Dear Sedoretu Author,

Hi! I'm Grave (ao3 user graveexcitement). I'm very excited for sedoretuex! Thanks in advance for writing for me. I hope one or more of these prompts inspires you, but optional details are optional and the freeform tags are kind of prompts in and of themselves; feel free to ignore the prompts or only use part of them if a different idea strikes you!

All requests are for fic.

Most of these prompts are written with the standard two Evening + two Morning sedoretu arrangement in mind, and with each moiety having one man and one woman (save for ships of only one gender), but I am definitely open to unconventional sedoretu setups!

Also, feel free to disregard the potential moiety setups I mention in my prompts if a different setup calls to you!

( Do Not Wants )

( Likes/favored tropes )

( (Fandoms: The Rigel Black Chronicles, The Scum Villain's Self Saving System, A Song of Ice and Fire, Star Wars, Stranger Things) )

I hope you are inspired by something in this letter! Good luck, and have fun!

Sincerely,
Grave

graveexcitement gravedread graveexcitement

Dear Cephaloparty,

Hi! I'm Grave (ao3 user graveexcitement). I'm super excited for cephalopartyexchange! Thanks in advance for writing for me. I hope one or more of these prompts inspires you, but optional details are optional and the freeform tags are kind of prompts in and of themselves; feel free to ignore the prompts or only use part of them if a different idea strikes you!

All requests are for fic or art.

( Do Not Wants )

( Likes/favored tropes )

( (Fandoms: The Scum Villain's Self Saving System, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight) )

I hope you are inspired by something in this letter! Good luck, and have fun!

Sincerely,
Grave

graveexcitement gravedread graveexcitement

Dear BodySwap Swap Author,

Hi! I'm Grave (ao3 user graveexcitement). I'm super excited for bodyswapswap! This is one of my all time favorite tropes :D Thanks in advance for writing for me. I hope one or more of these prompts inspires you, but optional details are optional and the freeform tags are kind of prompts in and of themselves; feel free to ignore the prompts or only use part of them if a different idea strikes you!

All requests are for fanfiction.

( Do Not Wants )

( Likes/favored tropes )

( (Fandoms: The Magnus Archives, Rigel Black Chronicles, Stranger Things) )

I hope you are inspired by something in this letter! Good luck, and have fun!

Edit 8/14: My apologies for not finishing this last week! /o\ I hope it helps; either way, I'm sure I'll love whatever you write!

Sincerely,
Grave

graveexcitement gravedread graveexcitement

i've been on T for 10 weeks and it's going well! my voice started to deepen around like, 6-7 weeks in, and has continued to do so. i'm excited to see how deep it will get! also my eyebrows might be thickening slightly? not sure

other effects under the cut for slight tmi

( tmi )

in other news, it's been summer break for a month and a half, my sleep schedule has reverted to nocturnal (ie. going to sleep somewhere around 5-7am and sleeping until 1-3pm), and i feel unfulfilled because i'm not, like, doing anything and my days have no structure. but i am hanging out a lot with friends so that's all right.

i will be starting a summer class in about 10 days, so at least then i'll have structure again. the course is on Philosophy of Law, as i needed a course with an ethics flag and it seemed interesting.

hope y'all's summers are going well! and we still have a few hours left of june, so: happy pride!

It's been a while, huh. I've been having a... perhaps not "bad" semester, but "mixed-success" semester. And part of that is that I've been kind of... well, you know that tumblr post that's like "filling up all of your time with books, fanfic, youtube, social media, podcasts, music, to prevent the chance of a single thought occurring in your head"? Yeah, that's kinda been me. Which makes it remarkable that I have managed to do some stuff! But I've just overall been very averse to... spending any significant time thinking. And thus my journalling habits (both here and in my private journals) have fallen by the wayside.

So, I'm trying to fix that.

My academics are... ahem... [insert "*chuckles* I'm in danger" meme]. Well, two of my classes are basically fine. The third class is the one I'm in danger of failing due to missed work. The professor is very lenient and will let me turn in most of my assignments absurdly late; I just have to scrape myself together enough to actually do that. Which will be my next goal after I finish writing this. This class is unfortunately vital to my degree; I need to make a C in order to take the next and final course in the sequence in the fall. Which I am also excited to take, because one of my favorite professors is teaching it and a friend from last semester is taking it as well! I really don't want to lose that opportunity... or delay my graduation till Spring 23 T_T.

