Goblin Emperor: Four Sisters by Akallabeth
Mar. 15th, 2026 07:57 pmPairings/Characters: Ursu Perenched, Holitho Sevraseched, Nadeian Vizhenka, Shaleän Sevraseched
Rating: Gen
Length: 9k
Creator Links:
Theme: siblings, minor characters, book fandoms, small fandoms, family, gen, female characters
Summary: Short scenes from the lives of four (half-)sisters, the unacknowledged daughters of the Great Avar.
Canon-compliant, to the best of my knowledge and ability.
Reccer's Notes: We only get a sentence in canon about each of these four sisters, but the details we get are really interesting. This is one of the best fics exploring the scant details we get.
Fanwork Links: Four Sisters
Long-term psychological effects of physical isolation
Mar. 16th, 2026 04:12 amI have a character in a sci-fi universe who ends up "shipwrecked" alone on a completely uninhabited planet for two years. The planet, and the specific environment he lands in, are perfectly habitable by humans (we are in soft scifi territory here, very Star Trek inspired) and he's able to survive with some effort. (The details of how are not really important to the story - I know at least that he's the kind of guy who'd be able to salvage some tech and emergency supplies from his wrecked ship, and I'm comfortable with brushing past the details of what exactly he brought with him - but if anyone's really interested in coming at it from that logistical angle, I won't stop you!)
What is more relevant to the story is how this experience would continue to affect him by the time he's back home safely. I think there are a bunch of possible avenues here and I'd love to see people's takes on how they would approach this or approach researching it. For example, here are some of my cursory thoughts:
- PTSD is certainly a likely long-term complication
- It's implied that his shipwrecking was not an accident/was engineered maliciously - I imagine this is something he has dwelt on heavily throughout the two years and will affect his ability to trust people (and to visit other uninhabited planets in the future!). Seems like it would be easy to get caught in delusional spirals in a situation like that.
- I know that prolonged isolation can cause hallucination/psychosis in some cases, especially in solitary confinement, sensory deprivation contexts, etc. Is that as much of a risk in this case? And if so, do you think he'd still be experiencing psychotic symptoms after the fact?
- One of his personality traits is that he's fairly attention-seeking - I think it's likely this incident will exacerbate that and make him more desperate for connection
- It'll probably alter how he approaches social situations in the future in general; that's something I'll definitely be thinking about
- Perhaps he got into the habit of talking to himself on the planet, and this never went away
Batman: proper rites by the magpie said (hollowmen)
Mar. 15th, 2026 07:44 pmPairings/Characters: Jason Todd, Damian Wayne
Rating: gen
Length: 7k
Creator Links: the magpie said (hollowmen)
Theme: siblings,
Summary: Being a cat for three weeks has repercussions, it turns out.
Jason snacks his way through one of them. Damian reads books. Both of them drink a lot of tea. It's nice, mostly, which Jason finds highly suspicious.
Reccer's Notes: This is sweet and deeply in character for both of them
Fanwork Links: proper rites
(Note: other fics by this author have been recced, but under a different pseud--they used to be magpiemountains (hollowmen))
Paul R. Ehrlich is dead
Mar. 15th, 2026 10:31 pmInterestingly, although he died a couple of days ago, I couldn't find a news article to which I felt comfortable linking.
Persuasion: the natural sequel by rain_sleet_snow
Mar. 15th, 2026 07:21 pmPairings/Characters: Anne/Frederick
Rating: Gen
Length: 8k words
Creator Links:
Theme: siblings, book fandoms, old fandoms, minor characters, small fandoms, five things
Summary: Five people who were surprised by Anne and Wentworth's engagement, and one who wasn't.
Reccer's Notes: Anne's siblings (and siblings-in-law) are not the only ones reacting to news of the engagement in this story, but they are most of the people reacting. I love the way the news causes each of them to re-evaluate Anne, and what they thought they knew.
Fanwork Links: the natural sequel
Culinary
Mar. 15th, 2026 05:44 pmLast week's bread held out admirably.
Friday night supper: ven pongal (South India khichchari).
Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, came out a bit more vanilla-y than usual.
Today's lunch: Norwegian halibut fillets panfried for slightly less long than suggested on packet, as I have found this in the past to be a bit of an over-estimate, served with samphire sauce, baby cauliflowers quartered and cooked thus (used lime and lemongrass vinegar for the acidulation) and La Ratte potatoes roasted in goosefat.
due South: lay down your heavy load by Sixthlight
Mar. 15th, 2026 05:09 pmPairings/Characters: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Maggie McKenzie
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 4,422 words
Creator Links:Ao3, Tumblr
Theme: Siblings, post-canon
Summary: "Maggie, moving on."
Reccer's Notes: This is a post-canon fic from the point of view of Maggie, Ben's sister. They didn't grow up together and she appears in exactly one episode of due South before disappearing back up to the Arctic Circle. In this post-canon fic they end up working together and get to know each other better. See also Sixthlight's short AU fic about Benton and Maggie from dS Ladies Fest!
Fanwork Links: Ao3
Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore
Mar. 15th, 2026 08:50 am
Hodge would like nothing better than to study American history. Be careful what you wish for.
Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore
Theatre with music in it
Mar. 15th, 2026 09:27 am( Read more... )
Operation Mincemeat (Touring Cast, Bath Theatre Royal)
( Read more... )
SGA: Postcards to Jeannie by Sholio
Mar. 15th, 2026 05:00 pmCharacters/Pairings: Jeannie Miller, Teyla Emmagan, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex
Rating: Gen
Length: 5000-10,000 (best guess) - the individual postcards are mostly text-based, in different fonts, but it's too hard to add it all up. There are 8 or so sets of postcards/images, plus two longer narrative interludes.
Content Notes: Not all of the postcards or notes have text equivalents, so it's not fully accessible. Rodney at one point talks about a relationship he had at uni with an older woman he describes as a "sex addict".
Creator Links: Sholio on AO3, Sholio's own site
Themes: Siblings, Epistolary, Friendship, Family, Team as family, Unconventional format and style
Summary: (more notes than a summary) Contains spoilers for the Season 3 episode "McKay & Mrs. Miller". I might be taking a certain amount of liberty with the timeline; let's assume that a few months went by between "M&MM" and "Return".
This is a very image-intensive story. Illustrations and photos are all by me, aside from one or two photos taken by my husband. A couple of the postcards utilize (heavily Photoshopped) patterns that I got off the Internet to represent fabrics and such, because I didn't have anything suitable.
Reccer's Notes: This is a heartwarming epistolary story in which Teyla and Jeannie (Rodney's sister) write to each other. Eventually the other team members are brought in as well, especially John and Rodney. It's a mix of tales about Jeannie's life, and of the team's, especially Teyla's, adventures, and although the format as a series of postcard/image pages is a little awkward to negotiate, it's very much worth reading. The postcards start off somewhat formally, and quickly become more personal, and one theme is of the correspondence bringing Rodney and Jeannie closer together. It's touching, funny, tinged with the realities and sadnesses of life in the Pegasus galaxy, and an excellent read.
Fanwork Links: Postcards to Jeannie (and the sequel is Pictures for Jeannie)
Performing some traffic maintenance today
Mar. 14th, 2026 01:04 pmHappy Saturday!
I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!
If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.
Tank Wars (1990) · QBasic Gorillas (1991)
Mar. 14th, 2026 02:39 pm
Tank Wars, created by Kenneth Morse, allows you to customize a myriad of game options, from windspeed to the color of the sky. You can play hotseat multiplayer, or if you have a keyboard and a mouse (fancy!) you and a friend can huddle around the computer together and split the controls. If your friends are unavailable there are CPU opponents of various levels of skill, from "Mr. Stupid" to "Wind Master". As you rack up points you can buy bombs with different blast radii, and when you win the terrain blows up in a satisfying crater and rains back down on the field in an elaborate shower of pixels.
QBasic Gorillas came with MS-DOS 5.0 and was created by Microsoft as a demonstration of the capabilities of the QBasic programming language. You and your opponent are gorillas who throw exploding bananas, and when you win, you do the Monkey.
Tank Wars is, I suppose, the "better" of the two games, in the sense of having more sophisticated graphics and gameplay. But does it have dancing gorillas? Does it have exploding bananas? Does it have a cartoon sun that makes a face like 😮 if you manage to hit it? I ask you. I did play both games a lot, but I know which one was more appealing to my sensibilities as a child of 8-9 years of age.
Books Received, March 7 — March 13
Mar. 14th, 2026 12:21 pm
Seven books new to me: four fantasies, one science fantasy, one science fiction, and I am not sure how to categorize the Shepard. At least three are series books.
Books Received, March 7 — March 13
Which of these look interesting?
The Lion and the Deathless Dark by Carissa Broadbent (July 2026)
4 (10.5%)
Teach Me to Prey by Jenni Howell (December 2026)
0 (0.0%)
Heart of Thieves by Jessica S. Olson (September 2026)
0 (0.0%)
The Dagger in Vichy by Alastair Reynolds (October 2025)
16 (42.1%)
Crows and Silences by Lucius Shepard (December 2024)
15 (39.5%)
Engines of Reason by Adrian Tchaikovsky (September 2026)
20 (52.6%)
The Heart of the Reproach by Adrian Tchaikovsky (July 2025)
16 (42.1%)
Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.6%)
Cats!
25 (65.8%)
Yet another thing to worry about???
Mar. 14th, 2026 04:11 pmGoodness knows, some real weirdness is revealed in You Be the Judge in Guardian Saturday, but today's produces a theory which is entirely new to me -
But apart from all this hoohah about HYGIENE, I am rather taken with New Health Scare Theory:
Boiling water twice is a no-no for me – there is a change in quality and taste. My life had a certain drabness to it – I now attribute that to consuming poor-quality water for so long without realising.
This could be a whole new thing, couldn't it? Once-boiled water for vitality!
I was going to ask are they living in a log cabin or what in Ohio if the kitchen is so freezingly cold in the mornings they have to warm up the mugs so that they do not immediately chill the coffee but I see the issue is poor insulation.
Maybe they should do something about insulation rather than bicker over 'secondhand water'?
