rarelywritten | Member Posts

There's a very, very generous Humble Bundle offer going for the next 12 days:

Fierce Women of Science Fiction and Horror

It's heavy on Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire in her Horror persona), Kate Elliott, and Pamela Sargent, and I own a few of the others, but wow, 65 books for a minimum $1 contribution?

I just have to figure out the logistics of how to deal with where I'd prefer to run the download vs. where I want to books while I read them.

Current Mood: curious

shewhostaples

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

Talk about your creative process.

Five years ago I'd have talked about volcanic islands rising out of the sea, and building causeways between them. A good premise or prompt would spark a snappy exchange between two characters, or a vivid little snapshot of background, or a moment of insight. I'd write them down as soon as I could.

Then I'd build on them, adding the line that followed on naturally, the reply that the other character would have to make, setting up the scene so that this moment could happen. And then I'd work out how they all related to each other, what order they came in. I'd consider what needed to have happened by the end of the story in order to make it satisfying, and I'd add a bit here and a bit there until my lonely archipelago had a fully functional infrastructure.

I am still trying to do this, but it's not working as well as it used to. A toddler who just doesn't go to sleep, a commute (once my best writing time) that's down to one day a week, and a dying laptop have all made writing hard, and frankly I'm just too tired a lot of the time.

But I am exploring other creative realms, and the one that's currently interesting me most - knitting - is about as different as you can get. You have to do that in the right order.

At the moment I'm trying to design my first pattern: a slipover. It's going to have to be a slipover because I only have five balls of this yarn. I bought it in a charity shop and the Internet has nothing to say about it. I am having to plan: to measure, to practise, to calculate. I can't just make it up as I go along. It is an alien process to me, but, rather to my surprise, I'm enjoying it. The secret is, I think, being just good enough to be able to do things that make all that interesting rather than tedious. By which I mean, cables. I really like cables. I'm even enjoying the tension square.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: cat purring

malinaldarose

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of snow-covered mushrooms and green moss. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

Since I am behind on Snowflake Challenge posts, one of my goals for today is to catch up. (Along with cleaning my desk, finishing paying the bills that are due before my next paycheck, scanning and shredding old paperwork, catching up my book journal, and a few other administrative tasks leading up to my retirement in twelve to fifteen months.)

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

Process? Process?!?

I am a total pantser. I quite often start things with no idea where they're going to end up. Usually, it works out. Sometimes, it doesn't.

When I sign up for an exchange, which I only do a few times a year, I do have more of a process. It looks something like this:

1. Await assignment with bated breath.
2. Read assignment.
3. Go...well, heck, how am I supposed to do that?
4. Review canon, trying desperately to figure something out.
5. Procrastinate.
6. Realize there are only two weeks left.
7. Panic.
8. Panic.
9. Panic.
10. Frantically start writing.
11. Finish with a week to go.
12. Edit.
13. Send to beta.
14. Re-edit.
15. Panic -- did I miss some DNWs?
16. Re-read and re-edit.
17. Aw, heckit.
18. Post.

---

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works.

1. Crossovers! Crossovers are my favorite thing of all time, going all the way to when I was a kid and Jaime Somers and Steve Austin regularly appeared on each others' shows.

2. Whump. At least, I think it's Whump -- where the hero (or one of the ensemble of heroes) is hurt, but has to rescue themselves. It happened a lot on shows when I was a kid, usually with blurry vision effects, and stumbling.

3. I couldn't find a term for it, but I also enjoy those characters that aren't completely human (or do know it, but don't know what to do about it), or have a hidden past of which they are not aware. Probably some subset of Chosen One. Though I also like a good Chosen One, too.

4. I love me some Found Family (though in the case of NCIS, it got to the point where Abby being so constantly inappropriate at work made my teeth itch so much that I actually stopped watching the show at the end of the ninth season and haven't watched it since (even though I know she's gone), except for an episode here and there if I happened to be visiting someone who was watching it.

5. I adore Fluff. If it makes me smile and feel all warm and fuzzy, then I like it.

malinaldarose

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of pillows and book with textured snowflake. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

Since I am behind on Snowflake Challenge posts, one of my goals for today is to catch up. (Along with cleaning my desk, finishing paying the bills that are due before my next paycheck, scanning and shredding old paperwork, catching up my book journal, and a few other administrative tasks leading up to my retirement in twelve to fifteen months.)

