Saturday at Capclave

Sep. 21st, 2025 10:25 am
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
Perhaps I should have taken the fact that the hotel's Starbucks' espresso maker was broken Saturday morning as an omen for the rest of my day. I was able to get caffeine by running across Rockville Pike to the Chateau again, but it was a very “??” and “!!” start to the day.

Naomi and I were both on a panel at 10:00 am entitled “Benevolent AIs. The moderator, Wendy Delmater Theis (formerly of Apex), went down the row and introduced herself before the panel, which was fine. She asked everyone who they were and seemed very confused by my general existence. I’m not sure if it was the horror of, “Oh no, a name I don’t know how to pronounce?” or (something I’ve been getting on and off here, which is) "... and you are?”

I am admittedly sensitive to the latter. Much more than when someone flubs my name. It’s not a real microaggression against me when someone isn’t sure if my name is LIE-duh or LEE-duh or ends up calling me Lynda or Lydia. I’m a white lady. You mispronouncing my name is not a reflection on how you feel about my ethnicity or my heritage. It’s annoying to me when fear of mispronouncing my names stops people from calling on me on a panel or saying, “You, the end,” rather than trying and failing to say LIE-duh. But, like, it's just something I live with. 

However, the whole long stare of ‘hmmm, you have said you are an author, but clearly you are one I have not heard of. Whelp, I guess that means you’re not important” is something that feels much more like a microagression of a sort. I’ve been slowly getting used to it happening. It was always a crapshoot outside of my regional conventions if anyone had heard of me, and this has only increased as time wears on.

But, while I did get ‘the long stare’ and the ‘uh, YOU, at the end’ from our moderator, that wasn’t the real problem with this panel.

First, as expected with a panel about AI, it was somewhat unclear if we’d be talking about LLM and other so-called AI, like ChatGPT, that are operating in the real world as we know it right now or if we’d be talking about fictional versions. The panel description didn’t actually help. Neither did the moderator. Worse, she was one of those moderators that really just wanted to be the one talking. She’d pose questions, let us throw out a couple examples--scold us if we were not precisely on the format she set out (film, TV, books, series) and… I don’t really know because at some point my soul left my body after she shut down Naomi for starting to talk about the AIs in Murderbot Diaries (ART and Mickey) because those were AIs from a book series, not standalones and we were on standalones. Like, wow. We were in the book category why the distinction and is it really something to get cranky about? Whatever. I checked out.

It wasn’t bad in the “someone brought up Hilter” kind of bad (that would be my next panel-panel) but more a “WTF was that?”

Next up wasn’t exactly a panel, it was me interviewing Naomi. And this went fine--quite well, actually.

Scott Edelman, who published my first professionally published short story (in SF Age back in the 90s), chatted with me in the hall for a long time before the interview. We were waiting for Naomi to get out of the panel she was on and just sat on the hallway couch chatting about this and that. Scott did a lot for my ego by apologizing for not knowing that I was going to be at this convention as he would have had me guest on “Eating the Fantastic,” as well. (This is the podcast where he interviews writers over meals that I linked to in yesterday's post). He noted that couldn’t just slot me in because he reads everything the author has written in preparation and, I don’t know if you know this, gentle reader, but I’ve written and published sixteen novels. That would be a lot to just read in a matter of hours. And maybe he was lying, but 1) I don’t think so. He genuinely seemed to remember me. And 2) even if he was, it was a nice thing to say.

The interview was great. Naomi is easy for me to talk to, of course. We’ve been friends for decades.

At some point there was a run to get sandwiches for lunch at the local grocery store and.... then came the panel from hell.

I seem to have been cursed with moderators who really had points they wanted to make on Saturday. This panel was called “For the Love of Evil” and, ostensibly, was about villains we should hate, but secretly love (or perhaps that we love to hate.) I had a nice little list of names like Killmonger, Moriarty from Sherlock, (Milton’s Satan?), and Loki. Things started off well because Capclave is an East Coast con and East Coast cons have the culture of “list all your books and awards” and so I got a big laugh when I noted that ,when I won the Philip K Dick Special Citation for Excellence, I sent out a press release that said, “Lesbian wins Second Place Dick” (which I really did!) But, as things turned out, that might have been the high point of the panel?

Things went along for a while pretty well, but then for reasons known only to our mod, Larry Hodges, he decided that he needed to monologue about how various real life villains mapped to fictitious ones. This was already a bad idea because he was talking about Stalin and Mussolini (neither of which he could pronounce) and... of course, we could see where this was going.

Inexorably, he gets to Hitler, whom he likens to Thanos because “he thought he was doing what was right for the world.”

The author next to me, Diana Peterfreund, dropped her head to the table.

I full-body disassociated.

For me, it was a kind of decision paralysis. I was torn between grabbing the mic and just saying “no, no, no” until Larry stopped talking or faking my own death/dropping the the floor and marine crawling out the door.

Meanwhile, of course, Larry is still making his case that Hilter was just trying to right the wrongs of the world (in his own head, like how a villain thinks he’s a hero, but still, Larry, there’s no justifying this, so please just STOP.) But he didn’t stop, he kept talking, and so thank GOD for Diana who finally does manage to grab the mike and say, “SO! Change of subject, Loki sure is hot!” This allows me to finally return to my body and I grab my mike and say, “So hot!” We go back and forth like this until the bad feelings go away.

Why do people feel the need to EVER bring up Hilter? I feel like unless you're comparing the current presidential administration to the Third Reich, just don't. 

Anyway, Loki is not exactly what we talked about--Diana managed to be far more articulate, but I no longer remember anything other than SOMEHOW we managed to literally wrestle the panel back to something akin to squee about villains. And when I say “we,” I mean Diana, with some support from me. The panel was saved. It even, miraculously, snaps back to true and we end with some nice questions from the audience which aren’t just “WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST WITNESS?”

I did have some great things happen on Saturday, like the chat with Scott E. and running into some other folks I know like Carolyn Ives Gilman and Walter Hunt. I was the “comealong friend” to Naomi’s Scintilation Discord group dinner, which was delightful. Then, just before retiring upstairs, I watched the WSFA award ceremony which was nice in the classic small con award way, even though Marissa Lingen didn’t win.

No further mishaps.

But, the ones I had? Doozies.

Thanks to all the trauma, I retired early last night. As noted previously, I just don't really function all that well in social situations after dark any more. Naomi was apparently out until quite late. I woke up long enough last night to have a nice chat with her about it all (and catch her up on all my trauma). 

This morning we'd been invited to breakfast with Joe and Gay Haldeman at 9 am. The two of them are, of course, quite wonderful so we had a lovely time talking to them both for several hours over eggs and toast.

Today things wrap up in the early afternoon, so I've been put in charge of finding something fun for us to do this evening. Tomorrow we're still in DC for some sightseeing, and then it's home Tuesday afternoon.

Friday Afternoon, Capclave

Sep. 20th, 2025 09:17 am
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
When last we left our intrepid heroines, Naomi and were off to see what fun Japanese shops we could shop. The only place that was open when we set out (around 10 am) was Maruichi, a grocery store, 1.1 miles from the hotel. It was probably the most fun we had shopping. I tried Boss Coffee Black hot, not out of a vending machine (as it proper) but, even so, it was quite good. I liked this place because I could listen to customers and shop workers speaking a language I’m trying to learn.

I think I’ve talked about this already but I’m at the halfway point in the 13th Warrior language acquisition montage with Japanese. I will embed the video I’m referencing below, so you know what I mean. But, the point in the scene where Antonio can pick out about ten words out of a hundred? That’s me right now.





In the same mall was a kielbasa shop which was filled with other fun Polish goods and goodies. We spent a decent amount of time just window shopping (and gift buying) at these two places.

The other Japanese shops, however, weren’t open for another hour or more and so Naomi and I wandered back down the Rockville Pike checking out all the other little places along the way. We found a fun little tea shop run by an Indian couple who were very charming. Since Mason never reads my blog, I can tell you that I picked up a couple of really nice gifts for him (as my son has turned into a bit of a loose tea connoisseur,) including a cute tea ball where the counterweight is a book reading cat.

Surprisingly, the Tesco (the departo) was a bit of a bust for me. Naomi’s guest liaison had hyped up this store’s stationary section and so I’d gotten my hopes up. Alas, what they called stationary was actually just a packet of lined paper. Not even with a cute bit of art at the top. Very strange. Very disappointing. Tesco, however, had an absolutely mind-boggling number of Lay’s chip flavors and Kit-Kats, etc. It was interesting, thinking back on the Reddit thread comments, that the only language besides English that I heard spoken there seemed to be Mandarin. (I can not say for sure, but it certainly wasn’t Japanese.)

Naomi then took me out for my very first ever conveyor belt sushi. What fun!

conveyor belt sushi
Image: the conveyor belt with sushi

I was brave and tried raw squid (not sure I’ll be doing that again!), but otherwise we ate far too much. This place also had robot servers--two different types, a little train that brought small snacks, and an actual robot that brought bigger appetizers and then complained that it had to get back to work. I found it very charming.

train-like robot
Image: the little train-like robot that delivered small snacks. I failed to get a picture of the larger robot.

Then we came back to the hotel room long enough to take a quick break and rest our feet.

I will admit that at this point I “snoozled.” Snoozling is what my family calls those kinds of half-naps where you’re easily wakeable for a chat, but also just as likely to drift into the zone where you might start snoring. You know, snoozling.
From there we went to registration to begin the con. Program participants all got individualized schedules printed on the back--and I was reminded that this was something I wanted to be able to do for our Gaylaxicon folks. This means, I’ll be doing them? But it’s really SO NICE. It feels like a perk to the programming participant, you know?

Naomi had a panel right away at 4 pm called “Morally Grey Characters” which I sat and listened to. Zack Be was the moderator and he did an excellent job, actually. He’s apparently a psychologist by trade and you could kind of tell from the way he talked to some of the folks who asked questions at the end--like he was able to coax out the shy ones, and firmly, but respectfully shut down the rambling ones. I will admit that I wasn’t super riveted by the topic. I am a fan of morally grey characters, but the panel ended up focusing more on how to write them than recommendations on where to find them. I wanted the latter.

Then I was on an absolutely banger of a panel on SF and Romance. The other folks on the panel were fantastic:JL Gribble, Morgan Hazelwood, Sherin Nicole and Andrija Popovic. The conversation was dynamic and informative and I had a tremendous time.

