sholio: heart in a cup of tea (Heart)
[personal profile] sholio
I wrote another Murderbot 1x10 episode missing scene.

Echoes (gen, 2500 words, Gurathin-centric)
Summary redacted because of spoilers; basically Gurathin's POV on some of the events of the finale.

A few notes on the fic (spoilery for both fic and episode):
under hereβ€’ I kept tweaking Gura's final line to Murderbot, so it might be a bit different if you read an earlier version. (I felt like I needed to soften it from how it originally was. They are hard to write! Especially keeping their edge when they're so soft in the final scene.)

β€’ We know Murderbot has trouble figuring out what it's feeling, but I also think it's very plausible that Gurathin has the same problem, if not as badly. He's repressed so much for so long. Asking himself to identify exactly what emotions he's feeling is something that some therapist or other taught him to do.

β€’ This is not necessary context for the fic and it's entirely subject to interpretation, but what I was thinking when it wrote it is that Murderbot using "its" for augmented humans in its last line of dialogue to Gurathin is actually MB doing roughly the same thing (except more emotionally positive) that Gurathin is doing in the episode of the show where he's arguing with Mensah and calls it "he" and then corrects himself to "it." It's over-identifying and doesn't even realize that it's doing so; I mean, it's worried about Gurathin, obviously, and that's why it's here, but there's also a certain amount of "we are the same kind of creature" going on here, even though it doesn't realize it's relating to him on that level. It knows that he might have damaged himself with the data overload because it also knows that it might damage itself in a similar way, and he has much less storage to handle it. And it's just kind of subconsciously being concerned about him as it might be concerned about a fellow construct, or itself, having taken damage. Of course neither of them parses all of that consciously.


In other events, Terrible Temperature Troubles Flash Exchange revealed gifts tonight! I got two absolutely delightful gifts - An Official Complaint Against the Universe (Babylon 5, Vir & Londo, hypothermia and h/c) and Consequences of Cold (Biggles, Biggles/EvS, snuggling when chilled). I loved them!

And finally, [community profile] hurtcomfortex author reveals were tonight. I wrote Sleepover (MASH, 1700 words, Margaret POV) with huddling for warmth and light comfort after nightmares.

July 2025 update

12/7/25 07:05
meridian_rose: pen on letter background  with text  saying 'writer' (Default)
[personal profile] meridian_rose
Hi all
I did try and read some entries this week but it's so hot that I'm barely catching up.
I've edited and posted some fic to AO3 but not much else lately.
Have a photo edit of two pics I took this week. We have a pair of juvenile robins regularly feeding and bathing in the garden! They have golden speckles at present with one starting to get the red breast feathers. Plus a picture of one of the adult robins who visits along with the blackbirds, sparrows, and bluetits.
I don't have pics but we've also got hawks, neighbour who did get photos thinks peregrine falcons. They shriek and call and can sometimes be glimpsed wheeling across the sky.


ride_4ever: (FK reading something)
[personal profile] ride_4ever
June postal mail from fen brought me a beautiful card from [personal profile] elayna. It's colored by hand and she indicated that it was done in pencil -- must be some very special kind of pencil -- there's a depth of color and a shine to it that doesn't look like other pencil-work I've seen. And she pointed out that with one of the images being a compass and one of the images being a wolf or wolf-dog it made her think of due South. Also, she put a wolf sticker on it and used a maple-leaf postage stamp. I <3 everything about this card very much!
longficmod: Photo of a woman tying a running shoe (Default)
[personal profile] longficmod posting in [community profile] fandom5k
Hi, all--we're so close to the finish line! I'm announcing a 1 week delay at this time to ensure all our pinch hits are covered. The new reveals date is 26 July at 23:59 US Eastern. We have one pinch hit currently available, with upcoming deadlines on the 13th and the 18th.

Anyone who isn't signed up but is only pinch hitting can leave prompts at our treats for pinch hitters post! This is a great place to look if you're interested in creating treats.

This pinch hit is due 25 July at 23:59 US Eastern time, one day before our new reveals date.

If you can claim this pinch hit, please comment with your AO3 name. All comments are screened.

PDPH 10 - The West Wing, Neko no Ongaeshi | The Cat Returns, Severance (TV) )

troisoiseaux: (reading 8)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Continued my nostalgic re-reads of formative 2000s YA with A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper, a novel about the impoverished, eccentric royal family of a very small island - think Gibraltar, but legally independent, mostly abandoned, and on the other side of Spain? - in the years before WWII, in the form of the diary of 16-year-old princess Sophia FitzOsborne. (I only realized years after originally reading this how much it owes to Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle, which I've still never actually read.) This holds up delightfully, although it feels almost embarrassingly self-indulgent, in terms of realizing how precisely it's calibrated to appeal to a certain type of teenage girl and how precisely I was part of that target audience, which might be best described as "former American Girl and Dear America girlies." (And, I suspect, Samantha girlies in particular?) Like, it's just sooo.... she's an orphan living in a crumbling castle (with secret tunnels, a slightly unhinged housekeeper, and possibly ghosts) on an isolated island! She feels herself the too-ordinary middle child among her more talented/charming/outrageous/etc. siblings and cousins, but she's our protagonist, of course she has hidden depths! Plot threads include Sophie's crush on slightly older family friend Simon,* whether to move to London to be Presented Into Society as her aunt insists,** and the looming specter of real-world 1930s geopoliticsβ€” the boiling-pot build-up to, you know, WWII - a reference to the fascist sympathies of the British upper class in one of Sophie's brother's letters here, a piece of news there - is chilling, but things get dramatic very quickly when two lost German "historians" (or so they claim) wash ashore.

