silverflight8 | Reading

More B5 fic! This is one that I wrote some time ago, but haven't posted mostly because I was completely stuck for a title, until the right one fell into my lap. (I'm honestly delighted with how the titles for this little series have been working out; they're coming out so nicely multi-layered.)

Dedicated (1600 wds, gen, mostly G'Kar)

This is a follow-up to Devotional, the one I wrote a while back in which Londo reads G'Kar's book, post-canon. When I wrote that, I liked the idea that G'kar at some point gets a chance to read Londo's annotations in his book ... so that's what this is.

spiralsheep

- Halloweek: Decided to go subtle for Halloween this year and terrorise the neighbourhood by putting a Beware of the Swan sign on my front gate. Received several concerned enquiries satisfyingly quickly, including from my postie who is now in on the joke and thinks it's lolarious. The fact that I normally eschew "practical jokes" is definitely working in my favour. XD

- Lexicophilia 1: Received an event notification from a learned USian institution informing me that " registratin " [sic] is open. Obviously I'm hoping any correction for this will be registratin' rather than registration. :D

- Lexicophilia 2: I met two gentlemen out for a stroll with their cameras and we got chatting, and eventually the subject came around to customer service representatives. One of the men said he'd recently been on hold waiting for a customer service ambassador, so I wondered if one should address them in the same way as a diplomatic ambassador, i.e. Your Excellency, but my interlocutor felt customer service reps should have their own title and after some discussion of which titles, such as Your Eminence, were already taken, suggested Your Refulgence. Having googled, I was disappointed not to find a fictional Your Refulgence, or any refulgences outside overly flowery translations. Reality has disappointed me again. It has failed to be adequately reflugent. ;-)

pauraque

After taking the summer off from book club, I am rejoining for this collection of Asian folktale retellings by Asian authors. It was nice to see everybody again plus a couple of new faces!

Apparently nobody liked the book they read while I was gone, so I guess I dodged a bullet. Everyone seemed excited for the new one and liked that we finally found one with author's notes.

"Forbidden Fruit" by Roshani Chokshi

( The spirit of a mountain falls in love with a mortal. )

"Olivia's Table" by Alyssa Wong

( A second-generation 'exorcist' comes to a haunted town in Arizona to cook for the Hungry Ghost Festival. )

"Steel Skin" by Lori M. Lee

( After an android uprising, a girl believes her father is an android in disguise. )

"Still Star-Crossed" by Sona Charaipotra

( A young woman is stalked by the reincarnation of her mom's dead boyfriend. )

wickedgame posting in

icons

Fandoms: Bed Friend, Echo, Euphoria, Fallout, Hawkeye, I Will Turn Back This Time, Jessica Jones, Killing Eve, Legends of Tomorrow, Mako Mermaids, Moon Knight, Motorheads, Mr. Robot, Ransom Canyon, Superman & Lois, Wednesday, Yellowjackets

rest HERE @

mundodefieras

morbane posting in

yuletide

The MultiLingYule mini-challenge is for works in languages other than English.

Maybe there are very few fanworks in your first, second, etc language, and you'd love to connect with a fellow speaker who's also a fellow fan.

Maybe you're learning a new language and getting a gift in it would be a delightful way to improve your fluency.

Maybe you just want to talk about how much you love conlangs and invite someone to incorporate conlangs into your gift.

The possibilities are multi-ple!

MultiLingYule is an opt-in challenge similar to Crueltide and Interactive Fiction. Comment here to let people know

-if you are interested in receiving gifts in languages other than English
-what languages those are
-what you're prompting (link your letter; if you don't have a letter, you can link your prompts on the app after requests are revealed)
-any other useful notes.

With a Mod Hat On

On the requesting side: if you would be happy if a gift in a different language were your only gift, please also note this in the optional details of your sign-up form. This prevents mod panic when we go to check assignments and need to figure out if someone can actually read their gift!

On the creation side: unless someone has clearly indicated that a non-English work would suit as their only gift, gifts of that kind need be posted in Yuletide Madness, regardless of length. Works can only go in the main collection if they fulfil all the same requirements as an assigned gift.

Similarly, someone may be delighted to get a gift in a language you've just started to learn, and connect with you over enthusiasm for that language, but if you're posting a gift in the Main rather than the Madness collection, it should probably either be in a language you're fluent in or in a language you can call on fluent help for.