Even cooler, I was wandering towards the con suite thinking I might scrounge up dinner there when JL Gribble invited me out to dinner. I hung out with them and one of their writer friends and had one of those fun con experiences where you go out to a meal with someone you barely know and have a fantastic conversation. At the same time Naomi was off being interviewed in a very similar vein by Scott Edelman for “Eating the Fantastic,” (https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/tag/eating-the-fantastic/) which basically hopes to recreate that magical con experience. So, that was kind of a cool coincidence!

Naomi and I met up again at her reading, whereafter I turned into a pumpkin.

There is something that is happening to me now that I am older where I just don’t want to talk to people after 9 pm. I don’t know what that’s about. I still consider myself an extrovert, but I am starting to experience the uniquely introverted experience of being “peopled out.” I’d had my fill of strangers. Time for bed.

I was up this morning early enough to discover that the Starbucks in the hotel has a broken espresso machine. So, I ended up across the street for our lattes again. Today is my busiest day, so I'll have a lot to report tomorrow.

ITPE25 dear podficcer letter

Sep. 20th, 2025 12:24 pm
annapods: happy pea in a pod (Default)
[personal profile] annapods
Hi! I'm Anna, she/they. Annapods on ao3, discord, bsky, tumblr. My main tumblr is annabelle-myrtille.
Thanks for checking out my letter for this exchange!

Last edits 20/09/2025 - first publication


Fandoms
Fandoms are in no particular order. When other versions of the same canon exist (ex: webnovel, adapted into a webcomic, adapted in an anime), feel free to use whichever version.
Unless specified otherwise, you can pick any characters to focus on, and pair any of them up with whoever as long as you keep my DNWs in mind. OT3s and moresome ships, gen, and worldbuilding are always welcome. I'm fine with OCs, including as major characters.

FandomRequestingOffering
KPop Demon Hunters (2025)YesYes
K-pop
This is meant to be broad, and includes both RPF and MVs. I'm fine with going in fandom-blind or watching a few videos you linked for context.
YesNo
데뷔 못 하면 죽는 병 걸림 - 백덕수 | Debut or Die - Baek Deoksoo
TeSTAR members in whatever version: Park Moondae | Ryu Gunwoo, Lee "Keun" Sejin, Cha Eugene, Seon Ahyeon, Kim Raebin, Bae Sejin, Ryu Cheongwoo.
YesYes
Batman - All Media Types
Batman (Bruce Wayne), the robins and batgirls (Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Damian Wayne), Pamela Isley | Poison Ivy and Harleen Quinzel | Harley Quinn, Kon-El | Conner Kent. Please no romantic or sexual relationships between Bruce and any of the robins or batgirls.
YesYes
Naruto (Anime & Manga)YesYes
หัวใจไม่มีปลอม | Beauty Newbie (Thailand TV 2024)YesNo
Teen Wolf (TV)
Only interested in Theo Raeken. The usual pairing would be Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken, but any/none is good.
YesYes
Among Us (Video Game)YesYes
내가 키운 S급들 | The S-Classes That I Raised (Webcomic)YesYes
KinnPorsche: The Series (TV)YesYes
崩坏:星穹铁道 | Honkai: Star Rail (Video Game)YesYes
原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game)YesYes
残疾暴君的掌心鱼宠[穿书] - 雪山肥狐 | The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish - Xuě Shān Féi HúYesNo
Bleach (Anime & Manga)YesYes
Space Shuttle No. 8 - เจฟ ซาเตอร์ | Jeff Satur (Album)
But really Jeff Satur - Works & Related Fandoms
YesYes
Katekyou Hitman Reborn!YesYes
Original WorkYesYes
No FandomYesYes
人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng TóngxiùYesYes
僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)YesYes



Media and format likesI'm opting into everything that's allowed by the exchange. I love experimental, mixed, weird, unusual, etc formats and as long as you have fun making something for me, I'll love it! If you have an idea that I didn't mention, just go for it.

Stuff that's a personal challenge for you: character voices, accents, other languages than your usual, music, sound effects, soundscaping, cover art, multivoice, collaborations, …

Non-traditional text formats phone calls, epistolary, poetry, script formats, made for audio, notfic and chatfic, dialogue-only or dialogue-heavy, in-universe media, annotated versions, just plain interesting formatting, …

Non-traditional podfic formats podvids, adlib and oral notfics, color commentary, multiformat stuff, audio zines, remixes, playlists, filks, abridged versions, podfic excerpts, heavily adapting the text, …

Low standard, low effort I do not like the idea of you having a bad time with it, or feeling like you have to reach a certain length or quality. I do like the idea of a personal challenge to lower your own standards! Super short podfics, unfinished WIPs, random podfics recorded three months ago, podfics you’re not that proud of, no cover, no music, no workskin, raw unedited podfics, all the background noise, all the breaths, all the clicks, ...

Additional opt-ins
Repods of existing podfics, including my own,
Transformative works based on my own works, including but not limited to podfics of my own writing,
Main gifts that also fulfill another challenge, as long as the gift was still designed for me,
Treats for several recipients or treats that also fulfill another challenge, as long as the treat relates at least somewhat to my interests.


Story likesAdditionally to the likes above and below, anything tagged GIMME in my Ao3 bookmarks is a plea for podfic. Anything taggged extra bookmark is an example of a fic I loved. I would also love podfics of them, but since most of them are very long, it's more like a rec.

Any and all podfic meta
Easy option: a podficcer's commentary on any one of your projects! If you don't know where to start, here are a few questions I’d love to hear about:
- Why did you pick this project?
- How did podficcing go? Any surprises, good or bad, challenges?
- How do you feel about the results?
- How does this tie back into your other projects? Any previous ones it's relevant to mention?
- What do you want to do next?
But also audio discussions like Behind the Pod/Auralphonic/Pod Aware, Ao3 stats breakdowns, tutorials, essays, …

Canon and fandom meta in general
Fic Clique style recs, primers, analysis, audio collages, ..

Gen, or close to it
Pre-slash.
Only 100 words of romance in a sea of plot.
Filthy, tender and loving but totally platonic porn.

Platonic or queerplatonic affection and commitment
Strong friendships, could-be-gen-could-be-polya, found and chosen family, QPRs.
Sensual attraction, cuddling and snuggling, touch as a love language or a communication method, all the skinship.
Group polyamory, be it a big pile or a complex chained network.
Any AU that has groups as the normal relationship structure, like supernatural or a/b/o AUs with packs, coven, etc.

World exploration
Canon divergence, what-if, trope in/subversion.
Time travel fix-it, fix-it in general.
Crack and crack treated seriously, non-standard worldbuilding.
Meta, meta disguised as fiction.
Take your fandom to work, deep dive into someone's lived experience.
Fandom culture and/or media in-universe.
Culture, language, sociopolitics.

Hurt/comfort
Loneliness-induced angst, touch starvation.
Whump and fixing it.
Take your fandom to therapy.

Smut
I'll be happy with any rating! That said, here are the smutty things that I love.
Praise, edging, oversensitivity, delayed and/or multiple orgasms, all the nice feelings.
Selfcest, solo sex, fuck machines, tentacle monsters.
Pure porn is great, using sex to tell a story is also lovely.


Do Not Wants
DNWExceptions and limitsRecursive clause
Unhappy, hopeless or ominous endingsNo
Grimdark settingsFine as a setup for time travel fix-it, a parallel universe, or similarYes
Mind break or graphic tortureWhump and reference to past violence are fineYes
Internal POV of characters who delight in being gratuitously cruelYes
Internal POV of bigots, including well-intentioned onesCultural or physiological differences that lead to misunderstandings are fineYes
One character knowingly disregarding another character's feelings, wishes or agency during sex/about having sex, whether the other participant ends up enjoying it or notSomething-made-them-do-it is fine, other types of dubcon are fine, rape recovery/mentions are fine, consensual sex where the negotiations are not shown is fineYes
Teacher-student pairings in which the student is younger than 25, or younger than the teacher by more than 10 years, at the timeOnly applies to regular humans, not time travelers, robots, aliens, ... Doesn't apply to Scum VillainYes
Sexual content with participants younger than 16 at the timeOnly applies to regular humans, not time travelers, robots, aliens, ...Yes
Biological incest, incest kink, incestual shame for not-biologically-related pairings, daddy/mommy kinkNo
Soulmates designated by fateOther kinds of soulbonds are fineYes
Purely romantic proposals and weddingsFine if forced, arranged or politicalYes
Fake dating or friends with benefits that leads to actual datingYes
Pregnancy, impregnation, breeding kinkOne or two paragraphs referencing canonical pregnancies are fineYes
Harry Potter AU or contentYes
Christianity: faith, rituals, institutions, religious guilt, feeling of sin, ...Secular practices like gifts at Christmas or curses are fineYes
AUs in which the characters are from/in other countries than in canonFor characters from imaginary places in real world AUs, you can pick the countries based on what inspiration canon used for these charactersYes
Mundane high school or college AUsIf canon itself is set in a high school or college, then it's fineYes

Recursive clause = if you're podficcing a fic you didn't write, then a paragraph or two are fine.

Mid-Nominations Notes

Sep. 20th, 2025 11:40 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Thanks for all your nominations so far! 2732 fandom choices have been submitted so far (note that if two people nominate the same fandom, that counts twice towards that total).

Nominations will close at 9pm UTC 26 September. If your fandom requires evidence, please also submit it by that time. We can't give a decision on all fandoms on the Evidence Post by close of nominations, but the sooner you make your case, the better your chances of a swift answer.

We've seen some very large fandoms among the nominations! Yuletide is an exchange for rare fandoms. We will reject all of the fandoms below, so if one of them is your nomination, please choose again:
  • Baldur's Gate (Video Games) - I & II will be approved, as per evidence, but this label will be rejected

  • Actor RPF

  • Andor (TV)

  • Baldur's Gate (Video Games)

  • Black Sails (TV)

  • 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)

  • Deltarune (Video Game)

  • Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)

  • Downton Abbey

  • Gravity Falls

  • Horizon (Video Games)

  • House M.D.

