singularity

Title: Caring For Your Dragon
Author: blueraccoon/rebecca
Rating: NC-17
Summary: They went home. Now they have to go back to real life. In which Will and Jean-Rene figure out how this mate thing works.
Notes: I said on AO3 it's been fascinating to watch this story come together because it involves people I've literally written millions of words about, but which have only been read by one person other than me. I found I kept having to pull out things where I'd added unnecessary filler exposition just to drop in details about people because I thought they were cool and wanted people to know the cool details. There were two entire passages that got yanked because they were tours of a house and another building and I was like "becc, come on, nobody wants to read that shit" so now they're in my side bits file and if you want to read those side bits let me know.

There will be more stories. I have the next two mostly written, and then some stuff after that, and things planned for future. It seems to have found a small but existing audience on AO3 so I'm happy about that, at least.

bethbethbeth

On May 8th, I offered to read the first five books people recced - assuming they were available (preferably from the library) - and I'd give a short review [https://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/701769.html].

This is the seventh recced book review.

It's been a long time since posting one of these (I had non-recced books to read!), but I just finished:

The Lost Flock (2023), by Jane Cooper (recced by marinarusalka on dreamwidth)

When this was recced to me, marinarusalka wrote, “I’m curious to see if a non-knitter will find it equally interesting.” Because here’s the thing. I know nothing about raising sheep, I’ve never knitted, I’ve never been to the Orkney Islands, and yet this is why I loved reading The Lost Flock. It’s the same reason I like reading science fiction and fantasy; learning about and getting immersed in a world you know nothing about is great.

So…if you want to know about Boreray sheep (a rare, primitive short-tailed breed) or how felting is done or how to spin without a wheel or about sails for Viking ships, this is your book.

cinaed

( In which the Hooligans spend some time preparing for a dangerous forest trek and the paladin returns home to the forest for the first time since his father was murdered )

ursamajor

I started writing about our May concert weeks ago, and then got caught up in the swell of all of our June concerts. Three down, two to go!

hyounpark's mom and sister came out for our May concert - they'd wanted to come for Bocelli, but we took a look at ticket prices and required hotels and were like "even for a once in a lifetime thing like this we cannot in good conscience ask you to shell out mid-four-figures for a weekend in Napa." So instead, they came out for the reprise of Here I Stand: Paul Robeson, which also included Jasmine Barnes' Sometimes I Cry, and Brahms' 2nd Symphony. The performance went well, and was recorded! So I'm looking forward to being able to share that when it's released.

We also stuffed ourselves silly that weekend, but it was a good chance to just hang out at Leonard and Sara's and be lazy and have family time. Takeout sushi from Miyozen and wings from Wingstop while we worked on puzzles; curries for dinner from House of Curries; an excellent Hunanese dinner at Wojia the following evening.

H might have been a little more strategic on the eating front; 36 hours after we were onstage at the Paramount, he ran Bay to Breakers. I happily raced him across the city on the train per usual; devoured soda bread and a ganache cold brew on the beach at Sunset Dunes while waiting for him to catch up.

After that, we launched straight into prep for Beethoven and the symphony gala fundraiser. While we were waiting to go onstage for the gala, my little corner of sopranos was by what was very clearly The Party Table at the fundraiser. Highly amusing. We made ABC News for like half a second, and I was mostly blocked by the piano; perils of being a short soprano, lol.

Beethoven's 9th last Friday was the official wrap on our season, and I'm glad our director said what he did about it in his introduction, referencing that Beethoven was writing it in a time of much upheaval; that no matter the challenges, in our community, we seek and elevate joy; that this is our calling as musicians. An die freude, indeed.

*

We're approaching six years out here in California, now; as of yesterday, celebrating 20 years together with

hyounpark. (25 years on LJ/DW, at least off and on.) It seems like the universe is recognizing it, nestling into that theme of growing community ties. Just in the last week alone:

- H and I went to an a cappella concert on Sunday at the Freight, and one of the musicians was a college classmate.
- one of the additional singers we brought on for B9? Turned out to be my elementary school music teacher, who now lives less than a mile away from us. She was like, "Oh my god, I was so strict in those years!" Me, ever the diplomat: "Eh, I'd call it orchestral." Everyone in listening distance cracked up.
- on my way to rehearsal on Tuesday, I ran into one of my biking friends as they were going into BART and I was coming up out of BART. I'm finally starting to run into people serendipitously more often!
- at bike brunch last Friday, one of my friends from the food writing class I took in March was at the cafe we'd ridden to, and apparently they bike too, so of course I invited them to join us on future rides.
- at the B9 concert, friends in the audience included new biking friends, old fandom friends, and even older elementary school friends.

And now, we just got a last-minute song added to our setlist for the Bocelli concerts this weekend about 45 minutes ago, so I go cram. And make sure my clothes are washed. And check the Wine Country weather. And overhydrate. And make sure of our carpool. And that I have coughdrops. And sunscreen. And shoes that are both concert-dress-appropriate and walkable for tromping across the vineyard grounds.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: when it's dark, can this world revive

paynesgrey

Not much is going on in life. Just the same real life stuff - consulting with Capgemini, doing things with my family, keeping up the house and the pets, and trying to make some passive income with Poshmark and Pangobooks.

I'm doing some reading too, and I'm almost finished with The Apothecary Diaries Light Novel volume 4. I have some library books that I'm reading, mostly cookbooks, and reading some manga here and there from Hoopla through the library.

I've been doing some outlining for the stories for the fic fests I joined for the summer. Hopefully I can get writing them soon!

Trying to save money as best I can and eliminating eating out as much. We just painted the spare room in the basement which will become Juliet's playroom, and this weekend we'll be moving her in, as well as cleaning and organizing the basement and the garage. It's going to be a hot one this weekend so we'll be staying indoors mostly.

During all of this, there is one thing that brings me absolute joy and that would be my garden. I reactivated my Flickr account so I could post my garden pictures there, and not just on Facebook.

( My garden pics )

I will have to make sure to water vigorously this weekend as we are going to reach the upper 90s here in the Chicagoland.

Stay cool, everyone.

Current Mood: rejuvenated

scaramouche

Partway through watching The Devil's Plan season 1, I did a quick search on youtube for TDP-related content to get an idea if TDP is/was popular. The algorithm fed me a video by

TaranArmstrong commentating over Genius Game, a UK version of the original The Genius, which I forgot existed but at least knew existed at all because David Tennant is the "host". (Not really, he's in prerecorded video footage explaining the games and tallying results, but he's not physically there to host.)

