gen_battle | Member Posts

( Another gameday, so you get a hockey post. Lucky you )

Another exchange, Battleship, announced it won't be running this year :( It's totally understandable since even before it had so many signups it was so intensive to run but with the #s it had and all the chaos from last year it makes sense they'd want a break but I'm still sad it's skipping this year, I really only do three exchanges a year (h/c ex, battleship and yuletide) with two not running it's such a change for me and leaving me frustrated and wrong footed.

Being totally out of touch with current popular fandoms and fannish trends doesn't really help either. I have tried more popular/commonly found in exchanges canons but either they are very much not my thing or something that I enjoyed enough but have no interest in delving into fanfic/fandom-wise (like Heated Rivalry, I enjoyed the show but was perfectly content with the story it told, I don't have the desire to fill any of the plot holes or explore any other aspects of the sandbox it exists in or AUs of it, etc). And I haven't had a fandom I truly wanted to dive into on my own in a while either, there's been a few where a story idea here or there called to me, but once I wrote it I was good and if there were requests I might treat them but if not I probably won't be engaging with it much outside of reblogging a gifset here or there if I happen to find one.

Oh well.

Crafting babble under the cut (nalbinding babble and a recently completed rug)

I did stick with the nalbinding long enough to figure out a lot of the stitches. It is an interesting craft but I mostly wanted to learn it for making socks and while I liked the coptic stitch (which was how Romans and Egyptians made their socks) I could *not* get the increases to lie flat (apparently this is common according to the vids I watched) and while I could get the york stitch ones to do so, in general working it (and all nalbinding actually) just took so much attention I couldn't really do anything else while crafting and there also was quite a bit of eyestrain. Glad I gave it a serious try, might pick it back up some day, but for the moment it's a done and dusted thing for me.

After that I decided to try to replace the rug we'd had under the rocking chair that the moths got to. It was an old wool round one we'd inherited and while I've gotten pretty good at knotting rugs these past few years I tended to focus on oval ones since my first two attempts at round ones hadn't been great. But, I had a lot of premade strips that actually matched to use up (3 men's button down dress shirts (white, grey, and royal blue) and a bunch of random white strips left from two different sheets I'd previously made into rugs) which I quickly realized wasn't going to be enough so cut up two crappy pillowcases in the to-be-rugged drawer (green and a blue/grey) but then *that* wasn't enough so grabbed 3 more pillowcases (scratchy dark blue ones) and some more random stained white fabric and stripped all of that. (Strip prep actually takes a while, tshirts and sheet fabrics are different enough the method/result isn't all that similar, for sheets it involves cutting measured notches along one edge and then tearing down to the other end and then I roll the strips into discs to make sure they ripped evenly and also collect all the wispy flyaway schmutsy scraps so the strips will be cleaner to work with later - usually I gather it into a little bags and then use that for fillings when making amigurumi later). So it took a lot longer than planned but still, viola! Rug! 39"/100cm ish circle!

Very happy finally figured out how to make a circle rug; I don't think it'll be something I make often due to lack of place to put it and also the amount of space needed to make it but still. Yay, rug!

Here's a few weeks of

recthething recs, all MDZS/Untamed fic recs:

A-Yuan Talks to the Police and Finds His Baba a Friend by fieldofvision (2.5k)
Summary Snippet: Police officer Lan Zhan helps A-Yuan find his Baba at the farmers market, and A-Yuan finds his Baba a friend (cute little ficlet)

Honey, ginger, and the warm flavor of care by by Anaxyat (2.3k)
Summary: Jiang Yanli used to be the first person Wei Wuxian would call whenever something was wrong. After her, it would be Wen Qing. However, she had not received a single call in the past few days that could explain what was now unfolding before her eyes. (cute JYL modern no-powers AU sickfic)

Frame the Halves, and Call Them Brothers by Bodldops (41k)
Summary: Lan Xichen meets the Jiang's new (and terribly young) head disciple. A relationship blooms from there, and though he doesn't mean anything by it in particular, it is the small stone that starts an avalanche involving three of the great sects. (wonderful WWX&LXC friendship no-war AU)

I'd known about The Bibliotheca Fictiva (the world’s largest collection of literary forgeries, maintained now by John Hopkins) for a while now thanks to an NPR article from 2014 but it was very interesting to see this more recent article discussing it and looking at it via an AI and updated lens. Very interesting.

primeideal

Hello, thank you for creating for me! I'm also primeideal on Ao3, and I'm requesting fic for all fandoms. Treats are enabled.

