forthwritten | Network

xdiorix posting in

(If you'd like to see previous years' master lists, 2011 is here, 2012 is here, 2013 is here, 2014 is here, 2015 is here, 2016 is here, 2017 is here, 2018 is here, 2019 is here, 2020 is here, 2021 is here, 2022 is here, 2023 is here, and 2024 is here.)

Happy 15th annual #ITPE!!!! Thank you for bearing with us despite Tumblr sabotaging us not just once, but twice.

Here’s some stats and highlights from this year’s #ITPE!

We had 73 participants this year, and you made 293 podfics for a total run time of 124 hours, 16 minutes, and 4 seconds–that’s over FIVE DAYS of audio!

We have 4 simulpods this year! Incredible things happened in The Queen’s Thief fandom with

deepestbluesky podding a gift for

likethetrench, who recorded the same story for her recipient

feelingsandtaxes, who in turn podded that story for

lady-sci. Classic #ITPE antics!

flowerparrish and

tinybluebirdcloak gifted each other the same story as a treat, with flowerparrish also receiving a podfic of a story ze gifted to another recipient. Finally,

jeremyknox |

kbirbpods and

opalsong both podded the same story for their recipients.

By far our most prolific gifter this year was flowerparrish, who (on top of modding duties) not only made 4 gifts for zir recipient (including a nearly 11 hour podfic), but also picked up 2 pinch hits and made 57 treats. Not far behind was jeremyknox | kbirbpods who also picked up a pinch hit and made 15 main gifts for faer recipients and 16 treats! Opalsong had a relatively restrained year (for her), but still made 10 gifts (nearly 10 hours of audio) for her recipient!

rhea314 was also a generous gifter this year, making 8 main gifts for her recipient and 10 treats!

pezzax was another of our prolific gifters this year, making 22 treats! We also had generous treaters in

blackestglass,

wanderingjedihistorian,

chaoskiro,

j03-05, and

wilfriede! Honorable mentions to

popcornfairy28 and

reena-jenkins for the 3 and 5.5 hour (respectively) podfics they made for their recipients, and to

betrayedbycinnamon for treating despite not being signed up to the exchange!

Finally, we'd like to extend some thank you’s to:

-Data mod

flowersforgraves for converting all the sign up data to airtable which makes matching so much easier.
-

Asymptotical and

Dragonflies_and_Katydids for creating the coding we used to generate distribution day templates.
-Our pinch hitters

flowerparrish and

jeremyknox |

kbirbpods
-And as always,

exmanhater for ITPE’s permanent hosting

Now let’s get on to what you’re really here for…..the masterlist!! Here’s the masterlist spreadsheet for this year’s exchange!

Happy listening!!!

innitmarvelous_og posting in

iconthat

Link: https://i.imgur.com/WyJaVLU.jpg

Next: The Avengers (2012)

jazzfish posting in

endings

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troisoiseaux

Finished I Leap Over the Wall: Contrasts and Impressions After Twenty-Eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a 1949 memoir that is what it says on the tin and a fascinating read. It's a mix of explaining convent life to a secular audience (which was pretty much the same as in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, although I feel like Baldwin made more of an effort to explain why this or that aspect of life as a nun made sense in the context of Catholic doctrine), Baldwin's sense of culture shock from having entered the cloister in 1914 and left it in 1941, and her misadventures in adjusting to the modern world circa WWII— she worked various jobs in an effort to Do Her Bit for Britain, including as an unofficial Land Girl, dormitory matron at a munitions factory, hostess at an army canteen, assistant librarian at the Royal Academy of Science, and something for the War Office that she isn't allowed to talk about. (She was also the niece of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, which probably helped.) It's also a thoughtful, insightful memoir about a woman figuring out who she is as a person after nearly three decades of suppressing every instinct towards individualism; in a way, it reads a lot like the narrative of someone recovering from a long-term abusive relationship— there was one particularly aching line about the first time she "had actually dared to open a window, in a place containing several other people, and the universe had NOT rocked to its foundations and then come toppling down about my ears"— although, as it's all written in such a bright tone and Baldwin's view was clearly that she personally was unsuited for religious life, rather than religious life in itself being The Problem, I imagine that she would have been surprised by the comparison.

empyrealflamez66 posting in

iconthat

https://i.imgur.com/vpSItST.jpeg

Next picture: Malcolm in the Middle

malcolm in the middle family reunion episode

selenak

Current Location: Bamberg

For some Darth Real Life reasons, I had less time than usual during the holidays to delve into the Yuletide archive, but I did have some chances, and here are some early results. ;)

Akhenaten - Glass

The lone and level sands stretch far away: or, Egptian historical fiction. Based on the opera, but can be read without having heard it yet knowing who Akhenaten was. Poetic and intense.