I watched bits of Taran's videos and really enjoyed his commentary! He has a good handle on strategy and figuring out game mechanics to explain them in ways that I can understand (a blessing!), plus he has a good grip on the social aspects of the game. Most important though, I think, is that Taran's enthusiasm is nice and he gets invested in a fun-to-watch way, with good humour, and it's fun to see him so critical of Genius Game's mostly wishy-washy players and the UK audience's dislike of complicated games. The reason the algo fed me his videos is because he mentions that he loved TDP season 1 and wants to do commentary over TDP season 2. He couldn't upload the videos to youtube, so he put them on patreon instead, so I figured hey, once I started watching TDP season 2, I can intersperse that with his commentary videos.

TDP season 2 I think starts strong, there's a good selection of contestants, some of whom are well familiar with board games and/or card games, and the showrunners changed the format up where instead of two players going to prison at the end of every main match, half the players would go there, and instead of a prize match that all the non-prison players have to play to get prize money, there's a death match where all the prison players have to play to survive. Plus because the thing about season 1 was the hidden prison game, both sets of players immediately get on trying to figure out the hidden games in both areas, which are found pretty early in the season.

Unfortunately as the season went on, the flaw in the overall game design had an accumulative effect, and I found myself enjoying the show less and less, and ended up mostly (though not always) watching Taran's commentaries instead of the actual episodes. I bailed entirely in episode 10 of 12. I might go back, I might not, but it's just not fun anymore.

( Cut the rest for length. )

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: (G)I-DLE - My Bag

scaramouche

I picked up Brittany Kaiser's Targeted: My Inside Story of Cambridge Analytica and How Trump, Brexit and Facebook Broke Democracy when it first came out in paperback a handful of years ago, but hadn't read it because, well, I figured it'd be stressful. And it is stressful to read, which I have just done, considering where the world has gone since the first Trump election! But I think it worked out in the end because the book is already dated, and that helps to put some things in perspective in how facebook is no longer the powerhouse it once was, and our understanding of Big Data and data protection has evolved somewhat.

So Kaiser was an employee and eventual whistleblower of Cambridge Analytica (CA), I think it's quite widely known now how CA used Big Data to develop highly detailed psychographics of US voters to manipulate them in the 2016 election, especially towards the goal of voter suppression. What the book does is provide Kaiser's understanding of the timeline of events plus the details of the wheeling and dealing of players behind the scenes who were funding and/or moving money around, plus how the data was scraped and hidden in the first place (like, I knew all those facebook quizzes were part of data scraping and psychological profiling, but reading about it is still upsetting). But Kaiser says she had no hand in the data herself, since she was mostly pitching customers towards signing a contract before handing off to the operations team.

Since Kaiser didn't handle data herself I didn't get what I would've loved to know more about, which is how manipulation happens, beyond Kaiser's description of customized advertisments to incite anger and fake grassroots movements, but we knew that already. The psychology of it is interesting, and I would've liked deeper analysis of how to process news in a noisy world, and of the psychological and societal consequences we're still living in. But that's not the point of the memoir, and Kaiser's main emphasis is the attempt to redeem herself for her role in CA by focusing on data protection moving forward, which feels at this point a little horse-out-of-barn situation, but that doesn't mean we can't become more conscious of our online safety and support legislation to better protect everyone's privacy. (Facebook also being a case study of new social media being the wild wild west and allowing such abuse because no one knew what to protect themselves from.)

Plus when I say the book is dated, I'm also specifically referring to how Kaiser's exit strategy to get out of CA was to join the blockchain community.👀

Current Mood: nauseated

azurelunatic

* Shelves are fairly well stuffed. The other brackets have arrived, so we can go get more boards and tiny hardware at our convenience.
* There is now Shelf in the living room. Things are going in it.
* Household tidying progresses.
* Today I filled boxes for 13 weeks of my morning and evening pills. It feels like it took less time than usual, but I think that's a trick of the light. I think I usually start later in the day, and keep going until it's dark. It took about four and a half hours; I try to allocate at least 5.
* This means that I've got pills packed until sometime in September. Go, me?
* Juneteenth is tomorrow!
* Turns out that being a director at a certain kind of non-technical organization means that you spend evenings face-down in the user interface level of a misbehaving database. I am chockablock with sympathy.
* Yellface is adorable, and likes to spend the part of the day when I'm awake but still in bed sitting on my legs.
* Had games and pizza with friends last week; they've got a young-ish teeneager placed with them right now. She wasn't up for games but she did appear to fill her water bottle. Luna-cat is very curious about new people and apparently charged her, which was off-putting. I faded early.
* I got some new bras; I'll have to add pockets but the test wear was promising!
* Nobody told me about the dragons in The Priory of the Orange Tree, everyone just mentioned the lesbians.
* There's a new serial at

the_comfortable_courtesan!!!

runpunkrun

Hereditary rule, little gods, and the power of the printed word in a world very much like early 18th century England, only not. But this is really the story of a fatherless girl and her Horrible Goose as they spy, steal, and blackmail their way through a world still recovering from, or possibly on the edge of, civil war.

I got a bit bogged down in the middle where there were too many guys (gender specific) that I didn't care about having problems that I also didn't care about, but Hardinge's wonderful descriptive writing carried me through. She is so good at writing, you guys (gender neutral), and this has some especially brilliant descriptions of water and the various sounds it makes:

There was no escaping the sound of water. It had many voices. The clearest sounded like someone shaking glass beads in a sieve. The waterfall spray beat the leaves with a noise like paper children applauding. From the ravines rose a sound like the chuckle of granite-throated goblins.

And that's just the beginning. Every time she describes water, it's doing something different, a combination of words you've never before seen put in that order, but after a moment's thought it's obviously perfect. Her character work is excellent, too, though the POV of this book could best be described as "distant third person omniscient," and not really in a good way.

Contains: child harm, probably; animal harm; "gypsies" for some reason.

kaydeefalls

I am 40 today. Huzzah. I have spent the day at work, as per, baking myself a cake, and feeling grumpy because my wife's flight home Sunday was canceled due to tornadoes in the vicinity (you cannot make this shit up), which means she's not getting back until very late tonight instead. So to distract myself, here, have a fic.

Somehow I churned out 18k words in a week for this. It was supposed to be a quick and silly meet cute. IDEK. Happy birthday to me.

ready to dive (18468 words) by kaydeefalls
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heartstopper (TV), Heartstopper (Webcomic)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nicholas "Nick" Nelson/Charles "Charlie" Spring, Darcy Olsson & Charles "Charlie" Spring
Characters: Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper), Nicholas "Nick" Nelson, Darcy Olsson, Elle Argent, Tao Xu (Heartstopper)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Pride, Strangers to Lovers, Romantic Comedy, mass transit mishaps, strangers to friends to lovers speedrun, queer found family is so important, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Sexual Content, this is not a slow burn for once, they've got the hob on medium high and are jumping right into it, Meet-Cute, the mildest of angst before a happy ending, Confident Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper), Smitten Nicholas "Nick" Nelson
Summary:

In which Darcy is a drunken chaos gremlin, Charlie has to clean up their mess, and missing the last train of the night might just be the best thing that Nick has ever done. (A Pride-themed uni meet cute AU, because why the hell not.)