Footnotes (100% spoilers) )
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helloladies: Gray icon with a horseshoe open side facing down with pink text underneath that says Sidetracks (sidetracks)
[personal profile] helloladies posting in [community profile] ladybusiness
Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.
Read more... )
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[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
The Words of the Night by C. Chancy

A historian is on a plane to Korea when it is attacked by a dragon.

Read more... )
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[personal profile] antisoppist
While doing very boring work, I listen to spoken radio, which because BBC Sounds recommendations and "your next episode" are rubbish*, means going back through the schedules of Radio 4 and Radio 4 extra day by day and seeing what's been on. Yes I could Subscribe to Podcasts but I've been listening to speech radio since I was recording it on my cassette player I was given when I was 7 so I could listen to it again, and I like being in control and searching for what I want rather than having things piling up like an external obligation. So using this method, recently I have listened to:

1977 by Sarah Wooley
Which is a play about Angela Morley composing the music for Watership Down. Before transitioning, Angela Morley had written and arranged music for the Goon Show and wrote the theme tune to Hancock's Half Hour, and the play begins when Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen's Music is overwhelmed with writing music for the Queen's Silver Jubilee and has totally forgotten he is supposed to also be writing the soundtrack to Watership Down. Several times in this play people say something like "Oh God, the rabbits!" Malcolm Williamson is really not in a good place and stops answering the door and then runs away to the Carmargue with his (male) publisher, leaving not very many minutes of not arranged music with the symphony orchestra and the recording studio booked for something like 10 days' time. And people go "oh shit" and "the only person who can do this is Angela Morley" and go and grovel and promise it's not going to be about her, it's all for the sake of the rabbits and persuade her to just watch the film, no strings, and of course she does it and it's brilliant. 

Limelight: Pretender Prince
about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the 1745 Jacobite rebellion
This is part drama and part author (Colin MacDonald) telling us why he has dramatised it the way he has, and part interjections from historians, which worked much better across all the episodes than I thought it would the first time the drama was interrupted by the writer or the historians. Bonnie Prince Charlie doesn't come out of it all very well. The only Stuart history I did at school (in England) was James I to Civil War and death of Charles I (A-level) so all I really know about that bit comes from folk songs. So it was good and I enjoyed it.

As it's a Limelight drama it might be available as a podcast other than on BBC Sounds which now won't let you listen to it outside the UK. I've liked a lot of the Limelight ones, though they tend to be tense thrillers and not about Bonnie Prince Charlie, but I dislike the way BBC Sounds views all of them as a series and is now telling me to continue listening to my "next episode", which is about the CIA and not at all the same thing.


*You listened to a play. Now listen to another play that was on at the same time the next day.
sholio: Made by <lj user=aesc> (Atlantis city)
[personal profile] sholio
Finished the season finale, immediately turned around and wrote an episode tag.

Arrow (~2K words, gen, Mensah & Gurathin)
Set right during/after the end of the last scene in the episode.

I also saw on Tumblr that it's been renewed for a season two. Something delightful to look forward to!

(no subject)

10/7/25 23:33
skygiants: the aunts from Pushing Daisies reading and sipping wine on a couch (wine and books)
[personal profile] skygiants
I mentioned that I did in fact read a couple of good books in my late-June travels to counterbalance the bad ones. One of them was The Pushcart War, which I conveniently discovered in my backpack right as I was heading out to stay with the friend who'd loaned it to me a year ago.

I somehow have spent most of my life under the impression that I had already read The Pushcart War, until the plot was actually described to me, at which point it became clear that I'd either read some other Pushcart or some other War but these actual valiant war heroes were actually brand new to me.

The book is science fiction, of a sort, originally published in 1964 and set in 1976 -- Wikipedia tells me that every reprint has moved the date forward to make sure it stays in the future, which I think is very charming -- and purporting to be a work of history for young readers explaining the conflict between Large Truck Corporations and Pugnacious Pushcart Peddlers over the course of one New York City summer. It's a punchy, defiant little book about corporate interest, collective action, and civil disobedience; there's one chapter in particular in which the leaders of the truck companies meet to discuss their master plan of getting everything but trucks off the streets of New York entirely where the metaphor is Quite Dark and Usefully Unsubtle. Also contains charming illustrations! A good read at any time and I'm glad to have finally experienced it.
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[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] books
Today I finished the latest book in the Baru Cormorant series (fourth book remains to-be-released), The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. Y'all, Baru is so back.

! Spoilers for books 1 & 2 below !
 
