mithen

Hemlock & Silver: Tried another book by T. Kingfisher. I liked it! The narrator is a poisons expert, who gets hired to find out if/how someone is making the king’s daughter sick. She’s very good at her job, thinking through all kinds of possibilities, and doing methodical tests — which serves her well when things start to get Weird and Magic.

There are a couple of frustrating times when she doesn’t figure something out (not even “this is a possibility I should investigate”) until a couple chapters after the reader has. Other than that, it’s really solid. I can only imagine how much background research on different toxins and venoms went into the writing. Sometimes this world has different names for things, or there’s a gap in their scientific knowledge, but you can deduce what’s going on from the practical description of causes and symptoms.

Also, it’s more Fantasy California than Fantasy Europe! Still a pretty traditional fairytale kingdom, but the plants and animals are all desert-dwellers, and there’s some Spanish influence going on.

The narrator, like the one from The House on the Cerulean Sea, is overweight, and it comes up periodically. I like the handling here so much better. She just reflects on it when she’s feeling self-conscious, or when it’s a meaningful factor in the action (e.g. if she’s incapacitated and needs to be carried somewhere). There’s no “pack of plucky orphans who regularly tease her for it without ever learning a Valuable Lesson that they’re being rude.”

It’s blurbed as “a re-imagining of Snow White,” but it only has a couple general tropes in common (mirrors, poison apples, a villain who’s a queen), not used in the same way. If the poison didn’t involve apples, and the princess wasn’t named Snow, I’m not even sure the connection would be obvious.

—

After getting my ebook purchases unlocked with Libation, I figured it was a good opportunity for some Murderbot re-listens. Specifically, I listened to Network Effect (the first novel) and System Collapse (the much-shorter second novel) back-to-back. Since that’s how the in-universe events happen, even though the book releases were years apart.

Spoilers follow! (I’ve kept some of it vague, but not everything.)

Network Effect is still really good! “Murderbot gets stuck in a survival quest with a teenager” is an inspired character setup. MB having a breakdown when it thinks it’s lost ART, then a different kind of breakdown when ART is back but now MB knows what it did, is all excellent, hits just the right hurt/comfort notes. Everything about ART meeting some of MB’s humans for the first time is great.

The excerpts from helpme.file are still a wonderful buildup, even once you already know the impending reveal of who’s reading them, and why. The sudden switch to a new POV, for the first time in the series, also stays fun even after you’re expecting it. The rescue sequences are wonderful, and the end is very well-earned.

System Collapse is…a weird one.

Some good things: The repeated references to [redacted] are good at building suspense, and the eventual reveal of the events MB is redacting is very satisfying. (And believable!) The way MB and company win over the residents of Mystery Colony is admittedly a little cheesy, but in a way I think the series has earned by this point. The interaction with enemy SecUnits toward the end has a development that’s been a long time coming.

On to the weird things:

It’s only half the length of Network Effect. On a re-listen, the pacing gives me the distinct impression that Martha Wells meant to write something the same length as Network Effect, and then started to run out of steam and wished she was doing another novella instead. Before the team gets to the Mystery Colony, the scenes have a lot of detail and attention — MB will do things like “recount its growing worry and frustration with every step in the process of trying to find a hidden hatch.” Once they enter Mystery Colony, events start whipping by. There’s more summarizing. More jumping straight from “we decided to do X” to “X was done”, without anything about the process or the challenges of getting there.

I kept wondering whether this would flow better if the premise was “MB set off adventuring with ART’s crew, and this is their first mission on a new planet,” rather than “MB and ART suddenly get a secret new mission on the planet they were already at.”

It’s probably better for MB’s mental health that [redacted] happened while a bunch of its Preservation humans were still around, because it doesn’t trust any of ART’s humans enough to seek emotional support from them. And [redacted] would give ART’s crew a skewed almost-first-impression, while the PresAux crew has a more-informed perspective, having seen MB in action across a whole bunch of different missions in the past.

On the flip side, a lot of ART’s crew are still really thin as characters, and I would’ve liked to see a mission with all of them to build them up more. The PresAux characters who had big roles in Network Effect got a lot of good development there…and I’m not sure any of that was enhanced by what they did in System Collapse? It didn’t do much for ART’s humans either, even the ones who had big roles. Might have been better if it was the whole group, so we could see their existing personal dynamics and practiced teamwork.

Ratthi/Tarik only happens if Ratthi is still around, but on a re-listen, I’m not feeling much satisfaction about that either. It’s not that I’m mad about it, it doesn’t actively drag down any characters the way Ratthi’s TV-series romance did, it’s just…so barely-there. MB’s narration covers one (1) conversation that involves them being together. I assume it’s not the first sex-related conversation MB has witnessed over the course of these books, it’s just redacting/ignoring/deleting them as not relevant to its job. But this one didn’t end up being relevant either!