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge.

My Top Ten Movies...as of today and in no particular order and subject to change without notice or as I remember different movies.

1. Independence Day. This is my go-to movie when I'm out of sorts in one way or another. And, of course, I have to watch it in July. I generally watch it three or four times a year.

2. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. This is my favorite of the Mission Impossible movies (though I have not yet seen the last one; I meant to actually go see it at the cinema and completely missed it because it came out around the time I went out of town for my vacation). I just like the whole ensemble cast. None of them are realistic, of course, but this one feels somewhat more grounded than some of the others. Maybe it's just because I've seen it so many times. This is another one I watch multiple times a year.

3. Sense and Sensibility (the version with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman). At the complete other end of the spectrum, I love this movie. I love the Dashwood sisters. I love Colonel Brandon. Love, love, love, love, love.

4. Persuasion (the Amanda Root/Ciaran Hinds version). This one is so sad, but it ends so well. I also actually love the Netflix version for its sauciness and fourth-wall breaks.

5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Possibly my favorite of the Star Trek films, because it's goofy. The Wrath of Khan is amazing and I loved it when it came out. But I've always prefered the sillier Star Trek episodes, and this provided a much-needed moment of levity.

6. Dante's Peak. I love Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton in this. And the whole ensemble of geologists.

7. Love Actually. Nothing like a good Christmas move.

8. Avengers. I love this one because everything was still mostly sunny when it ended. The MCU got grimmer as time went on. I liked it brighter.

9. Back to the Future. When I was a teenager, I worked at a movie theater. This movie played for the first six months I worked there. I saw it 11 times.

10. Labyrinth / The Dark Crystal / Legend. The fantasy triple-feature of my high school/early college years.

---

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF.

Hmmm.

1. My hair, even though it started turning grey more than twenty years ago. I didn't really choose to stop coloring it -- the pandemic did that for me, but I was always going to stop at some point, anyway, and now I'm used to it. It is thick and long (very nearly to my waist) and I can wear it up or loose or somewhere in between.

2. I can read a map.

3. I have a really big book collection.

malinaldarose

a blue backround with white snowflake shapes on the right text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 on the right blended text

Since I am behind on Snowflake Challenge posts, one of my goals for today is to catch up. (Along with cleaning my desk, finishing paying the bills that are due before my next paycheck, scanning and shredding old paperwork, catching up my book journal, and a few other administrative tasks leading up to my retirement in twelve to fifteen months.)

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

I'm going to assume that this means the last page I visited, versus a page belonging to me.

I have been watching YouTube videos today (instead of doing the tasks that I planned, because this is what happens when I sit down at my desk on a Sunday). So here are a few:

I like Erin Smith's videos. She sets up journals and talks about stationery. Since I am a stationery junkie and enjoy collaging, I watch at least one of her videos every week. So here is the one I am currently watching.

I also watch Rewilding Jude every week. Jude is a young man who moved to a wreck of a cottage in Scotland and has been renovating it and attempting to be as self-sustaining as possible. His life is as different from mine as it might be, but his videos have helped me to think about my own wreck of a home a little differently (though I'm absolutely not going to learn plumbing and wood working myself). His latest is here.

I have also been watching a lot of the Holderness Family who I just came across a couple of months ago, because they're hilarious and relatable. I really hope they're as cool as they seem to be. (Please don't tell me if they're not. I don't want to know.)

---

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

This is a really hard one and kind of where I got tripped up that put me so far behind...so how about just a wishlist in general?

1. I would like to travel again. My last trip abroad was in 2018. I want to see Newgrange and go back to Stonehenge and tour France and go to Germany and...it seems increasingly likely that it's not going to happen.

2. I would like all of the problems with my house to be fixed. I would like the raccoons and various other fauna evicted. I want the shed demolished and hauled away and the garage fixed. I want the twenty-five years of sticks and branches hauled away. I would like the landscaping fixed. I like my house most of the time, but I would like to love it all of the time.