Greek Myths:

Mothers of the Brazen Spear: Andromache and three of her sisters-in-law after the Trojan war. Based on Euripides.

Homophrosyne: Penelope through twenty years.

Born with Teeth:

To Bite the World: in which Will and Kit talk and role play Richard III and Anne Neville. Matches the play really well.

Bride of the Rat God - Hambly :

A closer kinship: the crucial moment from the novel's backstory when Christine shows up in England to whisk Norah away. This is one of my favourite Barbara Hambly novels, and the characterisation of both women is perfect.

Copenhagen - Frayn:

Quantum Game Theory: Four alternate timelines where the Copenhagen meeting never happened, and one where it did. Clever, moving and profound.

Farscape:

Look after the Princess: in which Katralla from s2's Princess trilogy wakes up post- Peacekeeper Wars (there are plot reasons) to find herself in a mad adventure with Aeryn Sun. And Aeryn's baby. And the usual Farscape insanity. Really feels like an episode in the best way, and fleshes out Katralla to boot.

Also, there are still free spots if you want me to ramble on something on the January meme.

merricatb posting in

smallfandomfest

Title: Nai-robbery
Author: MerricatB
Fandom: Sense8 (tv)
Pairing/Characters: Wolfgang Bogdanow & Capheus Onyango
Rating/Category: Teen
Prompt: Sense8 (tv), Wolfgang & Capheus, Bonding over having loyal (and loud) childhood besties
Spoilers: Whole series
Summary: While visiting Capheus on an especially costly trip to Nairobi, Wolfgang reflects on the similarities between their childhood friends.
Notes/Warnings: N/A

Read on AO3

james_davis_nicoll

Hisako Ichiki is a perfectly normal Japanese school girl with perfectly normal social anxiety and depression and perfectly dreadful marks. Hisako also has a stalker.

Fears And Hates (Ultimate X‑Men, volume 1) by Peach Momoko

james_davis_nicoll

Seven works new to me: four fantasy, three science fiction, of which at least three are series.

Books Received, December 20 — December 26

Poll #34011 Books Received, December 20 — December 26

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

The King Must Die by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (November 2025)
4 (25.0%)

Mortedant’s Peril by R. J. Barker (May 2026)
5 (31.2%)

Cold Steel by Joyce Ch’Ng (March 2025)
4 (25.0%)

The Ganymedan by R. T. Ester (November 2025)
7 (43.8%)

Alchemy of Souls by Adriana Mather (August 2026)
2 (12.5%)

The Bird Tribe by Lucinda Roy (July 2026)
2 (12.5%)

Household by Riccardo Sirignano and Simone Formicola (2022)
5 (31.2%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
15 (93.8%)

purplecat

Cover for teh novelisation of Scream of the Shalka by Paul Cornell. Images of the animated Richard E. Grant Doctor and Derek Jacobi Master flank the screaming head of the snake-like Shalka.

dolorosa_12

I went back to the pool this morning, after having been away for over a week due to being unwell, and then the sports centre's Christmas closure. It was almost completely empty when I started my laps, and had filled up massively by the end; this is a strange time of year, when I can never judge how other people are planning to fill their time.

( Another December talking meme prompt and response )

Other than the very low-effort books I mentioned in my previous post, I've read very little, although I am working my way through The Story of A New Name, the second book in Elena Ferrante's acclaimed Neapolitan quartet, and finding it as excellent as the first. This book covers our narrator's late teens and early adulthood, with that same mix of tightly observed specificity (the impoverished residents of a single block of apartments in 1960s Naples) and more universally relatable observations on the excruciating experiences of being a young woman.