Current Mood: okay

beatrice_otter

I use the same name everywhere so I am

beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.

I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

General Likes and Dislikes

Here are some other things to keep in mind:

I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when the characters and/or actors are marginalized. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
I don't like it when marginalized characters get relegated to the sidekick/supporting/helper role so that it can be All About The White Dude.
I like it when female characters are more than just the Strong Female Character(tm) or The Nurturer.
I like fluff
I like angst with a happy ending
I like stories that make me think about things in a new way.
I like to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
I like unreliable narrators.
I like acknowledgment that different people can have different points of view without either of them being wrong.
I like stories that engage with problematic aspects of the source, and which deal with privilege in one way or another instead of sweeping it under the rug.
Worldbuilding is my jam, I am pretty much always up for explorations of why the world is the way it is. I love hearing about the economics, the politics, the religion, the clothing, the history, the folklore, all of that kind of stuff. And I want to know why it matters--how is all this cultural background stuff affecting the characters, the plot, everything. You don't have to do deep worldbuilding, but I'll enjoy it if you do.
I don't like it when plots hinge on characters being selectively stupid, or selectively unable to communicate. Like, if they are stupid or a himbo or whatever in general, or have problems communicating in general, that's fine! Or if they canonically have a blind spot in that area, again, it's fine. But if it's just "the only way I can think of for this plot to work is if the character spontaneously and temporarily loses half their intelligence and competence," then I'm going to spend the rest of the fic wondering why the character didn't just ____?
I like AUs, but not complete setting AUs (i.e. no highschool or college or coffee shop AUs, and especially not mundane AUs--nothing where you keep characters but drop most of the worldbuilding). I like fork-in-the-road type AUs, where one thing is different and the changes all result from that one thing, and you explore what might have been if such-and-such happened.
I like the concept of sedoretu marriages.
I like historical AUs, but only when the author actually knows the history period in question and does thoughtful worldbuilding to meld actual culture of the time with the canon.
Crackfic is really hit and miss for me, sometimes I love it and sometimes I can't stand it. Basically, if it's the characters we know and love in a ludicrous situation, that's great. If they're OOC or parodied in order to make something funny ... it's not funny to me.

I like plotty, gen stories, and plotty stories in general. I don't care for explicit sex, particularly when it's just thrown in for teh porn. I'm asexual; a lot of the time I don't even bother to read the sex scenes. Romance is awesome (as long as both are in character and the romantic plot doesn't hinge on one or both of them being an idiot). I love it when friendship is held up as important and not secondary to romantic relationships and blood ties.

Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end." I define incest as siblings and/or parents, cousins don't count.

I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.

Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.

I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.

Marriage Tropes and the Just Married Exchange
There are so many tropes in the tag set, and so many of them are hyper-specific, and I really hate what that does to matching and also to requesting tropes. For example, there's no way to say "yeah, I love me some time travel, anything with time travel will be awesome." Unless you want to completely throw open the gates and request any (not just "any time travel" but "any trope in the tag set"), in which case you can't DNW things you don't want. It's really limiting to both requestor and author! So if you're writing for me, I hereby declare the tropes as more suggestions than as Things You Absolutely Must Include. If you feel inspired by a trope tag I did not request, you're fine as long as I did not DNW it. So, for example, if you want to write Wimsey fic, and you want to write Peter and Harriet getting divorced, that's fine, because I have not DNWed it. But you couldn't write a fic where they're in Starfleet and Harriet is a Betazoid, because I have DNWed setting change AUs.

Peter Wimsey

I love all these characters and desperately crave more Wimseyverse. If you want to do a casefic of some sort, that would be delightful; a casefic centering on Parker or Bunter as the main detective with Peter in a supporting role would be lovely. But I would also be absolutely thrilled with domestic fluff or relationship issues or just the characters sitting down to tea and chatting. (Especially if you can capture Peter's piffling style or the layering of literary references in his and Harriet's speech.)

Harriet/Peter: I love their canon arc, of him falling so deeply in love immediately but her being so deeply hurt by what she's going through--and then by the baggage of being grateful to him and all the baggage of being a professional woman in that era and having to work through that as she falls in love back before she can say yes to him. I would adore anything canon-compliant set anywhere along that trajectory, or things set after they're married--during the war, maybe. However, I would also love AUs! What if they met earlier in some different way? Maybe they were both at one of Marjorie's parties. Maybe he happened to visit Oxford while recovering from the War and met Harriet there. (She was born around 1900, so she would probably have been starting 1918-1919.)

Bunter/Peter/Harriet: There are so many interesting angles you could take this! However, please DON'T go for "Peter/Bunter are established, but Peter offers to dump Bunter for Harriet" or "Peter/Bunter are established, and nothing changes in Peter's courtship of Harriet." Peter and Bunter's relationship is so fraught in canon--they play-act at the normal master-servant relationships, but Bunter's care for Peter goes far beyond that, and Peter jokes about Bunter being his wife in a way that I read as a bit "don't look too closely because in some ways it's true, but we can only acknowledge it through mockery." If you add sex to that, you get something that is even closer to marriage than their canon relationship. Peter can drop his mistresses immediately because the relationship is not based on anything deeper than sex and entertaining companionship. Bunter is in a different category altogether. I would love to see how Peter falling in love with Harriet changes things, if he and Bunter were together already. Regardless of Peter having love-at-first-sight with Harriet, I don't think he'd propose in this case without first at least talking with Bunter, which means no jail proposal. Maybe Peter (or Bunter!) sounds out Eiluned and Sylvia to figure out if it's safe to tell Harriet everything? Maybe there's a lot of angst on Bunter's part about being replaced--or maybe this time Harriet doesn't want to marry him because she doesn't think it's fair that she gets the public acknowledgement as Peter's spouse when really, it should be Bunter? Or maybe it's Peter who is angsting over the whole thing and Harriet and Bunter being very pragmatic about figuring out a workable solution. I'd love either a V with Peter in the center or a triad where all three are together with all three. Or maybe Peter and Bunter aren't together before Peter and Harriet marry (deeply in love but can't acknowledge it because of both issues with homosexuality and class), and it's Harriet--who has lived among the bohemian set--who gets the ball rolling. Or, as with Peter/Harriet, you could do an AU where they all met earlier ... and then the issue of his two years "dead" on that case become even more interesting.