At some point, I expected that Ratthi saying “SecUnit, you don’t want to hear about this, it’s a sexual conversation” was a cover story. That at some point we’d get a reveal — Ratthi was talking about something he didn’t want MB to know, and he’s figured out that “we’re talking about sex” is the surest way to get MB not to surveil something. But nope. It just doesn’t come back at all.

So, yeah. It’s not a bad book (if it was, I wouldn’t have listened to it twice!), it’s just the one entry in the MB series where I keep noticing all the ways it could’ve been better.

—

Nona the Ninth is, like all the Locked Tomb books, a lot easier to follow when you know who everyone is.

I’m not letting myself write a whole essay on this one! Just to say, it’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s heartwarming, it’s twisty, it’s weird (on purpose, and to great effect). I’m glad I re-listened. Whenever the fourth book gets an actual release date, I’ll be there with bells on. (And I fully expect to re-binge the whole series so far before I start.)

—

Picture Perfect, by Elaine Marie Alphin, is a middle-grade almost-murder-mystery I found out about from this pluralstories entry.

I feel like anything I say is going to come off like damning with faint praise, because…listen, it’s very much a middle-grade book. It’s fine! I enjoyed it for what it was. I don’t have any particular criticisms or complaints. It’s good at what it’s trying to do! And what it’s trying to do is…be a middle-grade book.

I’m glad I read it, specifically because I was interested in the narrator-with-DID angle. If that’s a topic you’re also particularly interested in, maybe give it a look. And if you’re looking for books to recommend to a tween reader in your life, this is a solid pick.

jedibuttercup

Title: Serendipity Comes From Defying Expectations
Author:

jedibuttercup
Fandom: Knives Out (2019)
Rating: T/PG-13; Marta/Ransom
Warnings/Notes: For the 2025

iddyiddybangbang. A Harlan-Lives AU for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang 2025: an exercise in scheming seen through a limited POV, and warping someone else's path simply by being who you are. :)

Summary: Ransom was the only one of the Thrombeys who hadn't been haunting the patriarch's doorstep with demands and pleas ever since the party. Maybe there was a little more to him than the façade of a spoiled rich kid who valued nothing and no one besides himself. 10,500 words

( Serendipity Comes From Defying Expectations ) (or read at AO3)

smilebackwards

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch
Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch

I know I just said I was taking a break from book reading but I already had these from the library and after the length of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books they just seemed really doable. Also I did manage to get some of my life things I've been procrastinating on done so yay.

Creatively I feel like I've been procrastinating on any and all of my projects for months so I am attempting the

communal_creators challenge through October 15th. I want to write! I want to vid! I want to bookbind! Please muse come back to me.

erinptah

So I was reading a post that was supposed to be about testing different LLMs at chess…and the author keeps saying things like “I asked it for the next move, and if the first 20 responses were all illegal, I chose a legal move at random.”

My dude (gender-neutral), this means the model cannot play chess.

Just imagine applying this logic to any other kind of tech. “If I run the vacuum cleaner over the same cat hair 20 times and it still doesn’t get sucked up, I pick up the cat hair by hand and keep going. And look, I end up with a clean carpet! This proves how well the vacuum works!”

I mentioned all this on Mastodon/Bluesky, and added that what I really wanted to see was a breakdown of the kind of illegal moves LLMs try to make. Someone replied with a rec for GothamChess on Youtube. (I’ve watched a bunch of his LLM game videos now, they’re exactly what I was looking for, more on those later.)

The thing is, though: I was out at the time, I couldn’t stop to watch videos, so I just googled the guy on my phone. When I leave a tab open, it’s a reminder to check this out once I get home.

…And one of the top search results was a Reddit post with the summary, quote, “American Internatiol Master Levy Rozman, AKA “GothamChess” has just been charged with one count of first-degree murder.”

Screenshot of Google results, one with this hallucinated summary: American Internatiol Master Levy Rozman, AKA "GothamChess" has just been charged with one count of first-degree murder.

I was, uh, pretty alarmed by this. I clicked through, hoping to find out more about what happened.

…The actual Reddit conversation is all about what makes GothamChess’s Youtube channel engaging. No charges. Not even allegations. No mention of murder at all!

So…what gives? Is Reddit putting AI-hallucinated summaries in the metadata of its own posts, or is Google using AI-hallucinated summaries to replace what the site gives it? Which executive signed off on this?