  • 전지적 독자 시점 - 싱숑 | Omniscient Reader - Sing-Shong

  • The Pitt (TV)

  • プロジェクトセカイ カラフルステージ!| Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE! (Video Game)

  • 斉木楠雄のΨ難 | Saiki Kusuo no Sai-nan | The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

  • Star Trek: Enterprise

  • Undertale (Video Game)

  • Warframe


We also won't approve "All Media Types" or "& Related Fandoms". If you've nominated any of the following fandoms, please either pick a specific piece of media, or argue your case on the evidence post.
  • Ender's Game - All Media Types

  • History Boys - All Media Types

  • Midsomer Murders - All Media Types


We've seen nominations for relationships, original characters, or Reader characters. Please only use the Character field to nominate specific characters who appear in a canon. For exceptions, see the eligibility post.

We've also seen many well-formatted nominations and nominations we are excited about! Please keep them coming.

We are happy to answer questions about nominations.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth


Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

Pre-Con

Sep. 19th, 2025 09:24 am
lydamorehouse: (crazy eyed Renji)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 Things don't kick off here at Capclave until after 1 pm, and I am, unfortuntely, an early riser. At least with the time zone shift waking up at Saint Paul 6:30 am is a much more reasonable (for most people) 7:30 am here.

I let Naomi sleep in and went in search of coffee. The hotel has a Starbucks so, in desperation, there's always that. But I live in hope of a good latte. I didn't exactly find one, though Chateau de Rockville Cafe wasn't bad. As I told my wife this morning, it was more bakery than coffeeshop. I might try a place called The Espresso Bar (GPS thinks it's a 7 minute walk from the hotel (on the other side of the metro line, which is directly behind the con hotel.) 

For reasons known only to Rockville, the little strip malls around the hotel seem to be filled with Japanese-themed shops. There's even a place called Teso Life, which porports to be in the style of a Japanese "departo" (department store.) The internet tells me, howeve, that it is not a Japanese company. This is an American company that is importing the vibe, if you will. There is an Eibsu, which is a Japanese grocery store with a lot of Japanese products and just a ton of other places like this. I don't know if this is a Japantown little corridor in Rockville or just a quirk.Okay a quick jaunt over to Reddit tells me that where we are, the Rockville Pike, does in fact have a small community of Japanese immigrants/Japanese Americans. I am warned, however, that the Teso Life is actually owned by a Chinese company. Apparently, the Maruichi Japanese grocery store and Temari Japanese cafe on Rockville Pike, are both run by Japanese expats.Regardless, I'm excited to check it out. And we need to do something for awhile. 

I'm glad I packed a pair of shorts, however. In my little jaunt for coffee, I managed to get very sweaty. It's warm here today. Shawn tells me that y'all in the Twin Cities got a lovely thunderstorm last night. 

Okay, I'm off exploring more exciting news as it breaks.

glad tidings

Sep. 18th, 2025 07:42 pm
aethel: (buddy breathing [by zoetrope])
[personal profile] aethel
1. Soulmate Goose of Enforcement is now a filterable tag on AO3: AO3 News post. It's a soulmate subtrope where an angry goose herds you toward your soulmate, and there are at least 626 fanworks about it.

2. I met my 2025 Goodreads reading goal (75 books), and the app gave me some digital confetti. I think book #75 was A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles.

3. Other books: I tried an audiobook narrated by Eric Schweig (Pike from Big Eden and the unnamed Inuit hunter from the Due South pilot): Tainna by Norma Dunning. It's award-winning literary fiction about present-day Inuit living in southern Canada--massive warning for rape, definitely showcasing the grim effects of colonization, but with added magical realism. I also read the first(?) Witcher novel, which is very similar to the first season of the show, but without the overarching plot. I stopped reading A Gentleman's Position by KJ Charles because the two characters already know the other one is interested and picked up A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking instead. So far, so hungry.

Busy Week

Sep. 18th, 2025 08:02 am
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 So either I will have a lot more to say over the next several days here on DW, or I will go silent for another long stretch. I'm leaving for the Washington DC area at 2:30ish today. Yeah, I know. It's a very weird time to be headed to DC, but DC is where Capclave is. Technically, Capclave is in a hotel in Rockville, MD. I'm going because [personal profile] naomikritzer invited me as her "comealong" friend. As it happens, Minnesotan author (and friend to both of us,) Marissa Lingen will also be there because she's up for the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story "A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places" which appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue 406 (May 2024). So that will be nice. 

Y'all, I have not flown in an airplane since before the pandemic.

My family travels a decent amount, but almost always by car. I'm not necessarily nervous about air travel, but airports in the DC area have not been having the best time lately. So, you know, if you have spare white light, thoughts, prayers, rituals to your dark gods, etc., I would appreciate them. I am taking the travel stone. The travel stone probably deserves its own entry, but the basic story goes like this: once when Shawn was worried about getting lost when I needed to seperate from her, I picked up a piece of gravel from the ground and said, "This is ensure that you make it home safely." She made it home safely. Now, that stone, dubbed "the travel stone" has traveled with us overseas and across country--pretty much any time we leave home. It has even spawned an offspring, since Mason needs his own travel stone now that he's a world traveler of his own. 

I am also taking along my whole ass computer. I could get along with just my phone, I suppose, but my phone lately has been very touchy about wanting to turn on when I hit the on button. Plus, I dunno. As I noted in previous journal entries, I have four panels, which is very good given what I nobody I am to the DC area fandom, but Naomi is a Guest of Honor. However, four panels for three days is very light for me, locally. Also I am a morning lark and am often up HOURS before the first panels ever start. I suspect I might have some time on my hands. If that's the case, I will find a nice corner of the hotel or a pleasant coffee shop and give you a con report. I mean, I promised one for Diversicon and then didn't deliver until after it was over. Still, there's something about being far from home an up hours before anyone else you're traveling with that I hope will be more conducive to writing to you. We'll see. Again, send those rituals to your dark gods and perhaps it will happen. 

Okay, I've finished my breakfast. No more stalling. I should finish packing up the remaining things (including this computer) and do the light housecleaning that I promised my family I'd do before I left. 

Hopefully, I'll write soon, but, if I fail, see you on the flipside!

💔📚👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

Sep. 17th, 2025 04:13 pm
bluedreaming: (mortgraphics - napeflower)
[personal profile] bluedreaming
I wrote a random drabble today for [community profile] fan_flashworks and when I popped over to Ao3 to see what the book fandom is called there, I was SHOCKED (read this with full hyperbole) to discover that there are way more Anne/Gilbert fanworks than Anne/Diana. Gilbert! That whatever-you-call-a-love-interest-insert! That wet blanket! Puddleglum has him beat!

Gilbert may or may not have hidden depths and great character or whatever but the books (which I probably read over three times all through) did not really demonstrate that at all. I remember reading a great essay on Anne as well as the Emily of New Moon trilogy about how the interesting (male) love interests inevitably get shelved, and the MC ends up with the cardboard cutout. Wish I knew where that was; I’d like to read it again.

Anyway, I refuse to read the books anymore because they killed off my best beloved Walter, so maybe there are secret hidden depths that older-me could decipher. Whatever.

#ITPE 2025 Letter

Sep. 15th, 2025 03:19 pm
xdiorix: (Default)
[personal profile] xdiorix
Dear podficcer,

I am super excited to hear whatever you have in store for me! I am on tumblr at [tumblr.com profile] blackestglass and AO3 at [archiveofourown.org profile] blackglass.

Things I Like: TROPES AND AUS. AWESOME LADIES. CHARACTERS OF COLOR. TEAM/FAMILY HIJINKS AND FEELS. OT3s AND MORESOMES ARE A-OKAY. GEN/HET/FEMSLASH (My slash ships are few and far between). I am here for the happy and the humor and the fluff. I mean, I am okay with angst and will forgive you for the critical hits to THE FEEEELS as long as it's balanced out with levity and has a happy ending. I am okay with any rating from gen to suuuuuuper explicit. I also love filk, so if you wanted to record that for me it would be SO welcome. I love music and sound effects, but if it's under narration, I really need the volume of the music/sfx to be on the lower side in order for me to parse what's being said. I've only written a handful of stuff, and if anyone felt compelled to record some of my fics for Critical Role that I haven't already recorded, that would delight me (I would prefer not to get podfics of anything I've written for the MCU/MCU-adjacent fics I've written only because I've moved on from that fandom)! I'm okay with repods of things I've done as treats, but would prefer not to get them as a main gift.

Do Not Wants: I am not into character death, dub/non-con/rape, explicit violence, ZOMBIES CAN'T DO EM, dystopias, post-apocalyptic AUs, Omegaverse, slave fic, infidelity, soulmates/soulmate mark AUs, and character-bashing. I've also discovered that I cannot listen to extended scenes in which characters are being wrongfully accused with no one to stand up for them on their behalf. I can skim those scenes in text, but it's harder to skip in audio. So maybe no courtroom drama AUs lol. I would prefer not to get cold reads/chatty reads, as I prefer an edited podfic.

Tropes/AUs I am into: Honestly, as long as the tropes/AUs don't fall into any of my DNW categories, you're pretty much good to go. College/High School AUs! My weakness. Coffee shop AUs! SPACE AUs! Regency AUs (omgggggg Regency AUs)! Characters in a different profession AUs! Genderswap/Rule 63/Spectrum slide (choose your favorite term)! Hella into piiiiiining (with eventual resolved sexual tension), failboats in love, fake dating/married, secret dating/married, kidfic/deaging yes do want, forced to share the same bed, huddling for warmth, accidental baby acquisition, etc. If the canon is sad, I prefer the EVERYBODY LIVES/NOBODY DIES AUs.

Fandoms:

Dungeon Crawler Carl: Listen...I know this is a longshot fandom. It's got like, 83 fics and the vast majority is for ships I don't care for. There is no blanket permission anywhere. But....it's where my joy is right now. I don't have any ships in this fandom and am here for the found family and the plucky, fuck-you, triumph of the human spirit. I adoooore Carl and Donut, together and separately. I love their found family and would also enjoy anything about Carl and/or Donut interacting with their friends/family Katia, Imani, Ellie, Zev, and Mordecai. You can ignore my DNWs about violence for this fandom. It's an extremely violent universe and I know what I'm getting into with this fandom.