3. I would like a faster and easier way of traveling so that I could see my far-flung friends and family. TARDIS? Transporter? Teleportation?

sanguinity

Today is Christmas, three times over!

1.

luzula finished Far Frae the Bonny Hills and Dales, a Flight of the Heron longfic that I have been following for the past eighteen months. AU where Ewen is transported and sold to the Caribbean sugar fields. There are tragic parts to the story (note the "major character death" warning), but it ends in a good and satisfying place. One of the things I love about

luzula's writing is that she makes her characters earn their happy ending -- and they do.

Congratulations to

luzula, and happy Christmas to me!

2.

fandomtrees revealed! I received some beautiful maritime-fandoms icons (William Bush, Frederick Wentworth, and Anne Eliot), thank you to

sarajayechan and

chewingbottles! I am looking forward to using them!

I also made a half-dozen things (which will have their own reveals post later), and that's been fun, too.

3.

Family Chistmas celebrations got delayed twice, first by weather, and the second time because my brother called up and said he was still waiting on my Christmas present to be delivered. He insisted he had ordered it in good time, but repeated shipping delays, it was supposed to be delivered any day now, etc. etc. And I was all dude, it's fine (while wondering what the big deal was, but whatever, if he wanted to hold off so we could do it all in person, that's fine, too.) I get a long weekend for MLK Jr. weekend (for non-USians, this weekend), so we pushed it all back to today, when we convened at Mom's house for delayed Christmas celebrations.

grrlpup and I got everyone a lot of Japan souvenirs -- my brother got squeaky-toy katana and a whole big box of the bubblegum he had adored as a kid (which, fair enough, took us WEEKS to find, it no longer being in every convenience store like when we visited Japan as kids) -- and we also got some beautiful hand-made art from my sister-in-law. I thought present-opening was done. When my brother dropped in my lap a great big box the approximate size, shape, and weight of an autoharp. Although a bit heavy for an autoharp? Weirdly balanced for an autoharp, too. (Not that he would ever get me an autoharp!)

Lo, this was my brother's Christmas present to me:
( color me dumbstruck )

I am very much blown away by the gift, and yes that was very much worth delaying celebrations for and also making sure he could watch me open it in person, I very much get it now.

Either he won Christmas or I won Christmas, I'm not sure which, but either way, Christmas was indeed won.

shewhostaples

Trying to get back on the bus with this one...

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

1. I am - not always, but often - capable of finding ordinary things utterly delightful. Like the Wendy Cope poem about the orange. I am not in that state at the moment, but it is lovely when it happens.

2. On the small scale, I think I am slightly luckier than average. For example: my hair went grey in my early thirties, but that happened to be the couple of years in which many people my age were dyeing their hair grey. We moved house the week before the first Covid lockdown, when it could have been the week after. I win raffles, and the occasional twenty-five quid on the Premium Bonds. (Or maybe I'm no luckier than anyone else, but - see point one - appreciate my luck more?)

3. I really like making things. I like that about myself.

4. Fashion aside, I do like the way my hair looks.

Current Music: The Traitors: Uncloaked

pauraque

Presenting my first lifer of 2026: Harlequin Duck!

two dark blue ducks with elaborate red and white markings float together on rough water

They usually winter on the sea coast and are rare in landlocked Vermont, but occasionally one will stop off on Lake Champlain for a while and all the birders come running. The lake is at least an hour drive for me so I can't always just drop everything and go when there are interesting waterfowl, especially if it's off some remote point and you can barely see the bird through a scope anyway.

Then last year there were these two male Harlequins who decided it would be fun to hang out at a lakefront park in a little cove right by the parking area, posing and diving about ten feet away from people. Wonderful! Except! This happened immediately after I had major abdominal surgery and could not get out of bed, let alone drive to the lake. I did look for the ducks several times when I was recovered enough, but I never saw them.

But this week... guess who's back?? It's assumed that these are the same birds since they're so rare and even more notable to have a pair of males, right at the exact same spot.

( more photos and rambling about ducks )

sanguinity

Still catching up on things I wrote in 2025, although I believe this is the last of them.

Most people who might care have seen it already, but for the sake of completeness: I wrote a Flight of the Heron story for the "Pomegaverse" square of Keep Fandom Weird Bingo.

