enchantedsleeper 🌈⭐ @enchantedsleeper@fandom.ink

My intro post was overdue an update, and I'm using Day 1 of the Snowflake Challenge as my incentive to finally write a new one! I'm enchantedsleeper, a fic writer, occasional vidder and general fandom enthusiast. My main fannish home these days is The Strange Case of Starship Iris, and I'm also into Marvel, The Murderbot Diaries and a sprinkling of other small fandoms.

I can be found on AO3, YouTube, Fanlore, FF.net, Dreamwidth and pretty much everywhere under this handle. Come and say hi!

Me, shoving my phone underneath something to stop it distracting me while I'm working: I'm going to forget this is under here

*predictably, two hours later* Where the hell is my phone?

...him also hits very differently when you're an adult reading the book and know the character is at most 12 or 13.

Another thing that hits very differently reading these books two decades on: wow, all these characters are just kids. I mean, no shit, Sherlock - but it reads very differently when you're the same age as the protagonist. You *buy* that Tracy Beaker is the toughest toughie to ever tough (even if you know she's crying when she says she has hayfever), instead of just being a scared and lost little kid.

A scene where another kid's mum calls him "rubbish" and shouts that his father doesn't want...

*Footnote to that last post is that I haven't read past Book 2 - I know there were other Tracy Beaker books - so I can't say whether they gave Cam a het romance, but it seems like pretty blatant queer-coding (in hindsight; I wasn't attuned to it when I was 9 xD) so I don't know why JW would undermine that.

Also, apparently JW is a lesbian? I learned this years after the fact and wondered why there'd never been any queer characters in her books, but... maybe they were just hiding in plain sight

(For anyone who isn't familiar with the Tracy Beaker books, Cam is the main character's foster mum, described as having short sticky-up hair, always in T-shirts and jeans, never wears makeup, is "single" without ever having a boyfriend/male love interest described* - but the real kicker is this line:

"Cam's mum is this weird old posh lady who lives in the country somewhere and doesn't want to see Cam any more because she disapproves of her lifestyle."

That's the bit that made me go: ohhhhh)

Me reading The Dare Game by Jacqueline Wilson in my 30s: Oh my god, Cam is totally a lesbian

Opened up a Google News tab to look up recent studies for an article at work and saw both the news about Roe v Wade and also the Conservative losses in by-elections. "Fuck" on the one hand, and "fuck yes" on the other. Talk about mixed emotions. But "fuckkkkkkkk" is winning right now as I watch the news coverage of the Roe v Wade decision

My boss linked me to a work-relevant piece of news on/about Twitter (Notes; apparently Twitter is doing blogging now...) and within minutes I found myself scrolling zombie-like through doom-laden proclamations. I need to set up Blocksite again to break this cycle. It's just frustrating when social media is a chunk of my work (coverage-wise, although I also do a bit of posting) but it can take huge chunks of my time and energy if I'm not careful.

Good news: the paid tests are already here, so I was able to take another one and it's come up negative. Meaning it's most likely just a bad cold after all.

One thing that's weirding me out, though, is that I almost never lose my appetite when ill; colds in particular just make me extra hungry. Yesterday that was the case, but today? I'm struggling to finish even a small amount of food. And the weird thing is that I'm sure I *am* hungry? I need food, I just can't... eat

I was using work-allocated tests but they only give you enough for one per week, so you're supposed to test at the start of every week. I get wanting to set the bar somewhere for people who otherwise wouldn't be testing at all, but what are you supposed to do if you catch it after that initial test? And I used up an extra one the other day to make sure that my hayfever symptoms weren't Covid. Sigh; I should have ordered some paid ones before now.

Aw, my boss got back with a supportive message, so that's nice. And is sending me funny anti-crypto tweets :P I feel bad abandoning him while he's also far from 100%. As far as I know, my own lurgy isn't Covid but I was only able to test yesterday and now I've run out, so I can't test again until my new order arrives. And they've decommissioned all the mobile testing centres and such =.= What a genius plan to let the virus run totally rampant by pretending it's not here!

Such is my anxiety about telling my boss I need a sick day (for no good reason - he's the best, but I still hate asking) that I was debating just... working anyway and seeing how I go. But opening my writing document and trying to muster my brain to come up with the next sentence convinced me it's not a good idea.

I sent the message asking if I can take the day and instantly felt so much better =w= (The reason I feel extra bad this time is because my boss has Covid himself, so like... timing)