9-1-1: Tumblr gifsets GOT ME. I don't usually ship slash, but I am not immune to idiots-to-lovers + co-parenting/found family so Buck/Eddie has been very good for me. I would prefer getting together fics over established relationship fics or PWP for this fandom/pairing. The more pining/mutual oblivious yearning, the better. I also like Buck/Tommy! I love all the ladies fandom hates, so please no Ana, Abby, Shannon, Taylor, Natalia or Marisol-bashing. Aside from Buck/Eddie, I would enjoy cute Fire Fam gen fic, Buck being a dad to Chris fic, Hen/Karen fic, Bobby being Buck's dad fic, anything about Ravi, Hen + Chim besties fic, or Chimney-centric fic. I loved Shannon and wish she hadn't been fridged, so I would love AUs where she lives and she and Eddie are amicably divorced and good co-parents. I'd even enjoy OT3 Buck/Eddie/Shannon. I am very sad about Bobby, so would prefer AUs where he's still alive.

The Murderbot Diaries (books): I am SO WEAK for the found family feels in this universe. Anything about Murderbot and its PresAux humans would be very good for me. I am ESPECIALLY invested in Murderbot and its relationship with Mensah and look, obviously I love gen fic, but the way I feel about Murderbot and Mensah is the same way I feel about Joan and Sherlock from Elementary, which is I love them platonically but I'd also love podfic that explores their relationship in shippy or queerplatonic ways. I also really enjoy Murderbot and its prickly relationship with Gurathin, but that dynamic I specifically prefer to be platonic. I really adore stories about Murderbot having a soft spot for all the mini-Mensahs/Mensah children. Murderbot interacting with fauna is also a reliable favorite for me! I do prefer book canon over the TV show canon atm.

The Mandalorian: My tastes for this fandom are very easy. Single Dad Mando raising his Green Baby. That is all I want. I'm not particularly invested in shipping for this fandom. That being said...I don't hate Din/Bo. The loyal-liege trope is one of my bulletproof kinks so uh, Din pledging his loyalty to Bo? Did in fact activate my "I could ship that" senses. I haven't actively looked for any fic, so if you find one you like that you think I'd like, don't let me stop you! I have recently decided I am also here for the Din/Fennec/Boba OT3.

CQL (The Untamed)/MDZS: My particular catnip for this fandom is Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing--a badass lady who deserved better gently domming a very angry, emotionally tortured man with lots of AU fix-it fic??? MADE FOR ME. In terms of gen fic, I will HAPPILY accept any fic where the women of CQL/MDZS get to be alive and be awesome. As an oldest Asian daughter, I overidentify with Jiang Yanli and want her to have good things, so JYL centric stories where she gets to have an interior life and an identity outside of taking care of her brothers would be Very Good for me. I also really enjoy shipping her with Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen. What can I say? I want her to be pursued by men of TASTE. And honestly? I will read any femslash pairings with her but I've developed a special investment in JYL/WQ. So basically, I believe in OLDER SIBS SUPREMACY! I am extremely into the big sibs Jiang Yanli, Nie Mingjue, Lan Xichen, and Wen Qing OT4 and any permutation of pairings or OT3s within this OT4. In lieu of the OT4, I will accept gen fic about any combination of those 4 bonding over how much they love their younger siblings. In general, I HAVE A LOT OF FEELS ABOUT ALL THE SIBLINGS. So gen fic about the LAN BROS! THE NIE BROS! THE WEN SIBLINGS!! THE YUNMENG TRIO! I WANT THEM. I WANT ALL THE SIBLINGS TO BE HAPPY! If you'd prefer to do something more canon-aligned, I would like post-canon JIANG CHENG AND WEI WUXIAN TO GET OVER THEMSELVES AND BE BROTHERS AGAIN. I'm also extremely invested in jiujiu!Jiang Cheng and any gen stories about him raising Jin Ling would make me cry many tears. I have also discovered that I am VERY INTO girl-Huaisang because the idea of Nie Mingjue being EXTREMELY PROTECTIVE of his baby sister delights me.......and also I ship it, ahem. I am also very into Huaisang/Zonghui (behold! a rare m/m ship!)--THE BODYGUARD ROMANCE I DESERVE. No canon compliant fic for them, I want Zonghui to be ALIVE and DESPERATELY IN LOVE WITH HUAISANG.

Rogue One: Jyn/Cassian break my heart. THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL AND TRAGIC, and naturally all I want are AUs where they get to be PARTNERS/A BATTLE COUPLE/IN LOVE. I do not, under any circumstances, want canon-compliant fic for them. I don't want to be sad about them!!! I'm already sad about them, I don't need more pain! ;_;

Critical Role/The Legend of Vox Machina: For Campaign 1 or The Legend of Vox Machina, you will literally never go wrong with Percy/Vex. Aside from Percy/Vex, I also really like Vex/Jarett, Gilmore/Jarett, Grog/Keyleth, and Kima/Allura. I would also adore gen fic for this fandom because FOUND FAMILY FEELS. I love Percy and Keyleth's friendship SO MUCH, so gen fic for them is especially appreciated.

For Campaign 2, I am basically entirely about Caleb/Jester. And more specifically, what I like about the ship is how much Caleb makes Jester's happiness a priority. I prefer stories which feature Jester's POV or at least a story where Jester's emotions are given priority or equal weight with Caleb's Sad Boi feelings. To put it simply, Jester is my fave, I like the ship because Caleb treats my fave well and I want that dynamic to be front and center.

For Campaign 3, I am super into Fearne/Ashton. Their dynamic is FASCINATING. I also really enjoy Laudna/Imogen.

EXU Calamity left me in shambles emotionally. I'm extremely invested in Laerryn/Loquatious so anything for them would be perfect. I would also love any reincarnation fics for the Ring of Brass or just pre-canon fics in general. Modern AUs where nothing bad ever happens to them? DO WANT.

Dimension 20: I've loved most of the campaigns and sidequests, but fannishly I'm most inclined towards Fantasy High and The Unsleeping City, as well as the Escape to the Bloodkeep sidequest. I am always into the found family and gen shenanigans most of all. As a former church kid, I feel Very Seen by Kristen's evolving relationship with her deities and her queer journey. I love everything about Gilear and if you find fic about his relationship with Fig, I WANT IT. I also love everything about Kingston Brown and would love Kingston-centric podfic. I am EXTREMELY invested in Ricky/Esther and Sofia/Dale, so ship-wise, this is where I live. For the Vile Villains, I just want stories about them being the best evil friends they are. I do enjoy the Lords of the Wing from A Court of Fey and Flowers, so if you'd like to podfic me a story about the cousins being the Messy Bitches they are, I would love that. I enjoyed Mentopolis enormously, and fics about Conrad and The Fix and post-canon fics about The Fix/Pasha would be amazing! Misfits and Magic season 2 set my Sam/Evan ship feels SAILING. I honestly wanted them to get together in season 1 but this season??? Their dynamic??? *chef's kiss* IMMACULATE. Also when Evan asks her if he can be her dog and live in her house??? AWAKENED SOMETHING INSIDE ME. I'm JUST SAYING. Pup play fic exists on AO3...with a bp author... *eyes emoji*

Leverage: Leverage Redemption has reignited the OT3 love and that's mainly what I want. But I also love found family gen and case fic and fun crossovers! Also......Sophie/Harry aka Our Mr. Wilson? I'm ngl, I SHIP IT.

Mass Effect Trilogy- I will forever be aboard the good ship FemShep/Garrus and would LOVE LOVE LOVE podfic for them. I'm also willing to receive cute team gen, fic about KROGAN BABIES, and Tali/Kal Reegar podfic. Also, ANYTHING ABOUT SPACE HAMSTER. I'm not really interested in MaleShep or any of the other romances tbph.

Dragon Age (2 or 3)- Again, I'm mainly interested in FemHawke or FemInquisitor. My VERY FAVORITE DA2 pairing is Hawke/Varric, but I also enjoy Hawke/Sebastian, Merill/Carver, and Isabela/Fenris. Anders can be around but I'd rather he not be a major character. (I'm not asking for Veilguard podfic specifically, but in the event you're podficcing Hawke/Varric fic that's post-Veilguard, I want the AUs WHERE MY MAN IS ALIVE. plz ;_;) My VERY FAVORITE DAI pairing is Inquisitor/Iron Bull--like, that was my gateway into the DA spiral bc I wanted to Ride the Bull. I don't mind Inquisitor/Cullen but I don't read a lot of fic for them because there's just...too much and it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff iykwim. I'd rather not have Solas present as anything other than an ensemble character. As always, aside from these specified pairings, I also super enjoy cute gen fic and I have the very softest of spots for Cole, so anything about people being kind to Cole is my jam.

Red vs. Blue- York/Carolina is still the Tier 1 OTP. AUs or fix-it canon AUs for them please, because I'm so sad about them ;__; BUT--I recently caught up on the seasons I didn't watch after they killed my boy and uh...I AM ON BOARD THE WASH/CAROLINA SHIP I HAVE MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THEM. Also, Caboose is my One True Love, so Caboose-centric gen fic is everything I could ever want.

Fullmetal Alchemist (anime/manga)- Roy/Riza were my first OTP, in the sense that I only ship them together and not with anyone else. I want them to be in love. It can be set pre-show, during the show, post-show, or in a wild AU--as long as they're in love you cannot go wrong with me. Whether they're desperately pining for each other or happily married, as long as I am DROWNING IN FEELINGS about how much they love each other I will be so so satisfied. LET MY BABES BE IN LOVE, THAT'S IT.

I also really love Lan Fan/Ling Yao, and I also SUPER ENJOY Lan Fan/Ling Yao/Greed. IT IS THE BODYGUARD ROMANCE I DESERVE AND WANT.

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku- This is a longshot fandom, but sob, I love Hirotaka/Narumi and would love podfic for them. I would also be okay with OT4 podfic for Hirotaka/Narumi/Kabakura/Hanako, bc fandom has opened my eyes to the polyamorous possibilities and on rewatch, the OT4 vibes are REAL.

Spy x Family- another longshot fandom, but I am, as always, into the found family-ness of it all. I also SUPER ship Loid/Yor and would love podfic for them. Bond is Best Boi so fics from his POV would be fantastic!

Elementary- Joan and Sherlock are my OTP. I am a-okay with stories involving them being platonic bffs, but if it's shippy you will own my soul forever. FICS ABOUT CLYDE WOULD BE LOVED AND PETTED AND CLUTCHED CLOSE TO MY HEART.

Ouran High School Host Club (anime/manga)- a small fandom, I know, but I would love anything involving the Host Club being their RIDICULOUS OVER-DRAMATIC SELVES and having WACKY ADVENTURES. Also leaning more gen, rather than shippy with this fandom. That being said, my preferred pairings are Mori/Haruhi and Kyouya/Haruhi if you can't find anything that works for you. In terms of OT3s, I do like Kyouya/Tamaki/Haruhi!

