hey love, I'm an inconstant satellite

Sentimental Reasons by Frostfire
Sam/Rick never occurred to me when watching Casablanca, but I liked this a lot.

Love Stories from the Jungle by Patrick Samphire
Response while reading: disappointment in the lack of specific place or identity
Response after reading: wow, fuck you
(It's a massive downer and feels weirdly condescending.) The language is lovely, but I hated it.
Bounced off two other free stories by the same author.

A Threadbare Carpet by Kate Heartfield
It's a little spare, I seem to want more immersive stories these days, but I liked the magic and the women characters.

Old Souls by Fonda Lee
I liked this a lot better than the Green Bone books; still pretty violent, but more relatable characters. It has a really remarkable search-and-replace error for Kegan/Mark, though, wow. I emailed the site about it, because of course I did.

The Beast and the Hummingbirds by Madison McSweeney
A good creepy little fairy tale.

Pastry Chef Attempts to Make Elvish Lembas by adspexi
:)

Other news:
Substituted a video chat for our monthly brunch with my half-sister. I wish we could have talked about anything but the news, but with everyone housebound, it was hard to find other topics. We had some good laughs, though.

I started making boiled chocolate cookies before checking that we had enough oats, and I was really down about it, but Emily happened to have a whole canister of Spare Oat. What a good girlfriend.

Mostly I've been reading good news articles today:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/the-perfect-virus-two-gene-tweaks-that-turned-covid-19-into-a-killer-20200327-p54elo.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/australia/astrophysicist-australia-magnets-hospital-scli-intl-scn/index.html (hilarious)
https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1243754919623974915 (GOOD DATA, been waiting for these phylogenies)

Stories included:
Let's Do the Same as They by halotolerant (Singin' in the Rain OT3 meets Steve Rogers' OT3)

The Author of the Acacia Seeds by Ursula K. Le Guin (lovely as ever, but i have Some Opinions about the plant section; obviously, plants do communicate, and their literature would be chemical)
An Orchid Keeps Its Secrets by Wasuremono, who agrees with me
The Quiet Rebellion of Tardigrade Sela Writings by Edonohana (I want to read all of them)
Mother Bonesplitter's Children by Fontainebleau (delightful! I love academic fights and new paradigms)

In other news:
Ember cat had her tail amputated due to an injury back in February and is still having phantom limb pain, so she and her meds are taking up a lot of my time and stress allowances. I had a good time hanging out with my girl tonight and playing Animal Crossing, though.