Note for this particular exchange: I hope to be traveling at the time gifts are revealed, I may not be able to comment promptly. I look forward to savoring my gift when I have time to sit at a computer and read!

General likes

-canon-divergence AUs

-five things

-worldbuilding

-dialogue

-wit and wordplay

-nonstandard formats (documentation, epistolary, etc.)

-time travel

-happy endings

-sad endings (when providing some measure of closure or melodrama; I'm fine with character death)

DNWs:

-explicit sex (but fade-to-black or innuendo is fine)

-underage characters having sex

-rape/noncon

-moralizing/didactic stories (characters Learning An Important Lesson about the value of tolerance, etc.)

-non-canonical allegories of current events and/or contemporary politics

-themes of cynicism or futility, or that the (canon's) main plotlines "are for nothing"

Anathem

Pre-Contact Mathic Life

The Dictionary After the Second Reconstitution

Pre-Contact Mathic Life:

I love all the weird math monk stuff. Patterns for bells and sleeping arrangements! Clock towers! Labyrinths between the different tiers! Everything the Ita are doing behind the scenes to make it functional! Anything set in the world of the concents would be great. It sounds like Saunt Edhar's is more ascetic than some of the other concents, so something set elsewhere with different traditions could be a neat contrast.

The Dictionary After the Second Reconstitution:

What's going to happen post-canon as people react to new jargon from the Daban Arnud? Weird/nonsensical multilingual puns that make no sense? What languages do people speak with each other on the Daban Arnud? Were there Millennials patiently waiting to add their neologisms and then oops, aliens? Do the avout incorporate any vocabulary from the saeculars, or do they still consider that a corrupting influence?

Paradises Lost
WB: Any

What a fascinating story! The contrasts between how the Zeroes feel that they might be depriving their descendants of something important, and the descendants' awareness of their own good fortune, are powerful. "History must be what we have escaped from. It is what we were, not what we are. History is what we need never do again." Guh. And the commentary about "noble lies" being condescending and potentially as dangerous as fundamentalism was really well done. Anything in this setting would be fascinating, with canon characters and/or OCs.

I'd be interested in any other traditions similar to the way religion develops on the ship--things arising to respond to societal issues, and then over the generations, growing and evolving into something the Zero generation couldn't have predicted.

More about the dynamics of family units, motherchildren versus fatherchildren? What considerations do people take in choosing someone else to reproduce with?

Some of the missing scenes? How do we get from "Luis arguing about religion" to "Luis gets elected council leader" so quickly?

Future communication with earth? Do other ships eventually arrive on the new planet? What traditions have developed by that point?

Project Hail Mary

Steve Hatch

I love Steve and how faith and science complement each other for him. Ryland kind of lampshades "you're the most optimistic guy I've ever met," which is saying something by the standards of an Andy Weir novel. More about his optimism in dark times? He seems very confident in his belief that the Beatles are just objectively the best musicians; more of his unshakable takes? Is he still alive by the time of the Beatle (spaceships)' return, and if so, what does he make of them? How does he incorporate the discovery of Eridians into his worldview?

Remembrance of Earth's Past

Cheng Xin
Yang Dong
Ye Wenjie

Cheng Xin:

A fix-it where she doesn't miss Yun Tianming at their star? Any kind of outside POV on her and the many different hats she wears: Older men patronizing her during Project Staircase? The humans resenting her in Australia? Luo Ji and the museum? What if she'd stayed on the cylinder worlds near Jupiter where things felt "normal" and 2000s-y? Her relationship with Guan Yifan--is he really a different kind of human for having been to space, or are they more two sides of the same coin?

Yang Dong:

For someone who has very little time "on screen," she casts a long shadow over all of the books. More about her friendship with the programmer from "Death's End," and/or with Luo Ji? What if she'd survived--what would she have made of her mother's betrayal? How would things have gone with Ding Yi?