What is Pomegaverse? According to Fanlore's page on Pomegaverse:

In these works, a human character experiences so much stress that they transform into a Pomeranian dog. They can only revert back to their human form if the stress is relieved via receiving love and affection from other people.

I haven't made a serious effort at the rest of that bingo card, but as soon as I saw that square, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it:

Form'd for Idleness and Ease

Keith & Ewen

Pomegaverse, Animal Transformation, Bad Things Always Happen to Keith, Let's Get That Man Some Affection For a Change, Or At Least a Mini-Vacay as a Beloved Lapdog

Captain Keith Windham's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day just got worse. Ewen, of course, is a perfect gentleman about it all.

Of course, this all demands an answer to the question of how the war proceeds if soldiers keep turning into lapdogs every time they get stressed out. (The Highland Charge continues to be effective -- perhaps even more so! Culloden... either gets that much horrific, or fizzles out for want of soldiers still standing.) I have no immediate plans to actually do this, but I am a little bit tempted to follow this mechanic through all five meetings of the book, just to see what happens.

brightknightie

If you enjoy Overly Sarcastic Productions (YouTube channel) -- as you will if you try them! they bring joy and knowledge of media, literature, and history in their own delightful ways -- but not so very much that you also listen to their podcast or subscribe to their Patreon, you may be wondering, hey, where's today's new video? What's a Friday without new OSP? How shall I press on through this vale of tears without new OSP to look forward to at the end of each workweek?

Well, after ~15 years of consistently posting a banger new video every Friday, and with Red's webcomic taking physical form via Andrews & McMeel, and Blue working on his second book, and both of them jointly publishing co-written short stories, they have declared 2026 to be "Chill Year." They will post a banger new video every other Friday, fortnightly instead of weekly (aka "not that biweekly, the other biweekly" as Red says of the podcast).

They plan to resume weekly videos in 2027. And they've explicitly promised that the much-loved annual installment of Red's animatic retelling of The Journey to the West will arrive on schedule, as always. ♥

brightknightie

havocthecat asked a question that made me realize that the casting news for the upcoming live-action The Legend of Zelda movie may have flown fully under the radar last year, for people less obsessed than me, because the studio very deliberately cast virtual unknowns:

Bo Bragason plays Zelda. Her IMDB entry.
Benjamin Evan Ainsworth plays Link. His IMDB entry.

These two were announced last July. No others have been announced, but an unconfirmed leak strongly indicates a certain third character. Perhaps interestingly, that leak, which happened in November when someone took sneaky unauthorized video footage, was successfully drowned out for virality when the studio responded by releasing three official stills of the leads in costume, in character, on set: a portrait each of Zelda and Link, and one of the two of them together looking out across Hyrule (as played by New Zealand).

This IGN article has all three official photos, the story of the leak and official release, and a link to the spoiler leak footage. Here's the Zelda portrait:

brightknightie

I'm over four-hundred hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since I got my Switch 2 this summer, and while I am a lore-hound and story-obsessive, I'm not a completionist as such. I'll try just about anything in game for more dialogue, but very little to run up numbers. So the end is near. I won't be able to put off storming the castle to join the princess and together defeat the big bad much longer.

But! I have the DLC pack -- that is, downloadable content, in this case 2 bonus adventures. After I finished all the shrines in the base game, I triggered "The Champions' Ballad." Unlike "Trial of the Sword," which is just a battle gantlet that I may never finish (it rewards nothing but a power-up), "Champions' Ballad" rewards story, sweet, sweet story: new side quests to help familiar characters, new puzzle shrines to solve, new journals of deceased companions to read, and new prequel flashbacks to watch (and, yes, more fights). I want all this story!

However, starting "The Champions' Ballad" one Saturday night with only a general idea of its mechanics, I found the first stage a frustrating, dismaying leap in difficulty. I was immensely put off. I thought about giving up. I grumpily Google Searched on: "Breath of the Wild Champions' Ballad is no fun because it is too hard." ( Read more... )

I'm enjoying "Champions' Ballad" immensely since I got out of that first section, btw. Story, story, story...

pauraque

This is part one of my book club notes on As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, which is a title that I imagine might be relevant to the interests of a few of you here! I missed the first meeting so these are not the first stories in the book, which I will have to go back to when I have time.