I've also managed to connect with some classmates of mine, at least in a "sit together in class, walk to next class, and (in one case) eat lunch together" way, which is nice. I've also joined a student organization for the first time since freshman year; a few of the aforementioned classmates are officers there, so I knew some people in the org already. It's nice.

I mentioned last year that I've been greatly enjoying wearing long skirts. This has continued and I am very happy with them (and keep buying more, oops); I feel cute and fashionable for color-coordinating a t-shirt with a skirt, and people compliment my outfits too, which is nice. On top of that, I've started painting my nails. It's turned out to be the only thing that has ever stopped me from biting/picking at my nails, and they're also colorful & shiny & smooth; overall, quite satisfying.

Finally, last month I knuckled down and made an appointment to be prescribed HRT, which happened last week; then today I picked up my prescription and was instructed on how to self-inject T. It was easier than I thought it would be; well, the preparation stuff is kind of fiddly and I'm nervous I'll fuck it up in the future, but the actual injection part was fine.

I think that covers most of it, so I suppose now I'll return to overdue homework. Hope y'all are doing well!

( venting )

hope y'all are faring well in these times, especially if it is also near the end of the semester for you

in 6th grade, my world cultures teacher really wanted to be a world geography teacher instead. there were a lot of maps in that class. one day, she gave us all clementines and markers, and had us draw an approximation of the Earth's continents on the clementine, like it was a globe. then she had us try to peel the clementines such that the removed peel was still all in one piece, to demonstrate the difficulty of mapping the globe onto a flat map.

ever since then i've tried to peel clementines/mandarins/etc all in one piece. i've been having clementines at lunch every day for the last few weeks, and that lesson in 6th grade comes to mind from time to time.

school's been going... okay, i think. i'm holding on in my Japanese language class; the way the class is structured is different from what i'm used to, but i think i'm figuring it out. (though i did have a crisis the other week and started morosely wondering if i would have to become an English major instead. this would be unideal because, while i am currently an English minor, being an English major requires quite a few more classes. so, no, i'm sticking with Japanese.)

my other classes are better; lots of discussion, which is good because if i'm confident in a subject (so, not Japanese) then i will not fucking shut up. love earning those sweet participation points.

all my classes moved to in-person about two weeks ago, and that's been fine, mostly. almost everyone in my classes masks during class (i say "almost" because last wednesday i did see someone not masking in my English class :/), but i do see a lot of people not masking in libraries, study areas, and other public indoor areas that aren't classrooms. so that's :/ and i wish my uni would implement a mask mandate (it's texas, and the uni is more spineless than dozens of public school districts, so :/)

the university does offer and encourage free testing, so i've been getting tested once a week, which helps give me peace of mind.

writing-wise, i ended up picking up a late pinch hit for my own Big Bang, which has become my longest work ever by a long shot. it'll be... around 27k when it's finished. void willing i will finish it in the next day or two because i need it to be done. (it was technically supposed to be finished over a week ago, by the rules of my own event, but my co-mod gave me leniency due to it being a late pinch hit. still. i'm a little >.> at myself :p.) i need it off my plate so i can work on my Fic In A Box assignments, which (because i got an extension) are due in a week.

at least the Big Bang fic will actually completely make up my GYWO deficit. (GYWO is getyourwordsout, a year-long writing challenge; i signed up to write 75k this year and was like, 25k behind where i should be before i got started on the BB fic. so between the BB, ficinabox, and highadrenalineexchange, i think i will actually complete my GYWO pledge this year, for the first time since i joined GYWO in 2018. assuming, of course, that i do complete Fic in a Box and Heart Attack.

modding a Big Bang (the Rigel Black Big Bang) this summer was interesting. it was my first time modding a bang, and i'm grateful my co-mod Rime was there to help; i don't think i would ever want to mod one alone, lol. it's like, one part spreadsheets, one part forms, one part emails, and one part hunting people down to make them fill out forms and talk to their partners.

the spreadsheets and forms were my co-mod's job, we shared the emails, and then i was the primary person badgering people about forms. which was a tad... uh... [pterodactyl screeching], at times. but overall it was pretty rewarding, seeing all the fic and art that was made for it! and even me taking that late pinch hit (which basically ended up being a Reverse Big Bang, where you write a fic to match the art — in this case it was an animatic (!!)) has been very rewarding, i just gotta finish it!