Ye Wenjie:

Secrets at Red Coast Base? Some more of the "declassified" documents? The early days of the ETO? What did she work out about Dark Forest theory before meeting Luo Ji? What if Yang Dong had talked to her about the documents she'd sneaked a look at? Or if Ye had lived long enough to discover more of Deterrence theory herself?

Steerswoman
WB: Any
Bel & or / Rowan

I was thrilled by the worldbuilding in this series--the depiction of Rowan's scientific inquiry is great, even if our perspective as readers is different from the characters'. And I especially enjoyed the complexity of Outskirter society in "Steerswoman's Road"--the tribes closer to the Inner Lands growing more militaristic and less cultured, the Face People and Efraim's weirdness around women, the naming ceremony and recitation of ancestors, the importance of poetry and lore--that makes them much more than "wilderness raiders."

There are lots of great tropey moments with Bel and Rowan that can be either shippy or gen: huddling for warmth, teaching each other swordplay, taking care of each other when they get dysentery! If you're so inclined, I'd be interested to see a shippy expansion on any of these, or something else along these lines. Another misunderstanding with the courtship gifts outside the tent?

Something more worldbuilding-focused elsewhere in the world would also be neat--documents at the Archives? Steerswomen and wizards' POV on the same events? What does religion look like in a world where Christian symbols and language exist but most people don't remember their homeworld? (I'd prefer no authorial bashing of any specific belief system or lack thereof, but canon-typical disagreements/skepticism on different characters' part is fine and expected!)

Crossover Fandom:

Sazed (Mistborn) & Taravangian (Stormlight Archive)
They both control two Shards now--Sazed's seem like inherent opposites, Taravangian's don't. What happens when they meet? Taravangian tries to talk Sazed into letting Taravangian combine more shards for the greater good? Sazed turns Taravangian's logic against him? Could they meet in some kind of pocket universe/Cognitive Realm nonsense/AU setting where their immense powers don't really come into play and it's just the two guys bickering at each other?

primeideal

Last bingo square: "Generic Title," title needs to contain one of a handful of cliche words, including "Bone" as an option. After a false start, tracked down this, the first in a trilogy.

The world of the Scattered Archipelago is almost all ocean, and there's a lot of seafaring. There's an ongoing war between the Hundred Islands and the Gaunt Islands, with both sides accusing the others of kidnapping children and forcing them into slavery or human sacrifice, but it's been going on so long that the beginning has probably been forgotten. Ships have historically been constructed from the bones of arakeesians (water dragons), but they're almost extinct now, so maybe the war will fizzle out because of lack of weapons?

This was a good example of indirect worldbuilding through language choice. The captain of a ship is generically "shipwife" and the disciplinary officer is "deckmother" (regardless of their actual sex); the default for generic person is always "woman or man" (rather than "man or woman"); ships are referred to as "he," a generic form of bravado is "tits" (where our world might use "balls"), etc. Not tendentious, but a good example of how background language subtly reflects how the characters, and the readers, view society.

There is also some interesting worldbuilding going on around the nonhuman creatures in the world. A ship can get magically-boosted wind speed/direction through the help of its "gullaime," a birdlike creature with magical powers, and the gullaimes seem to be related to the arakeesians in some fashion. But humans' exploitation of the gullaimes is basically slavery plus brutal eye trauma. It's strongly implied that the only reason our protagonists' ship is able to survive when others wouldn't is because they have an especially strong gullaime, or maybe just one that's been mutilated less than typical.

Unfortunately, I wasn't really invested in the POV character. Joron Twiner, nineteen, has been condemned to the "black ships" (crewed by criminals with lingering death sentences) after a miscarriage of justice. A young aristocrat killed his father in, essentially, a drunken vehicular accident (I liked this twist just because it was so mundane and, in a sad way, reflective of our world). Joron got his revenge in a duel, but due to the very hierarchical classist/ableist society, was criminialized anyway via a miscarriage of justice. Before the book begins, he was briefly made shipwife of his own ship, the "Tide Child" just because he wasn't part of any existing faction, and drinks away his days.