Peter/Harriet/Mary/Parker: this is a sedoretu quartet for me, so Peter and Mary share a moiety and are NOT fucking. The pairings would be Peter/Harriet, Peter/Charles, Charles/Mary, Mary/Harriet. Please don't infantilize Mary, as Sayers and the fandom often do; she's only 5 years younger than Peter and was 28 in Clouds of Witness, 35 when she and Charles get engaged (during Strong Poison, in which Harriet is about 30). I think Mary should keep her revolutionary politics, even after marrying the staid middle-class policeman that is Charles Parker. I think this would make the dynamics of Strong Poison--and the Peter/Harriet courtship over the next several years--fascinating. It would add so many layers. Charles facing up to the possibility of sharing a household/sedoretu with a woman he investigated for murder! Harriet getting to know Mary, and not everything being about her issues with Peter!

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

DS9

I love alien culture worldbuilding, boldly going, exploring, wacky science hijinks, time travel, AU shenanigans. I love the hope that we can become better than we are. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out compromises--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).

As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into wacky tropes, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want. One of my favorite things about DS9, it dealt with consequences. If you want to take a canon event that you think didn't get enough exploration and run with it, that would be awesome.

Do not feel bound by the trope tags. You can write anything as long as you respect my DNWs. (See note in the General section of the letter.)

I'd love something that dove into Bajoran religion, and the more ALIEN it is the better. We've MET the prophet and they have such a fundamentally different perspective on EVERYTHING than us linear creatures, I don't want it to feel like another screed on What Is Wrong With Christianity In America. You could lean into the Prophets' timey-wimey non-linearity and what that means for a religion that worships them. Most Earth religions are heavily time-based, with regular repeating festivals that serve a lot of purposes both social and religious--how would that work (or not work) when worshiping beings who see everything happening at once? Or explore the Orbs! What other orbs are there besides Time and Prophecy, and what do they DO? You don't have to have any ritual or belief or ANYTHING to use them, if they have line-of-sight to you they can DO THINGS. Give you visions! Send you time traveling! Whatever it is the others do! No Earth religion has any artifact that is anything like that, and besides wondering what the other orbs even are/do, I'm curious as to how they shaped Bajoran religion, and how it was that the Bajorans ended up worshiping the ones who SENT the orbs instead of the orbs themselves. Especially given that the Prophets mostly ... don't seem to want to be gods or care about being worshiped or what's going on on Bajor or anything. So it's not like they were sending messages with the Orbs about who sent them and why, which leaves a lot of scope for interpretation on the part of the Bajorans who found them.

I love Dax's relationship with Sisko, that lasted three hosts. What about when Sisko and Jadzia were still getting to know each other? They went from one power dynamic (Ambassador with lots of political power mentors callow youth) to a very different one (Sisko is all grown up, and Dax's superior officer, and with more life experience than Dax's current host). Negotiating that change must have been interesting, particularly if you throw in marriage to one of the hosts.

I thought that Kira and the O'Briens had a lot of chemistry, but also they have such radically different backgrounds and expectations. Culture, religion, childhood trauma--all radically different. I'd like to see how they could make it work.

I love to hate Dukat. You can use him as a villain, but don't ever forget that he's a manipulative weasel who most often actively chooses to do the worst thing possible. Even if he's doing something good in the moment, the moment is temporary.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

SWOT

My favorite parts of Star Wars includes the PT, the OT, the Zahn trilogy (especially Mara Jade) and the X-Wing books, bits and pieces from the TV shows, Rey&Finn&Poe as the only contributions from the ST, and an ending where something new and better results after all the pain and trauma. (Or at least something different.) It's not that everything has to be perfect, but I want there to be at least some growth and change. If you are inspired by other corners of the Star Wars universe, feel free to bring them in, but those are my happy places, and I am perfectly fine with completely ignoring the ST or rewriting it to make it either less stupid or less depressing (or both).

I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way. Do Leia and Lando work together on political negotiations/shenanigans while Han plays house-husband and swoops in with the Falcon when they need backup? Do Han and Lando go off and make shady business deals and come home to Leia with intelligence she can use politically? Does Lando start up a new operation--maybe mining, maybe something else--or take over an existing one after the war is over, and become a respectable businessman? I was one of the contributors to the "What if Han became Emperor by accident" thread on tumblr a while back, and my contribution was "ooh, Lando would be his Grand Vizier!" and if you want to go that direction that would also be awesome. Also, Weird Jedi Shit is always fun. I didn't include many time travel/dimension travel/soul bond/SF tropes, feel free to use one of them instead of the tropes I picked.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Kylo Ren

SW Legends

The original Zahn trilogy and the X-Wing books are my favorite parts of the old Legends universe, but I like everything EXCEPT the Courtship of Princess Leia and the New Jedi Order stuff. (Teneniel Djo is awesome! Han kidnapping Leia is really really REALLY not. And I hated pretty much everything about the Vong.) I really like it when Luke is building a new Jedi community and rebuilding old traditions. You can bring in details from the PT and newer canon, if they don't contradict major parts of the Zahn trilogy.

Mara has such a complex past. I think she has trauma from her time with Palpatine that she can't admit even to herself--he was so good at grooming young people, so very manipulative, and even when you know your abuser did evil things to you, it's still hard to internalize. I think she has a unique perspective on the Force, and the Jedi, and galactic politics, that doesn't fit easily or neatly with the others but nevertheless is important to include if they don't want to re-make the mistakes of the past. It's about how do we remember the past while working to create a new future? How do we avoid making old mistakes? How do we heal? How do we build something better?

I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way. Do Leia and Lando work together on political negotiations/shenanigans while Han plays house-husband and swoops in with the Falcon when they need backup? Do Han and Lando go off and make shady business deals and come home to Leia with intelligence she can use politically? Does Lando serve as the practical "let's get support and resources for this new Jedi Order you're building" while Luke swans around being compassionate and heroic and saving the day? (But make sure that Lando's contributions are valued and not taken for granted.) I was one of the contributors to the "What if Han became Emperor by accident" thread on tumblr a while back, and my contribution was "ooh, Lando would be his Grand Vizier!" and if you want to go that direction that would also be awesome. Also, Weird Jedi Shit is always fun.

I think Lando and Mara would do very well together; both okay with shady stuff, but both with deep principles they will not compromise. My primary ship is Luke/Mara but I was livid when they retconned Lando/Mara out with "oh, no, they were never really together, it was just an undercover thing!" Even as a very sheltered middle class white teen, I could tell that was racist bullshit, and also smacked of that patriarchal extreme-monagamist trope where "if you love each other, your previous relationships can't have meant anything!" which always hits harder for women than men. No. People can decide a relationship isn't working and end it and start new ones without devaluing and denying the previous relationship. I would love Lando/Mara. I would love Luke/Mara where either she was never with Lando at all even for undercover purposes, or where Lando/Mara used to be together and broke up amicably. I would love Luke/Lando/Mara. I would be livid at "but Lando/Mara was never a real relationship!"

