violsva | Network

snickfic posting in

More recs at my journal, including:

Possibly in Michigan
The Secret History
The Raven Tower
Impromptu/19th Century RPF
The Dispossessed
The Long Walk -Stephen King
Waking the Moon
Rope

snickfic

So many delicious goodies. :') I hope to make at least one more recs post before writer reveals.

Two, Seven, Eight, Possibly in Michigan, 1.8k. The Beachwood Place Mall is not a great work environment. The canon is a bizarre 1983 short film about weird men in masks following women in shopping malls, possibly with the intention of eating them, which you can watch here; this fic is a series of incident reports and answering machine messages to and from a concerned perfume counter employee. IDK if it's possible to fully capture the fever dream quality of the film, but this takes a good stab.

an island made from fate, The Secret History, Camilla & Charles, 1.6k. Early on at Hampden, Camilla escapes a tedious house party and finds Charles. This is a great, elegantly written little character study of Camilla, who never got quite enough time in the book IMO, and really shows the fault lines of her relationship with Charles. Great stuff.

k2, p2, yo, k2tog, The Raven Tower, The Strength and Patience of the Hill and The Myriad, 1.2k. The Strength and Patience tells a story about a sheep, and The Myriad has quibbles. The story about the sheep is fun and feels very in keeping with the universe of the novel, and the reveal about why the Strength and Patience has chosen to tell this particular story is delightful.

la femme comme il (en) faut, Impromptu (1991), George Sand, 3.2k. George gets invited to a salon and attends despite her better instincts. I'm not familiar with the movie and found this via the historical RPF tag, but I really enjoyed this vivid portrait of the Parisian artistic community at this time period, and the last scene really elevates it, IMO, and ties the whole thing together. I love the subtle emotional arc of this, and now I kind of want to go find the George Sand biography the author mentionds in the notes.

More A Comment Than A Question, The Dispossessed, Laia Asieo Odo & Sadik, 2.3k. Every so often, Laia goes a little mad and hears a voice claiming to be from the future. It's been a long time since I read about these characters, but I enjoyed this so much. The device of visiting Laia at these various points in her life was very cool, and there's something so peaceful about this whole fic, too, the same sense of peace and simplicity I got from reading the novel years ago.

There's No Discharge in the War, The Long Walk - Stephen King, Stebbins, 12k. Stebbins walks, dies, walks again. Stebbins has always been a sneaky favorite of mine, and I love seeing him get a fic all his own here that fleshes him out and gives him his own unique horrific trauma! The author uses the time loop device to fantastic and creative effect, and it all adds up to a conclusion that I like more and more the longer I think about it. Absolutely spectacular work. One of my favorites this year.

Hyacinth Girl, Waking the Moon, Oliver Crawford, 7.6k. Oliver, before the Divine. The author tags this as "Tragic Backstory" and they are correct!! I read this book last year and yet feel as though I'm missing things in this fic; I can't quite tell how many of these elements were present in the novel and which the author invents here, but the result is gorgeous and heartbreaking. You've got fairy tale stuff, dysfunctional family, the Benandanti always menacing in the background, more literay quotes than you can shake a stick at, absolutely gorgeous imagery.

Knife, Rope (1948), Brandon/Phillip, 4.9k. Brandon and Phillip's class go on a camping trip, and Brandon discovers that Phillip is not just more wallpaper. This is obviously backstory to the movie but feels like a beautiful, self-contained little psychopathic romance on its own. Two weirdos falling in love via discussing murder scenarios!! I was compelled from start to finish.

mrs_redboots posting in

yuletide

If you go to my journal you will find recs for stories in the following fandoms:

Puck of Pook's Hill/Callendar Series
Sussex Set
Swallows and Amazons (two stories)
Cadfael Chronicles
Chalet School
The Secret Garden
and Dragonriders of Pern

There may yet be more to come....

jesse_the_k

Since we met in 1977, MyGuy has always eaten the spongy white stuff which dwells between an orange and its skin (whether he picks it off the whole peeled orange or nibbles it away from the cut-open peel).

Yesterday I tried it. It's delicious! Michigan State University claims it also has as much vitamin C as the fruit.