On the (tangential) beta side, people who can check text snippets, lines of dialogue, etc, in multiple languages are extremely valuable and appreciated, and if you can offer this service, please consider doing so when the beta post goes up.

snickfic

The Secret of Chimneys (1925) by Agatha Christie. An adventurous fellow arrives in England set on delivering a manuscript and a batch of illicit love letters and ends up in a wild plot involving a murder, a stolen jewel, and a Ruritanian country in Eastern Europe.

This is one of Christie's light-hearted romps. I definitely read this at some point 25+ years ago but had forgotten basically everything, including how much fun Christie is when she's in this mode. (Aside from the ambiant xenophobia, classism, antisemitism, and some unexpectedly central pro-monarchial sentiments.) I had a great time.

--

Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer. A collection of essays spanning a wide range of topics at least tangentially related to climbing. As the title suggests, not many women in this book. Overall a mixed bag, as an essay collection is liable to be, and sometimes Krakauer's voice wears a bit thin, especially when he's trying to be funny. OTOH, in the midst of "Tentbound," an otherwise tediously humorous essay on being stuck in your tent for days at a time, we get this passage, the end of which delights me more than I can even articulate:

Boredom presents a very real, if insidious, peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington Post: "Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding. Examples abound . . . Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly." The backcountry traveler, then, in addition to developing such skills as map and compass, or the prevention and treatment of blisters, must prepare mentally and materially to cope with boredome, lest his tail grow scaly.

My favorites out of the bunch are probably "Valdez Ice," about climbing frozen waterfalls; "Club Denali," about people attempting to climb Denali; and "Devil's Thumb," about him randomly deciding at the age of 23 to go to Alaska and solo climb a particular peak. You will notice all of these are about difficult, hazardous climbing in very cold temperatures, aka sort of similar to his Everest book.

In addition, usually Krakauer gives kind of mixed messages about his own climbing, on one hand saying it's an addiction and the only thing he's good at, and on the other hand only talking about how uncomfortable it is and how much he would rather be doing something else, So Devil's Thumb in particular was nice for a story of him actually doing some major climbing and only making a little bit of fun of himself over it.

sholio

Yet another instance of the Whumptober prompts basically being used for creative inspiration, but not really whump as such.

I feel this works equally well for TV-verse (future) or bookverse (probably post-System Collapse, but it could be somewhere between Fugitive Telemetry and Network Effect).

No. 20: "That's New."
Symptomatic | Fancy Event | Resignation

( 450 wds under the cut )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3157/

Many things about Star Wars were not well planned out, but having a 37-year-old in old-age makeup play the Emperor in Return of the Jedi was such an incredible call.

https://xkcd.com/3157/

sholio

I return to Whumptober! Obviously the days are completely off at this point, but I'm doing a bit of catch-up.

No. 13: “How dull is it to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished.”
Never Enough | Insignia | Forced Retirement

Biggles & EvS, late in canon (600 wds)
Also posted on Tumblr.

( 600 wds under the cut )

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

Sign-ups close at 9pm UTC 24 October. We're more than halfway through sign-ups - if you haven't signed up, get in quick! If you have signed up, we're glad to have you. Please check all your details are correct.

If your sign-up includes a letter link, please make sure that link works for all viewers! In particular, if your letter is on tumblr, please set it up to be viewable for people who do NOT have tumblr. If you're using Google docs, we recommend linking a web-published version of your letter.

Pinch hits

Pinch hits are a major part of Yuletide. Pinch hits are writing assignments that need to be claimed by volunteers, and pinch hitters are the writers who claim and fulfil them. Currently, we publish pinch hit details on

yuletide_pinch_hits, but we also send out notifications of new pinch hits to members of the Yuletide Discord server who have taken on the "yulephs" role, and to anyone subscribed to the Google Group for Yuletide pinch hits.

If you're interested in helping out by taking on extra assignments, please check that you're signed up to receive notifications by one of these methods! We'll send a test message out soon.

Sign-ups

We've introduced some new features this year! You can now request up to 8 fandoms, and you may fill out a form (linked from the sign-up form) if there are people you would prefer not to match to. Beginning in 2023 we have also included an additional tag checkbox where you can specify whether you want all of your requested characters to appear, or if you’d be happy with particular combinations you specify, or any combination your writer chooses.

If you have questions about any of these, please email us at yuletideadmin@gmail.com! We'd like to make sure things go smoothly for you.

