Sholio (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sholio) wrote2025-12-12 05:27 pm
sholio) wrote2025-12-12 05:27 pmEntry tags:
Rec-Cember: Two recent short Murderbot gen fics
As I don't have the bandwidth for a lot of reccing tonight, here are two quick recs of short Murderbot friendship gen from the last couple of days that I enjoyed. Both of these are more bookverse than show-based.
Ransom by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
BoldlyNo (400 wds, Gurathin-centric)
Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.
The Truth, Bitter as It Is byHonorH (900 wds, Gurathin & Murderbot)
An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.
Ransom by
Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.
The Truth, Bitter as It Is by
An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.
Sholio (sholio) wrote2025-12-12 03:51 pm
sholio) wrote2025-12-12 03:51 pmEntry tags:
A couple of links
amperslashexchange just announced a collection delay and still needs pinch hitters! See if there's anything you can pick up here - there are some with bigger fandoms as well as some small fandoms.Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:
“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”
Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.
Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:
“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”
Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.
rachelmanija (rachelmanija) wrote2025-12-12 01:45 pm
rachelmanija) wrote2025-12-12 01:45 pmEntry tags:
The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
After a wet-bulb heat wave kills thousands in India, the UN forms an organization, the Ministry for the Future, intended to deal with climate change on behalf of future generations. They're not the only organization trying mitigate or fight or adapt to climate change; many other people and groups are working on the same thing, using everything from science to financial incentives to persuasion to terrorism.
We very loosely follow two very lightly sketched-in characters, an Irish woman who leads the Ministry for the Future and an American man whose life is derailed when he's a city's sole survivor of the Indian wet-bulb event, but the book has a very broad canvas and they're not protagonists in the usual sense of the word. The book isn't about individuals, it's about a pair of phenomena: climate change and what people do about it. The mission to save the future is the protagonist insofar as there is one.
This is the first KSR book I've actually managed to finish! (It's also the only one that I got farther in than about two chapters.) It's a very interesting, enlightening, educational book. I enjoyed reading it.
He's a very particular kind of writer, much more interested in ideas and a very broad scope than in characters or plot. That approach works very well for this book. The first chapter, which details the wet-bulb event, is a stunning, horrifying piece of writing. It's also the closest the book ever comes to feeling like a normal kind of novel. The rest of it is more like a work of popular nonfiction from an alternate timeline, full of science and economics and politics and projects.
I'm pretty sure Robinson researched the absolute cutting edge of every possible action that could possibly mitigate climate change, and wrote the book based on the idea of "What if we tried all of it?"
Very plausibly, not everything works. (In a bit of dark humor, an attempt to explain to billionaires why they should care about other people fails miserably.) Lots of people are either apathetic or actively fighting against the efforts, and there's a whole lot of death, disaster, and irreparable damage along the way. But the project as a whole succeeds, not because of any one action taken by any one group, but because of all of the actions taken by multiple groups. It's a blueprint for what we could be doing, if we were willing to do it.
The Ministry for the Future came out in 2020. Reading it now, its optimism about the idea that people would be willing to pull together for the sake of future generations makes it feel like a relic from an impossibly long time ago.
osprey_archer (osprey_archer) wrote2025-12-12 03:14 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2025-12-12 03:14 pmEntry tags:
White Christmas
Continuing my Christmas quest with a rewatch of White Christmas! This is one of my all-time favorite movies. I wrote Yuletide fic for it (Bob/Phil ofc), I’ve seen it on the big screen with the whole theater singing along at the end, seen it in general more times than I can count. (Despite this, I still have to check Wikipedia for the character names. I know who the characters are and how they pair off! I just can’t remember which name goes with which!)
So yesterday when I was taking a sick day, I figured another rewatch could only be good for my health, and of course I was right. Just such a fun movie. I love the song and dance numbers, and pine for the day when Hollywood would just straight-up stop a movie for a musical interlude. Why must everything “advance the plot” or “further character arcs”? Is it not enough sometimes just to watch Vera-Ellen taptaptaptaptap her toe real fast?
Also pour one out for Mary Wickes, who steals the show as General Waverly’s housekeeper Emma. I think my favorite single bit in the movie is the part where Emma overhears (because of course she’s listening in on the extension) that Bob and Phil are bringing their show to the empty ski lodge to rehearse (thus bringing in some much-needed income). She tells Phil and Bob that that’s just the nicest thing she ever heard and then kisses them both, and Bob is like “wowza” and is just about to go in for more when Phil drags him off.