Then "Lucky" Meas Gilbryn shows up. A formidable shipwife and daughter of the ruler of the lands, she's been sentenced to the black ships nevertheless, and begins whipping everybody into shape on "Tide Child." Joron is demoted to "deckkeeper" (second-in-command), and basically we're just watching from his point of view as she delivers a bunch of training montages, etc.

I can see how, if Meas is the most active, taking-agency character, you might not want the entire story to be from her POV--she could come off as too overpowered. But Joron is even less interesting. It's not clear why she keeps him as her #2, he's mostly just along for the ride, and sometimes to play good cop to her bad cop. And then there's a Goblin Emperor-esque theme developing of "I can never be friends with these people, just their officer, oh well." Even when he occasionally shows agency, jumping into a fight, he doesn't know why he's doing it: "He almost brought his hand to his mouth upon saying it, he was so shocked by his own words."

At first we're told that Joron resents Meas for "taking" his job, even though he doesn't really do anything with it, and sort of led to believe that his alcoholism will become a problem. But that just fizzles out. There's a lot of one-liner italicized flashbacks to "as my father used to say" or to his father's death, but it doesn't really add anything. And maybe there's supposed to be a plotline around him overcoming cowardice, but I don't feel like his actions are that strange or unusual, everybody has a self-preservation instinct even on a ship of people condemned to death.

Meas does a lot of "who's with me? Are you with me?" "yes we're with you, shipwife" "I can't hear you, are you with me???" "Yes Shipwife!" "Say it louder" "YES SHIPWIFE" "okay, good, let's go." I find this kind of audience-participation thing patronizing, I don't need to see it in fiction.

The text tries to depict the horrors of war via "hurry up and wait" themes and repetition. As realistic as it is, I'm not sure it pays off in prose. Joron felt anxious. And then the enemy ship drew closer. The parrot said some curse words. And then the enemy ship drew closer. Meas adjusted her lucky hat. And then the enemy ship drew closer. We get it.

On a sentence level, it didn't seem to be very well edited, there are various runaway sentences and dangling modifiers:

"It did not take long for Tide Child, carried on the strange magic of the windtalker, which cooed to itself as it worked, for the ship’s lookouts to get a clearer look at the flukeboats."

"Solemn Muffaz nodded to Gavith, who ran to the bell on the rail at the fore of the rump of the ship." There's nothing wrong with this sentence but I feel like five consecutive prepositional phrases (of the exact same word/letter count) is too much.

When it comes to Call A Rabbit a Smeerp, everyone's threshold is different, but the sun, moon, and stars are, respectively, personified as the Eye, Blind Eye, and Bones of Skearith the Godbird. Every time. Characters get "eyeburned" instead of "sunburned." For me, personally, this was unnecessary and distracting.

Meas' backstory was intriguing. Hundred Islands culture places a strong value on childbirth and healthy babies; if a mother survives her first delivery and the baby has no birth defects, it's sacrified to become a magical "ghostlight" for the non-black ships. But Meas survived this ritual because the gods (Maiden, Mother, and Hag instead of Crone) didn't want her, hence the "Lucky" epithet. Meas' mother had twelve more children, which, as the most prolific matriarch on the islands, makes her the ruler. But Meas got sentenced to the black ships anyway. Is that because she's secretly working to end the war once and for all? Or some other kind of treachery?

This and the worldbuilding were compelling, but I'm not sure I'd be interested in seeking out two more books from Joron's POV. There's a lot of "oh well, we will probably all die, but we've been sentenced to death anyway so let's just do our duty," but after a few quick deaths of named characters in the early chapters, most of the book comes and goes without the stakes or tension feeling earned.

Bingo: Generic Title, could also count for Pirates, previous Readalong. Maybe Down with the System?

cmk418

Immersed myself in reading a bunch of Starfleet Academy fanfics and lost the last hour and a half.

Watched the latest episode of "Paradise" tonight. This season is so disjointed. They're formatting it to cover just one part of the story in an episode which is a choice, but I'd rather they at least touched base with the rest of the cast just so we know what's going on with them. And I can only take so much of certain characters so if we're waiting for a full episode devoted to them, it's going to be no fun.