I also read Motherland (Julia Ioffe), a memoir-history in the mode of Jung Chang's Wild Swans which follows the author's family through four generations of the twentieth century in what are now Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. Being Jewish people in that part of the world during the Holocaust, World War II, and the Soviet Union's existence and collapse was obviously not easy, and Ioffe's various ancestors navigated these treacherous waters with ingenuity, resilience, and persistence. As well as being a family history, Ioffe attempts in the book to write a social history of 'Russian' women (inverted commas very much needed, because she has a frustrating habit of treating 'Russian' as synonymous with 'other regions of the Russian empire,' 'Soviet', and so on), from the birth of the Soviet Union to current times. Here, although she highlights some extraordinary people and episodes in history, I feel the book is weaker, because (other than the women of her own family), she focuses for the most part on elites — wives of Soviet leaders, Stalin's daughter, wives and mistresses of Putin and his oligarchs, Yulia Navalnaya, and so on — and although her thesis is that such women offer a sort of mirror into the changing society, I can't help but feel that they're not exactly representative.

And that's it in terms of reading for now. I picked up a couple of silly sounding romantasy ebooks, I've still got two Rosemary Sutcliff books out from the library, and Matthias returned from today's grocery shopping with an unexpected book gift for me, but I'm not sure how many of these I'll make it through before the year's end. In any case, my focus is still the Yuletide collection at the moment.

spikedluv

I hit Walmart while I was downtown and the bank-drive thru on the way home.

I did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, emptied the dishwasher, used the leftover chicken to make chicken noodle soup, went for a walk with the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, paid a bill online, and scooped kitty litter. There were some phone calls I should have made (that will now have to wait until Monday), but I forgot it was a Friday (presuming they were open). Pip being home throws me off.

I read some fanfic and more in Boyfriend Material. I watched some HGTV programs.

Pip felt crappier today. He took cold meds before bed last night and went to bed early. Today I picked up some cold & flu for him. He slept (or tried to, there was a lot of distraction) most of the morning, felt a bit better in the afternoon, and was in bed by 6pm.

Temps started out at 7.5(F) and reached 19.1. TWC app is calling for 1-3 inches of snow this evening (it’s supposed to start at 5pm) and 5-8 overnight. DNW!!

Mom Update:

Mom sounded good when I talked to her on the phone. I had planned to visit, but given that Pip was sicker today, I decided it would be better if I didn’t. Even with a mask. Her BFF had just left when I called, so she did have a visitor today. I probably won’t visit her again until I can be sure that Pip is getting better and I didn’t catch anything from him. I hate letting too many days build up between visits because I know she likes the company and I like to see for myself how she’s doing.

spiderbraids posting in

iconthat

https://images2.imgbox.com/ea/7f/OaW5V3ns_o.png

Next: Bloom from Winx Club

elainegrey

We had a pleasant holiday. I am very thankful for my relationship with my sister. We had a long phone call before our households woke, and a walk together later in the day. I am well aware how special our relationship is. Christine and i also joined her family and my Dad for gift exchanges, Swedish pancakes and (Norwegian -- from her husband's side) Sandbakkels (lovely sugar cookies baked into domes). I'll just note Mom didn't go all Swedish heritage until after i was in college, so only a few things i remember from my born-to-Swedish-parents great aunts and grandmother hint to their Swedish heritage. They were encouraged to assimilate.

Yesterday we took Bruno to the vet to find out whether there's an infection or similar causing his urination. It's probably psychological, and we have gone all in on Feliway, which seems to be the general advice. We'll try a little kitty prozac. I occasionally try to sedate Marlowe with gabapentin (days i won't spend working in the same room with Bruno). Sometimes it works but most of the time it doesn't. Wish i knew what would make that reliable, so we could expose them to each other without Marlowe going all special forces on Bruno. Carrie Dog had a panic attack Friday morning. Poor pups. I did feel a bit like this is the household of misfit beings, yesterday morning, but we can be a refuge for these beings and ourselves.

For Yule Christine has given me a maslin pan, which is the answer to the question: what type pot is wide enough to get all the jam and jelly to the right temperature while also not boiling over? Deep stock pots are not the answer. After reading rhapsodic accounts of jelly made in 100% copper pans, then reading why it's safe -- high sugar content buffers the acids in fruits -- i chose the more practical stainless steel. That should make jelly, jam, and fig leather prep next year more pleasurable.