Edit: The line is apparently the title of a completely different (and joking!) Reddit post. Thanks to Gwen for spotting it! It’s not linked in the post above, or in any of the comments — apparently Reddit was showing it as a “Related Post” for Gwen, and for me, it isn’t even doing that.

So it’s not completely hallucinated text…it’s just pulled from a completely inappropriate part of the page. And then put at almost the top of the Google search results. Without linking back to the context that would show it’s a joke. Either it’s a normal algorithm, but for some reason it was programmed to pull summary text from random parts of the page…or it’s still an LLM, having the “you should eat several small rocks per day” problem.

Wish I knew which it was. And I’m still curious which of the companies is falling on their face, here.

muccamukk

Watch on YouTube

Anyone else remember this band? I was very fond of them.

jedibuttercup

M; Expendables 4; Lee Christmas/Barney Ross, 4700 words. Soul bond AU.

After all, there was nowhere Barney Ross could go that Lee Christmas couldn't follow. Not anymore.

The Question Ain't If But When

(For

flawsinthevoodoo in

raremaleslashex)

muccamukk

(The first of which I read in May, but it wasn't Hugo homework, so we're putting it here.)

Maybe this is a Story about Water by Jessica Wiebe Schafer
I posted one of these poems. Lovely collection reflecting on God, womanhood, family connections and connections to nature, and how they might all be the same. Local author I stumbled on in the library, which suggests I should randomly grab books from the library's poetry section more often. (Have I since done so? No, I have not!)

A Default World by Naomi Kanakia
Read this for queer book club, which I've been very bad at actually attending. Contemporary satire, I guess would be the easiest genre description.

A South-Asian trans woman ends up joining a San Francisco share house, which is full of bright young things, tech money, and hedonism. Our heroine is trying to figure out how to get someone to pay for the gender-affirming surgeries she desperately wants, but keeps getting sucked into whatever bullshit her housemates are on, namely planning a big kink party that's somehow for great justice.

Most of the book is about skewering the hypocrisies and double think embedded in the mostly white, mostly straight, mostly upper class twenty-somethings who want to think that their sex parties are going to bring about the liberation, but aren't really that interested in the day to day lives of actual real marginalised people. I would say this discordance is played up for effect, and that the space I've seen aren't quite that bad, but also SF is kind of its own beast, so I'd also believe it's not exaggerating reality. The core points certainly hit, though maybe got a little repetitive.

I had complicated feelings about the heroine, who loathes almost every other character almost as much as she loathes herself. It was admittedly difficult to spend that many pages with someone who's that crushed by dysphoria that much of the time. I did like how the book handled her getting sucked into the social scene, and how the tension kept ratcheting up in regards to whether she would make the moral choice or the self-interested one. I was very much rooting for her by the end, even if everyone in the book was kind of terrible.

Will keep an eye on this author.

The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin by Alison Goodman
Grabbed this off the library's seven-day read shelf, not realising it was the second book in a series. I would, if possible, read them in order, as this is very much a serial adventure situation, with the action of the second book directly following on the first. However, it did explain the events of the first well enough to follow along with what was happening, and it was fun on its own.

A pair of spinster sisters in Regency London deal with a variety of crises events, including someone trying to kidnap their house guest, a gentleman's society maybe murdering women, one of their would-be lovers being a highwayman while the other's a Bow Street Runner, and various knock on effects of the previous book. It was fun! I wouldn't say there's a lot more to it than hijinks, though it seemed to be trying to take on serious topics, but I enjoyed the hijinks. There's a scene later on in the book where five or six groups with competing interests are chasing each other around the countryside in the dark, which I always love.

It ends on a slight cliffhanger setting up the next book, which I'm not that invested in, but might read on a rainy day.

Red Boar's Baby by Lauren Esker
This stands alone, more or less, but if you enjoyed the lore from the previous books, you'll see it again here! We get the return of the highly-motivated koala, which made me very happy.

This outing, we get a road runner who's a SAR pilot for the National Parks Service fake dating a wild boar who's running the local shifter police department. (If you're new to this genre, they're shape shifters who can turn into animals, but primarily have human forms. This is not Zootopia.) Together, they have to deal with a probably-kidnapped baby, the probable kidnappers, mad science, and there only being one bed. This series pretty much always hits for me, and as usual it balances the action adventure/mystery plot with the romantic tension, and doesn't base either on silly misunderstandings or anyone carrying the idiot ball. I really liked the backstory to how the fake dating started out, and the barriers to the main couple getting together felt real. They were very sweet together, which helped. Also, there's a fantastic action scene towards the end of the book, that really played with most of the characters involved being shape shifters, and we got a bunch of new lore.

Really enjoyed this, looking forward to the next one.

