Optimism, Despite Chernobyl." Newsday, Aug 31, 1986, pp. 4. ProQuest, doc id 285373727

Further reading:

For a further account of the dosimeter issue, I’ve been directed to Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe, by Serhii Plokhy, published 2018, though I haven’t found a copy yet myself. But the reviews are all good.
- Thank you tryingtobealwaystrying to setting me on this track; I think their post was the first place I heard about the dosimeter shenanigans back when, and then they were super encouraging on the research front!

speaking of my dive into the research deep end, I of course gave my local library a gander. And what do you know, but every reputable material on Chernobyl is checked out and has a waitlist. Now, this is terribly inconvenient for me personally, but honestly I love it so much - there are 27 whole people on one waitlist, that's such an excellent problem to have. I love this city and how curious we are, and I'm so glad that this show that is raging against passively absorbing a convenient position is inspiring people to look further. Librarians of the world, I hope you know how much I admire your mission.

Current Music: hairpin turns - the national

Buut I have got just under of 500 words of fic based on Valery Legasov being generally a sad dude: >22.1% on ao3, no archive warnings apply, gen, etc. Would fit decently somewhere in episode 4 but it really doesn't matter. Generally as upbeat as the show can be, which is to say, not really at all.
To be frank I'm less shaking my head at myself for engaging in the chernobyl miniseries like this; I know there's folks up in arms about historical people but I'm not bothered about that. Knowing the difference between fact and fiction is the meat and potatoes of this show, let's chill. No, I'm shaking my head at the fact that I had to go and cite sources. for fic! I'm done with finals! I don't need to be doing this! but, I did:

Cooper, Richard. "Smoking in the Soviet Union." British Medical Journal, v.285, 21 Aug 1982: 549-551. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aed6/f80070a0148217b0b64db2316b0662a663d8.pdf
Gilmore, Anna et al. “Prevalence of smoking in 8 countries of the former Soviet Union: results from the living conditions, lifestyles and health study.” American journal of public health vol. 94,12 (2004): 2177-87. doi:10.2105/ajph.94.12.2177 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448609/
Starks, Tricia A. “A Revolutionary Attack on Tobacco: Bolshevik Antismoking Campaigns in the 1920s.” American journal of public health vol. 107,11 (2017): 1711-1717. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2017.304048 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637673/
Thun, Michael J et al. “Lung cancer occurrence in never-smokers: an analysis of 13 cohorts and 22 cancer registry studies.” PLoS medicine vol. 5,9 (2008): e185. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050185 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2531137/

Also, this is unrelated, but - I applied for a promotion! it got hairy for a minute when the server had a fit, but it's out of my hands and my supervisor will read it and we'll go from there!
I do feel like the right person for this job. Which is incredible in the first place, considering how terrified I was to step in as a volunteer just last fall. But I've grown, and it's been thanks to this office. I'll get to maintain my position if I don't get the promotion, so it's not like I'll be losing out on this place, but I want to do right by it, and that means the promotion. Hey, if there's someone more qualified who waltzes in, sure, and I have faith that my supervisor will pick a decent person! But if that means me, let's do it!

Current Music: Will Jay - Talking In Your Sleep

so for better or for worse, this finals season's chosen procrastination habit is apparently writing fic, to the tune of around 2k words. dangit, I need to be putting all that wordcount on my papers! But the Stony discord has good folks around for sprints, and I got in a zone :_D Choice final lines from the sprints:

“Jarvis, man. Do you think you could bring the lights down?”
“I see you’re still nocturnal as ever,” Tony’s voice floated over his shoulder, and the man himself dropped down on the bench next to him.
“I know what Shield is, I’m in the damn place,” he snapped.
“I am. I told you, you’re on the level, be ready when it comes. It’s here,” Murphy looked him in the eye.

spoiler: no, my pov char does not know what shield is, he has no idea what he's in for - see making friends with Isaac Murphy, oops! Team Clint are absolutely being used as an excuse for the strike team to enter the territory that the official mission is working in. There aren't any major waves raised this time, but arc I'm shading in has to get worse before it gets better, of course.
Also, I'm in the You Gave Me a Home server, but I don't think the story these are from mentions Steve more than once, in passing. Te be aich, this is more in the vein of the massively self-indulgent crossover, although on a different angle. we all have our vices, and crossing the streams is mine!
In any case, and I'm not surprised by this, but I've noticed the massive trend in my writing process to prioritize dialogue and introspection over action or exposition, which is inconvenient! Not insurmountable, but my first drafts are very strongly slanted towards those aspects, and the balancing takes a good deal longer. So anything should have to wait until after finals, to be polished properly.