What else am I missing?

milesent_feed

Posted by milesent

https://milesent.wordpress.com/2025/12/29/holiday-weekend-update/

http://milesent.wordpress.com/?p=6469

Kind of surprised that so many days have passed and it feels like not much has happened.

Christmas Eve went well, it’s always a bit stressful being a hostess but I love my family and with just my side it was less stressful. Brother-in-law John came! He hasn’t in ages! I think he liked what I got him,though he quipped “Too late” on the “introverts excuse wheel” I got him, heh. Hey! It’s for avoiding other people’s social engagements, not mine!

It’s funny the subtle differences in people’s holiday traditions and how one person’s perfect gathering can be torture for another person. Just… feeling philosophical about it. For instance, all of the combo gifts for Marie and Brian I had Brian open, because I know he had fewer gifts than Marie did. For our niece and nephew it’s the opposite… the niece has the most presents and gets to open all the combo gifts because the nephew wants her to be spoiled. I think Marie agrees with me giving more presents to Brian, she’d feel bad if she got more than him. Anyway… there’s a lot of angst involved in gift giving. In our family it always felt a bit like a test; one had to give the best gift to prove you love the other person. It’s odd.

Anyway, I felt I did a good job as gift buyer this year; though I feel since I did most of the shopping the husband (while grateful) missed out on some of the joy of seeing people open the gifts as he hadn’t picked so many out.

Marie and Liz liked the watercolor kits I got them, and Marie was super touched by the Rotring pen (yay!) and the Emperor Tamarin stuffed animal. (I wasn’t sure if she’d be thrilled… but she was! Yay! Major win as a gift giver!)

Jennifer seemed really out of her shell this time, it was lovely. We talked a lot and I think she liked what I got her too. So happy to see her so healthy! (and cute, she had this amazing pink outfit!)

Christmas Day we went by the husband’s niece and nephew and ate too much, heh. His brother Frankie in New York got everyone photo prints… and I was touched, everyone got a group picture of the family but me, I got a big picture of me at the Star Trek set in May, it was my “Getting killed by the rock monster before the first commercial break” pose, hee. Very funny… but it made me feel special. Thanks Frankie!

On Boxing Day the hubby and I went to the mall; there was this nutcracker tray he was interested in if it was still there, and on sale. Alas! It was gone. As was the peppermint candy bath mat I was interested in. Still, we got a few sale items (I added to my snowflake broach collection) and steps on our pedometers.

On Saturday we went to the Metroparks, which was lovely. Why don’t I go more often? It was beautiful, and relatively quiet. We saw a red tailed hawk up close when it swooped from one of the lamposts overhead to attack some small furry critter in the grass. Startling and gorgeous and I think the mousie (or whatever it was) got away, as he didn’t have anything when he returned to the tree.

Yesterday we went by my friend Jacqueline’s; she is fostering two adult cats and four adorable kittens. We had fun playing with the kittens (hubby became a climbing tree!) and loving on the momma cat and coaxing little Lydia cat out of hiding; poor dear is very shy of humans. I hope all six cats get loving homes! We also swung by Gale’s Garden Center and picked up a few more Christmas items on sale We may have a problem. Hey, we didn’t have a Christmas night light for the upstairs bathroom! That was needed! hee.

Today I am grateful that my weight is down after all that over-eating, and the leftover population is decreased and most of all that I have the day off of work! I am looking forward to making this a fun and productive week. *knock on wood* I’ll keep y’all posted.

https://milesent.wordpress.com/2025/12/29/holiday-weekend-update/

http://milesent.wordpress.com/?p=6469

dine

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minoanmiss

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Current Mood: surly

feng_shui_house

This is so cool. 4minutes 19seconds- I was happily bopping along to it. Great mood elevator. It’s very accurately titled:

Minecraft, but I soar through 1,000,000,000 blocks with NO LAG (Music Sync)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XiJxSQiHVU

profiterole_reads

Why on Earth: An Alien Invasion Anthology, created by Rosiee Thor and Vania Stoyanova and written by 10 more authors, was a lot of fun. Teen aliens on a rescue mission crash-land on Earth.