I still love Bob and Phil’s chemistry, and I do kind of ship it but in a way where it also doesn’t bother me that the movie’s whole plot revolves around getting them together with girls. Phil and Judy have fantastic chemistry too, although possibly more shenanigans chemistry than romantic chemistry. (They might be able to work as a marriage, though.)
I don’t love Bob and Betty as a couple, mostly because their big misunderstanding is so movie-contrived. This really is a case where Betty could just say what’s bothering her and Bob could explain and they could sort it all out without Betty running off in a huff to the Carousel Club in New York! Since this is a big part of the story you’d think it would sink the movie, but everything else works so well for me that when we get to this bit I always sigh “ho hum” and wait patiently for the big “White Christmas” finale. Simply a perfect ending tableau.
So yesterday when I was taking a sick day, I figured another rewatch could only be good for my health, and of course I was right. Just such a fun movie. I love the song and dance numbers, and pine for the day when Hollywood would just straight-up stop a movie for a musical interlude. Why must everything “advance the plot” or “further character arcs”? Is it not enough sometimes just to watch Vera-Ellen taptaptaptaptap her toe real fast?
Also pour one out for Mary Wickes, who steals the show as General Waverly’s housekeeper Emma. I think my favorite single bit in the movie is the part where Emma overhears (because of course she’s listening in on the extension) that Bob and Phil are bringing their show to the empty ski lodge to rehearse (thus bringing in some much-needed income). She tells Phil and Bob that that’s just the nicest thing she ever heard and then kisses them both, and Bob is like “wowza” and is just about to go in for more when Phil drags him off.
I still love Bob and Phil’s chemistry, and I do kind of ship it but in a way where it also doesn’t bother me that the movie’s whole plot revolves around getting them together with girls. Phil and Judy have fantastic chemistry too, although possibly more shenanigans chemistry than romantic chemistry. (They might be able to work as a marriage, though.)
I don’t love Bob and Betty as a couple, mostly because their big misunderstanding is so movie-contrived. This really is a case where Betty could just say what’s bothering her and Bob could explain and they could sort it all out without Betty running off in a huff to the Carousel Club in New York! Since this is a big part of the story you’d think it would sink the movie, but everything else works so well for me that when we get to this bit I always sigh “ho hum” and wait patiently for the big “White Christmas” finale. Simply a perfect ending tableau.
Sholio (sholio) wrote2025-12-11 12:23 pm
sholio) wrote2025-12-11 12:23 pmEntry tags:
Year in review and next year's plans
I normally do this at the end of the year, but I'm doing it early this year because I'll be out of town 'til the 27th, and I don't really expect much to change; all my publications for the year are publicated. See the tag for previous years' updates!
This year's cover grid:
3 full-length novels, 2 novellas, 1 collection. That's honestly much better than I was expecting; I spent most of the year clawing my way back from burnout, and the final two books were slammed out at the end of the year when suddenly my creative brain came back online.
( Checking in with last year's plan )
( Next year's plans )
( Edited to add: one more thing )
This year's cover grid:
3 full-length novels, 2 novellas, 1 collection. That's honestly much better than I was expecting; I spent most of the year clawing my way back from burnout, and the final two books were slammed out at the end of the year when suddenly my creative brain came back online.
( Checking in with last year's plan )
( Next year's plans )
( Edited to add: one more thing )
Sholio (sholio) wrote2025-12-11 01:46 am
sholio) wrote2025-12-11 01:46 amEntry tags:
Babylon 5 fic: Movie Nights
I finished something I started a while back!
Movie Nights (2735 words) - Babylon 5, seasons one to five
Summary: Just a bunch of aliens getting hooked on each other's trashy serial media.
Movie Nights (2735 words) - Babylon 5, seasons one to five
Summary: Just a bunch of aliens getting hooked on each other's trashy serial media.
Sholio (sholio) wrote2025-12-10 05:31 pm
sholio) wrote2025-12-10 05:31 pmEntry tags:
MASH Christmas fic
This is actually something I wrote last winter, February or so, when I was bingeing MASH. I figured that although I could post it at the time I wrote it, I could also wait and post it at actual Christmastime.
Goodnight Moon (1816 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Charles Emerson Winchester III, B. J. Hunnicutt, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Christmas, Missing Scene, Episode: s09e05 Death Takes a Holiday
Summary: Hawkeye makes a discovery. (Missing scene for 9x05 "Death Takes a Holiday," the season 9 Christmas episode.)