"Peak Day" by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

( A person who (apparently) almost died of an aneurysm is 'saved' by an evil corporation and forced to work in a warehouse. )

"Hallelujah Here and Elsewhere" by francesca ekwuyasi

( A troubled queer woman goes through a rip in spacetime and visits an alternate version of her life. )

"Playing Dead" by Trynne Delaney

( An impoverished artist becomes a nanny for children whose blood is harvested by a rich dude to stay eternally young. )

"Mother, Father, Baby" by Lue Palmer

( An abuse survivor who was disbelieved by her mother is (maybe) haunted. )

shewhostaples

Top 10 challenge

I'm onna train, so here are 10 railway stations I like. In no particular order, and for various different reasons.

1. Frankfurt Hbf. This was where my international rail travels began. Standing on the concourse, looking at the departure boards (getting slightly earwormed by Stuttgart and Fulda), realising that I could get pretty much anywhere from here...

2. London St Pancras. It's beautiful. It's not actually a terribly pleasant experience getting a train from here (maybe the East Midlands and South Eastern platforms are better) but from the outside it's a fairy tale castle.

3. Stockholm. Rolling in, bleary eyed, off the sleeper from Malta, through dingy orange lights, and then suddenly you're in this marble palace. (I got chugged in Stockholm station. I don't know what I was doing to look like a Swede with disposable income rather than a discombobulated tourist, but there we go.)

4. London King's Cross. Never mind all that wizard nonsense, it has a fully functional platform zero. Also the toilets are free these days.

5. Liège Guillemins. Just glorious.

6. Ryde Pier Head. When it's operational and when you don't just miss the train because the catamaran was thirty seconds late. But there's still something fun about a station in the sea.

7. Dawlish. Train to beach in under a minute (your mileage may vary, as may mine considering I haven't been there in about a decade).

8. York. Never mind a pub in the station, it has one on the platform. Lovely stained glass, too.

9. Norwich. Light, gracious, makes you glad you've arrived.

10. Luxembourg. Stained glass again - and just time for an ice cream before the train.

brightknightie

I posted 8 fanfiction works in 2025, which is a lot for me these days (though one was a poem and two were drabbles, which can skew such assumptions). I found tremendous joy in several, and early in the year felt full of enthusiasm and creative energy for fanfic. But then something went awry; I lost that for a while. I'd very much like to find it again. The HL exchange at the end of the year is often refreshing and reassuring that way! I'm hoping it will be again coming into this new fanfic year.

Last year (2025), I posted:

Dungeons & Dragons (TV, cartoon, 1983): "Muscle Memory" (G, gen, ~1K words). A little "returned from the Realm" glimpse of Erik as an adult still equipped with skills and insight from his long-ago adventures. I've thought of maybe doing a set of these, one for each of our gang. (Comment threads: 6.)

The Legend of Zelda (BOTW/TOTK, video game): "The Water in Which We Swim" (G, gen, ~2K words). A lore explanation of why this Link cannot swim underwater, set on a family visit to Zora's Domain a decade or so post-canon. Inspired by EOW's Zelda being able to swim underwater perfectly well. (Comment threads: 5.)

The Legend of Zelda (SkSw, video game): "First Comes Choice" (G, gen, ~500 words). Poem. A glimpse at the moment the spirit of the hero freely chooses Hylia, rather than Hylia ordering the spirit, aka my headcanon on the metaphysics of free will, self-sacrifice, and love in TLOZ's cycle. (Comment threads: 2.)

Forever Knight (TV, 1992): "Reconcilable Differences" (PG-13, gen, ~5K words). Written for FKFicFest. This experience proved dispiriting. I wrote this Nick and Natalie action/drama poorly; readers found it to say something I never intended. I'm afraid that FK fandom experiences are like that these days for me. I do not fit. It is no longer home. (Comment threads: 10.)

The Legend of Zelda (BOTW, video game): "Reasons to Visit the Library" (G, gen, 100 words). Drabble. Post-BOTW, Link shows Zelda her father's hidden study in Hyrule Castle's library. (Comment threads: 2.)