This book is called an "anthology" but it's more of a collaboration (like my beloved Grimoire of Grave Fates). Rosiee Thor and Vania Stoyanova wrote the prologue presenting the aliens, then the other authors wrote stories about them encountering human teens, or sometimes just about humans dealing with the existence of the UFO. It's labelled as YA, but the writing feels MG to me.

The aliens choose their own genders, and don't necessarily stick with it. There are several enbies (among both the aliens and the humans), a trans boy, as well as some m/m, f/f and f/nb.

spikedluv

I did a load of laundry (bed sheets, so also stripped and re-made the bed), hand-washed dishes, vacuumed the bedroom rug (I used to think the old vacuum did okay on the bedroom rug, but it was even doing poorly there because the new vacuum just glides over it and I don’t have to go over a spot more than once to suck up the dog hair; such a treat!), cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and changed kitty litter (thankfully I’m done with the crap litter and back to the usual). I turned the last little bit of chuck roast into soup.

I finished Boyfriend Material and read some fanfic. I watched the Bills game. NGL, getting that two-point conversion would’ve been exciting as heck, but I wish they’d gone for the safe (safer) play. It’s no fun watching your team lose. *pouts*

Today I tried the Cinnamon Plum tea. It was pretty good, and not too cinnamon-y. But I also didn’t let it steep as long (as I did with the Cinnamon Orange) for the first cup, which might have helped.

Bad news: I felt myself starting to get stuffy today. I hope that whatever I catch from Pip is mild.

Temps started out at 1.8(F) (BRR!) and reached 32 (according to Pip; I missed it). There was actually a little bit of sun in the morning, but it didn’t last, sadly. Freezing rain started during the evening and we're supposed to get more overnight. (Spoiler alert: we did get more overnight. o_O)

Mom Update:

Mom sounded good when I spoke to her. I can’t wait until I can see her again. I want to see for myself that she’s looking as good as she’s sounding. My brother visited her in the morning and Sister A in the afternoon, so she did have some company, which is good.

lsanderson

Munich’s surfers foiled again after city thwarts effort to restart river wave
Authorities remove beam placed on Christmas Day to recreate Eisbach wave, which vanished in October
Agence France-Presse in Berlin
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/28/munichs-surfers-foiled-again-as-authorities-remove-access-to-famous-river-wave

‘It would drive some people crazy’: Victoria’s French Island remains remote, and that’s how most like it
Just 70km from Melbourne yet only accessible by ferry, the island’s isolation is the source of its appeal and its biggest drawback
Stephanie Convery with photography by Penny Stephens
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/28/it-would-drive-some-people-crazy-victorias-french-island-remains-remote-and-thats-how-most-like-it ( Read more... )

minoanmiss

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purplecat

A LEGO Orrery - on top of a circular base containing cogs, sits a lego pillar with a large yellow ball. An arm extends out to one side ending in a circular platform with a smaller blue ball

You can't actually see it, I realise all of a sudden, but there is a tiny moon that circles around the Earth which is obscured, in this view, by the Earth itself.

garonne

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aqueductpress_feed

Posted by Timmi Duchamp

https://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-pleasures-of-reading-viewing-and_01205835346.html

Reading Pleasures

by Lesley Wheeler

The scariest book I’ve read in ages, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, stole into my to-be-read stack in some mysterious way. I don’t remember buying it or receiving it as a gift, but there it was, so I popped it into my beach bag and devoured it in a single afternoon, shivering despite the sun.

2025 has been a frightening year, which might be related to my quest for fictional uncanniness, emphasis on Gothic houses and haunted people. Of this year’s buzziest genre books, I thought Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar was amazing; my feelings about several other hefty new novels were more mixed.

Eowyn Ivey’s Black Woods, Blue Sky, on the other hand, evoked weirdness in Alaska with mesmerizing beauty.

I live at the edge of Appalachia, so I seek out fantasy set in this region; this year I admired Linda H. Codega’s Motheater and Smothermoss by Alisa Alering. Encounter the Weird in suburban New Jersey—a more surreal place than it sounds—in Scott Nicolay’s novella caterpillars. For spooky mansions, try Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs. Westaway and Elisabeth Thomas’ memorable Catherine House, in which Gothic meets dark academia.