I managed to pass on some Frankoma Plainsman green dishes to my sister, who missed out on the 70s overdose of avocado green. I knocked the handle off one of my Pfaltzcraft Heritage Christmas mugs as i got them out for the first time since, i dunno, pre pandemic? Pre Mom's stroke? I think it will glue back OK. I am trying to decided if i should just ditch it. I also broke a ramekin (and thinking back a broke a 4 oz jelly jar).

Meanwhile, time passes. Myself and all around me slowly giving over to entropy.

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) Gorgeous weather, cold but lots of sunshine. I lunched outside and went for a stroll to get some vitamin D

2) A little problem was solved easily. My parents and I are going to switch DVD players so that I can watch the blu-ray disc I received for Xmas

3) Bought new (warm) clothes yesterday and more are on it’s way after I discovered a better deal online before buying some of them.

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

calimac

British newspaper article by Anna Bonet, listing "The 14 children's classics every adult should read." Most of them British, of course. Organizing them by my experience with them, they are:

Read in childhood
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
The Hobbit I encountered at 11, and it changed my life. I would not be most of the things I am today if I had not read The Hobbit. The Railway Children I remember enjoying at about the same age, but I haven't seen it since. I know Nesbit mostly through adult introduction to her as a foundational children's fantasist. Alice and The Little Prince were OK, but didn't really grab me. Watership Down wasn't published in the US until I was 17, but that was the perfect age to find it. Not even excepting Earthsea, which has a different feel, it is the only post-Tolkien epic fantasy with the same sweep and power. (Most of them are utter crap.)

Failed to read in childhood
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
One of two classics I was given in childhood that I utterly bounced off of; the other was one of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. I did like Tom Sawyer.

First read in adulthood
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Wind in the Willows, which I picked up at about 24, is the one children's classic that I didn't encounter until adulthood that has become as dear to me as my childhood favorites. I read the entire Narnian saga when I joined the Mythopoeic Society at 18, having previously ignored Lewis; I found them thin and not particularly appealing. The other two I don't remember when I read them, but only once each. They were OK, but I find I rather preferred their cinematic adaptations.

Not read
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
I think I may have picked up the Durrell at one point, but I didn't read much if so. I had a different encounter with Streatfeild, as I had another book of hers as a child, The Children on the Top Floor, which I did like very much (and still do, actually). Enid Blyton was completely unknown in the US in my childhood, though she's seeped in a little since then. I'd heard of Anne of Green Gables but never ran across it.

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/27/look-at-those-wee-teefs

Via David Ellis

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/27/look-at-those-wee-teefs

badly_knitted posting in

fan_flashworks

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

Title: Illegal Actions
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Sheridan.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 200
Spoilers/Setting: No Surrender, No Retreat.
Summary: Sheridan can’t stand idly by while Earth Alliance destroyers fire on unarmed ships full of refugees.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 501: Amnesty 83, using Challenge 83: Fight.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.
A/N: Double drabble.

( Illegal Actions... )

wickedgame posting in

icons

Fandoms: 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Lone Star, 9-1-1: Nashville, Good Trouble, Ransom Canyon, Six Is Not A Crowd, Stay By My Side, XO, Kitty

rest HERE @

mundodefieras

silveradept

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: HUNTR/X - How It's Done

It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.

( 26: Rocks )

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Game Changers book series, Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairings: OFCs, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter/Kip Grady, Hayden Pike, Troy Barrett, mentions of many HR characters
Rating: Teen
Length: 6937
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply. Some mentions of homophobia and slurs.
Creator Links: corsi on AO3
Themes: Outsider POV, Unconventional format & style, Epistolary, Worldbuilding, Fans and fandom

Summary:
yara

troycabaret

tried to get oomf into hockey and now she's obsessed with FUCKING HOLLANOV? THEY'RE 50 YEARS OLD

Or: Ten years, as seen through fandom.