The Legend of Zelda (BOTW, video game): "Even the Smallest Possibility" (G, gen, 100 words). Drabble. Revali scoffs at Link for taking the legendary Minish seriously. Inspired by the concept artwork from when the developers thought the Minish could be in BOTW. (Comment Threads: 3.)

The Legend of Zelda (BOTW/TOTK, video game): "Gerudo Spirit, or Three Last Untold Tales (Before Age of Imprisonment Arrives)" (PG, gen, ~2K words). A set of three sequential, but independent, ficlets. Each mini-story explores a piece of my headcanon for the Gerudo Civil War and Imprisoning War, posted just before Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment came out, as I expected the new game to thoroughly "joss" my ideas, as we used to say. In the event, my guesses held up fairly well (except that I never saw coming that Ganondorf would stay resident at Hyrule Castle after the pledge of fealty and before Sonia's murder!). (Comment threads: 0.)

Highlander (TV, 1992): "Hakobore" (G, gen, ~6K words). Written for HLH_Shortcuts. The title is the Japanese word for a nick in the sharp edge of a blade deep enough to threaten its structural integrity. Inspired by the exchange prompt, I damaged Duncan's katana and sent him to Japan to get it fixed, enjoying learning tons about traditional sword construction and maintenance. Methos and Midori appear. (Comment threads: 18.)

sanguinity

Is it too late to post about Yuletide? Surely not!

For Yuletide 2024, I tried to pick up a Hornblower-TV pinch-hit. Alas, even though I had the first part of the story written, I wasn't quick enough to get assigned the pinch-hit. Which turned out just as well, because the story stalled out and while I told myself I could post it as a treat, I never finished it. I ended up quasi-trunking it that spring as a hopeless job.

But in November I finally figured out what its plot needed to be (sadly, it would require a complete rewrite!), and then one of the Yuletide 2025 requests was even a better match for the overhauled story than the original 2024 pinch-hit would have been. So I rewrote it, and published as a Yuletide treat, hurrah:

The Worst Part of Waking Up for BromeliadDreams

Bush/Hornblower

Hurt/Comfort, Dying Declarations, First Kiss (is also the) Last Kiss (or it should have been damnit), Everybody Lives (as embarrassing as that is for some), When He Made This Bed He Wasn't Expecting to Wake Up In It, Episode: Loyalty

Summary:

At the end of Loyalty, Bush is too late to save Hornblower. With his dying breath, Hornblower requests a kiss from Bush…

…only to wake up a week later and discover he's going to live after all. Damnit.

The title btw, was only meant to be provisional, but it was as sticky as fuck and time was tight and I never got around to changing it. I do realize it's the perfect title for a Folgers Incest fic (and I had a serious conversation with myself about whether I really wanted to waste such a great title on the wrong fandom), but in the end I don't have any real ambition to write Folgers Incest fic. And anyway, it's funny. So there it stayed, sorry for the earworm.

This morning I was tidying my WIP folder, archiving the stories I've finished since the last time I cleaned up, and remembered I still had the first version of the story, which is in Bush-pov. I still like it very much, and it's mostly all stuff that doesn't appear in the rewrite, except by implication.

So this morning I published it as a bonus:

Too Late, Too Late

Hornblower/Bush

POV William Bush, Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Episode: Loyalty

Summary:

Bush is too late to the beach to stop the firing squad.

Bonus Bush point-of-view on the beach scene.

One of the things I love about fic is that there doesn't have to be one canonical version; you can post alternate povs and alternate endings, and bits and bobs and scraps of things. And a lot of times people enjoy them! And if they don't enjoy them, they don't have to click. It's great.

So if Bush-pov on the beach scene is the kind of thing you might enjoy: enjoy!

shewhostaples

Snowflake Challenge: A warmly light quaint street of shops at night with heavy snow falling.

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

Hmm, well, nobody can give me leisure time or sleep, so I can't guarantee that I'll be able to follow up on any of the following in a timely fashion, but:

1. I got a mini ice cream maker for Christmas, so I'd love some ice cream or sorbet recipes.

2. Travel tips for Lyon or Montpellier, which we'll be visiting next month.

3. Not recs as such, because they don't need to be tailored to me, but tell me about a book or a fic you've enjoyed recently.