Plot bunnies: Standard Star Wars shenanigans where the fate of the galaxy is at stake and Our Heroes save the day. Is there critical knowledge in a hidden holocron they have to find? Is one of the other Hands (or an Inquisitor, or some other evil Force user) making trouble for Karrde and/or the New Jedi Order and/or the New Republic? Is the Empire threatening Lando's newest business venture (again)? Is there some situation where Lando's skills as a Respectable Businessman And Administrator are crucial to saving the day?

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, twincest, the "Lando and Mara were never really together, it was all a con/undercover thing!" retcon, Kylo Ren

BSG

I tend to prefer stories that go AU sometime in season 4, and where they DON'T choose to give up technology on the new Earth. However, there's also interesting things to be done with canon as is. I like Kara fine, but as the show progressed I got annoyed with the narrative focus on her and her Sooper Special Sekrit Destiny at the expense of other characters AND everything about her that wasn't related to that Special Destiny.

Lee/Dee/Kara/Sam is the obvious solution to the whole Lee/Kara drama, and yet it would cause almost as many problems as it would solve. I think Sam and Lee would get along ok, but Dee and Kara are like oil and water, and a poly relationship requires more communication, not less, and Kara sucks at communication. And they're all traumatized, but Kara especially acts out her trauma in really unhelpful ways. So! What would it do to their time on New Caprica? Were they split up as they were in canon? Were Kara and Sam on Pegasus, or Lee and Dee on New Caprica? What happens when Sam finds out he's a Cylon? What about Kara's mystical visions? (I always headcanoned that Kara's musician father that she had visions of was actually that one Cylon that the Ones got rid of completely, which would make her a hybrid like Hera.) Does having more people to help dealing with plot and emotional crises help, or does it just make things more difficult? If Dee doesn't die, does Felix still try for a coup?

If those ideas don't inspire you, here are some ideas I've had floating in the back of my head for two decades, mix and match as you like or feel free to ignore and do your own thing.

Plot bunnies: So, the show occasionally made nods to the supply problems, and I would be interested in something either dealing with the shortages or figuring out creative substitutions. I would be interested in stuff really exploring what it's like to be a Cylon and realizing the depth of how wrong they had been and what evil they had committed. I'd be interested in political wrangling and stuff dealing with religion (although please keep Baltar and Zarek to a minimum, and if you're going for the religion angle please don't go for "religion is bad and all believers are fundamentalists" angle). I'd be interested in day-in-the-life relationship stuff.

What if Kara's father was Daniel, the Cylon model the Ones got rid of when they got rid of the Five? What if the reason Cylons can't have babies is because the Ones douse the water supply with contraceptives? (They hate having biological bodies, betcha they hate the whole idea of children and reproducing that way.) What if Caprica Six hadn't miscarried? What if the jump at the end of the series, instead of going to a prehistoric Earth, took the fleet (and the Rebel Cylons) to the Twelve Colonies a couple of months before the Cylon attack? What if the kid Leoben dug up and claimed was his and Kara's actually WAS his and Kara's?

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Dee committing suicide

Enterprise

What can I say, I just love Vulcans. Trip and T'Pol were hands down my favorite thing about the show. Also, I love the idea of that Enterprise that got thrown back in time and turned into a generation ship, and I would love to see more of them and what happened when they first got thrown back in time, and also what might have happened if Lorian's Enterprise had survived.

This is the couple that had not one but TWO kids neither knew about show up, Lorian and Elizabeth. What if either had lived? What if there was some OTHER shenanigans and they had a THIRD kid pop up, either through a normal pregnancy or some other SFnal shenanigans?

A note on worldbuilding: so much of the things we're told about Vulcans in Enterprise makes NO SENSE when compared with ... anything in any other Star Trek show ever. For example, how do you outlaw melds and telepathic contact when YOU NEED TELEPATHIC BONDS TO MATE EVERY SEVEN YEARS?!?!?!?!? You can either ignore the contradictions or lean into them and find explanations for them.

As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.

I love alien culture worldbuilding. I love boldly going and exploring and wacky science hijinks and time travel and alternate universe shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are (but it might take a lot of work). I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).

Prompts: what was life like when Enterprise was stuck back in time just waiting for things to come around so they could attack the Xindi weapon, knowing that Lorian was going to be the only one of them still alive when it happened? Pon Farr and its ramifications: if T'Pol has to go through Pon Farr with Trip how does that affect her relationship with them, both working and personal? IWhat about T'Pol's relationships with her family and friends back on Vulcan? What about T'Pol's neurological damage, how does that affect things? Or just a normal episode-like shenanigans!

Please ignore the last episode.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, episode: "These are the Voyages ..."

TNG

I love alien culture worldbuilding, boldly going, exploring, wacky science hijinks, time travel, AU shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).

As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into wacky tropes, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.

Guinan is awesome, but please tone down the Magical Negro stereotype--she's not just The Wise Magic Advisor. She's got her own prejudices and traumas. I would love anything that dove into her past or her culture. Picard and Guinan have INCREDIBLE chemistry. Watch Time's Arrow and see the way he LOOKS AT HER. Something with time travel and meeting in the wrong order a la Time's Arrow would be interesting, but so would them hanging out together and being friends. Or an adventure from before they were together on Enterprise. Or an AU where Picard doesn't get back to the present in Time's Arrow because he stays with her, and then they have adventures trying to find a way to send him forward in time. I don't like most of the Picard TV show, but I do appreciate Picard and Guinan's stuff.

Riker/Ro: the episode where they have amnesia is amazing, I love stories that deal with what happened afterwards. Before that, they have such great conflict, because Riker is trying to manage Ro and not connecting with her, and Ro has Problems With Authority (unless she independently has come to respect the individual, as with Picard). Then they have amnesia and sleep together! And then they try to pretend it never happened.

Geordi was great. Professional in the face of all the wackiness Star Trek could throw at him, very smart, very compassionate. Aside from that one episode with the genetically engineered society, they didn't do much with his blindness besides "disabilities give you superpowers" with his visor. What are the downsides to it? What, if any, tradeoffs did he have to make, and was it his choice or something his parents decided for him? Does he ever get grief from fellow officers about "what happens if your visor gets knocked off, you'll be blind!" as if not being able to see would make him incompetent? He and Data have that wonderful friendship that is rock solid that I love to see explored and transmuted into romance.

Deanna Troi/Worf: This is three different cultures, and 'human' is the place in the middle that they both understand, but I'd be interested in something that explored the 'alien' cultures and didn't assume 'human' as normal. Klingon gender roles are that the women are loud and violent and the men read love poetry. Deanna's more the poetry type than the loud and violent type, and I'm not sure how much of a soft side Worf has. So neither of them quite 'fit' Klingon gender/sexual norms. Feel free to bring in the perspective Martok and the others had on mental illness when they were trapped in that Dominion prison camp, that mental illness is an enemy to fight and it takes a lot of strength to fight an enemy in your own head. From that perspective, Deanna is a weapons trainer for the mind.