Reccer's Notes: This is courtesy of a rec in

cathexys' journal. It's another fic told through snippets from invented social media posts across about ten years, following the development, within the universe of Heated Rivalry, of hockey rpf fandom, mainly focusing on Hollanov (Ilya/Shane). It's extraordinarily well done, and although the story of Shane and Ilya's decade-long love affair is the core thread, the real tale is of the rpf fandom, specifically a few devoted fans. The poignancy and brilliance of this fic is the portraits it paints of fanwriters and young fans, immersed in the fandom while they grow and develop, moving through their own life stages and dramas while posting about the hockey players they love, especially Hollanov. And in the end, of course, the Hollanov truthers are resoundingly vindicated. The formatting makes it clear that we're seeing posts on tumblr, livejournal, AO3, Reddit, Twitter, etc., with different types of fandom on each platform. Hilarious and touching, this is a wonderful read, and the details are meticulous and very funny.
PS: It may help to know in advance (as these may be hockey rpf terms with which I was unfamiliar) that 2481 is code for Hollander/Rozanov (their jersey numbers), and 2435 is Hollander/Pike. MHL is the Major Hockey League, HR's version of the NHL. Some details in the fic will probably only make sense if you've read the books.
PPS: Also, there's a fictional recs list by "ice knives" partway through, and I want to read ALL OF THEM!

Fanwork Links: Love Takes Miles (read it in creator's style if you can, for the formatting)

dine

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minoanmiss

Current Mood: amused

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

sonia

I've been getting together with a friend to sing for a couple of years now. We met in the Balkan choir and both have aspirations to sing in a trio again someday. She generally sings low and I generally sing high, although it's fun to swap sometimes. We haven't been successful at finding a third person to sing middle with us, but we've enjoyed practicing choir songs and learning other songs together.

I tend to like song with strong rhythms and melodies, and she tends to like the slow wandering songs with lots of ornamentation, so it's been broadening both of our repertoires. Here are a couple of songs I've been working on at her suggestion.

Zora Zazorila "Dawn is breaking". Here is Eva Quartet sounding fantastic. I listen to them and despair, because I will never ever sound like that, but I can sing my own version, with my own slower and simpler ornaments. Zora Zazorila sheet music

Watch on YouTube

Bozha Zvezda "Lord's star". Here is Kitka singing it on their Wintersongs album, Leslie Bonnett gorgeously singing melody with Janet Kutulas. Bozha Zvezda sheet music

Watch on YouTube

They learned it from Daniel Spassov, and here's his recording. Bozha Zvezda

Those songs are both Bulgarian, but in case anyone is interested in learning more about Balkan singing, Dragi Spasovski is a kind and knowledgeable teacher of Macedonian songs, and he's teaching online for EEFC four Wednesdays in January, 5-6:15pm PT. I just signed up! More info and registration.

petra

Current Mood: as me as it gets
Current Music: But you can't be free, 'cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene

A little bit: Genghis Khan (1438 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: DCU (Comics)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage Sex
Relationships: Bruce Wayne/Everyone's Mother
Characters: Bruce Wayne, John Grayson, Mary Grayson, Barbara Eileen Gordon, Jim Gordon (DCU), Sheila Haywood, Catherine Todd, Willis Todd, Crystal Brown, David Cain, Sandra Wu-San, Oliver Queen, Bonnie King-Jones, Sandra Moonday Hawke, Diana (Wonder Woman), Clark Kent, Talia al Ghul, Isis (DC Comics), Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Janet Drake
Additional Tags: Pairing Tags in End Notes, Bruce Wayne Has a Superpower, Bruce Wayne's A+ Parenting, Drabble Sequence, familial duty, Extremely Dubious Consent, Sex Pollen, Catbaby - Freeform
Series: Part 18 of Fandom Bicycle (One Character/Everybody Else)
Summary:

In which the parentage of various heroes is elucidated and the answer to "Who's your daddy?" is definitively: "Batman."

torachan

1. It rained a little bit off and on today, but mostly off. Aside from taking a few walks in the neighborhood, we just stayed home anyway, so it didn't really matter, but I've had enough rain for now.

2. Carla made a super delicious dinner tonight. A beef roast and cheesy potatoes, steamed broccoli (the least exciting of the bunch but still tasty), and Alex brought some take and bake garlic bread, which I had a little bit of even though I shouldn't. There was also some of the ube Christmas cake for dessert.

3. Gemma's a sassy girl.

bitterlawngnome

( about 40 plant pictures )

skygiants

Every year I'm like "I should really read the Neon Hemlock novellas" and then perhaps I actually manage to get around to reading one of them, but this year I ... thought I had read all of them because I thought there were only four published but it turns out in fact now that I check there were several more than that. Well! I read four of them! They were all very gay and very tropey; under these subheadings, I enjoyed two of them quite a bit, one of them didn't hit for me, and the last one I found incredibly frustrating, for personal reasons.