Tortall (Protector of the Small books specifically)- I am all about Keladry. KELADRYYYYYYYYY. KEL BEING AWESOME. KEL BONDING WITH ALANNA. KEL AND HER BOYS. KEL AND HER PEOPLE AT NEW HOPE. Gen is fantastic, but you should know I ship Kel/EVERYONE. I wrote a manifesto about her with fic recs here.

Avatar: The Last Airbender- I've been on a Zuko/Katara kick lately, so please indulge my feels for this ship, plz and thanks.

The Punisher/Daredevil series specifically- Frank/Karen. Period. End. I'd prefer you steer away from stories where she's Perfect Pure Karen who's put on a pedestal--what I like about this ship is that they see each other's darkness, recognize it, and accept it.


I think that's about it. If you want more information about my tastes, my recs tag on tumblr, or my recs tag on [livejournal.com profile] het_reccers is a good thing to trawl through. :D And if you have any questions, feel free to comment anonymously.

Giving:
Aside from the fandoms/characters/ships outlined in my letter, I'm also willing to create in:
911: Lone Star
MCU (movies up to Shang Chi, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye--I haven't seen any of the other Disney+ series)
DCU comics (Batfamily, pre-Infinite Crisis Teen Titans, pre-Infinite Crisis Birds of Prey, Batgirl (Cassandra Cain run), Justice League International)
DCU animated series (Teen Titans (original series, not Teen Titans go), Young Justice, Batman, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited)
The Martian (book/movie)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series)
Firefly (TV series)
Good Omens (all canons)
Miraculous Ladybug
Stargate Atlantis
Naruto, Bleach, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, Inuyasha (anime only)
Enchanted Forest
Figure Skating RPF
Spirited Away
Sleepy Hollow
Brooklyn Nine Nine
Calvin and Hobbes
Sense8
The Good Place
Untitled Goose Game
Mulan
Carmen Sandiego (any adaptation)
The Mummy
The Queen's Thief
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Bridgerton
kdheart: kd_octopus (Default)
[personal profile] kdheart
Dear podficcer,

It is once again that time of the year! ITPE is here and it's time to brush off the old letter and tell you what I like. Things haven't changed that much. 

The first tag I usually check for any new fandom is still the Hurt/Comfort tag - that should tell you what you need. Feel free to smother me in fluff, or whump. However, I generally prefer things to have a happy ending, no matter how dark and painful they get along the way.

Yes: hurt/comfort, fluff, whump, non-sexual kink (especially bondage and D/s), polyamory, team fic, queerplatonic relationships, asexual characters, aromantic characters, non-traditional relationships, explorations of identity, explorations of gender, trans headcannons, lots of fluff, disturbing fluff, mutual dub-con, sex pollen (consensual and enthusiastic use of sex pollen is muchly appreciated, but the garden variety dub-conny kind is also welcome), tentacles, non-human biology, mind games, hypnosis, codependent characters, self-sacrificing idiots, sleep deprived characters who make bad decisions, naps, pining, loyalty, competence, soul bonds, time loops, character study - this is an incomplete and very incoherent list. I like a lot of things.

No: modern AUs for fantasy media, hopeless endings, pure angst, permanent character death (especially from cancer), things done to characters against their consent while they are unconscious, non-con as the main focus, omegaverse, needles being inserted in eyes (eye trauma in general isn't an issue, just very specifically no scenes of needles being inserted in eyes. yes, i am aware of what fandoms i'm in), pregnancy (of any kind) as the focus of the fic, daddy kink, OOC, soulmates, reincarnation

Repods are welcome (especially of stuff I've already podficced) and I'd be very happy if you podficced anything of mine (I am aware how small some of these fandoms are and I doubt more fic will miraculously appear in the meantime).

Fandoms

Jonny Quest (any media, but The Real Adventures and the new Dynamite comics in particular) (Dr Quest/Race, team fic, family shenanigans, adventures, Jonny, Jessie and Hadji in any combination, platonic or romantic, any of Race's or Benton’s past relationships, anything really ...just not the one where Jessie dies of cancer)

Venom (Eddie/Symbiote, Eddie/Symbiote/Anne/Dan - for the movie, Eddie/Symbiote, Eddie/Symbiote/Flash, Flash/Symbiote - for the comics)
Marvel's Midnight Suns - I've been playing this game for a week and I am hooked. It's the 2012 Avenger's Tower vibe I was missing, but Venom is there, too (any combination of characters, any ship, but mainly Iron Man/Dr Strange and Venom/anyone, team fic, hurt/comfort, the usual)


The Fall Guy (2024) (all the whump!! Colt Seavers was my original blorbo - I want that man to suffer!)
Sunshine (2007) - whump and hurt/comfort preferred
Kane and Feels (gen fic, case fic, fluff, hurt/comfort, Kane/Feels, Feels/Jenny, KaneHana)
MarsCorp (team fic, gen, anything focused on Hob or David Knight) 
Down (podcast) (any combination of Team Virgil and the Entity is welcome, lots of tentacles and mind fuckary ahoy!) (yes, I already podficced everything in the tag. I don't mind repods!) (huge soft spot for MarionCharley, regardless of punctuation)
The Infinite Bad
(anything)
The Kingmaker Histories (podcast) (Eisen/Telesphore, the trio being either platonic, or romantic, shenanigans, Ariadne and Ninette - fingers crossed, there's going to be some fun fic to record)
Lockwood&co (TV) (Lucy/Anthony or Lucy/Anthony/George, hurt/comfort or shenanigans)
The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself (TV) (ot3. none of the individual pairings, please. h/c preferred, maybe some light angst)
Rusty Quill Gaming (Zolf/Sasha, no modern AUs)
The Murderbot Diaries (books & tv, all the found family feels! and grumpy SecUnits! ART! I have a very soft spot for Gurathin in all his grumpy glory)
Leverage (THE OT3!!!! team fic! competence kink! Eliot's cooking!)
The Mummy (Rick/Evelyn/Ardeth Bay)
Whyborne & Griffin (Whyborne/Griffin, Christine/Iskander, Maggie/Persephone, or gen + waffles)
Jurassic Park (the books and the original trilogy) (Alan Grant/Ian Malcolm/Ellie Sattler,)
The Exorcist
(TV) (gimme that good, blasphemous whump and hurt/comfort!)
Guardian (Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan and Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng)
White Collar (the other OT3)
The Flash (Harry/Cisco)
Supernatural (Sam/Gabriel, soul bonds, h/c, going back to my roots with this one, 2010s fic preferred)

 


Rhea314's Dear ITPE Podficcer Letter

Sep. 15th, 2025 10:21 am
pi: (Default)
[personal profile] pi
Dear Podficcer,

I'm excited you're matched with me! Happy ITPE, I hope you find something you're excited to record, and I look forward to listening <3   Below is some guidance on what I do and don't enjoy. Podfic fandom is a wonderful place and I've received so many beautiful gifts over the years. I am excited for whatever you might want to record for me.

more information including fandom specifics for The Scum Villian's Self-Saving System, The Lays of the Hearth-Fire, The Husky and His White Cat Shizun, and The S-Classes That I Raised )

My Weekend

Sep. 15th, 2025 09:31 am
lydamorehouse: (Bazz-B)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
Look at me posting on a Monday! Will wonders never cease?

On Saturday, I ran my usual D&D campaign. Because a lot of people find this stuff boring, I shall put my brief discussion about it under the cut.

As part of our usual Saturday alliterative errands, Shawn and I stop for coffee. (Our alliteration is: coffee, cardboard, cardamon buns... and then sometimes other that things we struggle to turn into 'c's, like Mendards which we sometimes just call 'cart,' because it's shopping.) This Saturday is was only the traditional three stops. Our cardboard recycling center has closed in Saint Paul, so now we have to drive all the way out to Roseville, which is... annoying? Though it may mean that we will return "car" to our alliterative errands as the car wash place is out in the same direction.

Anyway, my point in bringing this up is that my barista often ask me if I have fun plans for the weekend and so I mentioned D&D. One of the guys there also runs a campaign and GUESS WHAT THEY'RE PLAYING??? Yep, the same thing we are: The Curse of Strahd. Like me, he's having to do some heavy homebrewing to make it fit into the play style of his group. We both joked that we might be using some of the same source materials but there's no way we're playing the same game.

Which is what I love about GMing and RPGs in general.

So called boring stuff... )

Other things I did this weekend was start watching Altered Carbon. And, before you ask, no, I'm not watching it for the podcast. It came up when I was looking for something new and I thought: why not? I hear that the second season isn't as good, but I'm enjoying the story so far. To be clear, however, thanks to all the shounen anime that I consume I have a LARGE tolerance for what is essentially splatterpunk. I would not recommend this show to anyone squeamish about blood, gore, or realistic violence. It also treats women (particularly sex workers) as disposable and so has gotten the reputation as misogynistic, but I'm really enjoying two of the women characters in it SO FAR. We'll see how it all plays out as I go along. I'm only up to episode four, I think.

Netflix also reminded me that I need to continue with The Summer Hikaru Died, but I am waiting for a few more episodes to drop before I return to that one. At some point, too, the anime is going to go past what I've read of the manga, and I'll have to decide if I should go to the library and check out any new volumes or if I'm cool with letting the anime carry me. I'll probably be cool with just going with the anime? Sometimes you just have to because the English language release is that much further behind?

Anyway, my alarm went off for my writing accountablity Zoom so I should head off and try to do some writing!

Yuletide 2025 Nominations Open

Sep. 14th, 2025 09:07 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Why should I nominate?
To create the pool of fandoms available for this year’s Yuletide. More at AO3.

What can I nominate?
Up to 5 rare fandoms and 4 characters you want to request or offer. See what’s eligible here.

When can I nominate?
From now until 26 September, at 9pm UTC. Please check the date and time in your own timezone! Until then, you can also edit your nominations.

Where can I nominate?
Tag set.

Who can nominate?
People with AO3 accounts who intend to take part in Yuletide. You may use only one account for nominations. If you don’t have an AO3 account, add yourself immediately to the invite queue or email the mods.

How do I nominate?
First, check what's eligible. Then go to the tag set on AO3, and make sure you're logged in. Click "Nominate" at top right, enter your fandom and character choices, and click Submit at the bottom. Check the results on the page to make sure you entered them correctly. You don't have to submit all your choices at once - you can change your mind and add or edit your nominations until nominations close.