Picard & Ro: I love the friendship and mentorship they have despite (or maybe because of) their differences, and the mutual trust they built. I'd be interested in an episode-type story set before she defected to the Maquis, or an AU where she didn't for some reason, or something after the Dominion War when she's no longer a terrorist. Or a role-reversal AU where Bajor is the perfect paradise world that's the founder of the Federation and provides most of the people for Starfleet, and Earth is the one conquered by the Cardassians. I absolutely LOVE Ro Laren, she's such a contrast to the rest of them.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Babylon 5

Ah, the fandom of my youth! This was my first fandom that was mine, and not just something the family watched together. I love the layering of the themes, and how you can watch it on multiple levels (action/adventure, character arcs, political allegory, deeper themes about truth and freedom and who are you and what do you want and why are you here). The characters and their story arcs were all so compelling. One of the things I love about Babylon 5 is that there were so many characters where the fact that they were antagonists didn't mean they were stupid or bad people, just people with a different perspective honestly trying to do what is right.

I especially love Minbari culture. If you do worldbuilding for Minbari culture, past, present, or future, I will love you forever. I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time.

Stephen Franklin was a terribly underused character I love his warmth and the strong unbendable core of his ethics, and my two favorite people to see him with are Susan and Marcus. I love the playfulness of Marcus and Stephen together, although I headcanon Marcus as a romantic ace (or possibly demisexual). (Feel free to change Marcus' fate.) Maybe Marcus and Stephen get together on Mars when they're pretending to be a couple! Maybe Stephen saves Marcus' life when he tries to throw it away to save Susan, and that changes things between them.

What if Neroon survived somehow and had to learn to be religious caste? Or maybe something exploring his earlier career, or his relationship with Branmer, or the complexities and frustrations of his encounters with Delenn, or his time on the Gray Council.

I love John and Delenn together, but she is way too smart for him and I like it best when he knows he's a bit out of his league and a bit uncomfortable at all the alien stuff (and yet maybe a bit excited by it under the surface). The political implications of their relationship, on both Earth and Minbar, fascinate me.

Susan/Marcus! I think Susan would be much more comfortable with Marcus if all he wanted was a good screw, without all the feelings. I headcanon Marcus as a romantic ace or demi, so he'd be fine with no sex at all, but what he really wants is the feelings. How they negotiate this can be very interesting. (Feel free to change Marcus' fate.) Also, the religious tags aren't just for Minbari religion; you could do something of the two of them celebrating Jewish holidays or rituals.

How would Neroon and John get along as part of a marriage? What about John and Lennier? What if John were the only human in a four-person marriage, how would he handle that and how would the rest of them handle him? So many possibilities.

Is there a problem on Babylon 5 that needs to get solved? Is there some Minbari cultural rite or Earthforce political intrigue? Is the PsiCorps making trouble? I'd also love something post-series about peace-building.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

The Goblin Emperor

I love how hopepunk this series is: yes, terrible things have happened, and yes, there are genuinely evil people, and yes, there are people who aren't evil but are nonetheless really awful. And yet, despite it all, good people win. There are people who can be trusted to be good, and kind, and loyal. I love how three-dimensional everyone is, not just the heroes but the villains, too. If you wanted to bring in historical flourishes, I'd be happy with parallels to European history, but I'd be ECSTATIC if you brought in non-Western ideas, practices, structures, clothing styles, and institutions.

Is sedoretu the norm at all levels of society? Do both Goblins and Elves practice it? What does it do to Varenechibel's marital history--were there two spouses he kept and he just kept swapping out the fourth?

Vedero and Maia as two parts of a sedoretu (sharing the same moiety, of course) means that any of the children born to the sedoretu are children of the Imperial line; does that mean that Vedero's child with Csevet or Nurevis (depending on which you write) could be the next Emperor? (What political shenanigans would that cause? What pressures? I bet a lot of people would then be wanting Maia and Csethiro to not have kids until after Vedero has had several ...) If Chavar could have gotten Nurevis in, he would have pushed that instead of his niece; would he have found that Nurevis was much less willing to bow to his wishes once he wasn't dependent on his father? What (if anything) would that do to Chavar's participating in a coup? Does it push it back until a few months after the wedding when it's clear it hasn't cemented his hold over Maia? If Chavar doesn't stage a coup, how does that change things (and how does Maia get rid of him when he's not just the Chancellor, but Maia's father-in-law)? If he does, what is that like, what does it do to the marriage?

Chenelo lives! There are so many possibilities. I'm fine with either "she was never sick" or "she got medical treatment she was denied in canon and got better" or pretty much anything. I'm interested in AUs where she was never relegated, or where she lived in relegation with Maia until he inherited, or even where she was relegated and then Varenechibel brought her back to court for some reason. (This is a perfect place for "villain has amnesia"--if Varenechibel hit his head and forgot everything, he'd still be a cold and unpleasant person; but if he didn't remember being in love with Pazhiro, he might not resent Chenelo as much, and might rank "diplomatic relationship with Barizhan" as more important than "my personal resentment".) Or maybe her half sister the pirate came and stole her and Maia away and they've lived quite happily in a foreign land until Varenechibel and his older sons died in the crash. Or maybe Varenechibel dies before she gets relegated, and then the Elvish court marries her off because they need a reason to keep her (and Maia) in the Ethuveraz, because while Maru would probably only want Maia as an heir because he doesn't have one, what if he wants Maia so that his heir will have a claim to the throne of the Ethuveraz ...

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

elf

Got the most recent FAPA mailing, #351. It's fewer than 60 pages. While we're up to 21 members I think (I don't have it with me right now) - up from the 14-ish when I joined a few years ago - the page count has dropped recently, possibly in part because the Org Editor can no longer print people's entries for them. (He retired and no longer has access to the work printers.) So the overseas members are no longer sending in quarterly submissions.

( defining terms )

FAPA's contribution requirement is 8 pages a year, which can be 1 double-sided sheet of paper per quarter. This was not particularly onerous even in the days of hectographs. It is, however, apparently enough of a hassle that several current members only technically meet it - sending in that single sheet a quarter, and it's only a page and a half, and it's in 14-pt type and includes a picture covering a quarter of the page. If there were still a waiting list, they'd be bumped for failing to meet the contrib requirements. Since there hasn't been a waiting list this century, this is not an issue.

There are scans of some past mailings (or rather, parts of them) and scans of Fantasy Amateur, the official org zine (aka, the index & list of members), which stops right at the point where membership started dropping below the max of 65.

...Anyone want to join a venerated scifi institution that's been fading since the dawn of the WWW?