Hockey game with Dad tomorrow night. They'll have a tribute video for the Captain (who has technically only been gone since Friday.) I'll need to grab a handful of Kleenex to take along.

Still haven't heard anything about choir, so I guess they still may be deciding.

That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!

cmk418

Happy International Women's Day to all who celebrate. I was thinking about my journey of feminism and how even not so long ago (within the last 10 years), I was still reluctant to call myself a feminist. And in the early 2000s, I would swear up and down that I would never vote for a woman to be President of the United States. (I hadn't had the Donald Trump experience at that point, so it was easy for me to believe that.) But the older I've gotten, the more progressive I've become and the less apt I am to see things the way I saw them previously. Feminism is no longer a label I shun. It's one I embrace. And the more I hear from men and men's opinions, the more I want to see what women could do if they ran the world. That's not to say there aren't women who are assholes and racists and homophobes and predators, but if we're looking for a gentler world, I'm not sure men in charge is the answer.

We had an absolutely beautiful day today. I went to the bookstore and picked up two books- "Play You For It" by Samantha Saldiver, a Sapphic basketball romance between a coach and a journalist, and "Vampires of El Norte" by Isabel Canas, which was recommended during the Snowflake Challenge a couple of years ago (because woman cannot live on Sapphic romance novels alone). And then I sat outside for a half an hour and read the first chapters of both books. It was lovely.

That's all I've got for now. See you tomorrow!

argentum_ls

More than a year after writing it, we've finally reached the point in our schedule where I can start posting my next Matthew story, Fish or Cut Bait.

Title: Fish or Cut Bait
Summary: A new case with a personal connection to Diana Chase takes the team to a town Matthew called home a century ago. There, with Diana closely involved in the investigation, he must also determine how Talbot's newfound knowledge of his Immortality will affect their partnership and his position within the FBI.
Rating: G for now. Probably up to a T later.
Word Count: ~43,000 (when complete)
Tags: Casefic, Canon Typical Violence, Other Additional Tags to be Added

I'm ridiculously excited about this story, in part because of how long it's been waiting. I hope you all enjoy it too.

rivulet027

Title: An Awful Introduction
Fandom: Star Wars
Pairing: Stordan/Bodhi
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Star Wars. It's not my toy box and I'm merely playing.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Stordan thinks dying should be less of a surprise.
A/N: Written for the

fandomweekly prompt near-death experience with the bonus prompt "Please, stay with me".

( An Awful Indroduction )

cmk418

Was up late watching hockey last night so this will be quick.

Watched "Starfleet Academy" tonight. This was mostly a setup episode and had its moments, but was fairly standard compared to some of the others we've seen. The bonding ceremony in the beginning was nice. Can't believe that the season is ending next week. I like the 10 episode seasons, but I think they should accelerate the time between them, so we're not waiting forever to find out what happens next. We grew up on 22-episode seasons with reruns in the summer (at least I did) and you could do a one-off, one-on thing for series now and still call them seasons 1 and 2. It's not like there's DVD revenue that's going to be generated because not many people are buying physical media when they can stream it. Turning us into a binge-watching society and then making us wait a year or longer between seasons is crazy. /end rant

So far, the Blues have made zero successful trades because no one wants to waive their NTC to go to beautiful Buffalo. Maybe tomorrow.

That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!

cmk418

This is one of the most exciting and also one of the most frustrating times of year for NHL fans. The trade deadline is 3pm EST on Friday and things are starting to ramp up. There are rumors everywhere and some moves are being made. Some years there's nothing until the final day and some years there are significant trades that happen in the days ahead and then crickets on the deadline day.
( More details behind the cut )

silverflight8

I’m going to put my reviews of these two together because to me, although they’re very different in tone and in novel structure (and intent), the introduction of Ekaterin and the change in Miles’s life make them two halves of a heterogenous whole. I’m going to skip back and forth a bit.

( First, Komarr )

A Civil Campaign puts us back on Barrayar, with a full cast of characters from previous books.