Current Music: the cave - mumford and sons

so yes I am behind on my final papers and yes I do feel very bad about that

but also what I've been slowly writing instead has accumulated into the Most self-indulgent trope-riddled thing on the face of the planet, to the tune of 'best friends have gotten married for insurance purposes without talking about Feelings'
and the context comes from a load of long convoluted au worldbuilding that a friend and I have been throwing back and forth for the past few years, so it's not even headed for ao3

there's like, several chunks but this is the most internally complete:
anyway, names changed to protect the innocent (me), so just pretend this is OCs ft. fluff (warning for hospital setting (mostly just hallway); the other half of this setup had his husband down as emergency contact and that's what let the cat out of the bag):

Honestly, this is what it’s about, he waved a hand at the utilitarian hall. It’s being there for him.

( ok, so he probably should've told his family he'd gotten married back when it happened )

Current Music: it had to be you - motion city soundtrack

I am like, ardently failing to be upset by the staggering racism and ignorance of my classmates today, so many things aren't going right, I'm getting so dizzy when I stand up and I vehemently do not want to collapse in public but I'm just doing my best here, I'm just doing my best and I'm so tired

anyway!!! to deal with the world, here's some comfort-style fic!!!

Troubleshooting, And Other Ways To Help Your New Android Son: When To Ask For Help (2606 words) by Odense
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Hank Anderson, RT600 "Chloe" (Detroit: Become Human), Elijah Kamski, Connor (Detroit: Become Human)
Additional Tags: Sickfic, (in a sense), Kamski Test Pass, formal semantics, analytic philosophy

Summary:
Connor runs into a glitch, and without Cyberlife’s support, Hank has to go to Elijah Kamski for help. Discussion of empathy and formal semantic issues ensues.
(generally following the best ending)

So, dreaming is a human brain doing a defrag?
Sort of.
Really?
Absolutely not, but it works to think of it that way.

I actually started this back last november to try and recontextualize some things I was struggling with in semantics, and now that I'm funneling all my anxiety into non-academic writing, I think the first chunk is looking pretty alright! Chloe and the kamski test pass are lined up for the second chunk, which is blocked and starting to fill in, and I'll finish it as soon as my brain gets in gear (which, who knows when that is, but i am working on it in any case)
I just love sci fi, what can I say.

I had a lot of fun writing this one! I hope it works for y'all too :D

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: when we were young

Well we're not quite at Everything Awful Oh God Somebody Do Something, but man
has it been a mess lately or what

without even touching anything political/international/real-world beyond my tangible sphere bc I'm so exhausted, the thing about working in a legal clinic is, obviously, people come to you when they're in the worst situation. And it's our job to be supportive and helpful and get them as many resources as we can, and not be bogged down, but it's an endless parade of ways the world is cruel to people who don't deserve any of it. And our director is also working with the public defender's office, and the cases she gets are an order of magnitude worse - we're just civil, here, small mercies, but I'm gonna have to spend some time figuring out crim law too and that's gonna take a lot of emotional support, I can tell you.

so in the name of not letting myself start the day by on a down note, yesterday I finally psyched myself into letting some of my fic-bites into the world! I can't promise either quality nor quantity, but hey words exist in sequence!
In decreasing order of seriousness,

1: when having struggles, write lowkey whump
( MCS is a Delicate Flower )

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2: YJ and JR, BFFL
( welcome back, jingrui?? )

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3: and then I throw caution to the wind and the bit where YJ realises everyone thought he was gonna be DFAB is my excuse to be 1000% self-indulgent
( YJ is trans as hell it's great )

AKA:
YJ: So, I'm trans
JR: Hell yeah, sister
YJ: So I'm gonna try being more femme, I think
JR: (walks directly into a tree) uhh. um. good for you!!

so those exist for the world to enjoy, hopefully! if something's not working for character voices and things, drop me a line? just please be nice! orz

also I called in late to work for the first time today bc I just gotta eat breakfast. and thank Goodness my director is chill, I just need to get my feet under me

LLAP, y'all