Requirements:
* Send 25 copies (currently) to the OE, minimum 8 pgs/year; can be sent quarterly, annually, or anything in between.

( More details inside )

scaramouche

I have finished Chucky season 2, what a fun time! Not a strong start for me, because I found the season's set-up of Jake, Lexy and Devon getting sent to a Catholic boarding school in lieu of going to juvie somewhat hackneyed, plus I don't care much for the use of Christian symbols and themes in this particular franchise, but then! Character work! (Which I'd missed at the end of season 1.) Jake and Devon get to have character-driven conflict! Devon gets to be angry and express it! Jake is distracted by his own guilt! Lexy gets crunchy emotional stuff with her addiction and via their friendship with the new adorable character of Nadine! Yum yum yum.

So it's all about being orphans and the fallout of when parents let their kids down. The first three Child's Play movies were entirely about this: traumatized children who are not believed or protected by their parents/guardians, so the show coming back to that and setting it in a Catholic institution is a bit too on the nose for me, but I did very much enjoy the trio getting to fully mirror Andy and Kyle's experience as children lost in the system and eventual turning to violence in order to find meaning (violence against Chucky, but violence all the same), and that mirror going all the way to the finale where everyone gets their catharsis, and Andy and Kyle gaze upon on the trio and are glad that at least they get to grow up without the fear of Chucky hanging over them.

Which is why I wish the show ended right there, with that oh so satisfying win. That was a great murder of Chucky that Andy did! (Were his gunshots meant to mirror how Chucky was shot to death in the first Child's Play, only Andy is his own hero now?) Episode 7 is such a banger, and allowing everyone to vocalize their fears and regrets just gives so much emotional weight around the horror camp elements, what a great balance.

But this being a horror franchise and the show having been renewed, that's not the end and the trio get to be traumatized some more. :(

Other stuff:

The absurdity of Devon Sawa returning to the show as a brand new character after being killed off twice in season 1 is fantastic. I also think I laughed the hardest at the prep montage where Father Bryce changed his cassock solely to show off his abs.

Good Chucky was such a fun little gimmick and, besides being fun in itself, I like how it informed Jake's grappling with his own guilt and projecting his hopes that if one of the Chuckys could be redeemed, maybe Jake can, too. Brad Dourif's voice work with Good Chucky is phenomenal. I cared less for the other two Chucky variants, though.

Lexy's little sister Caroline was so much more interesting in the season opener, and I was bummed that we didn't get much more of her, though it looks like she might have a bigger role in season 3. (Unless the show is going to further push how young their victims can be.)

Jennifer Tilly was way more delightful this season, I think because having Tiffany at odds with Chucky is just more interesting for longer arcs, plus the very fascinating tonal dissonance between her being charming and having her own insecurities, while at the same time doing such monstrous things to Nica and, as revealed this season, Chuckyverse!Jennifer Tilly.

Sadly, I did not care for Glen and Glenda. It felt like Mancini had trapped himself with the vague ending of Seed of Chucky, and the machinations to get the twins out of the way felt more contrived than anything else. I think my main issue is that I could not buy Glen and Glenda's characterization as relatively normal teenagers despite having been raised by goddamned Tiffany Valentine.

The meta episode where Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, etc. were at Tiffany's house for the twins' birthday, is a fun gimmick but some of the gags were a bit much, a bit too Seed of Chucky for me. Loved seeing Meg Tilly, though!

Sister Catherine as a legitimately normal and kind character really grounded the season. Same goes for the sincerity of emotions in the Christmas finale between the trio and Lexy's mom. You need that sincerity when there's OTT horror-comedy going on everywhere else, plus the breath of fresh air that is an adult who does want to protect the kids and listen to them.

Freddie Lounds! Okay well, it's Lara Jean Chorostecki as Sister Ruth, a bit part that I WISH was bigger because, what a weird character who's so hungry for praise and to feel special, that she could've been pulled into the Chucky conspiracy but her quirkiness only ended up maneuvering her into becoming fodder.

Nadine is a great new character, what a great actress, and I'm glad they added her in to give someone for Lexy to bond with, though I did say out loud at two different points, "Oh she's a goner." And then... yeah.

Nica, sadly, I feel was kind of just... there. I think this is an unfortunately natural progression from her role in season 1, where she's cordoned off from the other storylines and trapped with Tiffany. I wonder also if this is a consequence of her two movies (Curse and Cult) being straight up horror, and the aftermath of that leaving her in a situation so awful that there's no place for levity, let alone relief. The only connections she makes are with the twins, and later Andy and Kyle, but they're so brief and don't break her out of her (and her story's) isolation. The status quo finally ends in season 2 with her freedom, so I'm hopeful for more interesting things for her to do in the next season.

Current Mood: pleased

scaramouche

While casually browsing Netflix for something that could be playable out in the open while repairmen go around the house, I saw a Korean reality/game show The Devil's Plan. I clicked it and after a while went huh, the game vibes are similar to The Genius, which I very much enjoyed a few years ago. So I looked it up and oh, there's a creative team overlap, that makes sense!

So The Devil's Plan, although it opens melodramatically, it is almost the same format as The Genius in that there's complicated board-type games to play, and there is an accumulative currency ("pieces" in TDP, garnets in The Genius) gained through games that confers survival and other benefits in the long term. But the major difference between the two is that The Genius was played one day a week over multiple weeks, while The Devil's Plan is played continuously over a week while the players live together in the set over that time Big Brother style.

I wonder if what happened is that the makers of The Genius got the idea from seeing how some of the players (primarily season 2 onwards, is my impression) organically met up for dinner after recording sessions, where they socialised without game stress, analysed the games they just played, and worked out feelings that might have accumulated on-camera. I think I remember some of the players mentioning that some production staff joined them for those dinners as well, and from there maybe someone got the idea that these off-game sessions could be part of the show itself. Plus the shorter timeline really amps up the intensity of the game relationships and does not give the players true breaks to recover regular headspace.

I think it's really interesting that TDP season 1 isn't as cutthroat intense the way I remember season 2 and 3 of The Genius being, which you'd assume it would be considering that all the players MUST have watched The Genius and other similar shows beforehand. It might be the choice of the players themselves, but the show format itself has two games a day, where one game match has the players competing against each other, and another game that they have to win collectively, and the teamwork of that second game counters negative feelings that might have come out from the regular match. I liked that, I thought it was very clever! I also wonder if the living-in format also reduces drama since players have to spend ALL their time with each other, and Korean social community rules guide them into working out peaceable solutions.

( Cut for The Devil's Plan season 1 winner spoilers. )

Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: Marina and the Diamonds - Oh No

blueraccoon

Title: Dragon's Mate
Author: rebecca/blueraccoon
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Will's never let himself look at any alphas with potential interest, although to be fair he hasn’t met any he’d want to consider either. Until now, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.
Notes: This takes place about 12 years after Clean Session but you don't really need to have read that for this to make sense.
Warnings: some discussion of pediatric cancer and some angst.