( A Civil Campaign )

glinda

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

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Arcade Fire - Keep The Car Running

thisbluespirit

[I wrote this with about 0 brain something like 2 months ago. But I was feeling like posting one of my drafts and I just realised belatedly that Chris Bidmead had died in August. Or possibly just found out and was shocked for a second time, who knows, it's terrible how much I forget. But I do love his DW era very much and while he lived to a good age, I am still sorry to hear it - he brought so much to the show & was a rare DW script editor who was genuinely interested in SFF* as a genre, which showed in a whole bunch of scripts commissioned by him, which are like any of the other eras - even if a whole set of them then had the misfortunate to be made by the next script editor who Did Not Get Them at all. This serial is actually one he wrote later for his successor's rather more action/dark orientated era (and said successor, Eric Saward, Did Not Get this one either), but - I had prepared it earlier! And also: I love Frontios!]

I haven't much brain so I thought for this edition of the Unofficial Fandom 50 I would once again burble about a favourite classic Who serial, this time...

Frontios

tumblr gifset for pictures

What is it?

It is a four part Fifth Doctor serial (4x 25 mins; c. 1hr 25 minutes in total) from Season 21 (1984). Yes, it has Giant Woodlice.

The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) accidentally stray into the far future - so far that the Time Lords are forbidden to go there. They arrive at a tiny, struggling colony of survivors from Earth, who are under bombardment from an unknown enemy from space - except there's also something beneath them: the earth on Frontios is hungry...

Sometimes, as a DW fan, you love the unloved serial; sometimes you adore the fan favourite - and sometimes you just love a decent one more than you can properly justify or exactly explain, but we've all been there. I have a few of these, and Frontios is one, although honestly I think it belongs in the circle just outside of the all time greats personally, which is why I'm going to babble about it. (I mean, I realise, like everything, it does depend on a) taste and b) how people feel about lumbering giant woodlice).

(It's also the only DW serial where a member of the main guest cast had to be replaced at the last minute because the original actor, Peter Arne, had been murdered. This has no bearing on anything, other than the replacement being the excellent William Lucas, but I felt the need to mention it anyway). (All my DW classic faves do not involve someone dying or nearly dying irl, I promise).

Watch on YouTube

What do I love about it?

It's about confronting buried/unspoken terrors & what you can do with gravity in SFF if you have some giant woodlice to hand, plus it's one of those forsaken, almost Shakespearean colonies classic Who loves to do (the youthful leader with his fragile hold on it is even called Plantagenet) and I am a sucker for such things. The guest cast is great - William Lucas, Lesley Dunlop, Peter Gilmore & Jeff Rawle, pre-Drop the Dead Donkey.

Penned by Five's original script editor, Chris Bidmead, Peter Davison shines here, and gets to pull out his brainy specs for the first time since Bidmead left; Tegan and Turlough are both really well used, with Turlough's buried race trauma demonstrating that having alien companions as well as earthlings on the TARDIS can lead to interesting options for storytelling.

It's dark and weird, fascinating and quotable, with excellent team!TARDIS banter. The hatstand gets a moment of glory. The TARDIS is disintegrated. The Doctor saves Tegan's life by being really insulting to her. "Frontios buries its own dead."

Basically, I love weird colonies, I love strange ideas, I love this TARDIS team, I love the hatstand, I'm not at all put off by giant woodlice and: "Just tell them I came and went like a summer cloud." (Oh, Five. <3)

* Classic Who script editors (and producers) were assigned to the show by the BBC and did not always have a huge amount of choice about being offered the post and then being removed from it - it was just how the BBC worked at the time.