If you've looked at other reviews for the series, you may have seen book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, referred to as the series' "sophomore slump." I disagree, but I understand where the feeling comes from. The Monster feels like a prelude, a setting of the board, for The Tyrant. The Monster puts all the pieces in place for the cascade of schemes and plays that come in The Tyrant. They almost feel like one book split into two (which is fair—taken together, they represent about a thousand pages and would make for one mammoth novel).
 
If you felt like Baru was too passive in The Monster and that there wasn't enough scheming going on, I can happily report those things are wholly rectified in The Tyrant. Having located the infamous and quasi-mythological Cancrioth at the end of The Monster, Baru wastes no time in whipping into full savant plotting mode.
 

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[personal profile] littlefics posting in [community profile] seasonsofdrabbles
Hi everyone!

We'd like to get your input on a suggestion we received after the previous round.

Our current rules allow participants to request/offer any combination of the seven permitted drabble types. This means that a participant could theoretically opt out of requesting or offering single drabbles (i.e., a drabble of exactly 100 words). In other words, participants could exclusively request longer drabble types if they wished.

We received feedback that it may be more in the spirit of the exchange if participants could not opt out of single drabbles. We think this makes sense, and have drafted the following rule change:

Potential rule change: Participants cannot opt out of receiving or writing single drabbles. Rather, single drabbles are a default drabble type in any request or offer—and participants can add other drabble types if they'd like.

Under this new rule, you would still be able to request/offer the full range of drabble types we permit in this exchange—you would just not be able to opt out of single drabbles, specifically.

Your input: Here is a StrawPoll where you can express whether you support this change. While we think this rule change would be a net positive, we'd love to hear whether you support it or not—and why, if you'd like to share.

If you feel there are additional factors or perspectives we should consider, please do leave a comment below, email us, or leave a comment on the Mod Contact Post (where it will be automatically screened).
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(no subject)

10/7/25 19:58
scriggle: (Default)
[personal profile] scriggle
1) I finally cut the cord and got rid of cable. Kept the internet and the phone. Verizon had some streaming bundles: Netflix/HBO Max and Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ for $10/month. I went with the Netflix bundle. I was also able to add my Trac phone to my account as Verizon bought them for a $15/month discount. My bill's going down about $100. πŸŽ‰πŸŽ‰πŸŽ‰

2) I've already binged The Pitt. Loved it! I'm working on Sense8 (I know like 10 years late) and enjoying it. I've also watched Murderbot. A bit different from the book but still liking it a lot.

2a) The Old Guard 2 came out last week. spoilers for tog2 )

3) My container garden is growing. I've already harvested 3 little zucchini and a bunch of peppers. There are lots more peppers on the plants. The tomato plants are loaded with tomatoes. I noticed today that a couple are just starting to ripen.πŸ…πŸ…πŸ…

4) My flowers on the other hand are suffering from the curse of bunnies. They have destroyed the pansies by first eating all the flowers and then eating the plants practically to the dirt. They're eating the lilies. Even digging up some of the bulbs. There's lots of clover for them to eat but no, they have to eat my flowers. 🌷🌼🌺

5) I bought two new recliners to replace the ones I have. They'll be delivered Tuesday.

6) I had a carpenter ant scare and had to call an exterminator. Turned out it was carpenter bees and they treated for those and I haven't seen any further evidence of activity. Now I have a service contract with them and they'll come and spray twice a year and I can call any time for any problems that arise.🐜🐝

7) Still going to two exercise classes a week offered by the Senior Center (it's so weird to say that. I became old enough to join last year.πŸ˜•πŸ€”)

8) In the unexpected expenses department, I bought a new refrigerator this morning. The old one had been making concerning noises for a while. But last evening, I opened the freezer to get some ice cream and it was soft. I fiddled around with it a bit and got it going again. I decided it was time to replace it before cheetohlini's tariffs and shortages happen. I ended up buying from a local appliance store rather than a big box store. I need a smaller sized one and I prefer the freezer on the bottom. It was actually a little cheaper and it'll be delivered on Saturday.
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fandom things

10/7/25 11:41
snickfic: Oasis: Noel and Liam Gallagher, text "Cigarettes & Alcohol" (Oasis Gallaghercest)
[personal profile] snickfic
- As of July 6th, I'd written more words this year than I had in all of 2024. Mostly this tells you how much 2024 sucked creatively, but also damn, that's a pretty good pace! I'm currently working on something for Summer of Horror and daydreaming about that Liam/Liam/Noel time travel fic that I may finally go back to working on.

- H/C Exchange finally went live! I got Re-Animator mpreg, which was DELIGHTFUL, and I wrote... something completely unexpected, literally on the day of the deadline after I finally gave up on all previous plans.

- I did end up signing up for Battleship. I'll participate for the eight days of it that happen before I leave for vacation. I also prompted a variety of forever OTPs (Liam/Noel) and rarepairs I haven't thought about in ages (Dawn/Illyria). Hopefully someone will be inspired.

- I picked up a couple of things in the summer Steam sale, and thus have done basically nothing the last 2-3 days but play Cult of the Lamb, the cutest little cosmic horror game you ever did see.

September 2022

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