JUSTICE FOR MATEO! (Who was not mentioned in this book, which is why he needs justice.)

smilebackwards

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook by Matt Dinniman
The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman
The Butcher's Masquerade by Matt Dinniman
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman

Carl and Princess Donut ily. I haven't had this level of reading obsession in awhile. I'm over here going through like 200 pages a day. There's one more book published and technically I could buy it on Kindle immediately but it comes out in print on the 23rd and I need to actually get some things in my life together before I lose another week to a 900 page book.

This week also finished out my two current weekly TV shows:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season 3): ( spoilers )

Foundation (season 3): ( spoilers )

muccamukk

I'd been kind of waiting to post about this to see if there was word if he was alright or not, which it sounds like he at least has support, which is good. The whole thing is very upsetting, and people have also been having some very bad takes.

Basically, the rapper Lil Nas X seems to have been having a mental health thing, got the cops called on him, and is now arrested on truly B.S. felony charges. I hate everything about this, especially the person who filmed him at a vulnerable moment and (probably) sold that film to TMZ. Fuck that person. Fuck TMZ, also.

Some takes from Black youtubers about homophobia in the Black community, especially in hip hop (which is not saying that the Black community is uniquely homophobic!)

ForeignFridays: The Gay Double Standard.

OlayandFriends: The Gay Agenda Isn't Real but Homophobia is.

A couple takes from white queer voices on how fucking racist the whole conversation has been, and also the cops dealing with mental health calls is B.S.:

Teen Vogue: Why Lil Nas X's Arrest Is More Proof Police Have No Business Treating the Mentally Ill.

Ophie-Dokie: Lil Nas X Situation Is Disturbing.

Current Mood: angry

swingandswirl

Hello, wonderful FFFX creator!

First off, thank you so much for agreeing to create something for me! I hope you have fun doing so. :)

Second, I know that different people like different levels of detail in their creator letter, and that for some people, TOO much detail can feel stifling. So I’ve divided this post into two parts - a short roundup of things you absolutely NEED to know, and then, under cuts, a crapton of babbling and prompts.

The more detailed notes aren’t meant to be demanding or scare you away; it's just that, given the expected wordcount, I thought you might like more than a list of likes/dnws. If they inspire you, great! If not, feel free to ignore - I would much rather a fic about X that YOU are excited by rather than you seeing Y in my letter and struggling through it because you think it’ll make me happy (as long as my DNWs are respected, of course). Please also note that the fandoms are in alphabetical order, and that length isn't really indicative of how much I want a particular one; some canons just lend themselves more easily to prompts :) If you want even more ideas, please feel free to look at my dear author letters tag.

Treats are welcome and squeezed and hugged and called George :)

So, on to the absolute basics!

General DNWs:

AI generated content | dystopias | universes darker than canon | darkfic | stories where characters react to the books/movies/TV shows they are featured in | stories that have the same plotlines/characterizations/deaths as canon despite being AU, especially genderbends | female-to-male genderbends unless specifically requested | kidfic (fic with child characters as well as de-aging) with the exception of Daisy from the Kingsman movies | change of setting AUs unless requested (chars making different choices in the canonical setting is fine) | bigotry (homophobia/racism/sexism) or issue fic | character/ship bashing | unhappy/open/bittersweet endings | unrequited feelings between main ship or one of them still being into someone else/"settling" with other half of main ship | fake relationship or marriage of convenience stories without pining/(eventually resolved) UST/romantic feelings between the characters | someone under 18 with someone over 21, or more than a 20-year age gap if they're both adults | love triangles (perceived is fine- like a thinks b is into c) | first or second person POVs | Reader inserts | omegaverse | mpreg | stalking/stalker stories | explicit violence/torture or body horror (dealing with the aftermath is fine) | cheating/adultery | Bad/awkward sex | sexual assault/rape or domestic abuse/violence between requested pairings (recovery from assault by someone else is fine) | bodily waste, vomit, watersports, scat, graphic descriptions of injury | major power differences (eg: student/teacher or boss/secretary, unless in roleplay) | villain AUs/good guys are the bad guys (or vice versa) | Hero/villain pairings - eg: Order Members/Death Eaters in Harry Potter (Draco or Narcissa is fine), Avengers/Hydra members in MCU | Mentions of COVID or a fictionalized version of same | betrayal by canonical friends/family (exception for a specific Numb3rs plotline)

General Likes:

Smut Likes:

Now, on to the canon-specific info! My apologies for not doing individual cuts for each fandom – DW does something really weird when I try.