cmk418

Thoughts on Blues-Devils 2/28/26
-It was the Kid's Game so we were treated to a bunch of cutesy stuff during the tv timeouts, yet they still played the song about putting a boot in someone's ass. Good times.
-The JackHughes as American hero effect is weird
-There were a lot of people there in Devils gear (yours truly included). Might have been the Hughes effect or there might just be a ton of Devils fans in St Louis right now.
-Oh yeah, the game. There was a lot of back and forth action, mainly because both teams were unwilling to score.
-I noticed that with the addition of Jack Finley on the 4th line, the WTF line acronym is back in full force
-With the exception of forgetting the rule in the second, Binnington was ok. I was pleased that he stopped all of JackHughes' shots.
-I thought Mailloux played pretty well.
-I did enjoy Snuggerud and Dvorsky being on a line together
-I know Faulk will be mentioned in trade talks and his play tonight might not be a selling point
-Nobody stood out for the Blues on the offensive side
-I kept waiting for Markstrom's "If You're A Goaltender, Tend the Goal" moment, and he did not disappoint. Attempting to take a shot at an empty net late in the third, he didn't achieve enough loft to get it out of his end of the ice, and the Blues took advantage while he was still woefully out of position for their only goal of the game
-The Devils did a pretty good job of dominating play for extended stretches and overall looked like the better team
-Not an ideal outcome for the kids in attendance, but a great way to teach them about life as a hockey fan. It'll be interesting to see who on the team is still around for my next home game in 10 days.

thisbluespirit

Just wrote a little snippet for Small Prophets, for

100fandoms, because I felt like it and also I thought there should be something for it, so:

Live in Hope (266 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Small Prophets (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kacey & Michael Sleep
Characters: Kacey (Small Prophets), Michael Sleep
Summary: Michael and Kacey have nothing to do but wait.

(I need to rewatch it - I think this must be set c. late ep4 or sometime in ep5? I mean, I need to rewatch anyway, because it hasn't stopped living in my head yet.)

primeideal

Hello, thank you for creating for me! I'm also primeideal on Ao3. Treats are enabled.

Note for this particular exchange: I hope to be traveling at the time gifts are revealed, I may not be able to comment promptly. I look forward to savoring my gift when I have time to sit at a computer and read!

DNWs:

-explicit sex (but fade-to-black or innuendo is fine)

-underage characters having sex

-rape/noncon

-moralizing/didactic stories (characters Learning An Important Lesson about the value of tolerance, etc.)

-non-canonical allegories of current events and/or contemporary politics

-themes of cynicism or futility, or that the (canon's) main plotlines "are for nothing"

Dune Movies

Chani & Liet

(Formats: Books/Articles, Journals/Diaries, Letters/Emails/Audio/Video transcripts)

Chani doesn't have a last name in movie canon, so if you're working just from the movies--what relationship do these two have? Something comparing and contrasting their relationships to Fremen religion/prophecy/fate versus free will, or interactions with the empire, could be neat. Scientific articles that Liet writes? Is she training Chani as a successor?

Alternatively: in book canon, Liet is Chani's father, suggesting that movie!Liet could be Chani's mother, which adds another layer of delicious wrinkles to everything. Letters they write when Liet is away on empire business? Is Chani curious or resentful about her family elsewhere in the galaxy? What hopes does Liet have for Chani, even if they never leave the pages of her journal?

Stormlight Archive

Shallan & any

(Formats: Books/Articles, Journals/Diaries, Letters/Emails/Audio/Video transcripts)

I think there's a lot of potential for correspondence in the post-canon era, with Shallan trying to communicate via seons from the Cognitive Realm. Worrying about Adolin? Theorizing with Navani or Jasnah as to what this might mean for the Radiants? Mentoring Gaz or some of her other squires remotely? Negotiating with Thaidakar? (I'm familiar with the rest of the Cosmere if you want to work in characterization/worldbuilding from other Cosmere books.) Trying to track down her family?

If you're interested in Shallan/Adolin, feel free to make it shippy, but I'm not interested in poly-shipping for this request. I subscribe to (and enjoy) the theory that Shallan is pregnant when we see her last, so I'd be happy with an OC kid showing up, but no need to include that if it's not something you're interested in.

It would also be neat to see more from Shallan's journals/sketchbooks/research during canon. Assignments she completed for Jasnah in Kharbranth? More of the spanreed notes from when she was "texting" Adolin in his self-imposed jail term? Research articles about the Radiants or Unmade?

I'm not super interested in Shallan's alter egos, so I'd prefer if they weren't a focus (mentions are fine).