4. Art for any of my fics.

Current Mood: exhausted

pauraque

A distant planet is home to two interdependent human colonies: the hierarchical City, founded by convicts exiled from Earth, and the egalitarian Town, founded by a group of pacifists. They have little in common besides having been removed from Earth because authorities there found them inconvenient, and they have very different visions for their shared planet's future. The City sees itself as the legitimate planetary government (they were there first and they perceive the Town as weak and worthy only of exploitation) while the Town sees itself as the City's equal and expects to resolve issues through nonviolent dialogue. Our protagonist is Luz, the daughter of a powerful City leader. As she learns more about the Town and her father's plans for it, Luz sees a deadly conflict brewing and finds herself caught in the middle.

Le Guin was quoted as saying that this book "might be" part of the Hainish Cycle. I'm not sure the timeline quite fits (not that she ever sweated the timeline) but the themes certainly do. My impression on re-reading is that this one does a lot of things that The Word for World Is Forest tried to do, but better—and it does some of the things that The Dispossessed already did, with less detail but with some insightful additional angles.

( cut for length )

I really like this book, and I definitely got more out of it as an adult, especially in the context of Le Guin's earlier work. I don't hear it mentioned very often when people talk about her, but I think there's more here to chew on than I first realized.

shewhostaples

Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

I think my actual last page was APOD, which my feed reader seems to be showing a few days behind the times. And that's a pleasing thing to recommend, on the slim chance that someone hasn't encountered it before: it's interesting and beautiful.

For something that's probably more obscure, though I hadn't visited for a while, Hidden Europe is equally fascinating. The magazines got me through lockdown - deckchair travel in my back garden - and now the articles are going online one by one. People, places, train travel.

brightknightie

The annual Highlander fanfic exchange,

hlh_shortcuts, author reveals came early this week. Check out the collection. A trend this year was longer stories. I'm not yet done reading all I want to, so I'm not yet making a general recommendations post.

But the story written for my prompt, "Metaphorically Speaking," which I gushed over during the anonymous period, turns out to be by

argentum_ls. Thank you, Argentum!

And the story I wrote, for Merriman's prompt, is "Hackobore" (G, gen; 5.6K words).

batdina, thank you for beta-reading! The title is the Japanese word for a nick in the sharp edge of a blade that is deep enough to threaten its structural integrity. Merriman expressed interest in sword repair, and I therefore damaged Duncan's katana and sent him to an expert to learn what could and couldn't be done. This gave me an opportunity to learn a lot about traditional Japanese swords, pivotally that it is not the smith who sharpens them, but a separate specialty craft, the togishi, the sharpener/polisher. ( Read more... )

Thank you for reading!

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Annual xchange ft.underrepresented genders & sexes

May 2015

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24	25	26	27	28	29	30
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Page Summary

chomiji - Holy Crud, That's a Lot of Books
shewhostaples - Snowflake Challenge: day 8
malinaldarose - Catching Up The Snowflake Challenge Part 3
malinaldarose - Catching Up The Snowflake Challenge, Part 2
malinaldarose - Catching Up The Snowflake Challenge Part 1
sanguinity - In Which Sanguinity Receives Many Lovely Things
shewhostaples - Snowflake Challenge: day 7
pauraque - Harlequin Ducks are special enough to get their own post
sanguinity - Heron fic: Form'd for Idleness and Ease
brightknightie - OSP's "Chill Year" 2026
brightknightie - Live-action TLOZ leads were announced in July w/photos in November '25
brightknightie - TLOZ:BOTW Champions' Ballad DLC: How it started
pauraque - As the Earth Dreams, ed. Terese Mason Pierre (2025) [part 1]
shewhostaples - Snowflake Challenge: day 6
brightknightie - Brightknightie's 2025 Fanfic Year in Review
sanguinity - Belated Yuletide reveal: Hornblower, plus an extra
shewhostaples - Snowflake Challenge: day 5
pauraque - The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K. Le Guin (1978)
shewhostaples - Snowflake Challenge: day 4
brightknightie - My HLH_Shortcuts '25 story: "Hackobore" (G, gen; ~6K words; Duncan, Methos; sword repair)

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