A hybrid novel about a woman’s rage in rural New Zealand is Louise Wallace’s Ash—worth seeking out. Also gloriously hybrid—and full of writing prompts—is Heid E. Erdrich’s Verb Animate.

In poetry, I read a third of Martha Silano’s Terminal Surreal, written while she was dying from ALS, and it was electrifying. I had to return the book, so reacquiring it is a priority! I’m likewise in the middle of Jan Beatty’s Dragstripping, which is, as Sandra Cisneros says, “full throttle.”

In what, for me, was a book launch year, I only managed to publish one review, of Rosa Castellano’s All Is the Telling, but many other new collections impressed me: Laura-Gray Street’s Just Labor, about gender and the textile industry; Susan Rich’s Blue Atlas, about a long-ago abortion; Tonee Mae Moll’s You Cannot Save Here; Cindy Veach’s Monster Galaxy; Denise Duhamel’s Pink Lady; Luisa A. Igloria’s Caulbearer; and Julie Marie Wade’s Quick Change Artist. An advance look at Joan Naviyuk Kane’s with snow pouring southward past the window excited me about that 2026 collection.

I reread Jennifer Martelli’s Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree before an event we did together, unaware that she was dying, too—we lost some important poets this year—then went back to Martelli’s My Tarantella, about the murder of Kitty Genovese, to keep her voice in my head.

From a couple of years back but new to me: Jaswinder Bolina’s English as a Second Language brandishes wickedly sharp humor at recent culture and politics. Finally, if a terrific and very of-the-moment eco-poetry anthology appeals, check out Attached to the Living World edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street and The Nature of Our Times edited by Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto, and David Hassler. Both will introduce you to amazing poets not yet on your radar.

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of six poetry collections, including Mycocosmic and The Receptionist and Other Tales (Aqueduct, 2012). Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming (Aqueduct, 2020). Wheeler’s work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Workshop; her poems and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, Orion, Poetry, Strange Horizons, and Ecotone. She teaches undergraduates in Lexington, Virginia.

https://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-pleasures-of-reading-viewing-and_01205835346.html

siria

I'm home for Christmas and the New Year, hurrah. I've drunk a lot of tea, there have been mince pies, I've spent nice time with the nieces. I also had the peak "Irish village at the holidays" experience of having to make small talk for a few minutes with a man whose wife is—known to even far-flung diaspora members like myself, but unknown to him—having an open affair with the parish priest. This is the kind of wholesome experience that you just don't get in other places.

( Generation Kill )

( Heated Rivalry )

garonne

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skygiants

The Queen's Embroiderer: A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis did quite a good job of giving me historical context around the lives of artisans and upwardly mobile bourgeois in 17th and early 18th century France and only a mediocre job IMO of convincing me of its central argument, but I was reading it for the former and not the latter so I can't say I was disappointed per se ...

As the author, historian Joan DeJean, introduces her narrative, she was browsing the National Archives when she came across two documents: the first, appointing Jean Magoulet as official embroiderer to Queen Marie-Thérèse of France; the second, decreeing that Magoulet's daughter Marie Louise should be put in prison and deported to New Orleans on charges of prostitution. DeJean immediately dropped what she was doing to Get To The Bottom Of This and went on a deep dive into the entire Magoulet family as well as the family of Louis Chevrot, the young man whose involvement with Marie-Louise resulted in the charges above.

In order to write this family saga, Joan DeJean has pulled out every relevant family document -- marriage licenses, birth certificates, guardianship statements, criminal charges, recorded purchases, etc. etc. -- and she does a clear and interesting job of explaining what we can learn from them, what these kinds of documents normally look like and what their context is, what the specific features of these family documents imply, and letting you follow her logic with your own brain. I appreciate this very much! I had no idea, for example, that it was standard in 17th-century France for the court to appoint a guardian for any child who lost a parent, even if they still had the other parent living, to ensure that their financial interests were protected, something that came up often in this narrative where a lot of kids were losing parents in situations where their financial interests were not particularly protected. It's a really good example of historical detective work, how you can draw a picture of a family through time through the bureaucratic litter they leave behind, and I appreciated it very much.

