Below are some icons I made as alternates for tvmovie20in20 Round 23 and ships20in20 Round 5 with The Hunting Party.

[100 icons] The Hunting Party

Preview:


"A secret prison. A killer escape. The hunt is on......"

A week before the CH deadline, I thought I might have to default on my assignment. I had literally no words and no energy to try to make some. But at the last minute I got a nice, easy, short idea and wrote it in two days, and I was really happy with it. And then somehow in the three days before reveals I wrote two more things! Huh! And also a separate thing for Bulletproof!

for the man who has everything, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 1400 words. 5 times Liam flirted with Noel during the reunion tour, and one time he didn't have to. I WAS NOT going to sign up for CH this year, but a request turned up for Liam/Noel at the very last minute, and I could not possibly refuse. (I've decided that I'm allowed to break my no-signups rule for Oasis requests. It's not like there are lots of them!)

This feels like a spiritual sibling to my vignettes fic from last year, although not in the same continuity. That fic was about their slow relationship rebuild leading up to tour, while this is about rebuilding during the tour, but in both cases it's a lot of short scenes that string together into a bigger whole, relatively sparsely written. This one leans a lot harder on specific canon events, partly because the period during the tour gave us all way more to work with than the period before (which is mostly a total mystery to this day!).

I didn't think I had another of those in me, but once I had the idea the day before the deadline, it all flowed really smoothly. I wrote the last scene and was like "this is way too soppy and cheesy, I'll need to rewrite it," but then I came later to edit and decided it had exactly the right amount of cheese, actually! FEELINGS.

--

14 Capra, Drowning by Numbers (1988), Cissie/Cissie/Cissie/Madgett, 800 words. It happened like this: on a Saturday afternoon, Cissie, Cissie, and Cissie agreed it was time for an experiment.

This movie had been on my radar for a while, I think because I'd seen a Yuletide promo for it? I was motivated to finally watch it when a CH request came up for pinch hit. It's a deeply weird, surrealist meditation on death featuring three women named Cissie and also starring Bernard Hill, and after I finished I was like, "I definitely cannot write fic for this." Then I went to take a shower, had not even gotten into the shower yet when the first line came to me, and I put my clothes back on, sat down, and wrote the whole thing in half an hour.

The fic is partly a "for want of a nail" fix-it of canon, and partly simply a fill for the prompt of the Cissies taking turns with Madgett. I think of all the fic I've written, it's probably one of the least comprehensible for reading canon-blind. I had fun, though, and christened the fandom tag, which is always nice. And the recipient seemed to really like it, which is the most gratifying part of writing something super niche. <3

--

full-service, The Housemaid, Millie/Nina, 2100 words. The obligatory post-canon cunnilingus fic, as you do.

This movie ended with such interesting possibilities for these two, and I knew my friend lioness was requesting them for CH, but what really got me to write this was that there were two entire fics in the fandom tag and neither for this ship. ;___; I wrote it all in a rush over two days, and I think it kind of shows, but I had fun, and maybe people will see the vision and write more of them. I would definitely read more about Millie's post-canon exploits and how her relationship with Nina evolves.

--

tea in the moonlight, The Endless, Aaron/Justin, 1700 words. The red flower knocks Aaron up, with Justin's assistance, and they have to decide what to do about it.

I had about 200 words of this for the Bulletproof tag "complicated but ultimately positive feelings about incestuous mpregnancy," one of maybe half a dozen Bulletproof false starts this year. I didn't think it was going to go anywhere, but after I finished the Housemaid fic, it turned out I still had energy left over, and I wrote the rest of it and posted it that same day.

I didn't end up gifting it to anyone, so as one of exactly twelve fics in the fandom tag, it hasn't gotten much attention. Now I'm kind of second-guessing posting it at all, or at least posting so soon without letting it sit for a while and giving it another editing pass. It's not remotely on the same level as my other Endless fic. OTOH I do really like the weird incesty mpreg feelings in it. IDK.

The below icons are for ships20in20 Round 5 with The Hunting Party various ships.

Preview:



The hunt is on......

50 total - The Pitt, Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Superman (2025), Fantastic Four (2025)



more here stillpermanentt

20 Stargate SG-1 icons from 10x14 The Shroud

  

Check out the rest here. <3 

I posted some recs for Candy Hearts here.

Fandoms:
True Detective: Night Country
Heated Rivalry
Original Work
Wake Up Dead Man

A few recs before author reveals! (And then a reveals post tonight lol.)