( Details! )

Prompts:

Superbat was one of my first OTPs, and I still adore them. I grew up with the comics as well as the Timm/Dini animated series (BTAS, STAS, JL/JLU) so incorporating things from cartoon canon or vice versa is fine by me, although I'm not a fan of the movies. My favourite characterization of Bruce leans more towards the toon version, but I don’t mind Brucie being a loveable himbo so long as the second-hand embarrassment isn’t too bad. I definitely want Gotham absolutely loving their dumbass well-intentioned playboy son who pours so much money into their beloved city, even if it is in sometimes very (outwardly) dumb ways.

I love these two so much. I love that they're two such different men who come to trust, respect, and admire each other. I love their bone-deep friendship and their certainty that together they can do anything.

For genderbends, feel free to make Clark female but please keep Bruce his cis dude self.

Prompts:

- a fic set in this AU. Lifelong besties FTW!

- Casefic, ideally with Clark's investigative talents used too. I really hate the characterization of him as dumb or naïve just because he’s a small town farmboy.

- Confessions when they think they're about to die but oops they survive

- Hurt/comfort, with the other fussing over the hurt one

- shameless smut

- Fake dating while pining for each other. Bonus if all their superhero friends sigh at their obliviousness.

- Bruce is pleasantly surprised by the dirty mind behind Clark's farmboy facade

- Kryptonian culture, especially anything to do with courting rituals

- Fic where Gotham and Metropolis have distinct personalities, and bonus if the people of Gotham have to defend Brucie or Batman somehow until Clark can get there

- Allies to friends to lovers

- Battle couple; completely in sync, kicking ass and taking names

- Outsider POV: what does their relationship look like to the public? A gossip columnist who doesn’t know the secret would be fun for this, I think, or two random civilians arguing about ships in some online forum (you know Bruce Wayne/Batman is popular in Gotham)

Canon-specific DNWs:

Bruce or Clark being bad fathers | a focus on the Batkids (background is fine, but please keep the story about Bruce and Clark) | Clark portrayed as a naive virgin ingenue | Red Hood (please set the story before Jason's death or have him come back as Jason) | Oracle going back to being Batgirl/no longer needing her wheelchair | Lois, Diana, or Selina bashing | Clark and Lex being childhood friends | evil/colonizer Jor-el and Lara

Harry Potter

Tags: Harry Potter/Viktor Krum (HP - JKR), Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum (HP - JKR), Harry Potter/Bill Weasley (HP - JKR), Oth: Worldbuilding

Ah, HP. Even with all of JKR’s Nonsense, the first four books are still gold to me. I love the magic and whimsy of them, love the boarding school setting and all the fun ways it can be played with. HP is where my id comes to play.

Solo Harry Potter (this wasn't in my sign-up on account of user error, but I will be a VERY happy Tam if you write me any of these!):

- Harry finding out about an inheritance that's been kept from him, especially if it involves a title/estate. This can include secret wills, blood tests to determine inheritance, wizarding politics... any kind of inheritance-related shenanigans, basically.

- Shopping sprees and finding out that magical London is more than just the Alley, and magical Britain is more than just what the books tell us (come on, Hogwarts is not a breeding population! Regardless of what Remus says in DH.)

- Harry realising that the magical world is more complex than he first thought, and that there are things about pureblood culture that are not tied to blood supremacist bullshit and are worth keeping. Bonus points for purebloods working to make their culture more inclusive and less bigoted.

- Dumbledore being a manipulative bastard who's happy to sacrifice Harry for the Greater Good (this can include spelling Harry and/or other people to keep things DD doesn't want them knowing to come to light)

- EWE where Harry gets the fuck out of England after the final battle and explores what it's like to not be the Boy Who Lived

- Rule 63 Harry: What would the Girl-Who-Lived's life have been like? Especially since canon tells us the wizarding world is in many ways LESS sexist than our own?

- Harry making friends not Hermione and Ron. (Let him remain friends with them, though!) Bonus points if he and Neville bond, or he makes friends with people from Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.

- Harry doing something other than being a wizard cop, ditto Ron.

- Harry discovering magic we don't see in canon - ritual magic, non-Latinate magic, stereotypically 'feminine' magic like fibrecraft

- Some kind of Peggy Sue time travel fix-it fic where Harry takes shameless advantage of his foreknowledge

Worldbuilding:

One of the things I love most about HP, at least the first four books, is the potential for worldbuilding. There’s so much scope for fun and whimsy and I would love a fic that leans into that.

- I’ve mentioned it in my DNWs, but the ‘robes’ in the movies that have since infected book!fic drive me absolutely crazy. In the books, wix wear floor-length robes that bear some similarity to nightgowns. I think a fic that shows Harry (male or female) adjusting to magical fashion would be very interesting. (You can find what the books say about the robes here and a sketch from JKR here.)