Requesting characters can be a tricky aspect of Yuletide, so just in case, here's a refresher:

If you select 2-4 characters in a request, you can only match to someone who offers them all, even if you’ve indicated in the additional tags that you’re happy with any one of them. If there are 4 or fewer characters nominated, and you’d be happy with a story about any of them, selecting no characters gives you the widest range of matches.

If you select no characters in a request, that means your writer may write about any nominated character or about the fandom world in general. Please only do this when you'd genuinely be happy with a story about any nominated character, or the world.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app
Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.

alierak posting in

dw_maintenance

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

lullabymoon

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

linky posting in

icons

Find Them Here at

chemyxstory

spiralsheep

Pleasing occurrences and habitat improvements overlap:

- I was asked to be a spokesperson and do outreach work for the public understanding of science with a respected US scientific institution. I probably won't, partly because I don't want to be subjected to more abusive attentions from anti-science right-wingers (especially well-funded USian cons), but it was flattering to be asked and good to know some scientific research institutions have enough money to ignore their current government's anti-science strictures.

- I was in a shared taxi when another passenger mentioned a well-known terrorist attack and the taxi driver began talking in an informed way about unconscious bias, which isn't how these situations usually work out.

- I care deeply about public toilets, i.e. that everyone has hygienic toilet access. You can't make me care about anybody's gender though. However, while I was in Caernarfon I used a "ladies" loo with a whole long discussion about trans issues written in multiple hands on the back of a cubicle door, and I'm pleased to report there was only the one negative comment about trans people at the top and all the others were positive. I also used gender neutral toilets in a leisure centre in Amlwch on Ynys Mon, and I have a burning desire to share the fact that nothing remarkable happened at all.

- I complemented a hearing impaired British Asian gentleman in the supermarket queue in front of me on the lovely scent of his flowers. We talked briefly and he suggested a time-saving shopping work-around to me that I later put into practice which meant I caught a bus I would otherwise have missed. I'm glad he made the effort to converse with me in a noisy supermarket.

( - Habitat )

invisiblestring posting in

yuletide

A mini challenge for people interested in fics regarding characters being pregnant, having babies, and raising children. Can be for a single character or a ship, fluffy or angst, good or bad parents! The sky’s the limit.

To enter, copy/paste and fill out the following form:

AO3 Username:
Letter Link:
Fandoms:
DNWs (if any):
Prompts:

embraidery posting in

yuletide

Thank you to donutsweeper for finding many of these! Feel free to ask me to add canons that would fit.

Ballad of the Mari Lwyd - Vernon Watkins

Benlian - Oliver Onions

Casting the Runes - M. R. James

The Changeling - psychomachia

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

Craobh-Òir agus Craobh-Airgid | Gold Tree and Silver Tree (Fairy Tale)

The Day Before the Revolution - Ursula K. Le Guin

Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen

Fandom For Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad

FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns

For Sale: Baby Shoes Never Worn - Anonymous

Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti

The Green Hills of Earth - Robert Heinlein (Short Story)

Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers - Alyssa Wong

Jorinde und Joringel | Jorinde and Joringel (Fairy Tale)

La Barbe bleue | Bluebeard - Charles Perrault

Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke (short story collection)

The Library of Babel - Jorge Luis Borges

Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)

Lucifer's Wife - Eleanor M. Ingram

mulberry down!! - Nicole Kornher-Stace

Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad - M. R. James

Sandkings - George R. R. Martin

Seventy-Two Letters - Ted Chiang

Solitude - Ursula K. Le Guin

Sonata for Harp and Bicycle - Joan Aiken

A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman

There is No Antimemetics Division - qntm

Two Loves - Lord Alfred Douglas (Poem)

The Very Pulse of the Machine - Michael Swanwick

Wind Will Rove - Sarah Pinsker

Wulf and Eadwacer (old English, modern English)

Yudah Cohen Series - Rebecca Fraimow (one, two, three)

Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne | East of the Sun and West of the Moon (Fairy Tale)

karanguni posting in

yuletide

The Wrapping Paper art challenge for Yuletide is an opportunity for those who love art to opt-in to giving and receiving art treats! Comment here to request art, and/or read the comments to find someone to treat.

Please be sure to post your treats to the Madness Collection; art is not permitted in the main collection. Please respect your recipient's wishes as to whether they'd like art as a treat. Tag your treats with "Wrapping Paper" to help them be found!

If you want to receive art, please provide this info in the comments:

AO3 Handle: Letter Link: Fandom and character(s): Prompts:

Happy treating!

