Tomorrow Starts Today

[extrapenguin]

I completely missed the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing yesterday due to living ahead of the Americans, but: I discovered that Prometheus Records has an entire album devoted to space exploration! Here's one of the five "freebie" songs:

I bought the album, and I also like Big Blue Sky, Fire in the Sky, I Wanna Go to Mars, Star Fire, and Beyond the Sky, and I can see myself enjoying The Pioneers of Mars, If We Had No Moon, and Legends as restful evening songs.
Oh, and here's another space-related song:

(Seriously, I have been so bad at keeping track of dates. I even missed this year's Yuri's Night!)

---

On a more fandom-y front, I watched Mulan (2009) (engsubbed), and Zhao Wei is very hot when she's in her general garb, especially when she's all dirted up. Also all those speeches are so very inspiring, and the ending was excellent.

I also watched four episodes of Oh My General, also about a crossdressing woman general! This time, though, it's set after the General gets honored by the Emperor – she says that actually, she's a woman, so the Emperor marries her off to his wastrel nephew. Becuse General Ye Zhao is endearingly shallow and the nephew Zhao Yujin is a renowned beauty, she has absolutely zero problems with this. Unlike the groom. It's very much a comedy, and much is milked from Ye Zhao having no fucking clue how women are supposed to walk, act, or talk. She is super good at all the martial arts, and I ship her with her husband's concubines. (She said that since they're pretty women in the primes of their lives, they should not be afraid to dress in fancy clothes and wear jewelry and makeup; later two of the concubines oohed and ahhed over Ye Zhao's martial arts practice and declared that if the General were a man, they'd marry him.) Oh, and the show is very saturated, especially the blue clothes the Ye Army wears. I would also 100% wear every blue get-up of Ye Zhao's.

I made some quick and dirty icons of Ye Zhao, too:


Writing Rainbow: Blue assignments came out! I've been writing a fic all day. There's another request I had my eye on that I'll try to write a treat for tomorrow. In general, enrichment is good for the soul. <3

(I also solved an upcoming quibble with spaceship rental via an e-mail conversation with jo_lasalle! Today has been a good day.)

Comments

[china_shop]

Congrats on solving your fic quibble!

Ooh, is the Writing Rainbow thing treatable? *goes to investigate, despite my writing being a little borken atm*

[extrapenguin]

Writing Rainbow is very treatable! Fic and art treats of any length are allowed.

[phyrry]

Woot, space music!

Oh My General looks hilarious. I might have to buckle down and watch it now... (I can hear my standard refrain already: "Just be poly.")

This exchange is so much fun, thank you for telling me about it. <3

[extrapenguin]

I was expecting a hilarious het comedy, but I'm getting so much bonus female friendship and femslashy stuff in there as well that it's !!!! - Ye Zhao has two military women as her aides who follow her into her new home, she has two sisters-in-law (her dead brother's wife and her husband's brother's wife), a mother-in-law, and every one of them gets along at least somewhat? It's so refreshing that all the drama comes from the husband and not the women. (Though note that you have a man forced to get wed and it's played for laughs, if that's a potential issue!)

The exchange is very fun! I had a blast with my assignment, and now it's time for some treats.

[phyrry]

That sounds amazing, honestly.

I also had a lot of fun with my assignment, but now that I'm looking at treats I'm sad that both people who requested the fandom I want to write for ship my NOTP. Like, there are a ton of awesome gay women to ship with the character I do match on, why keep the mean straight unrequited love interest around??

I might end up doing gen or something else entirely, I guess.

[extrapenguin]

This exchange has broad rules about "matching", so as long as it's a good-faith effort to write them something they may enjoy, it's fine. OTOH, shippers of your het NOTP might not be into your femslash ships. Gen featuring the woman and some gen-friendly tags might work.

(It really is baffling how popular certain types of male love interest are, when all I want to do to them is toss them out of an airlock and have canon forget their existence. I guess a bunch of people really kink on boring gendered tropes I loathe?)

[phyrry]

Oh, it's actually a femslash NOTP - Juri/Shiori. (Juri deserves better, dammit! Let her move on and find someone who loves her back! Ahem.) But there's always gen.

I *almost* used my last tag nomination for "there are no men in this house and that's how we like it". But I don't know the fannish zeitgeist and didn't want to start wank, so.

Most het romantic tropes are somewhere between "nope" and "oh hell nope" for me.

[extrapenguin]

Ah! Well, gen always exists.

I *almost* used my last tag nomination for "there are no men in this house and that's how we like it". But I don't know the fannish zeitgeist and didn't want to start wank, so.
In a flashfic exchange with a bunch of cracky tags like this one, I don't think it'd have started much wank, but then again, I don't consider myself in touch with the fannish Zeitgeist, either. "No Men Are Mentioned" would have been completely wank-free, though, I think!

[phyrry]

Ahhhh, 'No Men Are Mentioned' is a good way to phrase it. I will keep that in mind for next exchange, thank you!

[clevermanka]

I think I saw a gifset of Oh My General on Tumblr with no tags or caption (WHY, PEOPLE, WHYYYYY?) so thank you I'm probably gonna check that out it looks glorious.

[extrapenguin]

It is hilarious and fun and so very colorful (almost eye-searing at times)! I hope you have fun with it.

with no tags or caption
I join your chorus of WHYYYYY. It's as if they don't *want* other people to check the thing out!

[clevermanka]

I wish I remembered who posted it so I could find it again and reblog it with the info.

[tinny]

I'm going to take a look at the Oh My General. I'm not into serious wuxia stuff, but I have never actually seen a comedic one.

[extrapenguin]

It's hilarious! It's about as wuxia as Nirvana in fire is, i.e. more reality with some wuxia martial arts inserted than actual wuxia.