First, my gifts! Both for True Detective: Night Country.
The Near Horizon, Danvers & Navarro, 3k. Danvers has a new mystery to solve, and sometimes, if she stands in the right place and looks in the right direction, Navarro might show up and give her information about it. A post-canon fic with some lovely lines, great Danvers voice, and some of that same ambiguity we saw in canon re: exactly what the heck the end of Navarro's story was.

the mercy of eternity, Danvers/Navarro, 500 words. Navarro is unmoored in time, and it's up to Danvers to anchor her again. I really like the nonlinear approach here and how it lets the reader feel as disoriented as the character.

And some other favorites:
role models, Heated Rivalry, OMC/OMC with background Shane/Ilya, 7k. A wrenching and then hopeful look at two young hockey players navigating what it means to be queer while looking up to still-closeted Shane and Ilya. Lovely, probably readable canon-blind.

down, down, down, Original Work, Final Girl/Female Serial Killer, 900 words. After all the serial killing, the final girl has a lot she's not telling. I'm in awe of how much the author packs into such a short fic. Weird, chewy, fucky, A+.

Bridging the Divide, Wake Up Dead Man, Vera Draven & Grace Wicks, 4k. Vera meets a ghost, and then keeps coming back to meet her again. I think of everyone in the movie, these two got the shortest end of the stick and the least restitution for it, and this is so satisfying, as Grace gets to be herself in her own words, and they're able to sympathize with each other. It's not so much hurt/comfort as it is just two people being seen who desperately needed it, and it's so beautifully and delicately told.

Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Ilya Rozanov
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: ilyasloon on tumblr. But there are more works on their Insta
Why this piece is awesome: As ever I like WIP vids, seeing how artists build the picture. This is a super-realistic portrait of Ilya/Connor looking very much too cool for school!
Link: Ilya portrait with WIP vid, backup link here

Shawn Hatosy as Jack Abbot in The Pitt (s1 & s2e7 / 15 each)

  

more here! @ sweeticedtea

Fandom: Merlin
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Merlin, Arthur, Unicorn
Content Notes/Warnings: None
Medium: Digital 
Artist Website/Gallery:  khmelisuneliart
Why this piece is awesome: Lovely art of Merlin and Arthur encountering a unicorn in a sunny glenn.  If you don't know BBC's Merlin this piece still works as a pretty piece of fairy tale-esque art.
Link: tumblr

Wuthering Heights (2026). Young woman is torn between her love for the best friend she grew up with and her wealthy new-money neighbor.

I enjoyed this a lot. Emerald Fennell's visual spectacle is always on point, and in particular the costumes and sets are fantastic. There are a bunch of amazing set pieces, and the artificiality of Linton's mansion and the wardrobe he gives Cathy vs the organic squalor of her home and childhood were really effective IMO in contrasting several different binaries at once. I loved every single ridiculous dress. I was also really into Cathy and Heathcliff's starcrossed love. Heathcliff is so gone on her, and even when he's trying to be manipulative, he mostly comes across as desperate. (When he approaches Linton's ward Isabela in hopes of making Cathy jealous, he is the most gentlemanly ravisher you have ever met.) And Cathy is clearly equally gone on him, even if she gets in her own way sometimes.

I think the script could have used some work. For one thing, several secondary characters' motivations were left as exercises to the viewer (Cathy's father and especially her companion Nelly); like yes, I can form theories about why they did what they did, but maybe a little less subtlety here is in order. Also, just to make Cathy and Heathcliff feel a bit more complex as characters and/or to just make their relationship more toxic or at least complicated. Honestly, my main criticism here is that Fennell, against all expectations and especially considering her work on Saltburn, doesn't go nearly as weird and batshit as the story could support. The visuals yes, the character dynamics no.

Overall, though, a good time. I ship it and immediately went looking for fic. (There were 15 fics in the tag, half from before the movie even came out, and half the new ones were crossovers. RIP.)

--

The Tunnel (2011). An Australian mockumentary about a news crew that goes into abandoned subway tunnels underneath Sydney looking for a story.

I'm always interested in mockumentary horror, as opposed to your standard found footage, so I was excited to check this out. Unfortunately, the longer I sit with it, the less I like it. First of all, the whole point of the mockumentary aspect is to add depth, context, and contrast to the found footage, but IMO the interview clips here were almost extraneous. There were one or two nice moments, like when they have the anchor listen for the first time to what another crew member in the tunnels had heard through his head phones, but there was very little else that we couldn't have gotten from the found footage itself. The news investigation framing all felt a little off as well; the supposed pretext for going into the tunnels feels a little overheated. "Politicians fail to give updates on big proposal" does not feel like the red flag for a huge scandal, and various other aspects that were treated as potentially newsworthy just weren't, IMO. Also, surely the most terrifying part of underground horror is the threat of getting lost? I was astounded by how little a concern this was in the movie, even when they were running around without any care whatsoever for where they were.