The two I liked were No Such Thing as Duty, by Lara Elena Donnelly, and The Oblivion Bride, by Caitlin Starling. Both of these have a definite air of fanfiction about them: No Such Thing As Duty is a 'what if my favorite historical guy met a sexy vampire' fic, the favorite historical guy in question is W. Somerset Maughan. I have come to the conclusion that I'm really quite charmed by this sort of thing as long as the favorite historical guy in question is not a pre-existing big seller like Christopher Marlowe or Charlotte Bronte but someone who I actually have to look up:* the author's real victory is in making me Wikipedia their special historical guy and go 'whoa, sure, lot going on here actually'

*I'm aware this is very subjective and there are many people out there who don't have to go to Google to know basic things about W. Somerset Maughan. But they ARE a lot fewer I think than the people who don't have to go to Google to know basic things about i.e. Lord Byron. That said, if you are experiencing boredom at the idea of Yet Another Sexy W. Somserset Maughan fic, I'd love to know about it.

The Oblivion Bride meanwhile is a classic Lesbian Arranged Marriage fic that, per the author's note, appears to have grown out of a Dishonored fic the author wrote several years back. I don't know anything about Dishonored so I can't tell you much about that. What I can tell you is that she's a normalgirl cadet member of an important family who's been thrust into an important political position because all her actual aristocratic relatives have mysteriously died, she's an icy cold Murder Alchemist General and also Magical Detective who's marrying her by order of the prince to solve the mysterious deaths and keep the political assets in the hands of someone loyal to the throne; could they actually fall in love? The answer will shock you! Anyway, I like tropes, and I like lesbians, and I like that Caitlin Starling is never afraid to lean into her id; I was as happy to read this in novella form as I would have been on AO3.

The Dead Withheld by L.D. Lewis is the one that didn't quite hit for me -- it's a supernatural noir about a PI who can talk to the dead investigating the cold case death of her wife, and it is doing exactly what it says on the tin but something about it never quite grabbed me. Too short? Not enough oomph? Anyway, it might grab you!

and The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas drove me up a wall, in large part because the worldbuilding it's doing is extremely playful and interesting and fun -- it's set in an alternate universe where a South Asian empire was the major early colonial power instead of Rome, and their abandoned artifacts and technology power contemporary superheroes. The protagonist is an academic dating a superhero; the text is heavily footnote-studded and 50% of the footnotes are really fun and interesting little explorations of this alternate history. Unfortunately for me, the actual plot laid on top of this rich worldbuilding is all Gay Superhero Relationship Drama and the other 50% of the footnotes are gossipy anecdotes about the protagonist's sex life. This is certainly going to be a feature for some people but was, alas, a bug for me; every time I went through the effort to click through the annoying footnotes format on my digital edition I was really hoping to get a meaty paragraph about what happened after Siddhartha marched into the city of Rime and did not feel rewarded any time I got a smug half-sentence about shibari instead.

mulhollands posting in

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Next picture: A Room With A View (1985)

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reading list

Network

#ITPE 2025 Masterlist

Pass It On 6

(no subject)

I Leap Over the Wall - Monica Baldwin

Pass It on 6

Yuletide Recs 1

Fanfic, Sense8 (tv), Wolfgang & Capheus, Bonding over having loyal (and loud) childhood besties

Fears And Hates (Ultimate X‑Men, volume 1) by Peach Momoko

Books Received, December 20 — December 26

Random Doctor Who Picture

More holiday reading and a December meme prompt

The Day in Spikedluv (Friday, Dec 26)

Pass It On 6

Wishes that you had a good Yule (morning writing, cats, dawg, f&f)

Saturday 27/12/2025

Just One Thing (27 December 2025)

children's classics

Look at Those Wee Teefs

Fight Challenge: Babylon 5: Illegal Actions

multifandom icons.

December Days 02025 #26: Rocks

Game Changers (Heated Rivalry): Love Takes Miles by corsi

hope everyone enjoyed a Happy Boxing Day!

Conversation With My Father

Songs to sing

A little bit: Genghis Khan - DCU drabble sequence, Bruce Wayne/Everyone's Mother

Daily Happiness

(no subject)

(no subject)

Pass It On 6

Profile

September 2019

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