Worst Journey

Birdie & Cherry & Wilson, Birdie/Cherry

(Formats: Books/Articles, Journals/Diaries, Letters/Emails/Audio/Video transcripts)

I love the contrast of all the different character voices--not just narrator!Cherry writing a decade after the fact, but also diary!Cherry in the moment and epistolary!Bowers being very proud of his cute green hat. Maybe another incident with different POVs on the same event, whether it be future!Cherry interweaving his voice with present!Cherry or just the contrast between different voices in people's respective diaries/letters home? (Doesn't have to be limited to the requested characters, outside POV from other crew is also great!) Letters they wrote to each other after the return party turned back, for dramatic irony and sadness?

For the tag "books and articles" in particular I'm imagining canon-divergence AUs. Everyone lives and Wilson gets to write nerdy research papers about the penguin eggs? The Winter Journey ends in tragedy, and maybe that changes the approach the polar party takes? Atkinson leads the group to search for Campbell's party in late 1912 and the world doesn't find out for years (or ever?) how close Scott et. al got? (Any of these premises could also work for other formats, of course!)

As usual, all of this is optional, anything about these fandoms/relationships will be great. Thanks for creating for me!

primeideal

I had read a few reviews of "Back to the Future: the musical" when it opened on Broadway, and the reviews boiled down to: 1. the DeLorean is great, 2. they tried really hard to stay faithful to the movie and not cut anything important, but they also added a bunch of songs, so it's lengthy, 3. reviewer didn't care much for the movie because it didn't flatter their preconceptions, and the musical isn't any better, we have to be more edgy instead of just nostalgia bait. I figured 2 and 3 would not be big drawbacks for me, and it was in Baltimore, so sure.

It was...fine? I didn't dislike it in an "didn't flatter my ideological preconceptions" way, but the intro felt rushed (trying to establish Marty's siblings as characters, over-the-top hamming, etc.) This is just based on the original movie, not the sequels.

Anyway, here are some things that I think they could have done differently, especially because it's an adaptation. I'm not sure I'd necessarily enjoy all of these, just things that might be interesting to try.

Arguably the relationship at the core of the movie is Marty & Doc's friendship! Let them sing a duet together!
The character of Jennifer (Marty's girlfriend) could easily be cut. At the end of the movie it's like "come quick, your kids are in trouble!" and then that actress didn't want to do the sequels, so they just...awkwardly wrote her out. Jennifer in the musical doesn't do anything useful either.
I understand that we kind of need Marty's siblings to set up the photo as a symbol of temporal paradoxing, but again, they just showed up in the intro song to establish one-note characterizations, then were different in the alternate timeline of the ending. I feel like the first few scenes in 1985 could have been more streamlined/less ludicrous "And Now We Are Breaking Into Song" moments.
Doc has a song called "For the Dreamers," where he talks about his scientific heroes--he has pictures of Edison and EInstein on his wall, etc. But he's also like "yeah, some people fail a thousand times before they get it right, some people just...fail a thousand times." IDK, I kind of like the idea, but the execution of "the people who weren't successes matter too" could have been better.
The lampshading of "don't tell me about the future, I don't want to know, don't create a paradox" being resolved with "oh what the hell" is underwhelming plotwise. Maybe an adaptation where Doc actually dies? Or instead of Marty getting the message to him, someone like Mayor Wilson or Biff inadvertently changes the future based on Marty's meddling?
Sometimes people interpret the ending as fridge horror--Marty is the only person who remembers his original timeline, his family can't understand why he's not "their" Marty, etc. What if instead it doesn't change, but Marty is like, "hey, Dad, did you ever write science fiction books?" or something. Then we learn that George has been keeping up his hobby the whole time, he's just too embarrassed to share it with anyone, but Marty gives him a nudge to be a little more assertive in the future?
My mom's review of Wicked when we first saw it in 2008 was "this is going to be the best high school musical because both the lead roles are women and there are so many more girls than boys of high school age who want to do musical theater." What about always-a-girl AU for Marty and Doc? I like the idea of eccentric spinster Emily Brown still going by "Doc," but facing a little more side-eying/social awkwardness in Hill Valley. Is the love triangle different with girl!Marty in 1955? Does Biff flirt with her and get out of Lorraine's way? Is her alias "Victoria Secret" instead of "Calvin Klein"? :D

( Ending spoilers )

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