What really killed this for me, though, was the gender politics. As with so many found footage type movies, there's one female character, the news anchor, and everyone else is male. (Why is this????) There are repeated assertions from the guys both in the found footage and the interview segments that the anchor doesn't know what she's doing, doesn't deserve her position, and probably is fucking the station director. And what do you know, they're right, several people die because of her ambition and poor judgment, not to mention how she goes into crying hysterics several times. In 2011!! Just brutal.

There's a behind the scenes doc about the movie that I managed to watch five minutes of, and before I turned it off, it was entirely about what genius fundraisers the creators were, and how they "disrupted" the Australian film funding model by "inventing NFTs before they were big." (They raised funds by ~selling frames of the movie to donors.) So... yeah.

The movie isn't entirely without merit; there's some great found footage moments. If you just want to watch people stumble around underground being chased by unknown monsters, you could do worse. But a very qualified rec.

--

Prince of Darkness (1987). Per Shudder, this John Carpenter movie "follows a group of quantum physics students in Los Angeles who are asked to assist a Catholic priest in investigating an ancient cylinder of liquid discovered in a monastery, which they come to find is a sentient, liquid embodiment of Satan."

NGL, I watched this because I really really wanted to see a movie about the liquid embodiment of Satan, and now I have, I guess. This was just bad. There are some memorable moments; I loved the dripping fluid floating upwards and that the canister (OF FLUID) was locked to "only open from the inside." The dream transmissions for the future were honestly rad. The bugs and creepy-crawlies everwhere were really effective sometimes. There's also a fun sense of claustrophobia as the night goes on and things close in around the characters. Also, frankly, the devil and Jesus as extraterrestials who came to take over and warn Earth, respectively, was neat! I wish the movie had gone harder on that!

OTOH, the eventual romance began with the guy being such a creeper that I was sure he was being set up as a villain, and then he's a big old sexist to her right before he asks her out, and I hated that. The demon instapregnancy was so predictable and tedious. One of the guys repeatedly has homophobic comments made to and by him, and also he's weirdly racist to one of the girls, and this is all for no apparent reason except as a characterization note. And overall the movie was just slow and lacking in charm. I would love to see this exact premise from someone who was actually good at writing characters.

I definitely wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they were interested in specific elements of the plot or if they're a John Carpenter completionist.

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanvids/fanart/fancrafts/other kinds of fanworks/fics/podfics have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

95 movie and TV show icons (icons include many variations).

( Fandoms... )

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing!

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( 1776 #4, Captain America #7, Doctor Strange #3, Dungeons of Doom #2, Fantastic Four #8, New Avengers #9, Ultimate Spider-Man #24 )

What I'm Reading Next

To make lysimache happy, I have very slowly started reading Les Misérables in the original French, after learning that the Kindle can now load translating dictionaries. (My old Kindle could not, but it's like 15 years old.) I don't think I'm going to finish it ever but, hey, I'm trying.

Pandemic Life
Just had my Covid booster.

Previous poll review
In the Oxford comma poll, 44.4% of respondents have firm opinions, 34.9% have moderate preferences, and 6.3% are officially neutral. (I worded the poll badly, because actually what I have is a firm preference, which is to weed out unnecessary commas for cleaner prose. Yes, I realise I used an Oxford comma above. ;-p) The "always use it!" contingent makes up 39.7% of respondents, while 15.9% said "only use it when necessary!"

In ticky-boxes, 39.7% of respondents selected "buying a random bargain bin product, imprinting on it, and spending the rest of your life trying to track down replacements", and I'm very glad it's not just me. I recently bought 18 toothbrushes online, which should theoretically keep me going until I'm 60. Naturally, hugs won the ticky-boxes, with 69.8%. Thank you for your votes!! ♥

Reading
I can't remember what prompted me to, but I listened to the audiobook of The Duke Who Didn't by Courtney Milan, read by Mary Jane Wells, and loved it all over again. (Last time I read it in ebook.) It's a British historical het romance with leads of Chinese descent, and they and their supporting cast are delightful.

I've now started the next in the series, The Marquis Who Mustn't, in ebook. (It's the first ebook I've bought in ages. I'm proud to say that, after some technical hitches, I managed to load a Kobo book onto my Kindle, so that'll be my plan from now on.)