If you need to explain or argue for your fandom, please make a case for it on the Evidence Post as well as nominating on AO3.

Do I have to use fandom tags that exist on AO3?
Please do, unless:
  • There is no tag for your fandom (it's totally okay to nominate something with no fic!). Make one up, following this guide.

  • The tag that exists on the Archive describes a larger fandom with many parts and your fandom is one distinct part or subset. In this case, instead of using the tag that exists already, please use a tag that describes your specific subfandom.

  • The tag that exists on the Archive has the words 'All Media Types' or '& Related Fandoms' in it. Please don't use a label that includes those words without arguing for it on the Evidence Post
  • .

Please label fandoms according to the Archive's wrangling style. If you’re not sure how to label your fandom, please ask.

When will I see what was nominated?
Not for a while, sorry! You can share what you've nominated and coordinate with other participants at [community profile] yuletide. Moderators will approve tags starting approximately 28 September, and will release the tagset in early October. We will post questions about nominations between now and sign-ups, so please keep an eye on this community.

The Additional Tags at the bottom of the tag set are a new feature from 2023. Here is a post explaining how they work and some background (1, 2).

Disambiguation
When a character name could appear in more than one fandom, or is common, or short, please put information in brackets after the name to show where it belongs. For example:
-Bonnie Parker (Bonnie and Clyde 1967)
-Robin Hood (Prince of Thieves)
-Tulku (The Shadow 1994)
-Leonardo da Vinci (Da Vinci's Demons)

Disambiguation will also solve your problems if you receive the error message: “This character was rejected because it was nominated in another fandom.” If that happens, add more information to the name and resubmit.

Worldbuilding "character"
In most fandoms, you may nominate worldbulding as a character tag, in the format Worldbuilding (Your Fandom Name). However, mods will not accept "worldbuilding" nominations for RPF fandoms or where it is nominated without explanation for a purely mundane canon - there should be a clear fictional element to worldbuild around. See 2021's discussion post about worldbuilding; you may also find recent requests helpful to see how people have used this option.

Other character tips
If you submit a character that is new or rarely used on AO3, a suggestion from AO3 may appear in bold and in brackets next to your nomination after it has been submitted. This is okay, and does not mean that your nomination will be automatically changed. However, if you don't have any disambiguation information in brackets after the name, you may want to add it, because there may be another character with that name. Even if your character has two names, such as “Harrison Chase” or “Elizabeth Burke”, that name may appear in multiple unrelated fandoms.

RPF and Anthropomorphic fandoms must be nominated with characters. Other fandoms will be approved without characters if none are nominated.

Superhero and similar names may belong to more than one character. For example, Batman’s Robin could mean Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, or Stephanie Brown, among others. Please make sure it’s clear which one you mean - in cases where it’s ambiguous, please use their “wallet” name.

We don’t accept group nominations if the group contains named, distinct characters (for example, under Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, we wouldn’t accept The Five Gods as a character). However, we will allow distinct groups that do not contain individual, named characters. If it may be difficult for us to determine whether this applies to your nomination, please comment in the Evidence post.

Check your nominations!
After submitting, check that your nominations have gone through: click away from the tag set, click back, and, if still logged into the same account, you should be able to see "My Nominations" at top right. Check the spelling and formatting! You can edit your nominations until the nominations period ends.

Enjoy!

PS: as pre-approved nominations can only be seen by mods, consider discussing your nominations with other participants on [community profile] yuletide or at the Discord. In particular, please see this year's RPF discussion post.


Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth

Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.
mific: (ear trumpet)
[personal profile] mific in [community profile] amplificathon

We have a new alternate address for the Audiofic Archive: https://audioficarchive.org
  • This an additional domain name that works exactly like the old jinjurly one
  • Both this one and the prior one, and all links deriving from these urls will function normally 
  • The new link makes it a little easier for us to manage domain name renewals
Podfics posted from now on will have the new address in the post link and in any audiofile links. 


Lost in FEELS

Sep. 12th, 2025 10:40 am
lydamorehouse: (pretty demon)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 This time I disappeared because I have been having way too many feelings about KPop Demon Hunters. 

WAY. TOO. MANY.

I did not like the ending of this film. However, to say that I'm currently obsessed with it might be an understatement, so obviously I'm in. I bought all the way in, otherwise I wouldn't be left like this--feeling betrayed. I'm not going to go into all of my feelings because all of them would have to be under the cut thanks to the fact that they're all releated to the ending, so MAJOR SPOILERS. 

But, yeah, I've literally been doing that thing that I do, which is to google the crap out of things that were mentioned in the film, like saja (fascinating stuff there!) and Korean water demons (mul gwishin), etc. 

For those of you who saw it, what did you think of KPop Demon Hunters?



EDITED TO ADD: Fair warning! Spoiler FEELINGS DUMP in comments!! Do not read comments if you do not want spoilers!!

2025 RPF Coordination Post

Sep. 10th, 2025 11:37 am
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Please use this post to talk about the RPF or RPF-adjacent fandoms you're interested in nominating, requesting, or offering this year!


RPF nomination categories can be fluid in Yuletide, so we encourage RPF fans to coordinate with each other about the social circles, career groups, and characters you're interested in, to help ensure the resulting categories suit as many people as possible.

Coordinating your RPF nomination with other fans is the best way to make sure we can approve RPF fandoms quickly and easily. You are also welcome to reach out to us directly at yuletideadmin@gmail.com to discuss a potentially sensitive nomination.
This year's eligibility post covers what characters and fandom labels you can nominate. Here is a post from 2023 that explains why we may reject some RPF nominations.

While each RPF fandom must still meet Yuletide rules for size (no more than 1,000 complete works in English), we won’t reject an RPF fandom label for being too broad (i.e., for covering too wide a topic). However, we prefer not to approve two fandoms if one of them is a subset of the other, so please use this post to make sure your nomination doesn't clash with someone else's.

Click for links to some previous tagsets
2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014.


Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth

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Diversicon 32 - Con Report

Sep. 10th, 2025 09:45 am
lydamorehouse: (renji has hair)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
Diversicon selfie with Scot L 
Diversicon selfie with (left to right) me, Naomi Kritzer, and Scott Lohman


It's Wednesday, so I'm back on Dreamwidth. It is really starting to amuse me that I spend so much time intending to get over here to blog and then, inevitibly, it is somehow ALWAYS a Wednesday when I do. Seriously, I had been planning on doing a daily con report from Diversicon, but I somehow did not manage it. To be fair, we were "on" a lot at the con.

Okay, so--how did it go?

I will be honest. I was really uncertain that this convention had its ducks in a row. There were duck in the pond, clearly, but I wasn't sure, at first, that anything meaningful was going to happen with said ducks. 

[personal profile] naomikritzer , for instance, only HAPPENED to notice that the Diversicon programming grid had us at a reading at Webber Library on Thursday earlier that week. She checked the HCL schedule and an author appearance at Webber was nowhere to be found. Well, that turned out to be because Diversicon had privately rented a room. But, regardless, I wasn't sure if I was going to a library in NE Minneapolis or not! Or, if I did go, if anyone other than Naomi would be there. We did try to ask, but only got a confirmation the day of. 

Like much of what follows, everything turned out not only to be FINE but actually kind of great (??)

reading
Image: Naomi reading. The library meeting room was smallish, but the event was decently well attended!

I am not in this picture because I took it, but I would say that despite the fact that I feel like the whole thing went off last minute, the event was very well attended. I ended up reading from my newest book, which I am kind of struggling with. So it was nice to have some audience reaction to it and to get a chance to gauge how it read out loud in a very specific way. For instance, I regularly read my stuff out loud for flow, but I rarely read it out loud to other people to guage involvement. The bonus of being neurotypical (besldes the obvious) is that I can feel attention leaving the story when I read it out loud in a room like this and, of course, when the audience ignites. So both this and my reading at Diversicon really shaped my sense of the novel. (So thank you to everyone who was there!)

I sort of thought that we'd lucked out with the Thursday night reading. I did not necessarily think that the luck would hold all weekend. 

But it did.

I do not know what black magic Diversicon had going on, but despite the fact that behind the scenes the programming schedule seemed to be changing minute by minute right up until the doors opened, once things started, not only did they run smoothly, but the energy of the convention increased as the con went on.

Friday was the most chaotic for me because I had a lot going on at home. I didn't really see (or remember to ask or check) my Diversicon schedule, so I had to let Diversicon know that I couldn't make it to the convention until almost 4 pm. That turned out not to be true. Mason was done with his interview by 2 pm and I was able to be on my way to pick up Eleanor Arnason and off to the convention by 3 pm, which meant I made it into the con by 3:30 pm.

In another wierd bit of black magic, both Friday and Saturday, we arrived exactly at the same time as Eleanor's friend Ruth Burman. This was great for Eleanor because the one thing I couldn't provide was an EARLY ride home for her. Eleanor, who is even less of a night owl than I am, would have had to stay at the con until nearly midnight on Saturday if it wasn't for Ruth. 

My first panel was about something I wasn't sure I knew anything about. "Queens of the Apocalypse." When I was waiting for Mason to finish his interview before I headed to the con, I had a chance to ponder this. I think the panel title had gotten a bit lost in translation because Naomi has been known recently as the queen of the cozy apocalypse thanks, in part to stories like "So Much Cooking" and "The Year Without Sunshine." Since I was listed as the only panelist, I decided that what I'd do was introduce the audience to the subgenre of "Soft Apocalypses" which is a Thing and hopefully start a conversation about what the appeal of such things are, etc., etc. LUCKILY, Naomi didn't have a panel scheduled opposite this one and so she joined me in the discussion. Given that I planned it out in the car on the way to the con, it went surprisingly well. As you can see in the selfie above, one of the fun things about the convention hotel (there weren't a whole lot of them, it being way out in Plymouth and laid out extremely strangely) is that the panel rooms all had whiteboards, which we just decided to use. So, I was able to write out all of my recommendations.  People took photos of the whiteboard after the panel!  

Then, I attempted to get dinner in the hotel, which was a complete disaster. 

They had a "make your own" sandwhich which listed chicken as a substitute for hamburger, but I apparently made a mistake choosing that option. I just wanted a simple chicken sandwhich--chicken, American cheese, lettuce, and mayo. That's it. But, not only did my food never arrive until everyone was finished, when it did it had no cheese, lettuce that seemed to have salad dressing on it, and a dollop of salsa? Which was not great because thanks to GERDS I really can't eat raw onions anymore and I'm not a fan of tomatoes, I never have been. But, whatever, I was so starved at that point that I ate it. The only nice thing? The waiter could tell how irritated I was and comped my meal.