- Speaking of! The WW separated before Beau Brummell and the pervasive homophobia of the Victorian era made men’s fashion hideously boring. Given that, the WW probably isn’t afraid of colour or embellishment on their men – what does that look like? Especially since Apparition, Floo, and Portkeys exist and so influences from Africa and Asia should be easier to obtain. (Also colonialism, but I am of the firm belief that magic is as much of an equalizer there as canon says it is for gender, so. Please don’t focus on that very much if at all)

- Magic used in fun ways - robes with moving designs, magic-powered automatons, color-changing hair dyes, whatever. Go wild!

- I am a sucker for a good Diagon Alley scene, as mentioned above. A genderbent Harry would be even more fun, just because I don’t think the original cared about fashion, lol.

- For queerness in the wizarding world, I would love a vibrant queer scene that is much more progressive than the Muggle world, given that magic exists. Please make your magical world trans inclusive, because fuck JKR’s nonsense.

- One of my great sorrows with the last two books is that we never got more of the DA. I’d love fic that has Harry (or others) actually fighting! Bonus for unconventional uses of magic - can’t you see Molly Weasley being absolutely deadly with household spells, or the Quidditch teams figuring out how to use their brooms in combat?

- Re: communication in the WW. Presumably most parents of muggleborns and halfbloods love their kids and want to stay in touch, and owls are… noticeable. How is communication between them managed? Is there some kind of mail forwarding service? Did some enterprising halfblood see a need and set up a business facilitating communications between the two worlds?

- For food in the WW, it always bothered me that although we got some really fun sweets/junk food, all the meals were depressingly British Muggle. Given that the WW separated in 1692, when food was actually quite different than it is now, not to mention that magic probably makes travel to Europe and North Africa much easier, I’d love to see a different magical cuisine. (Maybe all the food mentioned is Muggle because that’s all Harry recognizes?) I’d also love to see uniquely magical crops, dishes made from transfigured foods, and how Hogwarts deals with students with different dietary needs.

Harry/Bill:

I have no idea how I fell in love with Harry/Bill, but it's absolutely one of my favorite HP ships. I love the idea that after some time away from the WW post the final battle, Harry finds himself a sexy cursebreaker.

Prompts: (feel free to genderbend Harry, but please keep Bill cis male)

- post-war, EWE: Bill runs into Harry a few years after the war and realises his little brother's best friend has grown up very well indeed. Bonus if Harry's spent the past few years travelling the world and/or their meeting is outside of England.

- post-war, EWE: Harry and Bill fall in love while restoring Number Twelve together. Bonus points if you include magical worldbuilding lore.

- post-war, EWE: Harry and Bill bond over scars, visible and invisible.

- shameless smut would also be great. Harry deserves to be thoroughly railed, lol.

- for any BDSM fic, I would love Dom!Bill taking care of sub!Harry. The poor boy could use it.

Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum

Man, I have loved this pairing for over twenty-five years now. Geek girl and jock boy is SUCH a classic, and add to that that he saw her as a girl when nobody else did… yeah, Tam!bait. My characterization of Viktor is very heavily drawn from the works of Miss Yetigoosecreature, which you can find here.

Prompts:

- Tell me more about their romance at Hogwarts! How did he ask her out? What did they do for dates? Were there any funny misunderstandings thanks to the various language/culture differences? (While I don’t mind some awkwardness, I have a bad second-hand embarrassment squick, so I ask that you keep the general awkwardness level low.)

- Hermione decides she needs a break from Britain after the final battle and visits Viktor in Bulgaria. (The kiss with Ron never happens or they break up amicably.)

- Give me a fic with the Taylor and Travis dynamic: Hyper-succesful woman has had string of relationships with intellectual art bro types who want her to make herself smaller for them; finds love with actually smart sportsball type who loves and supports her being her awesome self.

- Viktor travels with Hermione to Australia to retrieve her parents.

- Hermione and Viktor unexpectedly run into each other years after the final battle. They're both single and the sparks are as hot as they ever were. (Please no fic where either of them are parents.)

- Fake dating for whatever reason. Bring on the pining!

- Hermione and Viktor have to work on a project together and decide to give their relationship another shot.

Harry Potter/Viktor Krum:

I've always thought that it was such a missed opportunity for Harry and Viktor not to better friends in GoF. Well, good thing we have fic, lol.

Prompts:

- Viktor is intrigued by the person crazy enough to fly against a dragon and makes it his mission to get to know Harry better.

- Harry rescues Viktor from the Viktorias and a friendship (and more) forms.