While waiting to see if my Covid jab would importune me, I was allowed to go hang out in the library for the 15 minutes. I not only picked up my reserve, but also two random contemporary romance novels and a Japanese coffee shop book with cats. Given my recent rate of (not) reading hard-copy books, I should clearly not be allowed to browse.

Kdramas
Still going on One Spring Night. It's finally picking up. The cast is amazing, and they have excellent chemistry, which is what's been keeping me watching. The plot is, in essence, woman dumps her long-term high-status boyfriend for someone nicer of lower status; everyone has a hard time accepting this, especially the long-term boyfriend. Personally, I'm like, "The new guy is Jung Hae-in! Look at his smile!! How could you not??" Anyway, it felt like they were all having the same conversations over and over for seven episodes, which got a bit wearying, but hopefully the latest developments will stay developed. (FTR, this drama feels like an obvious descendant of Something in the Rain, with many of the same cast but (thankfully) no subplot about workplace sexual harassment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one will stick the landing better!)

Other TV
Watching our way through the extended edition of Lord of the Rings, plus many of the extras. What a blast from the past! Frodo actually made me tear up at the end of Fellowship. We're on the second disk of Fellowship extras.

Also, still, The Pitt and SurrealEstate, and my sister and I started season 4 of Fringe. (I would totally watch this show if it were always Olivia and Lincoln as partners. Who even needs Peter? ;-p)

Audio entertainment
Letters from an American, The Shit They Don't Tell You About Writing, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner (part of Crooked Media), and a whole bunch of episodes of Better Offline, including "Openclaw with David Gerard" (as recced by sabotabby), four short, angry episodes titled "AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble", and a fantastic rant with Cal Newport about AI reporting (spoiler: the vast majority of it is hype), which also, towards the end, explained (in words small enough for me to understand) how AIs are made/trained. Highly rec. I'm now working my way through Better Offline's series "The Enshittifinancial Crisis" and greatly appreciating his invective.

Online life
The Guardian slo-mo rewatch is still my happy place.

Writing/making things
I've been working on the same Yuletide New Year's Resolutions treat for, like, forever. It's only a couple of thousand words, it's just taking a while to come together. That's okay. I've also been noodling at a post about adverbs in speech tags for fan_writers, but there's too much to say; I need to rein it in.

Still intermittently practising drawing. Telling myself that one day I'll be able to do expressions and poses. That would be nice.

Life/health/mental state things
( Grumbling, feat. local politics )

Cats
Halle keeps bringing cicadas into the house and crunching them, nom nom nom.

Goals
I wrote a list of goals for the year and have not looked at it since. La la la.

Good things
Podcasts, kdramas, DVDs, audiobooks, media generally. Fandom and Guardian specifically. Sunshine again, yay! My roof did not blow off. Andrew and Halle and friends and biking out to meet someone for lunch.

I know that everyone who wanted to play Hades has probably already played Hades and moved on to Hades 2, because Hades came out back in 2020, but this is my journal and I just finished the main storyline yesterday, so.

( Hades, including some plot spoilers )

Up next in gaming: Not sure. I might play TR-49, which I just bought; I think that's a short one, and it looked like a fun puzzle game. I might also just play more Slay the Spire in preparation for StS2 next month. I know I said I wasn't gonna do Ascensions in StS, but I lied and started doing them. Of course, I'm at, like, 2. Out of 20. I will probably not get to 20.

I am also starting to feel well enough that I might consider playing a game on the Switch, which I haven't done since the migraines got bad, really, because holding a Switch is apparently a lot to ask of me, whereas games on the laptop means that the laptop sits right here next to me, and the 8bitdo controller also sits in my lap, so I don't have to lift anything. Yeah, I know. I've been really tired. At least right now I have enough energy to type this.

March 1 is just weeks away, so that means the kickoff to this year's March Meta Matters Challenge will be taking place soon! The challenge involves locating and copying over meta you've created to a second site in order to ensure its preservation, plus there will be some prompts for creating new meta.

Feel free to ask questions here about the challenge, locations, etc. Otherwise subscribe to marchmetamatterschallenge and look for our opening post on March 1!

01-20 that 70s show
21-27 archer
45-67 borgen (I fucked up the code and I ain't cleaning that up :p)
68-74 cougar town
75-82 damages
83-105 leverage
106-110 the middleman
111-121 misfits
122-140 the walking dead




( Ma'am, specificity is the soul of all good communication. )

Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: luluxa on tumblr, and on AO3 (AO3 ones are often higher-rated)
Why this piece is awesome: Luluxa did Heated Rivalry art! And it's gorgeous - warm skin tones with the boys on vacation somewhere hot - maybe their honeymoon? Just lovely!
Link: something for the Valentine's, backup link here