But, like that's the other weird thing about this hotel? NO LUNCH service. 

I hung around after dinner because as GoHs, it's expected that you attend both opening and closing ceremonies. Scott L, who is chairing this year, asked me to say an opening statement, which I should have expected that I'd be called upon to do, but somehow didn't. I fumbled a little bit, but then thinking about how this might be our last Diversicon, I launched into a whole schpiel about what I have loved about Diversicon since its inception.

Eleanor had gotten a ride home with Ruth at that point and so I hung around a little bit longer, but bailed early under the assumption that Saturday would be the late night. 

---



Saturday got complicated by the fact that I was picking up Eleanor again and Saint Paul, in its infinite wisdom, decided to close down eastbound highway 94. I got myself coffee, but I still managed to be kind of bolluxed up by the whole construction situation. I was fifteen mintues late to pick up Eleanor, who admitted that had Patrick not sat with her, she was considering bailing. But, the highway going west was open and, shockingly, traffic free, so despite my delay we managed to get to the hotel on time. And, as noted above, right on the heels of Ruth Burman.

My first panel on Saturday was "SF Writers and D&D," which Naomi and I had proposed for a couple of reasons. First, she and I have started playing D&D again and, secondly, one of the posthumous guests of honor, Andre Norton, wrote Quagg Keep after having been invited by Gary Gyagax to play in the Greyhawk world of D&D (citation).  We started out kind of uncertain about how much we'd have to say, but about a half hour into the panel the caffeine hit my system and I went FULL CON MODE.

Some of you have seen this transformation.

That was good because it carried me though the rest of the day.  I missed Naomi's reading in favor of hanging out in the hall with Greg Johnson and Martha Hood and someone else whose name I missed, who like a lot of men who are aging in fandom has gone with Wizardcore as his look. The three of us discussed the Seattle Worldcon Hugo Awards as all of us watched it, either in-person or streaming.

Then I had a reading, followed by a panel on podcasts & podcasting. I was the only panelist listed on that panel, but Naomi and Martha joined me and so we managed to have a lot of good recommendations. 

At some point in here I ate lunch brought to me by our fabulous guest liason, Bast, and a bunch of us went out to dinner together in the classic convention style. Table for SEVEN at the Red Robin (which was made kind of fantastic by our drill sargent of a waitress!) In the middle of dinner I asked the question "What will post-capitalism really look like?" and a half dozen or so people in rotating shifts proceeded to spend much of the rest of the night as we wandered back to the hotel's lounge area attempting to unravel this question. This included [personal profile] sraun who had to miss much of the convention due to the fact that his wife, Irene, had taken a fall on Friday night and ended up admitted to the hospital. She's home safe now, but that was NOT how anyone wanted her to have to spend the weekend!

visual break: bee on purple flower
Image: a visual break in the wall of text!  A bumble bee on a purple flower.

------


Sunday.

The strangeest thing about Diversicon was the fact that the energy of this convention continued to rise throughout the weekend. Normally, there's a bit of a peak on Saturday night and Sunday feels like winding down. Not so Diversicon!  We found out that one of the reasons for this is that Diversicon continued to gain memberships as the weekend wore on--they started with something like 38 and had nearly double that by the end. I know there are some of you out there thinking is 60-something really a lot? Diversicon is a small convention and this number was enough, in fact, to put the con into the black. There will be a Diversicon 33!  Hooray!

Sunday started out strong, panel-wise, with "Keeping on Keeping on (Diversity in SF)"  We can partly thank Elenaor Arnason, who was not able to come on Sunday, but who asked me this question as we were driving back and forth to the con. "Do we still need Diversicon? Is diversity baked into SFF now? Does it need its own convention?" This is a real question. I mean, I think the answer is an obvious "YES!" but it is notable that SFF, as a whole, has really made lifting up diverse voice a priority and it has, to many extents, worked. Obviously, there is always more work to do, but, especially with Gaylaxicon coming up, this was a question that was close to my heart. 

The panel I should have prepared more for was "Hacking, Hackers & Heists," as it devolved (evolved?) into a discusion of artifical intelligence as it exists today -- LLMs. But, I think we mostly kept on topic, despite that. 

I ate my lunch in the con suite and then caught the end of "End of the World Fiction and/or Hope Punk" which was pretty interesting, and then Naomi and I sat in to the Second Foundation/Rivendell Group Discussion of our work. Our final official panel was our Two-Person Book Club, which is something that Naomi and I do informally and we thought it would be fun to bring to an audience. Basically, we just trade hot takes on whatever it is we're currently reading. For poor Naomi, this often means listening to me talk about manga, but she's also been on a mainstream romance kick right now, so it seems like a fair trade. ;-)

Closing ceremonies was surprisingly high energy, like I noted, and I had hoped to hang around for the after con dinner, but my brain had, by that point, completely fried.

I had several absolutely lovely conversations with folks one-on-one and for a convention I was certain was going to be at best disorganized, Diversicon fully blew past my expectations and not only cleared the lowest bar but actually won the race (to over extend the metaphors and mix them up a bit.) 

It was an unexpected pleasure all around.

Cosy Cuisine 2025 Dear Creator Letter

Sep. 10th, 2025 05:23 pm
annapods: happy pea in a pod (Default)
[personal profile] annapods
Requests
DCU (Comics)
- Solo: Damian Wayne (DCU)
- Solo: Tim Drake (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Alfred Pennyworth (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Jason Todd (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Dick Grayson (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Bruce Wayne (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Pamela Isley (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Kon-El | Conner Kent (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Martha Kent (DCU (Comics))
- Solo: Worldbuilding (DCU (Comics))

KPop Demon Hunters (2025)
- Solo: Creator's Choice of Saja Boys (KPop Demon Hunters (2025))
- Solo: Creator's Choice of Huntrix (KPop Demon Hunters (2025))
- Solo: Bobby (KPop Demon Hunters (2025))
- Solo: Original Fan Character (KPop Demon Hunters (2025))
- Solo: Original Demon Character (KPop Demon Hunters (2025))
- Solo: Worldbuilding (KPop Demon Hunters (KPop Demon Hunters (2025))

Naruto (Anime & Manga)
- Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Ensemble & Hatake Kakashi (Naruto (Anime & Manga))
- Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto (Naruto (Anime & Manga))
- Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka (Naruto)
- Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama & Uzumaki Naruto (Naruto (Anime & Manga))
- Senju Hashirama & Senju Tobirama (Naruto (Anime & Manga))
- Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Izuna (Naruto (Anime & Manga))
- Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara/Uzumaki Mito (Naruto (Anime & Manga))
- Solo: Worldbuilding (Naruto (Anime & Manga))

나 혼자만 레벨업 | Solo Leveling (Webcomic)
- Solo: Sung Jin-Woo (나 혼자만 레벨업 | Solo Leveling (Webcomic))
- Solo: Creator's Choice of Jin-Woo's Shadows (나 혼자만 레벨업 | Solo Leveling (Webcomic))
- Solo: Worldbuilding (나 혼자만 레벨업 | Solo Leveling (Webcomic))

原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game)
- Solo: Creator's Choice of Character (原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game))
- Solo: Worldbuilding (原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game))

Among Us (Video Game)
- Solo: Crewmate (Among Us (Video Game))
- Solo: Imposter (Among Us (Video Game))
- Solo: Worldbuilding (Among Us (Video Game))

Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
- Solo: Creator's Choice of Character (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!)
- Solo: Worldbuilding (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!)

KinnPorsche: The Series (TV)
- Pete Phongsakorn Saengtham/Vegas Kornwit Theerapanyakun & Macau Theerapanyakun (KinnPorsche)
- Porchay Pichaya Kittisawat/Kim Khimhant Theerapanyakun (KinnPorsche)



Opt-ins- Totally fine with Recipes that are not actually doable in real-life, or shouldn't be done in real life. Is it bad? Is it fictional? Does it require professional equipment? Is it dangerous? All fine!
- I will love whatever multimedia, non-traditional, experimental thing you want to try, as long as it's allowed by the exchange and falls under at least one of my requested mediums.
- While I did not request podfic because I couldn't find enough existing fics that fit, I would be delighted by audio elements or even a straight up audio version on top of a text version.
- If I requested a group of characters or a solo character, you can pair any of them up with whoever as long as you keep my DNWs in mind. This includes OT3s and moresome ships.
- Relationships tagged as romantic (/) can also be interpreted from a pre-relationship lense, or as any flavor of queerplatonic.
- I'm fine with any additional side or background characters and relationships, as long as you keep my DNWs in mind.
- I'm fine with OCs, including as major characters. I'm also fine with no characters at all!


Generic likesOptional details are optional!
- Cooking as meditative or stress-relieving.
- Bread! Brioche! Dough! Fuck I love dough.
- Food that is meant to look pretty, or smell good, or have a certain texture to it.
- Worldbuilding about ingredients, utensils, appliances, cooking methods, tastes, celebrations and rituals...
- Halloween jokes and dares, halloween decoration, halloween food.
For more likes, feel free to look at one of my other Dear Creator Letters, but this is extra extra optional.


PromptsOptional details are optional!

DCU (Comics)
- Americana? Give me that apple pie, and pumkpin latte, and marshmallow hot chocolate. Could be from Alfred or Martha, could be an attempt by one of the others (did it work?)
- Rogue-themed coffee drinks. No way this ends badly.
- Gotham's gothic edge turned warm cosiness like sitting in front of a fireplace watching the storm outside.
- A compilation of Alfred or Martha's excellent cooking and baking for autumn fruits and veggies.
- Food sharing as an apology, or an overture of peace. Who buys cheap pumpkin muffins and leaves them on the windowsill of a secret safehouse they shouldn't know about?
- Poison Ivy's version of seasonal cosiness.

KPop Demon Hunters (2025)
- Seasonal Korean food! Persimmons, chestnuts, sweet potatoes, ...
- Chuseok!! What do the girls do for Chuseok? Do they have time off, and do they use it? Or do they have their own little celebration as a group? This one might work well for a little poem about one of the girl's feelings on family.
- The Saja Boys becoming more familiar with modern foods and comforts.
- Do they have similar ones in the demon realm? What do they eat there? Is it the same, or has it diverged? Actually, do they need to eat, or not? Does food taste the same?
- AU in which it's not about singing, it's about cooking.
- What are the Huntrix' favorite seasonal drinks?
- Soda pop but it's about barley tea or something.
- What would an autumn-themed fan event look like? Cosy fanmeet at a café? Themed photocards?