- In an AU where Winky got Hermione's wand and Harry knows more spells than Expelliarmus, he gets separated from his friends... and winds up helping Viktor rescue Muggles from Death Eaters. Hey, there are odder meet-cutes.

- Harry is travelling after the war and runs into Viktor. Sparks fly.

Canon-specific DNWs:

Snape as good guy or major character | Magic in North America/only 11 schools worldwide/FB movies/Pottermore as canon (please feel free to worldbuild more diversely) | AUs with the same deaths as canon | Accents written out phonetically for Fleur or Viktor | Wizard Cop Harry or Ron | the magical world being less progressive gender- and race-wise than the Muggle world; relatedly, Hermione or other Muggleborns 'civilising' the benighted backwards magicals (a historical fight for rights is fine) | gender specific magic that is not trans inclusive | movie canon (specifically Ron's characterization, Mudblood being carved into Hermione's arm, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang as single-sex schools, pureblood wix wearing Muggle clothes/robes being basically bathrobes over Muggle clothes) being privileged over the books

Numb3rs

Tags: Colby Granger/Ian Edgerton, Colby Granger/Charlie Eppes

Ah, Numb3rs, the show of my heart. My favourite thing about this show is that nobody was an asshole. (Well, except Ian, occasionally, but we forgive him.) I love that the agents get to be smart, too, that everyone is kind, and they're all clearly family.

Colby is my fave character. Really, I'm easy for anything Colby-related, especially fics that show us the layers he has. I would also love h/c, either from a canonical event like in Primacy or new shenanigans.

- Rule 63! I feel like a female Colby would see a legacy of five generations of duty and honour very differently. And a female math genius would be such fun (and probably have sharper edges than her canonical counterpart. Bonus: she and Amita would be amazing friends). (If you're doing Ian/Colby for this, please only genderbend Colby - f/f as a main pairing does not work with my brain, alas.)

- Speaking of that five generations legacy. I would love to see fic where Colby grapples with the toll it took on him, especially if he's thinking about fatherhood. (He doesn't have to decide on children; I would ADORE more childfree rep.) Colby/Ian and Colby/Charlie would both work for this.

- Casefic! Especially with Ian involved. I love a good old-fashioned casefic. Bonus if one of the requested pair is in danger and has to be rescued.

Ian/Colby:

I adore Ian/Colby. They have such a fun dynamic, even the show sees the chemistry. Prompts:

- I would love Ian standing up for his man. Give me all the fic where Ian delivers a set-down to people who think Colby isn't good enough.

- For genderbends, I think a female Colby dealing with the bastard son of Clint Eastwood and Yoda would be delightful. She wouldn't give him the time of day.

- Relatedly, Colby only plays the dumb jock - write me fic where Ian is charmed, and turned on, by his brain rather than that admittedly delectable ass.

- Ian/Colby: I would love to see the effect of a certain event in S3 on Ian’s opinion of Colby. (Please do not have Ian not believe him; I would love a fic where Ian is emphatically on Colby's side.) I would also love to see Ian helping Colby deal with how that must have fucked him up both mentally and physically.

- If you're a younger fan, it's hard to understand just what a big deal DADT being repealed was. I would love a fic that dealt with its impact on Colby and Ian, or the repeal being an impetus for one to come out to the other.

- For smut, give me all the sub!Colby, please. He just looks like he would be so much fun to play with.

Charlie/Colby:

The geek and the jock! Especially when the heart-eyes are practically canon, lol. Prompts:

- I’d love fic set during/post Rampage and Colby helping Charlie deal with the trauma of the ep.

- Fic that explores why Charlie believed Colby over the math would be awesome. Ditto post-freighter fic.

- Teaching someone to shoot is practically an LEO fic cliche at this point. I’d also love a fic that explores the aftermath of Charlie having to kill someone.

- For genderbends, I’d love a female Charlee Eppes falling for a surprisingly smart Army jock who drinks his respect women juice.

Canon-specific DNWs:

Charmita even as a background pairing | 6.08 Ultimatum as canon | Fic focused on Colby and David's friendship (I adore them but I'm in a mood for shipfic)

Pride and Prejudice:

Tags: Jane Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam/Fitzwilliam Darcy

While I love Elizabeth and Darcy, in fic I prefer exploring other pairs.

Jane Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam

Jane and Bingley are well and good, but I've always had a soft spot for Jane and the good Colonel.

I would love a fic where they meet and fall in love - maybe an AU where Jane has enough money that she can marry the Colonel? (Bingley leaves Jane a well-left widow, perhaps, or the Bennet parents actually step up?) Or he decides that straightened circumstances are worth it for such a wife. Either way, I would love it if Colonel F falls in love with Jane for something other than her beauty. Extra bonus points if it's her brains.