Goodnight Moon (1816 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Charles Emerson Winchester III, B. J. Hunnicutt, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Christmas, Missing Scene, Episode: s09e05 Death Takes a Holiday
Summary: Hawkeye makes a discovery. (Missing scene for 9x05 "Death Takes a Holiday," the season 9 Christmas episode.)
petra (petra) wrote2025-12-10 09:53 pm
petra) wrote2025-12-10 09:53 pmMake my wish come true - due South drabble, Food Bank Thank-You
ride_4ever just let me know about a donation, so I wrote:Make my wish come true (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Characters: Benton Fraser, Ray Kowalski
Additional Tags: Drabble, Christmas Fluff
Summary:
Ray observes a holiday tradition.
*
If you donate 25 USD in cash or in kind to a food bank or food pantry, tell me about it and I'll write for you!
petra (petra) wrote2025-12-10 09:23 pm
petra) wrote2025-12-10 09:23 pmEntry tags:
Cards will not arrive in time for the holidays
Happy "It's December Tenth" to all who observe it.
I have not written my Dark Outside pieces yet, far less addressed and sent the mail, so I will send cards When I Get To It.
I am still going to write for people; it'll just be in your email inbox come Solstice, not your physical mailbox come whenever. People who just wanted cards will get cards at some date TBD.
I have not written my Dark Outside pieces yet, far less addressed and sent the mail, so I will send cards When I Get To It.
I am still going to write for people; it'll just be in your email inbox come Solstice, not your physical mailbox come whenever. People who just wanted cards will get cards at some date TBD.
sage (sage) wrote2025-12-10 12:27 pm
sage) wrote2025-12-10 12:27 pmWhat I'm Doing Wednesday
books
A Companion to Women in the Ancient World by Sharon L. James (Editor), Sheila Dillon (Editor). 2012. Triggery as hell in the first third. Took a long time to read.
I started Natasha Pulley's Hymn to Dionysus, but it didn't grab me so it's on pause.
yarning
a) Thanks to some links from Petra, I learned to knit a few rows of garter stitch. And yet...it feels wrong. (I'm probably doing it wrong, though my little swatch looks vaguely like it's supposed to.) I found a video on knitting continental, so the yarn is on the correct side for my brain. But it feels weird. Maybe I'm just built for crochet...?
b) I think I've just about got the Vampire Lestat in gold pants crochet pattern complete. I'm testing it, which is a good thing, bc I found some errors. Meanwhile, I'm teasing the art doll on Tumblr (![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
mostlyvampires), hoping it'll eventually reach interested people. (I'd appreciate a reblog, if you see this! <333)
c) Next up maaaay be creating a red pants version. In the screen grabs from the trailer, that version doesn't have the necklace or microphone...unless I add them. I'm so impatient for more canon to work from! OR a different canon to bite me and demand yarning into being. OR commissions to make dolls of other people from photos. That's a thing I can do & it would be FUN!
d) Saturday evening some lovely anonymouse bought a Made to Order cat stitch scarf from me, but they didn't tell me what colors to use! I messaged them Sunday morning but didn't hear anything all day & hyperfixated on it, as you do. Then first thing Monday, there was a message with colors! So I spent all day Monday working on it, and then part of Tuesday weaving in all the million ends from the 45 color changes. And ouch my shoulder, but I've missed making these, so all in all, it was fun! AND, most importantly, I revised the listing to make it clear that ANY colors are doable, but you have to choose the colors! :g:
e) This is just me being fond, but yesterday someone bought the black sparkly amineko kitty with gold eyes after YEARS of it sitting on my couch waiting for a home. I'm so happy for it! \o/
healthcrap
Thursday's bone scan went fine, though the results weren't great. I may or may not have lost half an inch of height. I didn't stand up straight when she measured me, so I'm hoping not. OTOH, I haven't been exercising, so maybe so. :shrug: Yesterday was the doc appt for filling out transportation forms. I have doubts that it'll be approved, but we won't know til I send it in.