Naruto (Anime & Manga)
- Once again, seasonal local ingredients! There's mushrooms, pears, oysters, ...
- That first prompt kind of ignores the geographical differences between Japan and Fire country, but actually, if you wanted to go deeper into the worldbuilding of food supply chains and fictional cuisines, why not?
- Seasonal events and celebrations. Could be for a specific city, could be for a specific clan. Maybe there are singing rhymes?
- Which character drinks which type of tea, and which don't drink any?
- This is supposed to be cozy, okay, but I'm pretty sure you could also make it angsty by going for whatever weird recipe Naruto came up with while learning to cook on his own, or Kakashi's go-to depression meal, or Sasuke's attempts at reproducing staples from old family cookbooks, or...

나 혼자만 레벨업 | Solo Leveling (Webcomic)
- Cooking monsters. Cooking with magic. All the weird stuff!! With a cosy and seasonal twist.
- Can the shadows cook? I'm picturing one of them in an apron making bread at midnight and aw...
- What does Jinwoo prepare for Jinha when she gets sick with the dropping temperatures? What does she prepare for him pre-canon, too?
- AU in which Jinwoo dropped dungeoning and opened a café. Before or after the power up is up to you.

原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game)
- So many countries, so many cuisines!! I will be delighted by any and all of them, up to and including the Abyss. Replicating fictional dishes from the game? Coming up with new ones? Having characters make/eat real-world recipes? Yes.
- Using visions for cooking or baking. As a shortcut, as a unique technique, as a gimmick?
- Element-themed warm drinks!
- Who is using food as a love language? As flirting, or courting? Is it working?
- Hydro dragon verses about bringing him food and drinks and making him all cosy so he feels better and the sun comes back.

Among Us (Video Game)
- What does a cosy autumn mean in space? On a ship? On an extraterrestrial planet?
- What does a cosy autumn mean for an alien species?
- Dark humor, but are the imposters cooking crewmate stew?
- Fluffier, can the imposter(s) and crewmate(s) come to an understanding through sharing food and drinks?
- Space shanty about leaving cookies out for the imposter so it doesn't kill you. To tie it back to autumn... Verses about various crewmates trying out different types of cookies and all getting killed, until the last one tries pumpkin spice mix? Maybe the imposter is all conked out and snoring from eating so many cookies, all cozy in the warm vents?

Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
- I feel like I'm picking fandoms like pins on a map, but Italian cuisine! Japanese cuisine! Fusion!
- In my head, Mafia Land is home to the weirdest, nichest, most controversial fusions. As in, I'm familiar with fried chicken cheese sauce california rolls, nutella naan pizza, and the abomination they call French tacos. I'm 100% certain Mafia Land fast food is worse. What do they invent for the fall?
- Poison cooking. That's it. Seasonal, cosy, but also as upsetting as possible.
- Would Reborn write a 10k expose on how to make good coffee? Probably, though I'd be just as delighted by a shorter info dump *cough* recipe. Actually, I'm not sure if that would count as a fanvid/be allowed in this exchange, but if you dress up in a suit and make a video tutorial? I'll love you forever.

KinnPorsche: The Series (TV)
- Here we go with Thai cuisine too. Same thing, seasonal ingredients? Seasonal celebrations?
- Time-intensive recipes, elegant plating, pretty sure Vegas would pull all the stops sometimes.
- Chay's smiley face decoration was so cute. Does he have any other similar recipes? Does he also plate takeout like that?
- Post-canon KimChay reconciliation through gift-giving!
- Food industry AUs. Are the Theerapanyakun the owner of a high-end resort? Do they just have a lot of restaurants in their money laundering portfolios? Did the Kittisawat inherit a family restaurant that they're struggling to keep afloat?
- Continuing on the food industry AU, a short commercial for one of their restaurants! Shot in the fall, with a menu full of cosy food?


Do Not Wants
DNWExceptions and limits
Unhappy, hopeless or ominous endings
Grimdark settingsFine as a setup for time travel fix-it, a parallel universe, or similar
Mind break or graphic tortureWhump and reference to past instances are fine
Internal POV of characters who delight in being gratuitously cruel
Internal POV of bigots, including well-intentioned onesSpecifically for Among Us, cultural and physiological differences that lead to misunderstandings are fine
Sexual content in which one of the parties involved knowingly disregards another participant's feelings, wishes or agency, whether the other participant ends up enjoying it or notOther types of dubcon are fine, rape recovery/mentions are fine, consensual sex where the negotiations are not shown is fine
Teacher-student pairings in which the student is younger than 25, or younger than the teacher by more than 10 years, at the timeOnly applies to regular humans, not time travelers, robots, aliens, ...
Sexual content with participants younger than 16 at the timeSame as above
Biological incest, incest kink, incestual shame for not-biologically-related pairings, daddy/mommy kink
Soulmates designated by fateOther kinds of soulbonds are fine
Purely romantic proposals and weddingsFine if forced, arranged or political
Pregnancy, impregnation, breeding kinkOne or two paragraphs referencing canonical pregnancies are fine
Age regression, age play, deaging that is not caused by time/dimension travel
Harry Potter AU or content
Christianity: faith, rituals, institutions, religious guilt, feeling of sin, ...Secular practices like gifts at Christmas or curses are fine
AUs in which the characters are from/in other countries than in canonFor characters from imaginary places in real world AUs, please pick the countries based on the inspiration used for these characters

Yuletide 2025 Evidence Post

Sep. 10th, 2025 10:17 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Yuletide 2025 nominations begin on September 15 and end at 9 PM UTC on 26 September. See what can be nominated on the eligibility post. You can brainstorm, coordinate, and promote your fandoms at the participant community on DW.

Some fandoms need evidence to be approved. Comment on this post if:
  • The fandom you are nominating has too many stories to be eligible, but only because a tiny pool of authors has written most of it, OR because a significant majority are unrelated but tagged as crossovers, OR because a significant majority tagged as 'English' aren't in English

  • The fandom you are nominating appears on AO3 as part of a larger “umbrella” fandom, but you can clearly show that the fics for your fandom are under the limit

  • The fandom you are nominating is a fanwork (please include a link to the creator’s permissions statement and also describe how the fanwork is distinct from its source fandom)

  • The fandom you are nominating is an original work shared on a fan archive (please include a link to the creator’s permissions statement)

  • The fandom you are nominating is a social media post (please check RPF restrictions), headline, meme, or other “ephemeral” canon (please include the URL for the canon)

  • The fandom you are nominating includes a Worldbuilding nomination for an RPF or other real-world fandom

  • The fandom you are nominating includes the words “All Media Types” or “and Related Fandoms” and you believe you need to use that label

  • The fandom you are nominating is closely related to another fandom, especially if the other fandom is ineligible (ex: a Star Wars cartoon or tie-in novel, a prequel to a popular book series, or an audio drama sequel of an ineligible TV show)

  • The fandom you are nominating does not yet exist on AO3 and is hard to google (very common name, few sources in English, etc). Note: Most new fandoms do not need evidence.

Mods will not consider the following evidence:
  • Use of original characters

  • Crossovers

  • Fic quality

  • Ambiguous endings in stories that are marked 'complete'

  • Mistagging, wrong language, or not-many-authors evidence for fandoms that appear to have 1100+ eligible works on AO3. If you believe your fandom should be an exception, talk to the mods directly before commenting with evidence


If your fandom is one of these cases, you must leave evidence this year even if the fandom has been approved in the past. Otherwise, mods may reject the fandom if it’s nominated without evidence.

You must submit evidence before nominations close at 9 PM UTC on 26 September. It may take us some time to review and respond to your post, so if your nomination slots depend on our response, we recommend posting your evidence as early as possible!

Please put the fandom name in the subject line of your comment as well as inside your comment.

Suggested template:
<b>Fandom</b>:
<b>Possible issue with the fandom</b>:
<b>Why this fandom should be considered eligible</b>:
<b>Link to source (ephemeral fandoms, fanworks, and original works on fan archives)</b>:
<b>Link to creator's permissions statement (fanworks and original works on fan archives)</b>:

You are welcome to link to documents containing your evidence, if your post is long.

You can use bookmarklets for checking how many of your fandom’s works on AO3 are in English, complete, and over 1,000 words long, for any rating.

If your fandom appears too big before you use those filters, and is easily under 1,000 works after you apply the filters, then you don't need to tell us about it.

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Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

state of the me(dia) - aug

Sep. 8th, 2025 05:23 pm
marianas: (Default)
[personal profile] marianas
a little late, oops

READING
📖 Mr Collins in Love by Lee Welch - holy shit I loved this. it seems like it wouldn't work: a short novel in which Pride & Prejudice's Mr Collins is the romantic lead. but it does work. brilliantly. it is more a character study than a romance (but I *love* the romance) and it makes the probably smart choice to not show on page any of the scenes from P&P because we don't need them. just a wonderful lovely book.
📖 A Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley - it's the Natasha Pulley problem again: I get so swept up in how much I love her sentences, then come down from the book high and end up not sure if I even liked the book at all bc I'm remembering all the things that didn't quite work for me that my brain just slid right over while I was in it. I loved this for 3/4ths of the time I was reading it, thought it ended wrong (it deserved a tragic ending - I would have found it so much more emotionally satisfying), and now I don't think I liked it? Will continue to read everything she writes though, because the experience while I'm in it is like nothing else. (this sounds like drugs)
💻 a brief spin through the Captain Haddock/Tintin tag on ao3 for Reasons

WATCHING
📺 still on Apothecary Diaries, which remains very good

PLAYING
🎮 Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney - a retroactive liveblog of me playing the first case:
  • wtf wtf wtf
  • I love Apollo's thinking face
  • confident dirtbag Phoenix is so good
  • “grape juice” sure…
  • Phoenix did the point from a different angle!!!
  • that kid is definitely older than seven 🧐

🀄️ Mahjong Soul - extremely hooked on online mahjong. have managed to avoid spending any real dollars but have been engaging with the gatcha parts and have pulled 3 new characters. they added a mahjong balatro-like this month, which was very fun.

.

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