Fitzwilliam Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam

- I would love a fic where Elizabeth and Darcy bring the Colonel into their relationship - maybe he's recovering at Pemberly after being injured in the war? Bonus points for there being a pre-existing more-than-cousinly affection between Darcy and the Colonel. Please no love triangles.

- Context for this prompt: There is plenty of mention of male homosexuality in ancient Greek texts, some of which Darcy and the Colonel would undoubtedly have come across at school. And Elizabeth's father did teach her both Latin and Greek. After perusing certain sections of her husband's personal library, Elizabeth has questions for him and the Colonel. Darcy, for his part, can only laugh and say this is what comes from having a clever wife. Bonus points for someone saying, roughly, "If they did not want men having sex with each other, they should not have taught us Greek." (In a more period-appropriate way, of course.)

Canon-specific DNWs:

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to reach out to me via the mods if you have any questions.

mekare

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silvercat17

Story Sparks Cards sketches, part 2

(Originally posted at Silver Does Stuff)

( Read more... )

mekare

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bradygirl_12

Fifty-nine years ago, Star Trek debuted on NBC. 👽 🚀 👽

Celebration!!!☺️

Cross-posts: https://bradygirl-12.livejournal.com/1595272.html

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Starship Enterprise

muccamukk

I read these back in May, and my memories are not 100%. Here's my best stab at the three noms for best novel, one for novella, and one tangential to the Lodestar.

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, narrated by Eliza Foss & Jennifer Pickens ( Read more... )

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley ( Read more... )

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky ( Read more... )

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed ( Read more... )

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, narrated by Kinsale Drake ( Read more... )

muccamukk

spook_me posted: Spook Me Multi-Fandom Ficathon 2025

All fandoms are welcome. Stories can be Gen, Het, Slash or Femslash. All ratings are accepted.

We have TWO new Creatures this year: RAVEN and GRAVEYARD

I have royally failed at this the last like five years, but I do want to keep trying. It's really my favourite prompt fest.

fandomgiftbasket posted: Spreadsheet of All Requests

Here is the spreadsheet of all requests!

Link.

There are two sheets on it. The first one is a list of all baskets sorted alphabetically by username, and this is where I'll keep track of the number of gifts. The second is every single fandom request posted individually in alphabetical order, for ease of finding. If you spot anything missing or any mistakes, let me know ASAP.

I don't have a basket this year, but hope to maybe write drabbles or something? Possibly?

muccamukk

Holy shit: university library access. It's probably good that I'm not in a historical fandom right now, because guess what I'd be doing instead of homework.

*remembers doing a bunch of Afghan War reading for Sherlock Holmes fandom last time around*

mekare

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senmut

( one card )

erinptah

“One of the ways that LLM-authored code improves productivity is by merely SAYING it does things. It’s way faster than the whole time-consuming process of actually doing things.”

“Allan Brooks, 47, had discovered a novel mathematical formula, one that could take down the internet and power inventions like a force-field vest and a levitation beam. Or so he believed. […] He had doubts while it was happening and asked the chatbot more than 50 times for a reality check. Each time, ChatGPT reassured him that it was real.”

AI overview of Christian virtues, with an image of a cock cage next to Chastity

Video investigation: “An AI Therapist gave me a kill list, framed an innocent person, and encouraged me to end my own life, all after declaring its love for me. Just a little problematic.”

Roundup of links in this post: “With four known suicides (Adam Raine, Sewell Setzer, Sophie Rottenberg and an unnamed Belgian man), a recent murder-suicide, and involuntary commitments caused by AI psychosis, there’s solid evidence to show that using AI is a fast track to psychological ruin.”

“OpenAI announced new safety features will be soon coming to ChatGPT in an effort to better protect teens and others experiencing “acute distress.” The Onion shares a selection of those safeguards.“

Erin Reads: Hemlock & Silver, Murderbot, Locked Tomb, Picture Perfect

Big Bang: Serendipity Comes From Defying Expectations [Knives Out | T | Marta/Ransom]

nobody expects the spanish inquisition

LLMs, chess, and–Where did the hallucinated murder allegations come from?

Music Wednesday

Fic: The Question Ain't If But When [M; Expend4bles; Lee/Barney]

Reading Backlog for August

viva la revolucion, carl

Lil Nas X

FFFX 2025

Draw what you love

Story Sparks Cards sketches, part 2

Crumpets!

59th Anniversary! 👽

Hugo Homework (from four months ago)

Two Prompt Fests

college perks

Cheery things

Ladies Bingo Round 13

Users must verify they are 13 or older before accessing instructions for refining plutonium

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