Yuletide
I keep having feelings about my fic, flipping between unutterably anxious and more or less pleased. The betas really helped, and there are many many editing days left between now and Dec 24, so maybe it'll be okay in the end. Monday night, despite my intention to stick it in a proverbial drawer for a few days, I couldn't get to sleep until after I got up and tinkered with it a little more. I keep changing sentences and hoping I'm improving it instead of breaking it. :crosses fingers and toes:
I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333
A Companion to Women in the Ancient World by Sharon L. James (Editor), Sheila Dillon (Editor). 2012. Triggery as hell in the first third. Took a long time to read.
I started Natasha Pulley's Hymn to Dionysus, but it didn't grab me so it's on pause.
yarning
a) Thanks to some links from Petra, I learned to knit a few rows of garter stitch. And yet...it feels wrong. (I'm probably doing it wrong, though my little swatch looks vaguely like it's supposed to.) I found a video on knitting continental, so the yarn is on the correct side for my brain. But it feels weird. Maybe I'm just built for crochet...?
b) I think I've just about got the Vampire Lestat in gold pants crochet pattern complete. I'm testing it, which is a good thing, bc I found some errors. Meanwhile, I'm teasing the art doll on Tumblr (
c) Next up maaaay be creating a red pants version. In the screen grabs from the trailer, that version doesn't have the necklace or microphone...unless I add them. I'm so impatient for more canon to work from! OR a different canon to bite me and demand yarning into being. OR commissions to make dolls of other people from photos. That's a thing I can do & it would be FUN!
d) Saturday evening some lovely anonymouse bought a Made to Order cat stitch scarf from me, but they didn't tell me what colors to use! I messaged them Sunday morning but didn't hear anything all day & hyperfixated on it, as you do. Then first thing Monday, there was a message with colors! So I spent all day Monday working on it, and then part of Tuesday weaving in all the million ends from the 45 color changes. And ouch my shoulder, but I've missed making these, so all in all, it was fun! AND, most importantly, I revised the listing to make it clear that ANY colors are doable, but you have to choose the colors! :g:
e) This is just me being fond, but yesterday someone bought the black sparkly amineko kitty with gold eyes after YEARS of it sitting on my couch waiting for a home. I'm so happy for it! \o/
healthcrap
Thursday's bone scan went fine, though the results weren't great. I may or may not have lost half an inch of height. I didn't stand up straight when she measured me, so I'm hoping not. OTOH, I haven't been exercising, so maybe so. :shrug: Yesterday was the doc appt for filling out transportation forms. I have doubts that it'll be approved, but we won't know til I send it in.
Yuletide
I keep having feelings about my fic, flipping between unutterably anxious and more or less pleased. The betas really helped, and there are many many editing days left between now and Dec 24, so maybe it'll be okay in the end. Monday night, despite my intention to stick it in a proverbial drawer for a few days, I couldn't get to sleep until after I got up and tinkered with it a little more. I keep changing sentences and hoping I'm improving it instead of breaking it. :crosses fingers and toes:
I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333
rachelmanija (rachelmanija) wrote2025-12-10 10:07 am
rachelmanija) wrote2025-12-10 10:07 amEntry tags:
The Night Guest, by Hildur Knútsdóttir
An Icelandic horror novella translated by Mary Robinette Kowal! I had no idea she's fluent in Icelandic.
Iðunn experiences unexplained fatigue and injuries when she wakes up, but is gaslit by doctors and offered idiotic remedies by co-workers. (Very relatable!) Meanwhile, she's being semi-stalked by her ex-boyfriend/co-worker, her parents refuse to accept that she's a vegetarian and keep serving her chicken, and the only living beings she actually likes are the neighborhood cats that she's allergic to.
After what feels like an extremely long time, it finally occurs to her that she might be sleepwalking, and some time after that, it finally occurs to her to video herself as she sleeps. At that point some genuinely scary/creepy/unsettling things happen, and I was very gripped by the story and its central mystery.
Is Iðunn going out at night and committing all the acts she's normally too beaten down or scared to do while sleepwalking or dissociating? Is she having a psychotic break? Is she a vampire? Is she possessed? Does it have something to do with a traumatic past event that's revealed about a third of the way in?
Other than the last question, I have no idea! The ending was so confusing that I have no idea what it was meant to convey, and it did not provide any answers to basically anything. I'm also not sure what all the thematic/political elements about the oppression of women had to do with anything, because they didn't clearly relate to anything that actually happened.
Spoilers!
( Read more... )
This was a miss for me. But I was impressed by the very fluent and natural-sounding translation.