ok, dad has requested to play a board game (Azul Summer Pavilion), so i'm gonna go do that, and then after i have three things left to do today:

-study for my Japanese test tomorrow
-creative assignment for my Japanese Literature class
-write

hope y'all are doing well!

in today’s episode of Gender Neutral Bathroom Quest:

i have class in building J. building J is a large building, with three main sections: the main section (which includes classrooms, auditoriums, learning center, and cafeteria), and the east and west dormitory wings.

i have two classes on the second floor of building J, and with a spare ten minutes between them, i think, maybe this is a good time to use the bathroom!

now, with such a large building: surely there are gender neutral bathrooms. and checking the handy dandy site that documents gender neutral bathrooms at my uni, i find that indeed, there are several! two even appear to be on the second floor, which is great, because my classes are on the second floor!

so i walk around the second floor of the main section, clueless. then i see it: a gender neutral bathroom sign! it’s just on the other side of a set of clear doors that lead into the West dormitory wing!

these doors, however, are locked, i guess because they want people to only enter the dormitory wing from the ground floor. so… i can see the gender neutral bathroom. but to access it i would need to go down the stairs, cross into the west dorm, then go back up the stairs to reach this bathroom. and then either go out through the clear doors (if the lock is only one way) or back down and up the stairs (if it’s locked both directions) to get back to class.

(possibly there are first-floor gender neutral bathrooms in the west wing, in which case it would be descend stairs -> use bathroom -> ascend stairs again.)

at this point i got fed up and decided i would just use the bathroom after class. so, after class, i wandered around the main section of the building and confirmed: all of the gender neutral bathrooms are in the dormitory wings.

i ended up using a gender neutral bathroom in the ground floor lounge of the east dorm wing, which was possible because (as signs on the doors to the dorm proclaimed) you did not have to swipe your card to enter, which meant i did not have to worry if the card swipe was checking for students or for dorm residents.

pro: there was a piano in this lounge, so i could listen to the muffled sounds of piano while i used the bathroom

con: i don’t live in this dorm, and it’s also not very convenient if i want to use the restroom between classes, though it’s all right for after class, since i have time before catching the bus home.

in conclusion: Building J is a pretty modern building. (ok, apparently it was built in 1969, so maybe not as modern as i thought, but it’s def more modern than say, the Liberal Arts buildings.) it should have gender neutral restrooms in the main section of the building, and not just in the dormitory wings. possibly the second-floor bathrooms were once meant to be easily accessible from the main section, but that changed when they locked those doors to restrict dorm access (not sure if this was a recent restriction or not.)

there are other buildings on campus with more easily accessible gender neutral bathrooms -- including the art building, which actually has a set of multi-stall gender neutral bathrooms, as opposed to the normal single-toilet bathrooms. i like the multi-stall bathrooms! but this semester i'm nowhere near that building.

the other building i have classes in this semester, building P, apparently has gender-neutral bathrooms on the fourth floor only, and given the age of that building i'm not all that optimistic about how convenient they will be to access (according to the gender-neutral bathroom website, the elevator only goes up to the third floor?? what the heck.)

so! today was the first day of the fall semester. now, my university initially planned for a full return to in-person classes this semester. however, texas' covid situation right now is a shitshow. it's surging right now and our fucking idiot governor is doing everything he can to make it worse, including banning mask mandates in governmental entities and public schools (and today i also heard he's banning vaccine mandates for governmental entities, even if the vaccines do have FDA approval.) now, a number of K-12 public school districts across the state are defying the governor and requiring masks in schools, which is great. but my university apparently doesn't have the guts to do that, so masks are recommended but optional.