There are more stories in this universe that will get posted if people don't hate this one.

azurelunatic

Three shelves (10' length, more or less) have been assembled, put up on the north wall, and filled to great effect. This emptied 1 entire Billy (with slight double stacking). We therefore need bookends.

The empty Billy is now in the living room, with the top few shelves embookinated and various plastic craft-adjacent boxes on the lower shelves. This is making a significant dent in the chaos by my desk.

The shorter bookshelf is currently at the end of the hall, for lack of a better place to put it. I expect that if it stays there long, I will start racking up another set of incredible bruises, and I still don't know where the one on my right arm CAME from. (I remember that I walked into some corner on my sleepy and unstable way to bed and then went "well, THAT'll leave a mark!" but do I remember what that something WAS? No more than I remembered what things I'd rammed into when I was taking Drama in high school, and my legs were forever dotted with black and blue marks.)

Today after work, Belovedest has put up all the standards (upright rails) on the south wall, embracketed them with however many brackets we currently have, and has started to assemble board pieces into full length shelves.

Coincidentally, today I also got a notification from the hardware store that they are shipping the backordered brackets.

There is one free-loving* free-standing bookshelf remaining in the room, where it is cheerfully getting in the way. I suggested a different method of assembly which neither requires turning the boards lengthwise nor doing the assembly behind the Billy, which suggestion was well-received.

Eventually there will be enough Shelf in the media room that some of the things taking up floor space will be able to go on them.

Today I roused in the morning long enough to feel bleugh, then woke up in the afternoon feeling competent to Lounge. Still craving bacon at intervals.

* My high school freshman Biology class had a crucial typo in a sentence about free-living organisms. We reacted about how you'd expect.

elf

I have been reading the TTRPG space on bluesky.

1) Everything is commercial. Soooo much "buy my thing." You might think there'd be a mix of "buy my thing" and "hey come watch/listen to our playthroughs" but no. It's all "buy my thing."

2) It's really, really hard to avoid D&D and Pathfinder.

3) I had managed to forget how wank in TTRPG spaces goes down. It's never just "D&D has taken over the hobby and that sucks." It has to include "people who play D&D are stupid/cowards/wimps/conformist shills." Possibly with a side of, "if people were paying attention to what's good, they would buy my thing..."

(I do not like D&D. I do not play D&D. I have thought many negative things about D&D, and about D&D evangelists. I have never thought the only reason people play D&D was because they were too stupid to look at other game systems. I am damn well aware there is a ton of inertia involved, plus the hassle of convincing your entire gaming group to try something different.)

4) We don't have any shared vocabulary and this is a problem. Or rather: We have some words - crunchy, rules-lite, narrative game, OSR, "role-play vs roll-play," meta-gaming, RAW, probably a few more - but we have zero agreement on what they actually mean, on which games or play styles fall under which term.

5) Unlike the fanfic communities, there has been no serious meta looking into what's changed when a former on-paper hobby went digital. There are blog posts and such, but they're scattered as hell. And 2/3 of the discussion is weird hand-wringing about what people will or won't buy, not about how the hobby itself changes when the rules are on a screen rather than paper.

+1) If there are discussion groups about TTRPGs-as-a-fandom, I can't find them. Dammit.

+2) Don't get me started on the gleeblor.

sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing! Still trying to get fic written.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Marvel United #1, New Avengers #1, One World Under Doom #5, Ultimate Black Panther #17, Ultimate X-Men #16 )

What I'm Reading Next

Who knows? I have a stupid migraine again. Great.

Current Mood: annoyed

cinaed

( In which the Hooligans spend some time shopping for magical weapons with the wizard’s assassin girlfriend, who gets them a useful connection )

cinaed

Trying to be better about posting at least short book recs, and also I was part of a Trans and Nonbinary Pride book talk panel for World Pride in May so I read so many queer books last month.

Linus and Etta Could Use a Win by Caroline Huntoon - A middle grade series about a trans boy moving to a new school and a girl he befriends. Very sweet, I especially loved Linus, who came out and it went fine, everyone was supportive, but then he just kept having to come out again and again and he wanted a fresh start with people who only know him as a guy when his family moves to be closer to his elderly grandmother.

Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia - A YA novel set in an alternate Virginia about a trans girl trying to get into an elite group at her private school. This was an interesting read-- it's very much the POV of a self-absorbed teenage girl who does not want to be face of the trans right movement, she just wants to date this other girl and talk about historical speeches. There's transphobia and racism, but Tara carves out a happy life for herself.

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy - A post-apocalyptic punk horror fantasy story about a woman trying to figure out why her best friend killed himself after leaving a mysterious town. This was a little slight for me, but the horror elements were great and I enjoyed a lot of the characters and enjoyed it enough to seek out the sequel.

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by G. Parry - An adult fantasy novel set post-WWI in which a woman discovers faeries and magic are real and gets a scholarship to a magic university to try and save her older brother from a faerie curse. Probably my favorite of the books I read, the worldbuilding is cool, the friendships are fascinating and complicated, there's interesting classism involved, and I just really liked the main character a lot.

In the Form of a Question by Amy Schneider - A memoir of the longest-running female contestant on Jeopardy and her journey to that and figuring out she was trans. This was a great read, I really loved how Amy's love of learning came across and her anecdotes were funny and sad and complicated but all ultimately hopeful.

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo - A fantasy novel about a demon whose mortal city is destroyed by angels and her relationship with an angel she cursed that stays in the dead city with her. What a weird book, I say with great affection. The demon has such a completely alien mind which is a great POV, and her grief over her lost city and efforts to build a new one is a compelling read. Probably my other favorite of what I read but then I love all of Nghi Vo's works.

These Fragile Graces This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein - A post-apocalyptic scifi noir novella in which a trans woman is trying to solve the murder of her ex-girlfriend in the commune she self-exiled herself from a few years earlier. Also a wild ride! The main character makes some interesting decisions, the mystery is engaging and twisty, and I really enjoyed the ending.

Star Trek Reboot Fic

FIC: Caring For Your Dragon

The Seventh of the Recced Book Reviews: The Lost Flock

Astvanor Session 166 (6/13)

to reach the brightest light, to reach the mighty sun

First Blooms

The Devil's Plan (& Genius Game UK)

Book Log: Targeted

More tiny excitements

Fly By Night, by Frances Hardinge

it's so crazy lately

Dear Just Married Author

FAPA blues

Chucky (TV)

The Devil's Plan (& The Genius)

FIC: Dragon's Mate

Shelf status

Five Things Make a Post, TTRPG edition

Wednesday Reading Meme

Astvanor Session 165 (6/6)

May Books

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April 2017

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