On the other hand, Joan DeJean also occasionally slips into writing like this --

In the course of their attempts both to get rich quick and to save their skin when they got into bad straits, the Queen's Embroiderers became imposters, tricksters, con artists nonpareil. They lied about everything and to everyone: to the police, to notaries, to their in-laws. They lied about their ages and those of their children, about their professional accomplishments and their net worth. They caroused; they philandered; they made a mockery of the laws of church and state. The only truly authentic thing about them was their extraordinary talent and their ability to weave gold and silver thread into the kind of garments that seemed the stuff of dreams. In their lives and on an almost daily basis, haute couture crossed paths with high crime.

Savage beauty indeed.

-- which made me laugh out loud every time it happened. So, bug, feature? who could say ....

Anyway, Joan DeJean makes a pretty good argument for most of the family gossip she pulls out about the Magoulets and the Chevrots, but the center of her argument about the Great Tragic Romance between Marie-Louise Magoulet and Louis Chevrot rests on a really elaborate switcheroo that I simply do not buy. In drawing out her family saga, DeJean has become obsessed with the fact that there seem to have been two Marie-Louise Magoulets, one being more than a decade older than the other, and, crucially, also more than a decade older than Louis Chevrot; ( I guess this is technically spoilers for a three hundred year old scandal )

But a.) context about material culture and craftsmanship is what I was here for and context is what I got, in spades, and b.) if you're going to invent a historical conspiracy theory, make it as niche as possible, is what I say, so despite the fact that I don't BELIEVE DeJean I still spiritually support her. Has she perhaps connected a few more dots than actually exist? Perhaps. But I still certainly got my money's worth [none; library] out of the book!

badly_knitted posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: The Only Way
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Garibaldi, Sheridan.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 250
Spoilers/Setting: The Exercise of Vital Powers.
Summary: For Sheridan’s sake, Garibaldi will have to betray his former captain.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 501: Amnesty 83, using Challenge 100: Choices.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.
A/N: Double drabble and a half, 250 words.

( The Only Way... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

dolorosa_12

Today's prompt from

chestnut_pod brings this year's December talking meme to a close, and it's been a great run of questions. Many thanks to all of you who left a prompt! This final prompt is to talk about how I learnt to garden, plus any longstanding plant friends in my garden.

( Response here )

fandomtrees is due to open for reveals on 10 January, but it will only do so when every participant has a minimum of two gifts each. This post on the comm links to a spreadsheet of needy trees — there are still a substantial number of participants with only one gift, or with no gift at all. My own tree is here.

And the new year means that

snowflake_challenge will be rolling around again. I'm always so happy to see the consequent burst of enthusiastic activity on Dreamwidth!

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

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Violsva

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December 2025

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Page Summary

snickfic in yuletide - Yuletide recs (part 2)
snickfic - Yuletide recs, part II
mrs_redboots in yuletide - 8 recs in 7 fandoms
jesse_the_k - Pithy Realization
milesent_feed - Holiday & weekend update
dine - Music Monday
minoanmiss - Someone has a bad attitude
feng_shui_house - Mood Elevating Video.
profiterole_reads - Why on Earth: An Alien Invasion Anthology
spikedluv - The Day in Spikedluv (Sunday, Dec 28)
lsanderson - 2025.12.29
minoanmiss - Wind Phone
purplecat - LEGO Orrery
garonne - Book Bingo 2026
aqueductpress_feed - The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 19: Lesley Wheeler
siria - 2572 / Generation Kill; Heated Rivalry
garonne - Yuletide Recs
skygiants - (no subject)
badly_knitted in fan_flashworks - Choices Challenge: Babylon 5: The Only Way
dolorosa_12 - Final December meme post, and some fannish links

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We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Network

Yuletide recs (part 2)

Yuletide recs, part II

8 recs in 7 fandoms

Pithy Realization

Holiday & weekend update

Music Monday

Someone has a bad attitude

Mood Elevating Video.

Why on Earth: An Alien Invasion Anthology

The Day in Spikedluv (Sunday, Dec 28)

2025.12.29

Wind Phone

LEGO Orrery

Book Bingo 2026

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 19: Lesley Wheeler

2572 / Generation Kill; Heated Rivalry

Yuletide Recs

(no subject)

Choices Challenge: Babylon 5: The Only Way

Final December meme post, and some fannish links

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December 2025

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