Content note: A very large number of cats are murdered. Can horror writers please knock it off with the dead cats? At this point it would count as a shocking twist if the cat doesn't die.
osprey_archer (osprey_archer) wrote2025-12-10 08:13 am
osprey_archer) wrote2025-12-10 08:13 amWednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, which is actually a reread, which I realized fairly early on when the foppish country house owner explains that he’s staffed the place with murderers who have served their time. Just oncers, no more dangerous than the average man on the street, and anyway how else is he supposed to staff a country house given the servant problem in 1970s Britain? But I kept going, because Ngaio Marsh is always a good time, and also this book prominently features Troy who just happens to be at the country house to paint said foppish owner when the murder occurs… A Troy book is always especially a good time.
Maud Hart Lovelace’s The Trees Kneel at Christmas is set in Park Slope, where one of my friends lives, so every few pages I was shrieking “I know that place! I’ve crossed that street!” So naturally I loved the book, haha. Our heroine Afifi hears a story from her grandmother about how the trees kneel at Christmas back home in Lebanon, and becomes determined to walk to Prospect Park at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if the trees kneel in America, too.
I checked out Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1953 American Folksongs for Christmas purely because it was illustrated by Barbara Cooney, but found it unexpectedly fascinating. Seeger (stepmother of Pete Seeger) was, among other things, a collector of folk music, and this book is full of songs I’ve never even heard of, from the tradition of all-night Christmas Eve church singalongs, often in the South, where people would gather and sing till dawn.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started Tasha Tudor’s Take Joy, which is a compilation of Christmas stories/poems/carols etc illustrated by Tudor. The second story is Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the world’s saddest pine tree. In the woods, the pine is too entirely focused on growing bigger (big enough to be a Christmas tree!) to ever feel happy. Then it’s cut down to be a Christmas tree, and it’s taken to a house and covered with ornaments and candles, and it’s all very strange and confusing, but the pine tree thinks that it will be able to enjoy these celebrations once it gets used to them… except of course its life as a Christmas tree lasts for just one night, and then it’s tossed in the attic and dried out for firewood.
What I Plan to Read Next
As I feared, I’m already running low on Christmas chapter books. However, Christie has a Poirot Christmas book and a Miss Marple that’s set at Christmas (although not perhaps a Christmas Book), and I have been meaning to to a Miss Marple, so…
If you have any other classic mystery Christmas recs, let me know!
Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, which is actually a reread, which I realized fairly early on when the foppish country house owner explains that he’s staffed the place with murderers who have served their time. Just oncers, no more dangerous than the average man on the street, and anyway how else is he supposed to staff a country house given the servant problem in 1970s Britain? But I kept going, because Ngaio Marsh is always a good time, and also this book prominently features Troy who just happens to be at the country house to paint said foppish owner when the murder occurs… A Troy book is always especially a good time.
Maud Hart Lovelace’s The Trees Kneel at Christmas is set in Park Slope, where one of my friends lives, so every few pages I was shrieking “I know that place! I’ve crossed that street!” So naturally I loved the book, haha. Our heroine Afifi hears a story from her grandmother about how the trees kneel at Christmas back home in Lebanon, and becomes determined to walk to Prospect Park at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if the trees kneel in America, too.
I checked out Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1953 American Folksongs for Christmas purely because it was illustrated by Barbara Cooney, but found it unexpectedly fascinating. Seeger (stepmother of Pete Seeger) was, among other things, a collector of folk music, and this book is full of songs I’ve never even heard of, from the tradition of all-night Christmas Eve church singalongs, often in the South, where people would gather and sing till dawn.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started Tasha Tudor’s Take Joy, which is a compilation of Christmas stories/poems/carols etc illustrated by Tudor. The second story is Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the world’s saddest pine tree. In the woods, the pine is too entirely focused on growing bigger (big enough to be a Christmas tree!) to ever feel happy. Then it’s cut down to be a Christmas tree, and it’s taken to a house and covered with ornaments and candles, and it’s all very strange and confusing, but the pine tree thinks that it will be able to enjoy these celebrations once it gets used to them… except of course its life as a Christmas tree lasts for just one night, and then it’s tossed in the attic and dried out for firewood.
What I Plan to Read Next
As I feared, I’m already running low on Christmas chapter books. However, Christie has a Poirot Christmas book and a Miss Marple that’s set at Christmas (although not perhaps a Christmas Book), and I have been meaning to to a Miss Marple, so…
If you have any other classic mystery Christmas recs, let me know!