(If you're here from the future in 2026 and want to post Wrapping Paper yourself because it's taken a while to go up: feel free!)

moontyger posting in

yuletide

This is a roundup of IF in the tagset, with links and nominated characters. There aren't many, but they're spread over a few categories, so can be hard to find. There are a few things I weren't sure if they counted or not, so this is just the ones I was certain of. Let me know if I've missed something and I'll add it.

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds

1. Claire (16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds)
2. Lucy (16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds)

Changeling Charade on Choice of Games website or Steam

1. Alistair Farrington
2. Rowan Forester
3. Valentine Dupont
4. Worldbuilding (Changeling Charade)

Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets Choice of Games website or Steam

1. Alistair (Freshman Magic)
2. Halim (Freshman Magic)
3. Main Character (Freshman Magic)
4. Worldbuilding (Freshman Magic)

Keeper Series - Brynn Chernosky (tumblr link, but it has links to places to play in the sidebar)

1. Astrid Adtaz (Keeper Series)
2. Cressida Monroe (Keeper Series)
3. Female Main Character (Keeper Series)

Lady Thalia series (interactive fiction)

1. Margaret "Mel" Williams (Lady Thalia series)
2. Matthew "Yorkie" Barker (Lady Thalia series)
3. Oscar Knight (Lady Thalia series)
4. Theodora "Thalia" Knight (Lady Thalia series)

Stay? - E. Jade Lomax

1. Esteban
2. Myka
3. Jo
4. Worldbuilding

Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives - Jeffrey Dean Choice of Games website or Steam

1. Arundel
2. Qui
3. Robert Ward

maevedarcy posting in

icons

Icons for one of the most iconic vampires out there since we're celebrating the new trailer drop.

They're free to use but do let me know if you liked them!

Get the 12 icons at my journal.

elidelio posting in

yuletide

I started listening to so many great things last year thanks to making this list, so I'm back at it again with a compilation post for podcasts, audio dramas, actual plays, and radio shows in the tagset with links on where to find them on the internet (they can usually be found in your favourite podcatcher with little issue). I've also included links to transcripts when available.

Please comment with anything I've missed!

( Read more... )

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silver

August 2025

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Page Summary

sholio - Babylon 5 fic: Dedicated
spiralsheep - In which we raid the wordhoard
pauraque - A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, ed. Ellen Oh & Elsie Chapman (2018) [part 1]
wickedgame in icons - multifandom icons.
morbane in yuletide - MultiLingYule 2025
snickfic - books
sholio - Whumptober Day 20: Fancy Event (Murderbot)
xkcd_feed - Emperor Palpatine
sholio - Whumptober Day 13: Forced Retirement (Biggles)
yuletidemods in yuletide_admin - Pinch Hits & Mid Sign-Ups Notes
alierak in dw_maintenance - AWS outage
lullabymoon - Yuletide letter
linky in icons - 85 Kamen Rider Gotchard Icons
spiralsheep - In which there are 52 times Our Heroine improves her habitat, week 42
invisiblestring in yuletide - Babytide 2025
embraidery in yuletide - Short-Form Fiction and Poetry 2025
karanguni in yuletide - Wrapping Paper 2025
moontyger in yuletide - Interactive Fiction in the 2025 Tagset
maevedarcy in icons - 12 Lestat (Interview with the vampire 2022) Icons
elidelio in yuletide - Podcasts/Audio Series in the 2025 Tagset

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silver

Reading

Babylon 5 fic: Dedicated

In which we raid the wordhoard

A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, ed. Ellen Oh & Elsie Chapman (2018) [part 1]

multifandom icons.

MultiLingYule 2025

With a Mod Hat On

books

Whumptober Day 20: Fancy Event (Murderbot)

Emperor Palpatine

Whumptober Day 13: Forced Retirement (Biggles)

Pinch Hits & Mid Sign-Ups Notes

Pinch hits

Sign-ups

AWS outage

Yuletide letter

85 Kamen Rider Gotchard Icons

In which there are 52 times Our Heroine improves her habitat, week 42

Babytide 2025

Short-Form Fiction and Poetry 2025

Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne | East of the Sun and West of the Moon (Fairy Tale)

Wrapping Paper 2025

Interactive Fiction in the 2025 Tagset

12 Lestat (Interview with the vampire 2022) Icons

Podcasts/Audio Series in the 2025 Tagset

Profile

August 2025

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