(in my class of around 20 people today, everyone was wearing masks except one girl. so, not terribly impressed with her, but at least everyone else was wearing them despite them being optional? outside the classroom, i still saw most people masking indoors.)

vaccines are also in the "recommended but optional" category. what was mandatory was everyone getting tested for covid in the first week of class (ideally in the 3 days before classes started, but it's pretty hard to schedule a test in this area right now, so they extended it a bit). i got tested today (nasal swab, but it was pretty painless - i gather they're not swabbing as deep in the naval cavity as they used to), and i am negative, as expected.

so my university won't mandate vaccines or masks, and will mandate testing (at least this once). other than that, its reaction to the ongoing covid surge has been "uhhhh... we'll let individual professors decide whether to go online/hybrid/in-person for the first 4 weeks of class!" and with my luck, i got one of each. i was originally slated to have 3 in-person classes on M/W/F. my first class, english, has moved entirely online. my second class, japanese, is hybrid -- it's online M/W, in-person on F. and then my third class, japanese literature, is in-person both days (M/W). which means i'm still going to campus 3 days a week, it's just for only one class a day, and it's more troublesome

i still live at home with my parents, which is like a 30-40 minute drive to campus. (used to take the bus; i might test out the bus for return trips, and see how crowded it is; however, the route i took to commute down to campus had its southbound hours cut, so no matter what one of my parents is going to have to drive me to class, at least.) my second class of the day on M/W is online from 13:00-13:50. my third class of the day is in-person at 14:30. so i gotta finish my second class and then immediately be driven to campus to get to my third class. i explained to the prof and she's understanding of my lateness, but... it is inconvenient.

(can't zoom on campus because my laptop, which was never very good for zoom in the first place, broke, and i haven't yet taken it in to see if it can be salvaged.)

so! that was a lot of words to explain a bunch of inconveniences and grievances with my university. despite that, it was nice, if very strange, to have an in-person class. two of my classmates were classmates i recognized from prior japanese culture classes i'd taken in the last year, and i actually ran into one of them when i went to buy a course reading packet from the print shop. it was cool getting to actually talk to her in person. (also she was tall! it's funny realizing that you've gone a year not knowing how tall your classmates are.)

it's also gonna be nice to have class only 3 days a week, even if there are inconveniences on those 3 days.

uh... i think i had more words on how odd it was to be an in person classroom for the first time in nearly a year and a half, but i think that's about it. It Feels Weird!

(ps. one of the Quality Skirts With Pockets vendors i was talking about in my last personal post, Maya Kern, has opened a new round of preorders! i bought two more skirts, which will bring my total skirt count up to 5. i think i've spent more on my wardrobe this year than in the last 5 years combined, and most of this year's spending is attributable to skirts. but they make me happy so i'm good with it.)

this july/august i actually took part in the latest round of We Die Like Fen; i participated in the very first WDLF exchange but missed all the subsequent ones until now. it was super fun! i decided to round up some recs to post at recthething (a fanwork rec comm that i recommend checking out if you haven't already) and then realized hey, i can post them here too. (some of these were gifts for me :D!)

ATLA - Should Have Read More History Books (1.9k, gen)
After an unexpected trip through time, Aang decides to change history.

One problem. He slept through most of history.

BNHA - Whose Eyes Show The Road (700w, gen)
"Sensei," Midoriya said, "I need you to listen carefully. We have eight minutes before this loop resets. I'll remember; you won't."

Shouta pinched the bridge of his nose then looked down at his empty cup. Eight minutes wasn't even long enough to make more coffee. "How many times?"

BNHA - Twilight Weaving Morning (3.6k, Bakugou/Uraraka)
"Well, fuck," Bakugo Katsuki said. "You're supposed to be eighteen months old." Behind the words, Ochako heard him saying You're supposed to be dead. I thought you were.

Ochako wondered if he'd heard the shadow of the same words behind what she'd said. "I suppose the back in time thing is an obvious Hail Mary route. Did you have a plan? At all?"

Star Wars - Conspiracies (1k, gen)
CC-1010 died on Mustafar, strangled by Vader. Fox woke up in his office in the Senate building with Rex and General Skywalker.

Star Wars - Jedi Spice Tricks (2k, Finn/Poe)
Finn shakes his head. "I can't read your mind. We've been over this." Poe has a strange, definitely outsized appreciation for Finn's Force-sensitivity, such as it is.

Some errands, some toking, some makeouts: life could be a lot worse.

Stranger Things (fused with Locked Tomb Trilogy) - Ghostbusters (800w, Will/Eleven/Mike)
The twin necromancers of the Sixth get into plenty of trouble together. Good thing they have a loyal cav to get them out.

Zero Escape - Sixteen Children, No Answers (600w, gen)
An in universe write up of the first nonary game as an r/unsolved mysteries post.

Original Work - In The Walls (1.7k, gen)
Taking care of a feral cat colony isn't that difficult, except when a haunted house is involved.